Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
Tim
The contrast between the menacing basement and the sunny great room upstairs was almost as jarring as the difference between the skeleton and living, breathing Jenny Smith.
Jenny’s face was full, her body shapely.
She was classically attractive, a woman likely to turn heads.
It wasn’t looks that interested Tim, though, but the witness’s ongoing angst. Since sitting down, Jenny hadn’t stopped twisting her wrists against the cuffs that held them in place.
Next to Solomon on the L-shaped sofa, Tim cleared his throat. “Ms. Smith,” he said, “we have some questions about what you found in the basement.”
“You need to talk to him.” Jenny’s right eyelid convulsed like a fish on a dock.
“Who is it you think we should talk to?” asked Tim.
“The guy who owns the house. Mikko.”
So she knew who Mikko Helle was. Once again, Tim wondered if the man’s status as a celebrity athlete might have something to do with Jenny’s presence in the house.
He hadn’t had time to google the guy, was working off what Nicole told him, but it seemed plausible that Mikko’s fame—or his money—had made this particular home a target.
“Do you know him?” Tim asked now. “Mikko Helle?”
“You have to talk to him. Please, just make him talk.”
“Do you believe that Mr. Helle’s responsible for this?”
Her eye twitched yet again. “It’s his house.”
“A house,” Tim said, “that you were in too.”
She was squirming again, straining against the cuffs until the effort left her panting. Tim dragged two fingers along his browbone. He had so many questions, so much to make sense of. “Let’s back up a minute, Jenny—can I call you that? Why don’t you tell us how you ended up in that ceiling.”
She blinked at Tim, and shook her head.
“There have been a number of break-ins recently, Jenny. All homes in Cape Vincent like this one. Did you spend time in those other homes too?”
The woman looked down at the white rug under her sneakers. She ground her toes into the thick pile, leaving two dirty ovals behind.
“Look,” Tim went on, softening his tone, “we get it. People fall on hard times. It happens to the best of us.” He gave a sympathetic shrug. “Maybe you needed a place to stay and realized those other homes were empty. Maybe you thought this one was vacant too. Is that what happened, Jenny?”
Raising her chin slightly, she said, “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
“You’re gonna have to give us more than that. If you explain the situation, we might be able to help you.”
“You can’t help me. She’s dead,” Jenny said. “You can’t bring her back.”
She. Tim’s head felt weightless, a helium balloon bobbing on a string.
He’d heard it, clear as anything. Jenny knew the remains in the basement belonged to a woman.
With no clothing on the skeleton, even the medical examiner could only hazard a guess, but Jenny had referred to the skeleton as a female. And that revealed a lot.
In his earlier days as a state police detective, there had been moments when Tim’s eagerness to ferret out information meant he moved too fast. Occasionally, he’d resort to scare tactics in an effort to hurry things along.
Sometimes it worked, but he’d since learned to customize his approach.
Jenny Smith was looking at multiple felony charges ranging from burglary to criminal trespassing and theft.
For the moment, though, Tim had no intention of pointing this out.
Some people could be coaxed into a confession with a handful of kibble, while others needed a yank on the leash. Tim felt certain Jenny was the former.
“You’re right,” he said. “We can’t help with that, and I’m sorry. How well did you know her?”
The smooth planes of Jenny’s forehead and cheeks puckered like scorched skin. “Better than him,” she said. “Better than anyone here.”
“How did she get down into Mikko’s basement?”
The way Jenny struggled in place reminded Tim of Darcy when he tried to pull PJs over her hot, bath-damp skin. The kid hated the feeling of the fabric, fitted to protect against pajama fires, compressing her limbs.
Before him, the woman writhed like she felt trapped.
“Jenny,” Tim pressed, “who is she? Who did we find down there?”
Jenny Smith sucked in a breath and went rigid.
Tim thought for a moment that something had obstructed her airway; beneath the tousled curls, Jenny’s skin was so red it looked sunburned, a shiny crimson mask.
She emitted a sound between a growl and a moan and threw back her head as though she’d taken a kick to the jaw.
The tendons in her neck bulged like boat lines.
“I can’t,” she gasped. “Can’t be … I have to get out of here. ”
Tim and Sol traded an urgent look. “Hey there,” said Sol, leaning forward. “Slow down. You OK?”
“Can’t … breathe.” Her entire body had started to shake.
“It’s a panic attack.” Tim had never experienced one himself, but Shana had.
He’d seen it happen a couple of years ago, when she learned the local paper had published a caustic op-ed that called her competence into question.
In an intimate moment, Shana had told Tim what that had been like.
How her heart had felt like a water balloon pinned beneath a concrete slab.
She’d been terrified, her body betraying her in ways that felt fatal.
Tim didn’t wish that on the young woman before him, no matter what she’d done.
Their best shot at calming Jenny down was to get her outside. If the skeleton in the house was the source of her anxiety, they needed to change environments. Put some distance between her and the thing that triggered the attack.
“Let’s get her some air,” Tim said, and together he and Solomon ushered the woman out the front door.
The front yard smelled leafy and clean. A light breeze skated over Tim’s skin, but Jenny was still quaking, her face soaked with sweat and tears.
Tensing against the cuffs that held her hands behind her back, she thrashed like she was caught in a net.
More than once the shifting pebbles on Mikko Helle’s driveway, marred by deep ruts from the police cars, caused her to stumble even as Tim provided support.
“Breathe,” he told her. “You’re OK. You’re good.” But Jenny had doubled over. All she could manage now was desperate wheezing and the occasional strangled wail.
From the corner of his eye, Tim caught sight of a neighbor at the tree line. The man was holding up his iPhone, the device trained on the scene.
“Get the hell out of here!” he shouted, sending the man scurrying back to his own property.
It was because of the man with the phone that Tim didn’t notice Solomon had shifted position and taken ahold of her hands.
Not until he heard the telltale metallic click.
Time slowed, then stopped as Jenny Smith flung out her arms, knocking both investigators into a stagger. The wheezing hadn’t stopped, yet somehow she was running, lurching wildly toward the copse of trees that separated Mikko’s property from the one next door.
“Stop!” Tim yelled, sprinting after her, tasting bile and feeling his chest go red-hot. He thought he might be able to hear her ragged breathing if he paused to listen, but that would put even more distance between them.
It took less than a minute for Tim to break through the tight knot of trees, but still he couldn’t see her.
Tripping into the open road next to the water, he scanned left and right.
No cars to be seen. No boats nearby, either.
The road disappeared around the bend toward the lighthouse, and in front of him there was only sun-splashed water.
Where the hell had she gone? Was it possible Jenny had doubled back and taken a route through the eastern neighbor’s yard, in the direction of the village?
Had she kept running west? Around the corner, Tim knew, there was a smattering of houses that faced Lake Ontario, but the rest of the peninsula was all fields and woodland.
And if that’s where she was headed, Tim would need an army of troopers to find her.
He couldn’t say how much time passed before he conceded defeat and dragged himself back to the residence. As he paused to catch his breath and process what had happened, Jeremy Solomon burst from the trees.
“Shit,” Sol panted, shamefaced. His face and neck were hot pink. “I’m sorry. She looked like she was about to pass out. I didn’t think she’d flee, not in a million years.”
Tim raised his hand—not now—because, as frustrated as he was, he’d just noticed a new car in the driveway. A shiny white Tesla was parked by the front door.
“The homeowner,” he said to Solomon, mopping the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. “Mikko Helle. I think he’s back.”