The Husband

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I figured if somebody hadn’t shot me by then, they weren’t going to shoot me.”

“So you still didn’t feel in danger.”

“No.”

Flipping open his small spiral-bound notebook, Taggart said, “You told the 911 operator that you were dead.”

Surprised, Mitch met the detective’s eyes again. “That I was dead?”

Taggart quoted from the notebook: “‘A man’s been shot. I’m dead. I mean, he’s dead. He’s been shot, and he’s dead.’”

“Is that what I said?”

“I’ve heard the recording. You were breathless. You sounded flat-out terrified.”

Mitch had forgotten that 911 calls were recorded. “I guess I was more scared than I remember.”

“Evidently, you did recognize a danger to yourself, but still you didn’t take cover.”

Whether or not Taggart could read anything of Mitch’s thoughts, the pages of the detective’s own mind were closed, his eyes a warm but enigmatic blue.

“‘I’m dead,’” the detective quoted again.

“A slip of the tongue. In the confusion, the panic.”

Taggart looked at the dog again, and again he smiled. In a voice softer than it had been previously, he said, “Is there anything more I should have asked you? Anything you would like to say?”

In memory, Mitch heard Holly’s cry of pain.

Kidnappers always threaten to kill their hostage if the cops are brought in. To win, you don’t have to play the game by their rules.

The police would contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI had extensive experience in kidnapping cases.

Because Mitch had no way to raise two million, the police would at first doubt his story. When the kidnapper called again, however, they would be convinced.

What if the second call didn’t come? What if, knowing that Mitch had gone to the police, the kidnapper fulfilled his threat, mutilated Holly, killed her, and never called again?

Then they might think that Mitch had concocted the kidnapping to cover the fact that Holly was already dead, that he himself had killed her. The husband is always the primary suspect.

If he lost her, nothing else would matter. Nothing ever. No power could heal the wound that she would leave in his life.

But to be suspected of harming her—that would be hot shrapnel in the wound, ever burning, forever lacerating.

Closing the notebook and returning it to a hip pocket, shifting his attention from the dog to Mitch, Taggart asked again, “Anything, Mr. Rafferty?”

At some point during the questioning, the bumblebee had flown away. Only now, Mitch realized that the buzzing had stopped.

If he kept the secret of Holly’s abduction, he would stand alone against her kidnappers.

He was no good alone. He had been raised with three sisters and a brother, all born within a seven-year period. They had been one another’s confidants, confessors, counsels, and defenders.

A year after high school, he moved out of his parents’ house, into a shared apartment. Later, he had gotten his own place, where he felt isolated. He had worked sixty hours a week, and longer, just to avoid being alone in his rooms.

He had felt complete once more, fulfilled, connected, only when Holly had come into his world. I was a cold word; we had a warmer sound. Us rang sweeter on the ear than me.

Lieutenant Taggart’s eyes seemed less forbidding than they had been heretofore.

Mitch said, “Well…”

The detective licked his lips.

The air was warm, humidity low. Mitch’s lips felt dry, too.

Nevertheless, the quick pink passage of Taggart’s tongue seemed reptilian, and suggested that he was mentally savoring the taste of pending prey.

Only paranoia allowed the twisted thought that a homicide detective might be allied with Holly’s abductors. This private moment between witness and investigator in fact might be the ultimate test of Mitch’s willingness to follow the kidnapper’s instructions.

All the flags of fear, both rational and irrational, were raised high in his mind. This parade of rampant dreads and dark suspicions did not facilitate clear thinking.

He was half convinced that if he told Taggart the truth, the detective would grimace and say We’ll have to kill her now, Mr. Rafferty. We can’t trustyou anymore. But we’ll let you choose what we cut offfirst—her fingers or her ears.

As earlier, when he’d been standing over the dead man, Mitch felt watched, not just by Taggart and the tea-drinking neighbors, but by some presence unseen. Watched, analyzed.

“No, Lieutenant,” he said. “There’s nothing more.”

The detective retrieved a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.

In the mirrored lenses, Mitch almost didn’t recognize the twin reflections of his face. The distorting curve made him look old.

“I gave you my card,” Taggart reminded him.

“Yes, sir. I have it.”

“Call me if you remember anything that seems important.”

The smooth, characterless sheen of the sunglasses was like the gaze of an insect: emotionless, eager, voracious.

Taggart said, “You seem nervous, Mr. Rafferty.”

Raising his hands to reveal how they trembled, Mitch said, “Not nervous, Lieutenant. Shaken. Badly shaken.”

Taggart licked his lips once more.

Mitch said, “I’ve never seen a man murdered before.”