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“And here’s an interesting one. Guy named Lawrence Joseph Bader, from Akron, Ohio. Sold kitchen supplies or something. Goes on a fishing trip to Lake Erie and disappears. A boating accident, right? But then, eight years later—eight fucking years—he’s found in Omaha, Nebraska, working as a local television announcer or personality or something. And he’s got a different name. They never figured out what actually happened, whether he had amnesia or whether he faked his death. What do you make of that?”
“Have you made coffee?”
“And then there was that Ariel Castro guy, in Cleveland? Who kept three women as prisoners in his house for eleven years. Remember that? Back in 2013?”
“What I was thinking,” Hannah said, “was that we should go out for brunch today. I don’t even care where. Even IHOP. What do you think?”
Hardy looked up from the iPad. “Hmm?”
“You know. Pancakes, sausage, that kind of thing.”
“I guess,” Hardy said, eyes going back down. “Might have to work today.”
“Today’s your day off.”
“I know.” She paused. “I really, really hate being wrong.”
“No kidding.”
“What if I am? What if I’m wrong?”
Hannah went over to the coffee maker, pulled out the empty carafe. “Would it have killed you to start a pot?”
“But he looked good for it, you know? I still think he could be good for it.”
“I think I’m going to make tea for a change.” Hannah put water into a kettle and plugged it into an outlet.
“Where could she have been all this time?” Hardy asked. “If he didn’t actually kill her?”
Hannah tore off a banana from a bunch in a bowl and pulled up a stool on the opposite side of the island from the detective.
“Jacksonville, Florida.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, it’s a place. Just trying to help. Let’s talk about bacon. A side order, extra-crispy.” She started to peel the banana.
But Hardy wasn’t thinking about food. “He had time, you know. To drive down from the cabin, kill her, get rid of her body, and get back up there. He can’t prove he was there all night. It’s even possible he gave his buddy something to knock him out. But what’s the motive? He’d broken it off with that other woman. He didn’t have any huge insurance policy on her. If he’d killed her in a fit of rage, that could happen, but making the drive down, intending to kill her, that’s premeditation. And for premeditation, you need a motive. There has to be one. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
Hannah broke off an inch of banana and popped it into her mouth. “I like this part.”
Hardy looked up again. “What?”
“It’s like seeing the inside of a computer or something. Watching you talk it through, thinking out loud. It’s interesting to watch.”
The kettle was starting to boil.
“You want some tea?” Hannah asked.
“Nothing for me.”
“Okay, then.” Hannah slid off the stool and opened a cupboard, where she found a box of tea bags.
“It’s usually the husband.”
“Say again?”
“When something happens to a wife, it’s usually the husband.”
