Isabeclass="underline" My guess is it’s not even true. Andrew’s making excuses. Wants to justify what he did by saying she did it, too. And even if it is true, it doesn’t matter. The only reason she might have done something like that is because Andrew wasn’t treating her right. It was horrible living with him. You know what he’d do?
Detective Hardy: Why don’t you tell me.
Isabeclass="underline" He renovates houses. So they’d buy one that needed work, and he’d fix it up while they lived in it. Total chaos, living in a house while it’s being ripped apart. And then when it was all fixed, when they had a nice place to live, he’d sell it, make some money, and buy another fixer-upper, and do it all over again. Imagine living like that. Never having a place that’s really home. Brie couldn’t take it anymore.
Detective Hardy: I’m not so sure what you’ve described constitutes emotional abuse.
Isabeclass="underline" All I’m asking you is to do your job.
Detective Hardy: And where were you this past weekend?
Isabeclass="underline" Excuse me?
Detective Hardy: I’m just getting a sense of where everybody was. Building a timeline, that kind of thing.
Isabeclass="underline" We went away Saturday, overnight, to Boston. To see family.
Detective Hardy: We?
Isabeclass="underline" My husband, Norman, and I. And I feel sick about it. If we’d been in town, maybe there’s something we could have done. Brie might have called me if she was in some kind of trouble. You know, instead of talking to me, you should be out there looking for her.
Detective Hardy: Believe me, we’re doing that. Mr. Mason insists that he and Brie both felt guilty and regretful about what they’d done, and that it prompted them to reassess their marriage, that it actually brought them closer together.
Isabeclass="underline" And you believe that?
Detective Hardy: Do you?
Isabeclass="underline" What I believe is you need to talk to Natalie Simmons and see what she has to say. Maybe Andy told her he really was in love with her, that he wanted to make a life with her, and all he had to do was get my sister out of the way first.
Detective Hardy: We intend to talk to all relevant parties in our investigation.
Isabeclass="underline" Have you talked to her already?
Detective Hardy: No, we have not.
Isabeclass="underline" Good God, what kind of detective are you? You should have talked to her the moment I gave you her name.
Detective Hardy: I will. As soon as we’re able to find her.
Nine
Andrew
As I drove away from the scene of whatever it was that had happened on the street where Brie and I used to live, I noticed a car coming the other way that was obviously an unmarked police cruiser. You don’t exactly have to be Jack Reacher to spot them. Black or dark gray, unadorned by chrome, the cheapest hubcaps money can buy. You’d think the cops would have figured out by now that even a simple ten-dollar pinstriping kit would make it less obvious who they were.
I initially had an impulse to slide down into the seat, below the window, but that’s not an easy thing to do when you’re behind the wheel. So I sat up straight, back rigid, and tried my best not to turn for a better look at the driver as we slipped past each other. Being a gawker, I figured, would only draw attention to myself.
But I did get enough of a look to satisfy myself it was Detective Marissa Hardy behind the wheel.
Thanks, Max. Thanks a bunch.
She hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen her, which had been maybe a year and a half ago. I saw plenty of her, of course, in the eighteen months or so following Brie’s disappearance, and sporadically after that. An occasional encounter, to let me know she hadn’t forgotten me. She’d probably have visited me more often if I hadn’t hired a lawyer, Nan Sokolow, and threatened Hardy’s department with a harassment suit.
Hardy still had the short, almost buzz-cut salt-and-pepper hair, the oversized black-rimmed glasses. I’d always thought she looked more like a stern women’s prison librarian than a cop, but maybe that’s some unfair typecasting of prison librarians. But Marissa Hardy certainly never endeared herself to me. She was humorless and annoying and, I guess I have to give credit where credit is due, relentless. She was not the kind of person you wanted hounding you if you’d done something wrong.
Now it seemed likely she’d be back in my life again, unless she deemed what Max had to tell her as jumping to conclusions, or considered the surveillance video from the house next door as inconclusive. Except that didn’t strike me how Hardy would react. If she saw the slimmest opportunity to make my life hell again, she’d take it.
I headed north out of town on the Milford Parkway, and when I reached the Merritt Parkway I took the long curving ramp to get onto the westbound lanes. I stayed on the parkway until I got to Trumbull, where I took the White Plains Road exit. I made a few rights and lefts until I reached TrumbullGate Mall. Took no more than fifteen minutes.
It had been a few years since this place had been a shopping destination. The massive lot was empty, save for part of the south end that had been cordoned off and was full of new Hyundais. A local dealership was clearly renting some space to store their stock. Even though Greg had told me to come in through the south end service entrance, I did a loop of the mall just to get the lay of the land.
All the windows, including the grand entry points, were boarded up. Most malls, considering that they looked inward instead of to the outside, which explained why so many of them were so goddamn ugly, didn’t have that many outward facing windows to begin with. The outer perimeter of a mall was usually a maze of cinder-block corridors that allowed stores to bring in merchandise without traipsing it through the main concourse.
I found the south service entrance partially hidden behind a false front that would have allowed tractor trailers to be unloaded without being seen by the public. Tucked in there was an early 2000s Audi A3 in black parked behind Greg’s oversized pickup truck. The cargo bed was loaded with all manner of building materials. Scraps of railing, pipe, several mannequin torsos and limbs, undamaged ceiling panels.
A regular door up on the loading bay was propped open an inch with a chock of wood to keep it from locking. I was reaching for the handle when it opened from the other side.
A woman stepped out and was briefly startled to see me, then smiled broadly.
“You must be Andrew,” she said. “I’m Julie.”
She stuck out a hand. She was almost as Greg had described her on the phone. Short turquoise hair, yes, but also with streaks of black. Petite and instantly cheerful, with a smile that took over half her face.
“Hi,” I said.
“Oh hell,” she said, and threw her arms around me for a quick hug. “Greggy has told me so much about you I feel I know you.”
“Well,” I said, a bit caught off guard, “it’s nice to meet you.”
“I’m just heading off,” she said. “Back in a while with more donuts.”
I didn’t remember Greg being much of a junk food addict. She must have caught my puzzled expression.
“Not for him,” she said. “You’ll see. Just head in and follow the buzzing and hammering. You’ll find him. Gotta run.”
She headed for the Audi as I entered the facility. I found my way through the service area that shoppers never see until I reached a door that took me to the mall proper. There’s something about a now-abandoned but once-public space that raises the goose bumps on one’s arms. The mall consisted of two levels, open through the center so you could look down from the upper concourse to the one below. I’d come in on the lower level, near one of the abandoned anchor stores that at one time had been a thriving Sears, JCPenney, or Kohl’s.