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She died.
“Where were you living before?”
“St. Louis. I’m from St. Louis.”
He jots something down in his notepad. His name is John, he said earlier. John Something. John Elba. “Anything happen there before you left St. Louis?”
I scowl at my hands. They clench into fists on top of my thighs. I’ve had to go to the next town to report the incident, and police stations make me itchy. “Nothing interesting.”
“Maybe not to you,” John says.
Yeah, I know. I know how experience warps perspective. How something you don’t even notice may be fucking huge for someone else.
Still. Can’t recall anything out of the ordinary.
John is watching me. He’s young, Hispanic, his eyes darker than mine, intent and focused. “Anyone out there who has a beef with you, Mr. Hansen?”
God? Fate? The world? “No.”
“Are you sure? He mentions Milwaukee specifically. Why did you move there in the first place?”
This is starting to feel like I’m the one under investigation. Gritting my teeth, I say, “Because a friend of mine got a job there, and got me one as well.”
“Who was your friend?”
“James McConaghue.”
“Tell me about him.”
What’s to tell? “We were at school together. He only stayed for a yeah in Milwaukee, then moved on.”
John nods. “And back in St. Louis? Anyone who might hold a grudge?”
After all these years? I shake my head. “My parents and my brother. I had a girlfriend. But I broke up with her months before I left. Last I heard she moved away.”
“And you’re here with your family?”
“My kids. They’re home with their nanny.” She’d looked at me funny when I told her to lock the doors and not let them out today.
Fuck, I need to tell her about this. I hope she won’t freak out and quit.
“What about your wife?”
“She passed three years ago.” Funny how I can say it without breaking down.
Then again, I never did break down, not in the ways others could see it.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I say nothing. He’s just being polite, following the police conduct manual, and I’m sick and tired of fake sympathy and empty words.
“Look,” he says. “I can’t promise you anything. I have very little to go on. Any fingerprints on the knife are now overlaid by yours, so even if our guy was in the system, that’s a bust. I don’t suppose you asked the neighbors if they saw anyone sneaking about.”
I shake my head. “Can you post someone outside, just in case the nutcase returns?”
&nb
sp; “I’ll send an officer over to ask some questions, but to be frank, I don’t expect anything to come out of it. Unless you have nosy, bored neighbors who like sitting at the window, controlling everything that moves outside. And without an eyewitness, we have nothing to go on.”
