Selena had received had been friendly, but brief. We miss seeing you! Sorry we’ve been so busy. Maybe we can plan something for the warmer months?
A clear blowoff.
Selena had ignored those instincts, too. She didn’t want to know.
She was just like her mother.
“What about it?” she asked quietly.
“There were allegations from a junior member of his department.”
She shook her head, not trusting her voice.
“You weren’t aware.”
Another shake. She didn’t want to cry. If she started, it was going to get ugly.
“A coworker accused him of making advances, not taking rejection well. She said he became aggressive, threatening.”
Again, the urge to defend. He said, she said. Wasn’t this the minefield of the workplace these days? But no, she wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t even think it. She wouldn’t be another woman hiding the bad behavior of men.
Who was he? Who was her husband?
She remembered the bruised face of the Vegas stripper—her black eye, swollen purple mouth. A lap dance gone wrong. He wanted more; she declined. So he beat her. That was her husband; there was no disputing it. Even he didn’t try to deny it. She’d flown to Vegas, bailed him out. He got a drunk and disorderly summons, paid a fine, flew home with her the next day.
But Selena still thought about that girl, a young woman he’d hurt because she didn’t give him what he wanted. His infant son and wife asleep across the country, waiting for him.
Who was he? Who was she for staying with him? For burying that incident so deep in her subconscious so that it only surfaced when she was angry, or on sleepless nights when all her worries and fears danced and spun in the dim of her bedroom.
“Has he ever been violent with you?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Never.”
He pointed to her eyebrow, which was bruised from her fall.
“I fainted, hit my head on the way down.”
They locked eyes and his were dark and deep, probing.
“Look,” he said. “If you know more, if you have suspicions about what might have happened to Geneva, now is the time to help her. I know you want to protect your family, but a woman is missing.”
She shook her head. “My husband, he’s been unfaithful. He’s lied to me. And, you know, in the best case, our marriage is probably over. But I don’t believe he’s capable of hurting anyone.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. When he spoke, his voice was gentle.
“How can you say that? He has hurt someone.”
“Acting violently when drunk is different than—whatever it is you’re implying. Abducting, killing.”
She hated the way she sounded, like an apologist. But it was different, wasn’t it? “It’s like a different profile, right?”
God, she was pathetic. Crowe’s expression reflected a version of herself she didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Violence escalates, Mrs. Murphy,” he said. “In my experience violent men get more and more violent. When life stressors like job loss or problems in the marriage start to ramp up, those dark tendencies rise to the surface.”
Dark tendencies.
Fear, panic constricted her breathing. Everything was slipping from her grasp. She reached for the frayed edges of her life and felt them slip through her fingers.
“She wasn’t sleeping just with Graham,” Selena said. Desperate. She sounded desperate. “What about Erik Tucker? Isn’t he a suspect?”
So much for not throwing people under the bus. He didn’t answer her, just looked down at his notes.
“Do you or your husband have access to any isolated property anywhere—a lake house, a hunting cabin? Anything like that.”
“No.”
Did he, though? His friend Sean had a place somewhere—was it in the Adirondacks? She didn’t know if Graham had access, or how isolated it was. She told him as much; Crowe scribbled in his notebook.
“Why do you want to know that?”
He tilted his head. “Because a woman is missing, Mrs. Murphy. I want to know if there’s someplace he might be keeping her.”
Another blow to the gut. She picked up the ice pack again, but it had grown warm. The pounding in her head was reaching a crescendo. She wished she would just pass out again. Unconsciousness would be a blessed break from this nightmare.
“So, if you knew for a week that Geneva was sleeping with your husband—why didn’t you at least fire her right away?”
Good question. It was an impossible thing to explain to anyone who was living outside of her head. Anyway, she was about to fire Geneva but then she disappeared.
“It’s really hard to find a good nanny,” she said stupidly.