Next up, taking an initial statement. A good trooper will note both what the subject says and how she says it. People in a genuine state of shock have a tendency to babble, offering fragments of information but unable to string together a coherent whole. Some victims disassociate. They speak in flat, clipped tones about an event that in their own minds already didn’t happen to them. Then there are the professional liars—the ones who pretend to babble or disassociate.

Any liar will sooner or later overreach. Add a little too much detail. Sound a bit too composed. Then the well-trained investigator can pounce.

“Can you tell me what happened here, Trooper Leoni?” A Boston district detective takes the first pass. He is older, hair graying at the temples. He sounds kind, going for the collegial approach.

I don’t want to answer. I have to answer. Better the district detective than the homicide investigator who will follow. My head throbs, my temples, my cheek. My face is on fire.

Want to throw up. Fighting the sensation.

“My husband …” I whisper. My gaze drops automatically to the floor. I catch my mistake, force myself to look up, meet the district detective’s eye. “Sometimes … when I worked late. My husband grew angry.” Pause. My voice, growing stronger, more definite. “He hit me.”

“Where did he hit you, Officer?”

“Face. Eye. Cheek.” My fingers finding each spot, reliving the pain. Inside my head, I’m stuck in a moment of time. Him, looming above. Me, cowering on the linoleum, genuinely terrified.

“I fell down,” I recite for the district detective. “My husband picked up a chair.”

Silence. The district detective waiting for me to say more. Spin a lie, tell the truth.

“I didn’t hit him,” I whisper. I’ve taken enough of these statements. I know how this story goes. We all do. “If I didn’t fight back,” I state mechanically, “he’d wear out, go away. If I did … It was always worse in the end.”

“Your husband picked up a chair, Trooper Leoni? Where were you when he did this?”

“On the floor.”

“Where in the house?”

“The kitchen.”

“When your husband picked up the chair, what did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“What did he do?”

“Threw it.”

“Where?”

“At me.”

“Did it hit you?”

“I … I don’t remember.”

“Then what happened, Trooper Leoni?” The district detective leaning down, peering at me more closely. His face is a study of concern. Is my eye contact wrong? My story too detailed? Not detailed enough?

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth.

The song sounds in my head. I want to giggle. I don’t.

Love you, Mommy. Love you.

“I threw the chair back at him,” I tell the district detective.

“You threw the chair back at him?”

“He got … angrier. So I must have done something, right? Because he became angrier.”