Page 64 of Tear Me Apart

“I see. Well, I am terribly sorry to hear about this, but as I said, I’m calling for an update on my wife’s case.”

“2000, right? Vivian Armstrong? I remember it. I was patrol back then. I didn’t work the scene, but it was certainly news everywhere. Your infant daughter was kidnapped as well if I recall.”

“That’s right.”

“Weren’t you the one who found your wife? You were out of town and came home to find her dead?”

Zack grits his teeth. He hears the lingering question in the cop’s tone.Are you sure you didn’t fly off the handle and murder your wife? You can tell me the truth.

“Yes. I was in Gulf Shores. My mother was ill.”

“Well, I don’t have any updates for you, sir, but I’m happy to pull the case files and give it a look. Can I call you back?”

“Of course. Thank you.”

“Same number and address as is in the file?”

“That’s right.”

“Give me a few days, okay?”

“Absolutely. Thanks.”

Zack hangs up, feeling oddly elated. New eyes. He hasn’t had new eyes on this case in years.

He takes the Laphroaig and steps over the dog. The stunning fawn Belgian Malinois lifts her pretty head, and he can swear she raises a furry brow.

“Sorry to disturb, Kat.” Kat—short for Katerina—sighs heavily and wags her tail. “You don’t need to get up, honey. I’m just going to look.”

Another wag, the rug catching under her powerful tail. She understands him better than most people. She puts her head back on her paws, and Zack walks down the hall toward the guest room.

His house on Love Circle is modern, boxy, all glass and exposed brick. Impersonal, some would say. He designed it himself, placed it on the hill where he can look over the city. He can also walk or bike to work, which makes life easier. Easier? More convenient.

The cozy house where he lived with Vivian and the specter of his daughter was torn down years ago. He couldn’t fathom anyone living in it, and he certainly didn’t want to stay there. He’d never be able to look at the kitchen floor again without seeing the blood. He arranged to have it dismantled, giving undamaged sections to Habitat for Humanity. A crane had taken the roof off in one piece. Goodwill had taken the furniture. The remainders: doors, windows, beams, had gone to the various housing charities throughout Nashville. He left with nothing but their wedding photos, a sonogram, and the clothes on his back.

He started fresh. New. But he didn’t start over.

The guest room walls are plastered with news stories. Some are yellowed and crumbling, some are more recent, printouts from online crime websites and missing persons’ networks, websites that sometimes revisit the case and speculate as to the perpetrator. He entertained every theory they threw out, even those that blamed him, claiming he hired someone to kill his wife and sell his baby into the world of traffickers.

Those people are insane, as everyone is aware. He passed a lie detector with flying colors and was never a legitimate suspect. Not really. Not with his alibi. No one could make the timing work, no matter how hard they tried.

He fingers the most recent story, done three years earlier. It is an age progression analysis of what Violet might look like as a teenager.

He stares at the stranger’s face, at his own tilted eyes, at Vivian’s strong nose, the lips not thin, like his, nor full, like Viv’s, but somewhere in between, teeth an amalgamation of his and hers based on an algorithm of age and length and root depth, and knows it isn’t even close to being right. This is not his daughter. He might not know what she looks like, but she doesn’t look like this.

Of course, he’s never seen her. Never felt the warm round of her head in his palm, saw the strong flexibility of her body, smelled her skin. She was taken while he was burying his mother in the quaint town of Gulf Shores, Alabama, and he never had a chance to meet his little girl.

He’s always suspected the crime wasn’t committed by a stranger. No, the villain was, is, closer to home. It has to be someone he came in contact with, someone who felt he did them wrong. Someone who wanted to punish him. His old job was in intelligence, the people he worked with were criminals of the worst sort, hidden from the world, taking money to divulge secrets. They were whores, all of them, himself included.

Of course, the police saw it differently. They’d looked at him hard from day one, but his alibi was ironclad. He’d been standing over his mother’s grave, with 100 witnesses, six hours away. When he got home the next day, worried after several calls home went unanswered, the blood was dried black on the floor.

No matter, they still investigated him six ways to Sunday, took apart his finances and phone records, interviewed every person he’d come in contact with, everyone they knew in Nashville. It was Gorman who’d finally put a stop to it. Gorman knew Zack was innocent. There were no hard feelings. They were doing their jobs.

Unfortunately, after Zack, there were no other suspects.

He sits on the desk chair and stares at the walls. Kat pads in and sits by his side, putting her head under his hand. Support. She gives him unconditional love, support, and protection. Better than any person he knows.

The cut crystal glass is empty. He debates a moment—more? He hasn’t eaten, and he has a mound of papers to grade. Zack always eschews the services of his TAs in favor of doing his own work. He likes to see the students’ progress, detemine if they are becoming better writers under his tutelage. Another drink will send him into the stratosphere, and he won’t get any more work done tonight. But it is a three-day weekend, so who the hell cares when he gets the papers graded?