Page 35 of Chosen Path
“You stopped going to Sunday dinner?” Officer Booth asked.
“My sister and I had a falling out. It was just easier if I didn’t go over when she was there. So I had dinner with my mom on a different night. It was nothing. Family stuff.” Hope shrugged her shoulders and scrunched up her face.
“But you were both there on Thanksgiving, right?” Molly asked.
“What? Yeah, we called a truce for the holidays every year. For her kids’ sake. But Corrine wasn’t there that night.” She desperately wanted to bring the conversation back to Corrine and away from her sister, even if it made Officer Booth look at her like she was a serial killer.
“Okay, so you helped Corrine out. Imagine if she fell and broke her wrist. Do you think she’d ask you to take her to the hospital?”
“Um, maybe.” Hope thought for a moment. “Yeah, she probably would. A few years ago, when she started having problems with her blood pressure, she would get these nosebleeds and chest pains. She called me and asked me to drive her here, I mean to see Doctor Larson.”
“Maybe that’s when she added you as her emergency contact,” Molly mused.
“Yeah, maybe. But why isn’t her son listed as her next of kin?”
Officer Booth’s eyes went wide. “What son?”
“Corrine had—has—a son, Derek. He was in elementary school when his dad died. He didn’t handle it well. I mean, I don’t blame him. But he got pretty wild. He set a fire in the culvert back behind their house. Got into a bunch of fights. Stole some paint thinner from Rockman’s Hardware to huff it. That was the last straw. Corrine sent him to live with her brother. In Maine, I think. They weren’t close after that, but he is her only living relative. That I know of, at least.”
“What about the brother?”
“He died a few years ago.” She paused to think. “Three years ago, in the summer. I brought in her mail and took care of her plants while she went to his funeral and settled his estate.”
“And Derek?”
She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know.”
“So if he was eight or nine when his dad died, he’d be what now? In his twenties?” Molly was doing the math.
“Right. Mr. Wolf died sixteen years ago. I was sixteen.”
“Ah, that explains it.” Office Booth rapped her knuckles on the arm of the chair. “I joined the force fourteen years ago and I never heard about a teacher who died in school or a juvenile delinquent named Derek.”
Something about her relief and her dismissal of Derek rubbed Hope the wrong way. “He wasn’t just some juvenile delinquent. He was a really troubled little kid who, as you would say, was having a trauma response.”
The police officer had the decency to blush. “You’re right. I didn’t mean that the way it came out. But he does sound like a kid who would have been on the department’s radar.”
“That’s fair.”
“So, you don’t have any idea where this Derek is now?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. I don’t know if Corrine even knew. When she came back from her brother’s funeral, she said something that made me think she’d seen Derek and it hadn’t gone well.”
Officer Booth cocked her head. “Do you remember her exact words?”
Hope wracked her brain, trying to recall what Corrine has said. Finally, she sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’ll radio Officer Perth and tell him to look through Mrs. Wolf’s papers. Maybe she has an address or phone number. Besides it’ll give him something to do beside complain about the smell.”
Molly, who’d been unusually quiet, cleared her throat. “I’m wondering something. If we can’t get in touch with Corrine’s son, would her emergency contact be able to authorize an autopsy?”
Hope’s eyes widened.
Officer Booth frowned. “I don’t know the legalities there. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m going to have Ed Pratt over at Pratt’s Funeral Home follow me back to Corrine’s house with the meat wagon. We’ll see if Perth can find a number for this Derek. In the meantime, you should talk to Doctor King before you start pushing for an autopsy.” She gave Molly a long, meaningful look.
“Okay?” Molly said in an uncertain tone.
“Oh, it would also be helpful if you could go through Doc Larson’s old files and see if he has a patient record for Derek Wolf. It would be a starting point.”
