Seventeen

Kara Wiese said she was in her pajamas and asked if she could come to the police station the following day. A.L. said no. She said it would take her an hour to get there. A.L. said, “Do your best.”

The good news was that the extra time gave them an opportunity to verify that there had been no telephone calls between Steven Hanzel’s cell phone and Kara Wiese’s cell phone. Neither of them had home phones.

“You think Claire was wrong?” A.L. asked. “Or they’ve both got a second phone?”

“Hard to know. I’ll get somebody to do a search for another number under her name. Plus, we’ll ask her about it. If she ever gets here,” she added.

“I’m five minutes away from sending squad cars with lights and sirens to her house.” He leaned back in his chair so far that the legs came off the floor. When there was a knock on the door, the legs hit the floor hard.

“She’s here,” said the officer working the front desk.

“Excellent. Be right back,” A.L. said to Rena. He walked to the front entrance. “Evening, Kara.”

“Evening, Detective,” she said.

“Let’s walk back this direction,” he said pointing. “Detective Morgan is going to be joining us.”

“Everyone’s working late, then,” she said.

“We’ve got a missing child,” he said.

“Of course. That’s why I’m here.”

A.L. opened the door.

“Detective Morgan,” Kara said.

“Thank you for coming in,” Rena said. “We have a few questions about a previous statement that you gave us. In specific, you said that a few months back, you made several calls to the Baywood Bank because you were interested in refinancing your current home. Is there any part of that statement that you’d like to amend?”

“No. Listen, I understand the confusion. I spoke with Sam. Who was also a little confused.” She offered up a smile. “My husband is a great guy. Works hard. Is going to school to get ahead. But he’s not good with details or quite frankly, anything financial. I pay all the bills in my family. So those discussions I had with the bank about refinancing were done without him even being aware. It didn’t go anywhere so there really wasn’t a need to tell him after the fact.”

Again, Rena thought, such a fucking reasonable explanation.

“I guess I’m having trouble with your earlier explanation that you don’t recall who you spoke to at the bank. You see, I’ve refinanced,” A.L. said. “And it’s sort of a process. And I can’t help but think that it would have been unnecessarily complicated if you were talking to several different people.”