She remains still as a statue, long enough that the attendant eyeballs Louise, who shakes her head.
Finally, Allison straightens. She turns to the attendant and nods.
The attendant makes a note on the clipboard.
Louise waits a beat, then steps forward. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Brice.”
She studies Allison’s profile—the stiff jaw, the tension in her neck.
“Mrs. Brice, in your missing-persons report, you said you last saw Finley on April first at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you think of anyone who might’ve wanted to harm him?” she asks.
Allison blinks her dry eyes. Works her jaw. “He was being erratic. Difficult. Very worried about money. Very.”
That’s not really an answer to the question. But Louise will let that go for now. “Money, as in, after the divorce?”
Allison’s shoulders lift slightly. “We weren’t communicating well. It was a…contentious split. We were not getting along.”
“Mind me asking why? Why so contentious?”
She takes a breath, like she’s holding something in, then releases it. She turns and looks dead-on at Louise for the first time since they met. “You ever been divorced?”
“Me? No, can’t say I have.”
Allison’s eyes shut. “I have to go tell my son his father is dead.”
“I’ll need to follow up. I’m sorry to ask you these questions.”
“I understand,” says Allison. “I’m the estranged wife. I’m suspect number one.”
“I didn’t say that, Mrs. Brice.”
Allison tries a smile. She turns for the exit. “I’m sorry, but I’m not answering questions.”
“I understand you have to attend to your son right now. Maybe tomorrow?”
“No.” Allison turns back toward Louise. “I mean I’m not answering questions, period. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She disappears out the door.
Louise looks at Cutty. “Did I just hear that right?”
He leans into her. “Well, now she’sdefinitelysuspect number one,” he whispers.
“We got a singular prominent incised wound to the left anterior chest, approximately four centimeters in length.” Still in her lab coat, Dr. Roberta Boyd, a forensic pathologist with the Cook County Medical Examiner, snaps open a can of Diet Coke outside her office. “Nine millimeters in diameter. Penetrated the left ventricle.”
“Stab wound to the heart,” says Louise. “That’s the cause of death?”
“Stab injury to the left ventricle prompted hemorrhagic shock and cardiac tamponade.”
“You took the words right outta my mouth, Bobbi.”
Bobbi smiles. “The blade pierced the heart. The heart bled into the sac that holds the heart. Sac fills with blood, heart has no room to pump. Circulatory functions collapse.”
“Homicide, no question?”
