Point Of Departure

He hadn’t slept worth a damn. Who could, under the circumstances? He kept picturing Kaye’s face the last time he’d seen her, the accusation in her eyes. The disbelief. The fear. And the guilt he’d felt so deep in his stomach that it had been an actual physical ache.

Ever since the cops had shown up at his door, he’d been a wreck. Just how much did Abrams and Policzki know? Who had they talked to? Even his sister didn’t know the truth, and he wasn’t about to tell her. He couldn’t cope with the disappointment on her face when she found out that her brother had feet of clay. Unless he could find a way of bringing the investigation to a halt, it was only a matter of time before Abrams and Policzki discovered the truth about him. When they did, his life, the life he’d worked so hard to build, would implode with the force of a ton of TNT.

Sam picked up his coffee with hands that trembled like his father’s had the morning after a drinking binge. He raised the cup to his mouth and took a slug of coffee. He had to stop this. Had to stop the shaking, had to stop the thinking, had to stop the endless going around in circles, the perpetual game of what-if and if-only. If he didn’t, he’d make himself crazy. Normal, he told himself. You have to keep up the pretense of normal.

Okay, so he could do normal. He would do normal. Sitting down behind the desk, Sam pulled out his red pen, tuned the stereo to a classical station and began grading exams.

Not his favorite job, but a necessary one. His students came from all walks of life and from a mix of age groups, but the vast majority of them shared one thing in common: they were monumentally unprepared for college. Most of their papers were riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. At some point before they entered his classroom, every one of his students had managed to graduate from high school. Yet invariably, in every class he taught, when he assigned the first three-page research paper, he had to waste valuable class time teaching them how to write one.

But this morning, he just couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t differentiate between good grammar and bad, couldn’t seem to remember the difference between Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns. He checked his watch for the third time in five minutes, set down his pen and rubbed his bleary eyes. Acting as-if wasn’t working. He could pretend until the cows came home, but normal didn’t exist anymore. Not in his life.

And he had nobody to blame but himself.

He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk where, tucked away beneath six years of grade books, he’d hidden a framed photo of Rachel. Kaye wouldn’t have liked it if she’d known he kept his first wife’s photo in his desk. She would have liked it even less if she’d known he took that photo out regularly and had long, rambling conversations with his dead wife.

It still hurt to look at her. After eight years, it should have stopped hurting. But every time he gazed at her face, his chest ached with a pain no medicine could take away.

“I’ve really botched things up this time, haven’t I?” he told her. “Christ, Rach, I wish you were here to impart a little of your worldly wisdom. I know just what you’d say. ‘Snap out of it, Winslow. Life’s too short to waste it worrying.’ That’s what you used to tell me. I guess you were right about the short part. At least for you it was short.

“I’m scared,” he murmured. “I’m not sure what to do, Rach. Maybe I should be wearing a sign that warns women away from me—Don’t Marry Sam; You’ll Never Survive the Marriage.”

Rachel didn’t answer. She never did. No matter what he told her, she just smiled at him in that loving, nonjudgmental way.

“Everything’s falling apart,” he said. “My marriage, my life. Payback, I guess, for past sins. I guess you’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”

Rachel smiled silently back at him. Sam swiveled in his chair, stared out the window at a passing cloud. “I’ve been a terrible husband. I haven’t even made an effort. What does that say about me? A man who lets his marriage disintegrate without even bothering to try to repair it doesn’t have much of himself invested in that marriage, does he?”

Somebody knocked on his door, and Sam winced. Maybe he should just pretend he wasn’t here. But pretending had gotten him nowhere so far, and he couldn’t hide forever. It was better to brazen it out than to look more guilty than he already did. So he tucked Rachel’s photo back into the drawer, pushed away from the desk and said, “Come in.”

The door opened and Vince Tedeschi stuck his head in. “Hey, buddy,” he said, his face etched with concern. “Want some company?”

Not particularly, he thought, but this was Vince, his closest friend. Sam couldn’t turn him away. “Come on in,” he said wearily.

Vince closed the door behind him, pulled the visitor’s chair from its corner, spun it around and straddled it. “I just heard about Kaye.” He folded his arms across the chair back. “This is unimaginable. Have you had any news?”

