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“Oh my gosh!”
Lori Wilson is a portly woman, only five feet in stature, but heavyset and pale.
Though, the latter might be because she recently discovered her husband is dead.
“That’s him,” she sobs, pressing shaking hands to the steel bed Minka has him laid out on.
A sheet covers him to his neck, and his scalp has been sewn on at the back so his next of kin isn’t unnecessarily made privy to the ins and outs of an autopsy. His eyes are still missing, as are many teeth. But staging is helpful, so the woman isn’t left with lifelong nightmares that won’t let her sleep.
“That’s my Roger,” she weeps, alone in her grief but for the hand Aubree offers and allows to be squeezed. “I don’t…” Unsteady, the woman glances to Minka first, authoritative in her white labcoat. Then she peers my way and hiccups. “I don’t understand why this happened.”
“I was hoping to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Wilson.” I take out my recorder and set it on the stainless-steel countertop lining one wall overlooking Copeland City. “My name is Detective Archer Malone. My partner,” I nod to Fletch, “Detective Charlie Fletcher. We’re the primary investigators on your husband’s case, but up to this point in time, we hadn’t been able to identify him. Now that we know his name, we’d really appreciate your assistance.”
“I…” She clutches tissues when Minka offers them, crushing them in her palm. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know—”
“There was no missing persons report made, Mrs. Wilson.” I step around and draw her attention away from the bruising on her husband’s face. “Our understanding is that Mr. Wilson has been deceased for approximately three days. You weren’t worried when he didn’t come home in all that time?”
“No. He…” She clutches to Aubree’s hand and sends the younger woman’s fingers white from blood restriction. “Roger was away this week. He was traveling and not due back until Tuesday.”
“Tuesday?” I make a note of the day in my book, and wonder when exactly his enemies snatched him. He died approximately sixty hours ago, but he had been held for an additional forty-eight or so before that. “Where was Roger traveling to, Mrs. Wilson? And why? How was he planning to get there?”
“He works in real estate,” she sniffles. “He was attending a conference in Florida, which is something he did often. So when he told me he had to go, I just…” She cries into her tissues. “I said okay and went on with my life. The kids still had to get to school, you know? The dogs had to be fed and walked.”
“You were busy,” Fletch murmurs with a gentle nod. “It’s okay, Mrs. Wilson. Life gets busy for us all. How long before he left did he tell you he had to go? That is,” he rephrases, “how much notice did he give you?”
“He told me that same morning. I was making the kids’ school lunches when he came downstairs, kissed me on the cheek, and said he was going to Florida and would be back in a week.”
“And you didn’t worry?” I press. “That he was making travel plans with so little notice?”
She shakes her head, so little birdcage earrings dangle and sway. “This is normal for us. He often traveled because of his work. Especially with the economy the way it is now. If he had a lead on something, he followed it.”
“Of course.” Fletch reaches across and pats her arm. “How did Roger seem that morning? Stressed? Worried? Rushed? Was anything out of the ordinary?”
“Well, uh…” She mops her cheeks with more tissue and searches our faces for sense. For help. For respite. “Every morning is a rush, Detectives. With two teenagers, two dogs, and a self-employed man, things are always a little frazzled in the mornings as we do our best to get out the door on time. But…” she bites her lip. “I guess he was a little tense.”
“Tense how?” I demand.
Minka’s eyes flash with warning, because my words come out too harsh, but I keep Lori’s focus and repeat, “Tense how? What did he do or say to make you think that?”
“He just…” Fresh tears spill across her cheeks. “Seemed more hurried than usual. He snapped at our kids for bickering, when he was normally the laid-back parent and I was the one who would want to shove a potato in their mouths.”
Aubree’s lips curl into a small smile.
“He didn’t say anything in particular, Detectives. He didn’t even really do anything odd, except seem a little distracted.”
“Then why—”
“It’s silly,” she shudders. “It’s gonna sound silly to you. But to me, it was louder than if he’d stood in our kitchen and screamed.”
“We want to find whoever did this to your husband,” Fletch hums. “We want to find justice for him. Nothing you can think of to help us achieve that is going to be silly to us.”
“Well…” she hesitates. “We usually do the three-kiss.”
“The thr—” Confused, I look to Minka in question, then to Aubree. “What’s the three-kiss?”
“Like,peck-peck-peck?” she guesses, turning to look at Mrs. Wilson. “That was a trend for you and your husband?”
“Yes.” Lori sobs anew and swings her gaze back to her husband, laid out on a cold, steel table. “We don’tmake outanymore, Detectives. We’re too old and too comfortable in our marriage for such a thing. But always,always, we would do the three-kiss before parting ways. Whether he was going to bed and I wasn’t ready yet, or he was traveling for work and would be gone for days. He spent a lot of time away, as I said, always working hard for us. So we were well-practiced in the three-kiss routine. But that morning—this was Tuesday,” she whimpers. “He only gave me one kiss before darting out the door. That was the only thingoffabout this week. Until now.”
