Page 83 of Sinful Promise
“I remember.” She mops the tears from her face and hugs the youngest child to her chest. “Have you got any information, Detective?”
We will soon. But I don’t say so out loud. Not yet. Not until it’s packed away and certain. “I have questions, actually. I want to know what happened here this morning. I want to know what you saw. What you heard. I want everything you can give us. And then we can get back out there and search for the person responsible for your husband’s death.”
“W-was the person who tried to break in today the same one who hurt him?” Her voice trembles with grief, and tears spill steadily across her cheeks. But she’s not a weak woman. She’s not feeble. “Do you know that for sure?”
I nod, subtly. Because she deserves that much. She deserves answers. “Yeah. We expect them to be one and the same. Can we start at the beginning and you tell me everything you know about today?” Then I look to the teen and meet his eyes. “Then I’d like to speak to you.”
“But if we could have you separate?” Fletch murmurs. Respectfully, he peers to Whitney. “He’s not in trouble. And you don’t have to consent. But if we could get separate statements, that’ll help fill the gaps and keep everything straight.”
“Alright.” She blows into her tissues and looks to the boy for his agreement. “That’s okay. I’m okay with it.” Then, like she’s just now noticing Minka, she peeks past me and stops on my wife. “You’re the doctor, aren’t you?”
Minka steps forward, meeting the woman’s eyes, and notnotinterferes. “Yes, Mrs. Patterson. I’m Chief Medical Examiner, Minka Mayet. We met two days ago, but it was brief, and you’ve had a lot—”
“Do you know when we can bury Jason?” She gulps down fresh air and hiccups when it catches in her throat. “Everyone is calling me, but I don’t know what to say, because you haven’t released him from your office yet.”
“Soon.” She comes forward another step—interfering—and takes Whitney’s hands in hers. “Just as soon as the detectives clear him, I’ll help you make the arrangements.”
“The detect—”
“But I’ve been careful with him,” she pushes on when ‘when the detectives clear him,’ seems to upset her. “I have staff inside my building twenty-four hours a day, and I promise you, he’s being taken care of to the very best of our abilities.”
“Maybe don’t try so hard,” Jace, the teen, interjects angrily. He stands taller when we look his way, and puffs his chest forward.Man of the house. “My dad cheated on my mom,” he grits out. “He made a promise when they got married, and he broke it.”
“Jace,” Whitney starts. “Honey…”
“If you wanna fuck around, eventually, you’re gonna find out what happens.” He looks up and meets my eyes. “I can grieve my dad’s death but still be angry he’s a dick, right?”
“Yeah.” I work hard not to think of my own father. A death I somewhat, somehow, somewhere deep in my psyche, grieve. But that doesn’t mean I’m not brutally aware of the fact he was a dick. “Yeah, you can feel those things, Jace. They’re valid.”
“I want you to find her for what she did,” he murmurs. “Because she killed a person. But maybe you could go easy on her, too. Because she’s having a baby.” His voice breaks. “She’s having my sister.”
“Oh god.” Devastated, Whitney drops her face and sobs. “Oh my god.”
“It’s not the baby’s fault her father’s a prick and her mom did something crazy. So…” He lifts his shoulders, then lets them drop heavily. “I dunno. Maybe she was always crazy and she deserves to be in trouble. But maybe he made her that way, too, ya know? Because he was a dick.”
“Maybe.” I take a step back, discretely wrapping my finger in the loop of Minka’s jeans to pull her away too. If I’m going, she’s coming with me. “Can I start with you, Mrs. Patterson? Detective Fletcher can talk to Jace. Then we’ll switch.”
“Yep.” Fletch gestures toward his left. “Come on, bud. We’ll get this done so you can go back inside and get some breakfast. Waking up so early on a Sunday is practically criminal, huh?”
He chuckles. Just one single bubble in the back of his throat. But it quickly ends with tears on his cheeks and his hair flopping onto his brow. “Okay.”
While Fletch’s phone trills and he takes it out to study the screen with a scowl, they walk toward the porch together and leave us to our work.
* * *
“Ihave no clue why the hell she was there.” I keep Minka’s hand in mine and walk through our apartment door around lunchtime.
After interviews conducted, statements taken, neighbors canvassed, fingerprints pulled from the Pattersons’ front door and window, and a meal served to-go by a grieving widow who is equal parts distressed that her husband is dead, and enraged that he was a piece of shit, Minka and I—and Fletch too—have no choice but to sit back and wait.
For street footage to come back and give us a plate.
For facial recognition software to pull her identity when she ran a red escaping the Pattersons’ street.
For prints to come back, and for our tech team to find out Molly Jensen’s real identity.
Homicide investigations are rarely high octane, go-go-go, running around a city and chasing down a killer.
Most often, it’s waiting for reports and writing a million others.
