“And yet there’s not a single cut or scrape on her hands,” Bobby provided. “No broken nails or bruised knuckles.”

“So someone beat the shit out of her, and she never lifted a hand to stop it?” D.D. asked skeptically.

“Until she shot him dead,” Bobby corrected mildly.

D.D. rolled her eyes, feeling perplexed and not liking it. Tessa Leoni’s facial injuries appeared real enough. Her fear over her daughter’s disappearance genuine. But the scene … the lack of defensive wounds, a trained officer who went first for her gun when she had an entire duty belt at her disposal, a female who’d just given such an emotional statement while studiously avoiding all eye contact …

D.D. was deeply uncomfortable with the scene, or maybe, with a fellow female officer who’d grabbed her arm and basically begged D.D. to find her missing child.

Six-year-old Sophie Leoni, who was terrified of the dark.

Oh God. This case was gonna hurt.

“Sounds like she and the husband got into it,” Bobby was saying. “He overwhelmed her, knocked her to the floor, so she went for her gun. Only afterward did she discover her daughter missing. And realize, of course, that she’d just killed the only person who could probably tell her where Sophie is.”

D.D. nodded, still considering. “Here’s a question: What’s a trooper’s first instinct—to protect herself or to protect others?”

“Protect others.”

“And what’s a mother’s first priority? Protect herself or protect her child?”

“Her child.”

“And yet, Trooper Leoni’s daughter is missing, and the first thing she does is notify her union rep and find a good lawyer.”

“Maybe she’s not a very good trooper,” Bobby said.

“Maybe, she’s not a very good mother,” D.D. replied.

Chapter 6

6

I fell in love when I was eight years old. Not the way you think. I had climbed the tree in my front yard, taking a seat on the lower branch and staring down at the tiny patch of burnt-out lawn below me. Probably, my father was at work. He owned his own garage, opening up shop by six most mornings and not returning till after five most nights. Probably, my mother was asleep. She passed the days in the hushed darkness of my parents’ bedroom. Sometimes, she’d call to me and I’d bring her little things—a glass of water, a couple of crackers. But mostly, she waited for my father to come home.

He’d fix dinner for all of us, my mother finally shuffling out of her dark abyss to join us at the little round table. She would smile at him, as he passed the potatoes. She would chew mechanically, as he spoke gruffly of his day.