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“Not helpful.” I roll my eyes to the sky, but catch Fletch in my peripherals. Watching me. Waiting for me to finish so we can move on to our number one suspect. “Did you eat yet?”
“My lunch is waiting for me in my office.” She crosses a tile floor, her shoes clip-clip-clipping with each step she takes. “Doctor Campbell just dropped it off on my desk.”
“Doctor Campbell?” I bring my eyes down and narrow them. “Doctor Xavier Campbell… is bringing you lunch?”
“He got some for Aubs too,” she sniggers. “I’m eating, Detective. Make sure you have something as well. You’re cranky when you’re hungry.”
“I’m cranky when my wife neglects her medical needs,” I bite out. “And crankier still when a man, who openly worships her, buys her lunch.”
“Well, in his defense, I bought my own lunch.” She pushes through a door, so the sucking release becomes audible through the phone. “He was merely the delivery boy. We have a meeting now, Detective Malone.”
“We—”
“He and I,” she clarifies. “Not you and I. Aubree is working on William Alves’ body right now. But uh, just so you know,” she releases a breath, so in my mind, I see her sitting at her desk and taking a load off her feet, “when running a case, one of the first things we, as medical examiners, do, is request the patient’s medical records.” She pauses for a beat, to smile. To taunt. “I already knew of his allergies, Archer. I know he broke his fibula when he was a child, and three knuckles on his right hand approximately seventy-two hours prior to his death. Which implies, perhaps, he hit a wall in anger?” She lets her sentence hang for a moment before adding, “As the detective, I suggest that may be something for you to investigate. He didn’t die of anaphylaxis. He died when your perpetrator’s blade severed his carotid artery. Now if that’s all,” the sound of a foil wrapper makes my stomach jump. “I have a meeting to attend.”
“You’re lucky I care that you eat more than I care that you’re practically on a date with another man right now.”
She scoffs, completely unbothered by my accusation. “It’s hard enough dating one man, Detective. No way I’m doubling my troubles and causing myself more headaches. But seriously,” she adds, seriously. “I have to go. I have fifteen minutes to eat and meet with Doctor Campbell, then I have work to do, since you do, actually, have a new case sitting on both our desks.”
“Alright.” I love you. I miss you. I’ll see you in a few hours. “Talk soon, Chief.”
“Yep.”
She ends our call and leaves me listening to dead silence. But it ends quickly as Fletch steps back into my vision. “What’d she say?”
“Doctors already knew about the peanut thing.” I push away from the house wrapped in yellow crime-scene tape and head toward our suspect. “She also mentioned William broke a few knuckles a couple days ago. Reckons he probably hit a wall or whatever.”
“Which only paints more domestic violence,” he murmurs, lowering his voice as we come closer to the woman who watches us. “People are quick to tell us how much of a dick our vic was, but it only adds weight to Adrianna’s motive for wanting him dead.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” I draw a deep breath and school my expression, then closing the final fifteen feet between us and the cruiser, I meet Adrianna Alves’ milky-brown eyes and feel that stab of compassion in my belly. Because her left eye is surrounded by days-old bruising that would have had William in a cage if this went in any other direction. Her lips, thick and sensual to anyone who might be interested, are split and scabbed over. Her arms, both of them, ringed in finger-shaped bruises that corroborate a history of a controlling husband. “Mrs. Alves.” I extend my hand and wait for her to take it. Even if she’s a killer, she’s not a threat to me. Not a threat to my partner. Or to society as a whole. If she killed the man, she did it out of desperation. “My name is?—”
“Detective Archer Malone.” Her voice cracks as she shakes my hand. “I know who you are.” Then she releases me and looks to Fletch. “And you. I see you both on the news sometimes.”
“We’re really sorry about your husband,” Fletch murmurs, nodding to the uniform at her back to stand down. She’s not gonna run. “You have our deepest condolences.”
“Do I?” Adrianna folds her arms and closes herself off from the world. It could be a power pose. Intimidation. Assertiveness. But I consider it exhaustion. Fear. Uncertainty. “My face is already on the news, Detectives. You’re saying I’m a suspect. Not a bereaved wife.”
“We’re saying nothing.” I open the cruiser door and nod, not because I want to force the woman in and drive her away, but because I want to offer her somewhere to sit. To rest and escape the glaring sun atop her dark hair. “The news often reports whatever the hell they want to report, Mrs. Alves.” I hold the door and breathe a little easier when she breaks her robotic stance and lowers to the edge of the back seat, so her feet remain on the road, but her body rests in the shade. “They rarely report the truth. And at this moment in time, neither Detective Fletcher, nor I, have made a statement.” I lower into a crouch and look up into her terrified eyes. Her ochre-colored stare red from crying and puffy from a man’s fists. “What happened, Adrianna?”
“I didn’t kill my husband.” Her voice breaks, her steely countenance melting away to expose a woman terrified to her bones. “I swear I didn’t. We had a fight last night, but we have those all the time.” Tears spill from her eyes and track over her cheeks. “Kiera’s been sleeping poorly lately. Lots of night terrors and anxiety around bedtime, so I got the girls down, and I went to bed right after so I could try to catch up.”
“We have a witness who says William was verbally abusing you last night,” Fletch rumbles. “He was allegedly saying ugly things about you. About your body.”
In response, Adrianna looks down at her blood-stained thighs, where it would appear she’s wiped her hands.
“He was going off, and you just… go to bed?”
“He’d been drinking,” she whimpers, glancing up and accepting tissues when the female officer assigned to her offers them. “Thank you.” Sniffling, she brings the lot to her nose and hunches her back. “He wasn’t always this mean, Detectives. But alcohol changes people. Aging,” she sighs, “changes people.”
“William Alves was twenty-five-years-old,” I cut in with a frown. “I’d hardly consider that aging.”
“But we’ve been together since eighth grade,” she counters shakily. “We were just children. Small town, big plans.” She sniffles again and wipes her nose. “Katie… my oldest daughter,” she glances around, as though to make sure the girl can’t hear, “clearly was unplanned. But it happened anyway. We went ahead with the pregnancy. We were married before I was even legally old enough to say I wanted it. But our parents pushed for it. To legitimize teenage pregnancy. Next thing I know, I’m twenty-four with another child. William was twenty-five, wishing he was still seventeen and life was easy. So yes,” she looks to Fletch, her eyes hardening with determination. “age and alcohol changes people. They changed my husband to the point that the man we know today,” she shakes her head, “is not the same as the man I was forced down the aisle to say I do to. Neither were ideal,” she rasps. “But at least the boy, the younger version of him, was kind. And fun. Sweet, if not a little entitled.”
“Is that why you killed him?” I study her reactions. Every tiny movement of her body. Her eyes. Her hands. Even the flare of her nostrils as her gaze swings back up to me. “Because he was an alcoholic, entitled, asshole?”
“No.” Her jaw hardens. Her knuckles turn white as she fists her tissues. “I didn’t kill him.”
“He hit you, Adrianna. He had a job, but that’s all he did in a day. Went to work. Brought home enough money to pay the bills and buy beer. He didn’t help raise the girls. Didn’t contribute to running the household. He did nothing but park his ass on the couch and expect you to pick up around him.”
