Page 12

CHAPTER 12

AS TROY AND RHONDA spoke in the living room, Baby wandered into the kitchen, unable to stay away any longer. The infamous Hansen kitchen, center of social media speculation, was there before her, marked with the telltale signs of an exhaustive forensic effort.

Baby had seen a couple of crime scenes in her time, had been dragged along by her father when she was a little kid. She recognized the photographic exhibit tags, the lines made with erasable markers, the strips of painter’s tape. There was the acidy smell of luminol and the smudge of a pencil on the otherwise spotless white marble counters. The shiny appliances were in a weird group at one end of the counter. Several of the cabinets were standing open, and others had had their doors completely removed.

There was no visible blood, but Baby could tell where it had been by the clustering of forensic detritus. Something had happened in front of the sink.

Rhonda’s voice traveled to Baby from the living room. “So you saw the blood right away. Tell me the story.”

“What, all of it?” Troy asked.

“Yeah, all of it. I don’t want to get your version mixed up with what I’ve heard and make assumptions.”

Baby heard Troy blow out a lungful of air. She went to the kitchen doorway and watched him tell his story.

“I got home at six. That’s usually when I get home from work,” he began. “Depends on the traffic and whether or not I’ve stopped at central to chat with my buddy George.” Baby saw him glance at an end table that held several pictures, one of which was Troy standing next to a bearded Black man. The rest were tastefully framed photos of Troy and Daisy. “But generally I get back at six. I walked in, put my bag on the kitchen counter, and straightaway, I saw blood and glass on the floor.”

Baby turned away and used the hem of her shirt to cover her hand as she opened the fridge. She saw a stack of Tupperware containers labeled with the days of the week in pretty cursive writing. Must be Daisy’s lunches. Organization freak. The Thursday through Sunday meals were still there.

“What do you do for a living, Troy?” Rhonda asked.

“I repair and service utility poles. I’m responsible for the phone lines,” he said. “A landline connection goes down, I go out there, find the pole, figure out what’s gone wrong. Then I hook it back up and write a report.”

“Who is your employer?”

“The Public Utilities Commission.”

“Pretty dull job?”

“Maybe to some people. I like it. Lots of driving around alone, running my own show. And it’s different. One day I’m in the city, next day I’m in the desert.”

“But the hours are pretty regular?”

“Well, I don’t get overtime unless it’s urgent, so I don’t take any nonurgent calls that would mean I’d have to work past five,” Troy said. “So if somebody says, ‘Hey, some kids threw a pair of shoes over the wire out at Pomona and now the phones are out,’ and I look at my watch and it’s three twenty-eight p.m. and the call’s not from a hospital or a fire station, I push it to the next day.”

“Okay. So that night, you come home. You’re right on time, as usual. You come into the kitchen, and you see broken glass. You see blood,” Baby heard Rhonda say. “How much blood was there?”

“Maybe a tablespoon or two?”

“That’s an oddly specific way of describing it,” Rhonda said.

“Well, the cops have asked me that same exact question a hundred ways.” Troy sighed. “I’ve had some time to think about it.”

“Where did the glass come from?”

“It was one of our water glasses,” Troy said. “I recognized it from the hexagonal bottom. The police have it now.”

“Was it cracked? Was it in half? Was it shattered everywhere?”

“Shattered everywhere.”

“Any water or other liquids on the floor?”

“None that I saw.”

Baby went to the cupboard beside the fridge. The doors were propped open. More Tupperware. She looked at the next one. Four wineglasses, three water glasses, all spotless.

“Why did you clean up the glass and the blood?” Rhonda asked.

“Because that’s what you do with blood and broken glass,” Troy said. “You clean it up.”

“Come on.”

“Look, at that point, I didn’t know anything was wrong.” Baby heard Troy heave a huge sigh. “Daisy works from home — she’s a nutritionist and has a lot of followers on social media, so she has to do her Instagram postings and so forth — but she’s usually at the gym when I get back from work. So when I got home and saw the mess, I just thought, Looks like Daisy dropped a glass and cut herself. She must be here somewhere . I walked around the house looking for her and calling her name, but she wasn’t here. And her car wasn’t here either.”

“What kind of car does she drive?”

“A Honda Civic. A little red one.”

