“I came back after he left…Decker.” Donatti squirmed in his seat. “She let me in. We fought. It was a bad one, Gabe. I lost my temper.”

“You beat her up again?”

“No, no, no.” He paused. “I didn’t beat her and I certainly didn’t kill her. She was alive when I left the room. She was scared shitless, but very much alive.”

“Why was she scared?”

“Because I told her if she didn’t get her ass back where it belonged, I’d drag it back dead or alive.”

Donatti wiped drool from the corner of his mouth. He lit a cigarette.

Chris only smoked when he was frazzled.

“I must have been yelling. You know me, I never yell.”

“No, you really don’t.”

“No one can get me as angry as your mom. She knows how to push my buttons and she was pushing every single one of them that day. Fuck, I just blew. I was loud and it was bad.”

He took a drag on his cigarette.

“What made it really bad was that one of the fucking gardeners or maintenance men or whatever the fuck he is overheard me screaming. He knocked on the door, asking if everything was okay.”

“Did he call the police?”

“No. Your mother answered the door and told him everything was fine. But you’d have to be a moron to believe that. The guy was clearly on the brink of saying something. So I made an appearance and flashed him some money. About a grand.”

Donatti laughed.

“He took it, making the problem go away…temporarily.” He took another drag on the cigarette. “Now, I don’t like Decker. I think he’s an arrogant self-righteous son of a bitch who gets his kicks out of torturing me. But he’s a good detective. How long do you think it’ll be before he locates that stupid fuck?”

Gabe was silent.

“He’s going to find out that I fought with her. He’s going to find out that I threatened her. And now she’s gone.” Another puff. “Circumstantial evidence…because there’s no body and without a body you don’t get good forensics. It would be hard to prove a case against me. My lawyer would argue that she ran away and went into hiding. That’s a two-way street, given the most recent interaction of my fists and your mother’s face. Hiding makes sense, but also my killing her would make sense. Juries are unpredictable and I’m not willing to risk it.”

He flicked ashes into a paper cup.

“If she split to get away from me, I’ll find her. She doesn’t stand a chance.”

Gabe glanced at him, then averted his eyes.