“No.”

“Man, that’s hard. How’s Gracie taking it?”

“Gracie’s the same as always. Quiet as the tomb. She and Kaye don’t get along. For all I know, she could be jumping for joy about this. But there’s no way to tell when she keeps it inside. Half the time I think she hates me, too.”

“She doesn’t hate you. She’s a teenage girl. At that age, nothing you do or say is going to be the right thing. Believe me, I speak from experience. Kari and Katie barely acknowledge me. Unless they want something, and then the Bank of Dad is their favorite place for one-stop shopping.”

They fell silent, both of them contemplating the mystery that was teenage womanhood. “We can’t even carry on a conversation,” Sam said. “We haven’t been able to for years. It’s as though I’m speaking English and she’s speaking Swahili.”

“She’ll grow out of it. Until she does, good luck trying to have any kind of normal relationship with her.” Vince got up from the chair and stood there awkwardly. “Do the police have any theories about where Kaye might be?”

“If they do, they haven’t bothered to share them with me.”

Vince shuffled his feet a little. “Listen,” he said, “if you need a babysitter, or if Gracie gets lonely, she’s welcome at our house anytime. Day or night.”

Vince and his third wife had a young daughter. Every summer, the two families spent a couple of weeks together in a rented beach house on the Cape. Gracie thought of five-year-old Deidre as a younger sister, and always loved spending time with her. “Thanks,” Sam said. “I appreciate the offer.”

With false heartiness, Vince said, “Well, I’m off to slay the dragons of ignorance.” He tucked the chair back into its corner and paused, hand on the doorknob. “Hang in there,” he said. “If you need anything, Ellen and I are just a phone call away.”

When he was gone, Sam buried his face in his hands and exhaled a hard breath. How had his life deteriorated to this point? It just kept getting worse and worse.

There was a knock at the open doorway. He looked up. The man who stood there, dressed in jeans, a navy windbreaker and a Red Sox cap, was unfamiliar. “Dr. Sam Winslow?” he said.

“Yes?”

“This is for you.” He handed Sam an envelope. “Have a nice day.”

Sam looked stupidly at the envelope, picked up his letter opener from the desk and slit it open. He pulled out a thick sheaf of papers and unfolded what appeared to be some kind of official-looking documents. It took his sleep-deprived mind a couple of seconds before the words in bold print at the top of the page took on form and meaning.

Petition for Divorce.

Five

The squad room was noisier than a junior high cafeteria at noon, abuzz with conversation, ringing phones and the deathly slow ka-thunk ka-thunk of the photocopier that was the bane of Lorna’s existence. At the desk across from hers, Policzki was on the phone. “Thanks, guy,” he said. “I really appreciate it, and so does Gram. Give me a call this weekend, and we’ll catch that movie. Maybe pick up some pizza afterward.”

Policzki hung up the phone, caught her watching him. “My nephew,” he explained. “My mother’s on my case about mowing the lawn. I bribed him.”

“That always seems to work at my house,” she said. “Just be careful you don’t go overboard. By the time you’re done paying for two movie tickets, popcorn and soda for two, and a teenage-boy-size pizza afterward, you could’ve paid to have it done by a professional.”

“True, but it’s worth more brownie points if I keep it in the family.”

“Christ, Policzki, you need a life. Matter of fact, what you really need is your own place. How long have you been living with your mother?”

“Six years,” he said. “Six long and—did I mention long?—years.”

“Lord love a duck. If I had to spend six years living with my mother—or worse, Ed’s mother—I’d tie a rope over the nearest rafter and end it all.”

“She’s not that bad. She means well.”

“Of course she means well. She’s your mother. It’s part of the job description. So is making your kid’s life hell if he’s past twenty-five and still living at home.”

“It wasn’t my idea to move back home.”

“Which is why you need to move out. Listen to me, kid. I know what I’m talking about. You’ve paid your dues and then some. If you don’t cut the apron strings pretty soon, you’re going to wake up some morning and realize you’re forty and still living at home with Mom. Get a clue, Policzki. You must have enough money saved up by now for a down payment. Buy yourself a condo. Something small, something you can turn over in a few years if you get married and need more space.”

“And leave my mother alone? I’d never be able to live with myself. The guilt would do me in.”