“Okay. So then what did you think?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“There wasn’t anything to think,” Troy said. “Daisy somehow broke a glass and cut herself. And then, apparently, she went out without cleaning it up. That’s all I knew.”

“You weren’t concerned, even though she was obviously hurt? You didn’t wonder why she hadn’t cleaned the mess up herself?”

“Well, sure, it seemed a little inconsiderate to leave it like that, but it didn’t seem serious, as far as I could tell. You never hear about people dying from water-glass injuries. I just figured she’d gotten distracted and she was probably at the gym like usual.”

A pause in the conversation in the other room. Baby kept listening while staring out at the Hansens’ beautiful backyard. She wanted to rush back into the living room and blast Troy for all his weirdness and nonsensical answers. But Rhonda’s warnings lay over her like a blanket. Rhonda was lead. Baby needed to take a back seat, let her sister do the talking.

“So after you came home at six,” Rhonda said, “you stayed in. You didn’t go out looking for Daisy. You didn’t try to contact her.”

“No.”

“What did you do?”

“I watched TV and then went to bed.”

“It didn’t concern you when Daisy didn’t come home that night?”

Another awkward pause.

“I get it. I get it,” Troy said. “People keep asking me, ‘Why didn’t you text Daisy? Why didn’t you search the neighborhood? Why didn’t you call the police? Why didn’t you preserve the crime scene?’ I didn’t know it was a crime scene! I just came home and saw something weird, that’s all. It’s not like I opened the fridge and found her severed head in there.”

Baby stopped a surprised laugh just as it hit her throat, swallowed it. She leaned against the kitchen doorway and looked across the hall to the living room where Rhonda was sitting on the couch. Baby caught her sister’s eye and raised her eyebrows, but Rhonda didn’t respond.

“Troy,” Rhonda said. “You shouldn’t be saying things like that. Not to me, not to anybody. I sure hope you haven’t been talking so casually about your wife’s possible death with the police.”

“I can barely remember what I’ve said,” Troy said. “The first interrogation was eight hours straight. No food, no water.”

Baby left the kitchen and checked out the bathroom. The mirror was spotless, and a bucket of hot soapy water stood steaming in the middle of the floor in front of the toilet. There was soap in the grout in the shower. She spotted more signs of police activity: The drain covers in the sink, shower, and floor were all missing. She opened the mirrored cabinet and found empty spaces where she assumed there had once been bottles of pills that had been taken into evidence.

“When did you first try to make contact with Daisy after you came home and found the blood?” Rhonda was asking as Baby returned to the living room.

“The next morning.” Troy watched Baby, only his eyes moving. “I texted her that I was going to work and to have a nice day. I expected her to call me at lunch.”

“Troy.” Rhonda was sitting on the edge of her seat, her hands tightly clasped. Baby could sense the frustration coming off her in waves. “You must understand how strange this all is. Your behavior.”

“I’m a strange guy, I guess.” Troy fiddled with his fingernails. “I’ve been told that before. The police keep telling me a normal person would have assumed Daisy was in some kind of danger when he saw the blood and she didn’t come home.”

“Exactly!” Rhonda opened her hands.

“I just didn’t assume that.” Troy shrugged.

“Why not?”

“Daisy is a smart, capable, independent woman. I didn’t immediately assume she needed rescuing from some kind of perilous situation. And the odds that somebody came in here, into our house, hurt her, kidnapped her, and brought her to ... to some unknown location?” He threw his hands up. “They’re infinitesimal. Daisy and I, we’re not drug dealers. We’re not international spies. What possible reason could anybody have for doing that?”

Rhonda didn’t answer.

“I assumed that something much more likely had happened,” Troy said. “I figured she’d gone to a friend’s house after the gym or maybe went to a doctor to get stitches for the glass injury or whatever.”

“And you weren’t curious as to which one of those had happened?” Rhonda asked.

“No.”

Baby caught Rhonda’s eye again and beckoned her over. Rhonda left Troy sitting on the couch staring at his hands, and the two sisters walked down the hall toward the guest bedroom.

“We’ve hit the big time,” Baby said in a low voice.

“What makes you say that?” Rhonda asked.

“Because this guy murdered his damn wife,” Baby said. “It’s as plain as the nose on my face.”