Page 9 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

The police blockade would help keep the press away, but nothing stopped rumors entirely, and those rumors hit the internet fast.

“What the hell, Troy?” I said as Baby and I hurried inside. I slammed the door shut behind us and pointed to the scrubbing brush. The air smelled of bleach. “What are you doing?”

He pushed back his floppy hair and glanced at Baby as though she could help. “The police said I could clean whatever I wanted as long as I didn’t touch the kitchen.”

“Troy.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Don’t clean anything, okay? Don’t throw anything away or try to sell anything either. While you’re at it, don’t start inquiring with your life insurance provider. Don’t get on a dating app. Don’t hook up the porn channel. These are all textbook examples of guilty-husband activities.”

Troy stared at the carpet. I waved a hand at Baby. “This is my kid sister, Baby. She’s my partner at the agency.”

“Don’t start doing any gardening either.” Baby took up where I’d left off. “Those drones film you in the yard with a shovel, and the whole internet will fry. Satellites will burst into flames in the stratosphere and tumble to the earth.”

“I have to do something.” Troy went to the couch in an immaculate living room. “I’m going nuts. If I go out there, people start filming me or yelling at me. If I stay in here, all I have is the television, and it’s either murder documentaries, murder dramas, or coverage of Daisy and me.”

“So let’s give you something to do,” I said. “You’re going to walk me through what happened the night Daisy went missing.”

Troy’s pale, hairy toes twitched on the rubber surface of his flip-flops. The drones buzzed outside, a tap dripped somewhere, and the house stood otherwise still and empty and smelling of cleaning products. I noticed a bowl of decorative wicker balls sitting on the huge coffee table. Magazines were fanned out near them; they looked pristine and unread.

Eventually, Troy spoke. “I came home. Daisy’s car wasn’t here,” he said. He gestured over his shoulder toward the kitchen without looking at it. “I saw the blood right away.”

CHAPTER12

AS TROY AND RHONDAspoke 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?”

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