“Oh, but you see, Policzki, there’s where you’re wrong. That’s one more thing about mothers. We’re really good at playing the guilt card. But you know what? You’re not helping her by living there.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You’re creating an unhealthy dependence. She needs to reclaim her independence. She’s a strong woman. You step back a little and watch what happens. I bet you’ll see her bloom.”

“You’ve been watching Oprah again, haven’t you?”

“I’m serious, Policzki. The two of you need some space between you or you’ll never figure out that you’re two separate people. And how convenient for you—you just happen to know a genuine, card-carrying Realtor.”

“Mia DeLucca? Be serious. She hates my guts.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. To know you is to love you.”

“Not if I’m eyeing your brother as a possible murder suspect.”

Lorna thought about it, shrugged. “I suppose that would tend to put a damper on my enthusiasm,” she said.

“You think?” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head, then lowered them. “So, tell me. Did you have any luck with the M.E.’s office?”

“Nothing yet,” she said, “although not due to a lack of badgering on my part. How about you?”

“Salvatore’s starting work on the BlackBerry. He’ll fax us over a list of all Winslow’s calls, all her appointments. We should have it by noon. Delvecchio just e-mailed me a couple photos of the victim. Maybe they’ll help us with the ID.”

“Shit. Can’t Salvatore put a rush on it? I have a feeling we need to move fast on this one.”

“That is his version of a rush. Just because you eat Wheaties every morning, Abrams, doesn’t mean the whole world does. Some of us have to sleep occasionally.”

Dryly, she said, “I’ll try to remember that.”

“I just shot the photos of the vic to the laser printer. And while you were on the phone with the M.E.’s office, I went to the Winslow & DeLucca Web page and pulled Kaye Winslow’s photo. I’m having copies distributed even as we speak. I also have Jiminez working his way through the list of Winslow’s friends that Mia DeLucca dropped off this morning. If he runs across anything worth more than a phone call, he’ll let me know and I’ll follow up with a visit in person.”

Lorna rested her chin on her hand. “You know,” she said, “something about this really bothers me.”

Policzki leaned back in his chair and studied her with interest. “Besides the obvious?”

“Besides the obvious. Kaye Winslow fled the scene. What does common sense tell you?”

“That she’s more than likely the perpetrator. But since when is homicide supposed to make sense? And we don’t know for sure that she fled the scene. She may have been coerced.”

“There’s something about Sam Winslow. I don’t like the guy. He’s hiding something.”

“Which might or might not be germane to the case.”

“You did see the tears, right? Tell me I didn’t imagine them.”

“I saw the tears.”

“Crocodile tears. That guy is as substantial as toilet tissue, not to mention insincere.”

“Polite and cooperative on the surface,” Policzki said, “but, yes, I could see a boatload of hostility in those eyes.”

“Oh, yeah. The body language was a dead giveaway that something’s rotten in Denmark.”

“He certainly didn’t seem too distraught for a guy whose wife is missing.”

“Missing and possibly dead. Almost as bad as missing and possibly responsible for somebody else being dead. He didn’t even bother to worry about Kaye until he realized he’d better make it look good if he wanted us to believe him. That’s when the crocodile tears came into play.” She mentally chewed on it awhile longer. “What’s your take on the sister?”

“DeLucca? She struck me as pretty straightforward. A little protective of her brother.”

“Interesting,” Lorna said, “how she danced her way around saying that she and Kaye Winslow were friends.”

“I caught that. What do you suppose that’s about?”

“Beats me. She seemed genuinely concerned about Winslow’s welfare, and she admitted they have a good working relationship. But she wasn’t about to commit to anything as intimate as friendship.”

Policzki considered for a moment. “You think there’s something there?”

“Something. Might not have anything to do with what’s gone down, but it’s there. Her body language didn’t scream guilt, but there was something I couldn’t put my finger on. She’s maybe not as fond of her sister-in-law as she’d like us to think.”

“If it was a crime to dislike your in-laws, half the population of the United States would be behind bars.”

“Good point. Understand, I’m not ready to write her off completely. But I like the husband better for this.”

“So you think he did her?”

