The Perfect Block

“Hard to imagine either of the Missingers did a ton of housework,” Jessie surmised. “I wonder if they’d even know where the vacuum was kept. I assume they have a housekeeper?”

“They do indeed,” Hernandez said. “Her name is Marisol Mendez. Unfortunately, she’s out of town all week, on vacation in Palm Springs apparently.”

“So the maid is out,” Trembley said. “Anyone else work around here? They’ve got to have a ton of employees.”

“Not as many as you might think,” Hernandez said. “Their landscaping is largely drought-resistant, so they only have a groundskeeper come in twice a month for maintenance. They have a pool management company and Missinger says someone comes around once a week, on Thursdays.”

“So who does that leave us with?” Trembley asked, afraid to voice the clear answer for fear of being too obvious.

“It leaves us with the same person we started with,” Hernandez said, unafraid to go there. “The husband.”

“Does he have an alibi?” Jessie asked.

“That is exactly what we’re going to find out,” Hernandez replied as he pulled out his radio and spoke into it. “Nettles, have Missinger transported to the station for questioning. I don’t want anyone else asking him a thing until we get him in an interrogation room.”

“Sorry, Detective,” came a crackly, apprehensive voice over the radio. “But someone already did that. He’s en route now.”

“Dammit,” Hernandez swore as he turned off the radio. “We have to go now.”

“What’s the problem?” Jessie asked.

“I wanted to be there waiting when Missinger got to the station—to be the good cop, his lifeline, his sounding board. But if he gets there first and sees all those blue uniforms, guns, and fluorescent lights, he’s going to spook and demand to see his lawyer before I can ask anything. Once that happens, we’ll never get anything useful out of him.”

“Then we better get moving,” Jessie said, brushing past him and out the door.

CHAPTER EIGHT

By the time they arrived at the station, Missinger had already been there for ten minutes. Hernandez had called ahead and ordered the desk sergeant to have him taken to the family room, which was intended for crime victims and families of the deceased. It was a little less sterile than the rest of the station, with a couple of old couches, some curtains on the windows, and a few months-old magazines on the coffee table.

Jessie, Hernandez, and Trembley rushed to the family room door, where a tall officer stood guard outside.

“How’s he doing in there?” Hernandez asked.

“He’s fine. Unfortunately, he demanded his lawyer the second he walked through the front door.”

“Great,” Hernandez spat. “How long has he been waiting to make the call?”

“He already did, sir,” the officer said, shifting uncomfortably.

“What! Who let him do that?”

“I did, sir. Was I not supposed to?”

“How long have you been on the force, Officer…Beatty?” Hernandez asked, looking at the name tag on the guy’s shirt.

“Almost a month, sir.”

“Okay, Beatty,” Hernandez said, clearly trying to keep his frustration in check. “There’s nothing that can be done about it now. But in the future, you don’t have to immediately hand a potential suspect a phone the second he requests it. You can put him in a room and tell him you’ll get right on that. ‘Right on that’ might take a few minutes, maybe even an hour or two. It’s a tactic to give us time to develop a strategy and keep the suspect off-balance. Will you please try to remember that in the future?”

“Yes, sir,” Beatty said sheepishly.

“Okay. For now, take him to an open interrogation room. We probably don’t have much time before his lawyer gets here. But I’d like to use what we do have to at least get a sense of the guy. And Beatty, when you’re moving him, don’t answer any of his questions. Just put him in a room and leave, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

As Beatty went into the family room to collect Missinger, Hernandez led Jessie and Trembley to the break room.

“Let’s give him a minute to settle in,” Hernandez said. “Trembley and I will go in. Jessie, you should watch from behind the mirror. It’s too late to ask substantive questions but we can try to establish some kind of rapport with the guy. He doesn’t have to tell us anything. But we can say a lot. And that can have an effect on him. We need him feeling as uncertain as possible before his attorney gets here and starts setting him at ease. We need to get those lingering doubts in his head, so that he wonders if maybe we’re better allies to him than his high-paid lawyer. We don’t have much time to do it, so let’s get in there.”

