"Car accident." The words come out automatically, muscle memory. "Lost control on Route 9, hit a tree. Rainy night, poor visibility—"
I remove his middle fingernail. Quick, efficient, like pulling a weed. He screams until his voice cracks, then sobs.
"Try again, Detective."
"She was threatening to leave." The admission comes in a whisper, barely audible over the tape recorder's soft whir. "Saidshe was taking Delilah, moving back to her sister's place. Said she had evidence of what I…of how I disciplined them."
"Evidence?"
"Photos. Hospital records. She'd been documenting everything for months." His head lolls forward, defeated. "Stupid bitch thought she was building a case against me."
I make a shallow cut along his collarbone, just deep enough to focus his attention. "Continue."
"I couldn't let her destroy my career. My reputation. Everything I'd worked for." The justifications sound pathetic even to him now. "I knew her route to work, knew that curve on Route 9 where the guardrail was damaged. All it took was a little pressure on the accelerator when she wasn't expecting it."
"You ran her off the road."
"Made it look like an accident. Cops who investigated were my friends—they saw what I wanted them to see. Grieving widower, tragic loss, poor little girl left without a mother." He laughs, a broken sound. "Got so much sympathy. So many casseroles."
I lean back, processing the casual way he describes murdering his wife. No remorse, just practical considerations about reputation and career advancement. The tape recorder captures every word, every inflection, preserving his confession for posterity.
"What about the evidence she collected?"
"Burned it all. Made sure there was nothing left to tie me to…to the discipline issues."
"Discipline issues." I pick up the knife again, test its weight. "Is that what you call breaking your nine-year-old daughter's ribs?"
"She fell down the stairs—"
The blade slides into his thigh, deeper than before. Deep enough to hit muscle, to make him understand that lying has consequences. "Try again."
"I pushed her! She was being defiant, not listening, and I lost my temper. She hit the banister going down." Blood soaks through his uniform pants. "It was an accident."
"An accident you made her lie about."
"She had to learn. Had to understand that family business stays in the family." His voice takes on that familiar tone of paternal authority, as if he's still justified in terrorizing a child. "I told her if she said anything different, they'd take her away from me. Put her in foster care with strangers who'd do worse things to her."
The calculated cruelty of it—using an nine-year-old's fear of abandonment to ensure her silence about abuse—makes my vision blur red at the edges. I force myself to breathe slowly, to maintain control.
"I lived with someone like you once," I say, surprising myself with the admission. "Different house, different reasons, but the same fundamental pathology. I know exactly what you are, Detective."
Something flickers in his eyes—curiosity maybe, or the desperate hope that shared experience might create sympathy between us. "You understand then. You know how difficult kids can be. How they push boundaries, test limits—"
"I understand that you're a coward who uses your size and authority to terrorize someone weaker." The words come out flat, clinical. "I understand that you've spent sixteen years breaking down a child's sense of self-worth, making her believe she deserves the violence you inflict."
"She does deserve it! She's ungrateful, disrespectful. Always acting like she's smarter than me, like my rules don't apply to her." The familiar rant, the same justifications I heard through the window last night. "She thinks because she gets good grades, because she wants to go to college, that makes her better than her old man."
I remove his ring fingernail. He screams until his voice breaks, then whimpers like the animal he is.
"Tell me about the sexual abuse."
The words hit him like a physical blow. His face goes white, then flushed. "I never—that's not—you don't know what you're talking about."
"Detective Jenkins." My voice carries the patience of someone who has all night and unlimited pain to distribute. "We've established that lying costs you flesh. Do you really want to test my resolve on this particular topic?"
"It wasn't like that." The words tumble out in a rush. "She was young, maybe eleven or twelve. Just innocent touching, nothing serious. And it only happened a few times."
The clinical detachment I've maintained for forty-five minutes cracks. My hand tightens on the knife handle, and I have to count to ten before I trust myself to speak.