“I dunno.” Lorna picked up a pen from her desk and began doodling on the desk blotter. “Scott Peterson was polite and cooperative with the authorities, too. At least he was at first. Handsome son of a bitch, too. Just like Winslow. Didn’t seem particularly distraught, either, if memory serves me.”

Policzki nodded slowly. “Mark Hacking reported his wife missing and then went out, cool as a cucumber, and bought a new mattress.”

“Lot of wives going missing these days.”

“Lot of guys who seem tired of being married.”

“Guy reminds me of Chuck Stuart. Slick, sincere, good-looking. With a dark side lurking underneath the surface.”

“I know I’ll hate myself later for asking this, but who’s Chuck Stuart?”

Lorna grinned. “I forget you’re just a baby. You were probably in diapers when the Stuart murder came down.”

“Hey, watch it. I’m not that young. The name’s vaguely familiar. I just can’t place it.”

Lorna got up, walked to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup of sludge. Perching on the corner of her desk, next to the stack of empty paper cups that were starting to resemble antique collectibles, she crossed one leg over the other and said, “Guy’s driving back from Lamaze class with his pregnant wife. They’re somewhere in Mission Hill when he calls 911, says they were robbed and shot by a black man. He’s got bullet wounds in the leg, the abdomen. Wife was shot in the head. She never stood a chance. Baby was born by C-section, but he never really had a chance, either. The case started one hell of an uproar. Black perpetrator, middle-class white victims just minding their own business. Everybody was, ‘Poor Chuck this,’ and ‘Poor Chuck that.’ Except that poor Chuck’s story started unraveling after his kid brother admitted he’d ditched a gun for big brother that night. Once the story fell apart, so did Chuck. A couple months after his wife and kid died, he took a header off the Tobin Bridge. And if you think racial tension was bad before he jumped, imagine how much hotter things got when the truth came out that there was no black man, that Chuck’s gunshot wounds were self-inflicted.”

“Sounds to me like the plot to a bad Lifetime movie.”

Lorna took a sip of coffee. “Now that you mention it,” she said, “I believe they turned it into one.”

Policzki tapped his PaperMate against the edge of his desktop. “So you think Winslow’s tired of being married?”

“I couldn’t say for sure, but you know what they say. If it walks like a rat and smells like a rat, has a long, skinny tail and likes cheese—”

“Chances are pretty good,” Policzki said, “that it’s a rat.”

“Exactly. I think we should do us a little checking up on the good professor. Open a few closet doors, see if we rattle any skeletons.”

The show must go on.

The old showbiz cliché ran through Mia’s head all Wednesday morning. No matter how hard she might wish it, the real estate industry wasn’t about to grind to a screeching halt because there’d been a homicide and her partner was missing. Mia still had to check the Multiple Listing Service for new listings, still had to answer a raft of e-mails and wade through a dozen voice mail messages. She had to finish the comparative market analysis she’d promised a new client who was in a rush to put his condo on the market because he’d just been transferred to San Francisco and had to move in three weeks. She had to make follow-up calls to touch base with contacts she’d met at yesterday’s seminar who might prove useful to her in the future. A closing to attend at eleven-thirty, which meant she probably wouldn’t get a copy of the settlement statement until ten forty-five, at which time she would have to call the client to make sure everybody was on the same page before they all converged on the title company. She had to follow up with a nervous buyer who needed a gentle nudge to commit to bidding on the house she’d looked at three times but couldn’t quite make up her mind about.

In her spare time, Mia had to deal with the fallout resulting from Kaye’s absence. The story had hit the papers this morning, and the phone was ringing off the hook. The ever-competent Bev was a godsend, juggling phone calls and walk-ins, routine paperwork and the random crisis with a finesse so smooth it seemed choreographed. She gleefully hung up on reporters, then, in an abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde, offered warm reassurance to clients who phoned to inquire about Kaye’s welfare.

Yolanda Lincoln, the part-time agent Mia and Kaye had brought in six months ago, did her best to help pick up the slack. But Yolanda and Mia both had their own busy schedules to keep, so plugging the holes Kaye left was a challenge. She’d been scheduled for two closings today. Mia sent Yolanda to the nine o’clock in her place, but Yolanda was already tied up midday, and Kaye’s own one o’clock was too close to Mia’s eleven-fifteen to guarantee that they wouldn’t overlap. So Mia conveyed her regrets to the title company via Bev, then called the buyer and spent twenty minutes calming his fears and convincing him that everything was in place, just as it should be, and that he’d make it through the closing just fine without his Realtor by his side.

