Decker nodded encouragingly. “Makes total sense.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But…” Dresden shook his head. “Roseanne must have changed her schedule and didn’t tell me about it. She came home at six-thirty in the morning and found us together.”
“Where?”
“In the condo.”
“I mean what room?”
“Oh…not in bed,” Dresden told him. “Thank God for that. I had to go into work early that morning…I told the police that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“So we were already dressed and I was making coffee when she came in. But then she saw Marina and saw that her hair was wet. Roseanne assumed the worst.”
Way more than just a simple assumption, Decker thought. “What happened next?”
“The marriage was over anyway,” Dresden said. “But I didn’t want it to end…I didn’t want her having ammunition against me in divorce court, actually. And if that sounds bad, well, she wasn’t the saint that everyone says she was. She was fucking around on me just as much as I was screwing around on her.”
“I know that,” Decker said. “So what did Roseanne do when she saw you two together…and Marina’s wet hair?”
“She made some little snide comment about how she hoped I liked my whore because I was going to need a place to stay very soon.” He shook his head. “I went nuts. I grabbed her. I shouldn’t have done it, but I was angry. Like I said, she was fucking around, too.”
“I understand. She got your goat.”
“Man, did she ever, the little bitch! So I grabbed her and shook her hard and said something like, ‘Talk about whores.’” His eyes welled up. “I don’t remember what happened after that. My recollections get a little fuzzy. I was furious and she was furious. I remember that we tussled. I think I must have pushed her. Her purse fell to the ground and opened up…that must have been when her phone dropped out. I don’t remember if she said anything to me…maybe she whispered ‘bastard.’ But as soon as she was free, she picked up her purse and stormed out of the condo.”
He was breathing hard.
“I was so mad I was shaking. I wanted to kill her!”
He looked at Decker.
“But I didn’t. I remember Marina telling me to calm down and that she’d handle it. Then she picked up her own purse and left. I sat down on the couch, waiting for Marina to come back. I was trying to get a grip on myself. A few minutes passed, a few more passed. I suddenly realized that my shirt buttons had popped off and there were scratch marks on my chest. Roseanne must have attacked me with her nails and that’s why I pushed her…to get her off of me.”
Decker nodded. He had taken two confessions in two days. His hand was going to fall off soon from writing so much. “You pushed her to get her off, not to hurt her.”
“No, not to hurt her.” He glared at Decker. “And I didn’t hurt her. She was fine when she left. I mean she was mad but she wasn’t hurt. I went into the bedroom to change my shirt. I was starting to focus on what happened. Then I realized that about a half hour had passed and neither one of the bitches had come back. After I changed my shirt, I put on my suit jacket and decided to go to work. I looked around the condo’s parking lot before I left. There was no sign of Marina or Roseanne or Roseanne’s car.”
He shrugged.
“I went to work. About a half hour later I heard about the crash. I think a coworker told me. I don’t remember too clearly. I went numb when I heard the news! I wasn’t sure where Roseanne was. I didn’t think automatically that she was on the flight, but I wasn’t sure.”
Decker said, “So what did you do?”
“I tried calling Roseanne, of course. I must have called her about twenty times in a row until finally I get this incoming call from Marina, who’s calling me to tell me how sorry she was. I asked her what she meant.”
He swallowed again.
“At the time, I wasn’t thinking that Roseanne had been on the plane, only that it was a WestAir crash and maybe she needed me for support.”
“You honestly thought that?”
“She was still my wife.” He drank more water. “I really don’t know what I was thinking! But then Marina told me that Roseanne was on the plane. I felt faint. I asked her how she knew that. She said that she had talked to Roseanne in the condo parking lot…that they agreed to talk later, woman-to-woman, but that Roseanne couldn’t talk at the moment because she had to catch the flight that crashed…”
Again, he buried his head. Decker waited for him to resurface.
“I blacked out. When I came to I was sick, I was confused, I was…it didn’t make any sense to me. If Roseanne was going back to San Jose right away, why would she go home first? But then I thought about the fight and maybe that was why…”
More tears.
“I was too stunned to question Marina’s story. On some level, it made sense. I couldn’t get hold of Roseanne and now Marina was telling me she was on that plane.”
Tears ran down his face.
“I was in a stupor for a long time afterward. I didn’t go to work, I didn’t go out, I didn’t call anyone, and I didn’t answer any calls. I drank a lot because I was a wreck.” He shook his head. “I was a zombie.”
“I’m sure you were,” Decker said. “And I feel very bad for you. But we still have the car problem, Ivan. How did Roseanne’s blood get all over the car?”
“I don’t know!” Dresden protested. “I don’t have any idea.”
“You say that when you went out to the parking lot that morning, Roseanne’s car was gone.”
“Yes.”
“So how’d you get it back?”
Dresden furrowed his brow, trying to bring back the memory. “I think…I…oh, wait. Okay. This is what happened. A few days later, or maybe it was just a day later-it was after the airport reopened-Marina came back with Roseanne’s car, saying that she picked it up at the airport for me. She said she didn’t want me to have to think about something so trivial, so she did me the favor.”
“How’d she get the keys to the car, Ivan?”
“I don’t know how she got the keys unless she took them from Roseanne.”
Bingo, Decker thought.
“But why would I think that? I was still thinking that Roseanne died in flight 1324.”
“So she brought you the car a few days later?”
“No…No…wait…” He thought a few moments. “Okay, this is what happened. Marina said she had the car. Then she asked if she could borrow it for a while. At first, I told her no, that it would be a very bad idea for her to drive it. You know, that it would look weird for my girlfriend to be driving my wife’s car a few days after she died. That’s when she told me that she had actually picked up the car from the airport after the crash and that it smelled funky…that some old food had been left inside and she wanted to take it to the car wash or have it professionally cleaned or something like that. I think I asked her where the car was now and she told me it was at her apartment. So I told her return it to me as soon as it was clean. I also told her that we shouldn’t see each other right after Roseanne died. Man, did she get pissed! It wasn’t like I was planning to dump her. I just needed some time to myself.”
“Totally understandable. So what did she say to you when you wanted to cool it for a while?”
“I don’t remember the exact words, just that she was going on and on about how she was going to tell everyone about the affair and that I wasn’t worth her time and that she was going to ruin me. I finally shut her up by promising her some insurance money once the whole thing was settled.”
“And calmed her down?”
“A little. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything too well.” He rubbed his forehead. “I think it took about a month for her to finally bring me back the car. It reeked of mold. I asked her what the hell happened. She told me she was really sorry, but she left it out in the rain with the top down. But then she handed me twenty-five hundred bucks in cash and told me to get the car reupholstered the way I liked. She gave me Jim Franco’s name and told me that he’d do a great job and after all I’d been through didn’t I deserve a little something for me?”