Love You More_ A Novel - Lisa Gardner [55]
“Mother?” D.D. asked.
“Dead. Six months earlier, heart failure. Not a happy household, but …” Again, Walthers shrugged. “Most of them aren’t.”
“So,” D.D. replayed the events in her mind, “Tommy Howe is dead from a single GSW in his family room. Tessa confesses to the crime, all cleaned up and unwilling to submit to a physical exam. I don’t get it. The DA simply took her word for it? Poor traumatized sixteen-year-old girl must be telling the truth?”
Walthers shook his head. “Between you and me?”
“By all means,” D.D. assured him. “Between friends.”
“I couldn’t make heads or tails of Tessa Leoni. I mean, on the one hand, she was sitting in her kitchen trembling uncontrollably. On the other hand … she delivered a precise recounting of every minute of the evening. In all my years, never had a victim recount so many details with such clarity, especially a victim of sexual assault. It bothered me, but what could I say: Honey, your memory is too good for me to take you seriously?” Walthers shook his head. “In this day and age, those kinds of statements can cost a detective his shield, and trust me—I got two ex-wives to support—I need my pension.”
“So why let her off with self-defense? Why not press charges?” Bobby asked, clearly as perplexed as D.D.
“Because Tessa Leoni might have been a questionable victim, but Tommy Howe was the perfect perpetrator. Within twenty-four hours, three different girls phoned in with accounts of being sexually assaulted by him. None of them wanted to make a formal statement, mind you, but the more we dug, the more we discovered Tommy had a clear reputation with the ladies: He didn’t take no for an answer. He didn’t necessarily use brute force, which is why so many of the girls were reluctant to testify. Instead, sounded like he would ply them with alcohol, maybe even spike their drinks. But a couple of the girls remembered clearly not being interested in Tommy Howe, and waking up in his bed anyway.”
“Rohypnol,” D.D. said.
“Probably. We never found any trace of it in his dorm room, but even his buddies agreed that what Tommy wanted, Tommy got, and the girl’s feelings on the subject weren’t of much interest to him.”
“Nice guy,” Bobby muttered darkly.
“His parents certainly thought so,” Walthers remarked. “When the DA announced he wasn’t pressing charges, tried to explain the mitigating circumstances … You would’ve thought we were claiming the Pope was an atheist. The father—James, James Howe—hit the roof. Screamed at the DA, called my lieutenant to rant how my shitty police work was allowing a cold-blooded murderer to go free. Jim had contacts, he’d get us all in the end.”
“Did he?” D.D. asked curiously.
Walthers rolled his eyes. “Please, he was corporate middle management for Polaroid. Contacts? He made a decent living, and I’m sure his underlings feared him. But he was only a king of an eight-by-eight cubicle and a two thousand square foot house. Parents.” Walthers shook his head.
“Mr. and Mrs. Howe never believed Tommy attacked Tessa Leoni?”
“Nope. They could never see their son’s guilt, which was interesting, ’cause Donnie Leoni could never see his daughter’s innocence. I heard through the grapevine that he kicked her out. Apparently, he’s one of those guys who believes the girl must be asking for it.” Walthers shook his head again. “What can you do?”
The waitress reappeared, bearing platters of food. She slid plates in front of Walthers and Bobby, then handed D.D. her glass of juice.
“Anything else?” the waitress asked.
They shook their heads; she departed.
The men dug in. D.D. leaned closer to the cracked window to escape the greasy odor of sausage. She removed her gum, attempted the orange juice.
So Tessa Leoni had shot Tommy Howe once in the leg. If D.D. pictured the scene in her mind, the choreography made sense.