The closings were the only piece of Kaye’s schedule that Mia was privy to. Because they worked in a small office with only three agents, she knew many of Kaye’s clients, just as Kaye knew quite a few of hers. But without access to the woman’s electronic date book, she had no way of knowing where Kaye was expected to be or when, not until a disgruntled client phoned to complain, or a stranger walked through the door to announce that he had an appointment with her.

Mia forwarded Kaye’s calls to her own phone and left a message on her partner’s voice mail saying that she was away from the office until further notice. This thing would probably blow over, or at least that was what she tried to tell herself. Kaye would come home, everything would be explained satisfactorily and her disappearance would turn out to be just a simple misunderstanding.

Kevin called from school around ten o’clock. “You didn’t give me an answer about Tampa,” he said.

With all the chaos surrounding Kaye’s disappearance, Mia had completely forgotten about Tampa. Or maybe it was just unconscious avoidance. She glanced at her watch and said sharply, “Why aren’t you in school?”

“Relax, Mom, I have a free period. I’m sitting in the cafeteria right now, drinking an orange juice. You should be proud of me. It’s not even carbonated.”

It was a not-so-subtle dig at her determination to save her son from the self-imposed junk food diet he was equally determined to live on. They’d had a number of go-rounds on the topic. She’d lectured him on good nutrition and he’d pointed out that he was a teenager and that junk food went with the territory. They’d finally reached a compromise. He agreed to eat the healthy, nutritious meals she prepared for him at home, and she agreed not to ask what he was eating when he walked out the door. What else could she do? Soon he would be eighteen, and her flimsy parental control, such as it was, would be ended for good. She might as well start getting used to it. Once he went off to college, she’d be an empty nester, rattling around that big old house all by herself. She might as well start getting used to that, too.

“Well?” he said. “Can I go or not? They need an answer today.”

She’d loved him since the first moment she’d laid eyes on him. It seemed only yesterday. Hard to believe that seventeen years had passed, harder to believe that it was time she started loosening the apron strings. She knew she was an overprotective mother, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “Fine,” she said. “You can go. But I’ll want to talk to Mrs. Olson before you leave. And you’ll have to promise to call me while you’re gone.”

“Mom, it’s only four days.”

“And you’re the only kid I have. Humor me.”

“Thanks, Mom. Listen, I gotta run, the bell just rang. If I’m late for English class, Miss Crandall will have a bird. See you tonight.”

And he was gone, the connection broken, leaving Mia holding a dead telephone receiver. She should be glad he was growing up, should be proud of the man he was turning into. And she was. It was just happening so soon. She wasn’t ready. Maybe she never would be.

She’d just hung up the phone when her brother burst into her office, looking like a wild man, his hair awry, his shirt wrinkled and blind fury in his eyes. He flung a sheaf of papers on her desk and demanded, “Did you know about this?”

“What’s going on?” she said. “Have they found Kaye?”

Her brother planted both fists on the edge of her desk and loomed over her, his face dark with fury. “You heard me, damn it! Did you or did you not know about this?”

She’d never seen Sam like this, not even when they were kids and he’d had one of his weekly go-rounds with their dad. Fury didn’t set well on her brother’s handsome features. His complexion was mottled with rage, his eyes bloodshot and wild. Like some kind of caged animal.

“I don’t know,” she said, reining in her own too-short fuse. “Maybe it would help if I knew what ‘this’ refers to.” She fumbled for her reading glasses, slid them onto her face and peered through them at the paperwork he’d so unceremoniously deposited amid the sales contracts and the flyers and the gazillion notes that littered her desk. “‘Petition for Divorce,’” she read. “‘Katherine Bradford Winslow, plaintiff.’” Mia raised startled eyes to his, then continued reading. “‘Samuel L. Winslow, defendant…’ Christ, Sam. I had no idea.”

He continued to sway over her desk, so close she could smell the coffee on his breath. And something else, something slightly medicinal. Had he been drinking? At ten-fifteen in the morning?