Love You More - Lisa Gardner [99]
Murray hung up. D.D. went to work on assembling the rest of the team.
28
Tuesday, twelve p.m. I stood shackled in the processing area of the Suffolk County Jail. No sheriff’s van parked in the garage this time. Instead, a Boston detective’s Crown Vic had rolled into the secured loading bay. Despite myself, I was impressed. I had assumed the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department would be in charge of transport. I wonder how many heads had rolled and markers had been called in to place me in Detective D. D. Warren’s custody.
She got out of the car first. Derisive glance flicked my way, then she approached the command center, handing over paperwork to the waiting COs. Detective Bobby Dodge had opened the passenger’s door. He came around the vehicle toward me, his face impossible to read. Still waters that ran deep.
No pedestrian clothes for my road trip. Instead, my previously issued pants and top had been replaced with the traditional orange prison jumpsuit, marking my status for the world to see. I’d asked for a coat, hat, and gloves. I’d been granted none of the above. Apparently, the sheriff’s department worried less about frostbite and more about escape. I would be shackled for the full length of my sojourn into society. I would also be under direct supervision of a law enforcement officer at all times.
I didn’t fight these conditions. I was tense enough as it was. Keyed up for the afternoon events to come, while simultaneously crashing from the morning’s misadventures. I kept my gaze forward and my head down.
The key to any strategy is not to overplay your hand.
Bobby arrived at my side. The female CO who’d been standing guard relinquished my arm. He seized it, leading me back to the Crown Vic.
D.D. had finished the paperwork. She arrived at the cruiser, staring at me balefully as Bobby opened the back door and I struggled to slide gracefully into the backseat with my hands and legs tied. I tilted back too far, got stuck like a beetle with its legs in the air. Bobby had to reach down, place one hand on my hip, and shove me over.
D.D. shook her head, then took her place behind the steering wheel.
Another minute and the massive garage door slowly creaked up. We backed up, onto the streets of Boston.
I turned my face to the gray March sky and blinked my eyes against the light.
Looks like snow, I thought, but didn’t say a word.
D.D. drove to the nearby hospital parking lot. There, a dozen other vehicles, from white SUVS to black-and-white police cruisers were waiting. She pulled in and they formed a line behind us. D.D. looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“Start talking,” she said.
“I’d like a coffee.”
“Fuck you.”
I smiled then, couldn’t help myself. I had become my husband, with a Good Tessa and a Bad Tessa. Good Tessa had saved Kim Watters’s life. Good Tessa had fought off evil attacking inmates and had felt, for just one moment, like a proud member of law enforcement.
Bad Tessa wore prison orange and sat in the back of a police cruiser. Bad Tessa … Well, for Bad Tessa, the day was very young.
“Search dogs?” I asked.
“Cadaver dogs,” D.D. emphasized.
I smiled again, but it was sad this time, and for a second, I felt my composure crack. A yawning emptiness bloomed inside. All the things I had lost. And more I could still lose.
All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.…
“You should’ve found her,” I murmured. “I was counting on you to find her.”
“Where?” D.D. snapped.
“Route two. Westbound, toward Lexington.”
D.D. drove.
We know about Trooper Lyons,” D.D. said curtly, talking from the front seat. We’d taken Route 2 past Arlington, exchanging urban jungle for suburban pipe dreams. Next up, the old money of Lexington and Concord, to be followed by the quaint, country charm of Harvard, Mass.
“What do you know?” I asked. I was genuinely curious.
“That he beat you up, in order to substantiate your claim of spousal abuse.”
“Have you ever hit a girl?” I asked Detective Dodge.
Bobby Dodge twisted in his seat. “Tell me about the hit man, Tessa. Find out how much I’m willing