Jessie went to the observation room and took a seat. It was her first chance to get a look at Michael Missinger, who was standing awkwardly in a corner. If anything, he was more beautiful than his wife had been. Even at 3 a.m., wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that he must have thrown on at the last minute, he looked like he had just stepped out of a photo shoot.

His short, sun-bleached blond hair was just mussed enough to look unpretentious but not so much as to seem disheveled. His skin was tan in parts, but white in others, the sign of a regular surfer.

He was tall and lanky, with the look of a guy who didn’t have to work out much to get that way. The redness and puffiness of his blue eyes—likely from crying—didn’t make them any less gorgeous. Jessie had to admit, despite herself, that if this guy had approached her at the bar last night, she would not have been so cavalier toward him. Even his nervous shifting from foot to foot was frustratingly endearing.

After a few seconds, Hernandez and Trembley walked in. They looked less impressed.

“Have a seat, Mr. Missinger,” Hernandez said, making the instruction sound almost warm. “We know you’ve asked for your lawyer, which is fine. My understanding is that he’s on his way. In the interim, we wanted to fill you in on where things stand with our investigation. Let me first start by offering my condolences on your loss.”

“Thank you,” Missinger said in a slightly raspy voice that Jessie wasn’t sure was permanent or a result of the night’s stresses.

“So we don’t yet know if this was foul play,” Hernandez continued, sitting down across from him. “But my understanding is that you told one of our officers that Victoria was extremely proficient in regulating her condition and that you can’t recall an incident anything like this in the past.”

“I…” Missinger started.

“No need to answer, Mr. Missinger,” Hernandez interrupted. “I don’t want to be accused of violating your Miranda rights, which I understand have been read to you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Of course, that’s all standard. And though we don’t really view you as a suspect, you’re well within your rights to request your attorney. But from our perspective, we’re trying to move as quickly as we can to get to the bottom of this. Time is of the essence. So the more details we can confirm, like the one you shared about Victoria’s proficiency with self-medicating, the less likely we are to go down dead ends. Does that make sense?”

Missinger nodded. Trembley stood silently to the side, as though not sure if or when he should jump in.

“So,” Hernandez continued, “also just confirming, you said your housekeeper, Marisol, is on vacation this week in Palm Springs. You gave her cell number to an officer and I believe we’re reaching out to her. By the way, without formally replying, if you find that I’m stating something inaccurate, perhaps you could make me aware. No need to answer any questions, of course. Just steer me in the right direction if I get off course. Fair?”

“Fair,” Missinger agreed.

“Great. We’re making progress here. We know you tried to reach out to Victoria several times over the course of the afternoon and she never responded. My understanding is that it was late yesterday afternoon, when you came home to meet up for a dinner reservation and found her car but not her, that you became concerned enough to call the police. If I’m getting any of this wrong, just tap your finger on the table or something to let me know.”

Hernandez continued to walk through the rest of the timeline but Jessie found herself only half-listening. She had noticed something during the last exchange and was wondering if what she’d seen was real or imagined. Right around the time that Hernandez said “over the course of the afternoon,” Michael Missinger had flinched slightly, almost reflexively. Not when Hernandez said “you tried to reach out.” Not when he said “she never responded.” Only at the words “over the course of the afternoon.”

What had he been thinking about when the afternoon was mentioned? It was so imperceptible that Missinger himself might not have noticed it. That seemed unlikely if he was recalling murdering his wife in the afternoon. She would have expected either a bigger reaction or a concerted effort to have no response at all. At yet, something about the mention of the “afternoon” had thrown him, if only slightly.

Jessie’s thoughts were interrupted by a new person entering the interrogation room.

“Hello, Detectives,” a short, balding, forty-something man said buoyantly. “I’m Brett Kolson, Mr. Missinger’s attorney. I hope we’re all having a good time here. And I’m confident that you haven’t been questioning my client after he called me.”

He breezed in and pulled out the metal chair beside Missinger. Jessie typed Kolson’s name into the attorney database to see what she could glean about him.