She was rolling down a steep, slippery slope of potential catastrophes. “Whose witness would I be? How do I choose a side? Do I visit him in jail? How can you visit your mother’s murderer in jail? You can’t!”
The words dried up. All he could hear was ragged, desperate panic. Her eyes met his in mute terror. Watching someone have a panic attack was like looking into the eyes of someone trapped behind glass, drowning right in front of you.
“Breathe with me.” Roger put down his notepad and picked up the carved wooden figure of an elephant that sat next to the tissue box.
“Focus on this. Feel the curve of its trunk. Focus on the smoothness, the roughness.” He watched her hands trace the elephant’s textured surface.
“Tiger,” whispered Amy, and for a moment he didn’t get it. He thought, It’s an elephant, not a tiger. Was it something to do with the bunny dream? But then he remembered how at their very first session, she’d teased him about how every therapist she’d ever seen wanted to talk about the tiger when they described the fight-or-flight response.
The saber-toothed tiger. She was trying to tell him it was here. Leaping for her throat.
Chapter 51
“No criminal record,” said Christina. “No evidence of violence or threats of violence. No life insurance policy.”
“There’s still a financial benefit,” Ethan pointed out. “They were cashed up from selling the tennis school. He’d be in a better position financially than if they divorced.”
“I’m not talking about the Delaneys. I’m saying you could have said all of the above about this charmer.” She jabbed a finger at the newspaper on her desk.
The body found in bushland had been identified as Polly Perkins. Polly was a woman who’d lived in a suburb close to Joy Delaney. Thirty years ago, Polly’s husband told everyone his wife had left him and gone back to New Zealand. She’d left a “cold, hurtful” note. The neighboring women had been sad for him. They’d brought around casseroles and carrot cake.
The truth was that Professor Andrew Perkins had hit his first wife, Polly, over the head with a new Sunbeam steam iron, after he had expressly forbidden her from buying it because he was under “significant financial stress at the time.” His full, frank confession included the rueful admission that he “really hadn’t intended to hit her quite that hard.” He’d buried his wife’s body in bushland within a short drive of his home. If it wasn’t for the landslide caused by the storm, Polly would be there still. Polly had been estranged from a scattered, dysfunctional family, but there had been a missing persons report filed by her best friend in New Zealand. Over the years this friend had valiantly tried to get the Australian police interested in her missing friend, to little avail. Records showed just one visit by police officers to the Perkins house, three years after Polly “left.” The two officers had enjoyed some carrot cake baked by the kind neighbor who had become Andrew Perkins’s second wife.
The second wife had used the murder weapon to iron her husband’s shirts for a good twenty years before being given permission to buy a new one.
She had this week told police about an ongoing pattern of financial, verbal, and physical abuse that had left her a prisoner in her home.
“This man enjoyed thirty years of freedom after he murdered his wife. He could easily have gone to his grave without justice.” Christina pressed her thumb on Polly’s husband’s murderous, well-fed face. “We may not have Joy Delaney’s body yet, but—”
Her phone rang. It was probably just as well. There had been too much emotion in her voice. It was Constable Pete Novak, the ground search coordinator. “We’ve found an item of clothing in the bush reserve behind the Delaneys’ house that you’ll want to see. I’m sending you a picture now.”
She opened her email and clicked on the photo attached. It was a T-shirt screen-printed with a distinctive design of three flowers: orange, red, and yellow. Gerberas.
“Is that—?”
“Yes,” said Pete. “It’s covered in blood.”
Chapter 52
“Thank you for coming in today, Mr. Delaney,” said Christina.
Ethan noted that her manner was businesslike: not at all aggressive. She seemed to be speaking with the friendly detached authority of a medical specialist who has asked a patient to come back in for a serious follow-up appointment. “You know Constable Lim, of course.”
She indicated Ethan. Stan looked over at Ethan and nodded, folding his arms across his barrel chest. “Yup.”
Stan Delaney’s wife had been missing now for nineteen days. The scratches
on his face were completely healed. Ethan noted that he’d shaved for this interview and dressed in a business shirt. No tie. The shirt was ironed. He looked like a respectable member of the community. He had no legal representation. It was difficult to imagine this man having anything to do with that blood-soaked T-shirt.
They were in the small windowless ERISP room at the station. ERISP stood for Electronic Record of Interview with a Suspected Person, and it meant that this entire interview was being recorded on both an audio and video disk. Ethan sat in one corner, observing and keeping an eye on the recording equipment.
“You really want to be a cop?” his brother had said to him when he first mentioned going into the police force. “Directing traffic?”
Ethan’s brother was an actuary. He was sitting in a city office right now solving mathematical equations while Ethan was helping solve a possible murder, and his brother thought he’d made the better choice of career.
Christina did something quick and complicated with her hair to make it tighter at the back. She said, “Mr. Delaney, I’d like to go through the timeline one more time.”
“Okay.” Stan nodded. He sat up, uncrossed his arms, and placed closed fists on his thighs. Bring it on, he seemed to be saying. “What do you want to know?”