Chapter Thirty-Four
Neveah left her hotel at eight thirty to drive to the address where the Spokane police would meet her before they went to the Carvers’ home. One of their detectives would be going in with her for the initial meeting while other officers provided backup outside.
Her stomach was in knots, but no one would know that. She was determined to be cool, competent and professional as she completed her mission. The meeting place was the parking lot of a hardware store. When she drove in, she spotted the officers in unmarked cars and pulled up next to one of them.
“Detective Charles?” a man with a buzz cut and hard blue eyes asked.
“That’s me.”
He studied her for a second, and she wondered if he was surprised that she was young or that she was Black. Could be either—or both. Not that she cared what he was thinking.
“I’m Detective Anthony. We spoke on the phone.”
“Right. Thank you for your help.”
“No problem. We’ll follow you. The Patrol cars will remain out of sight, as we discussed.”
“Great. See you there.” Neveah led the way to the Carvers’ well-kept raised ranch home in a neighborhood of similar houses. On the way in, she’d spotted swing sets, bikes and other indications of many young children nearby.
A red Dodge minivan was in the driveway at the Carvers’ home, along with a black Jeep Cherokee.
With the printed copy of the warrant for the phones tucked into her pocket, she met Anthony on the sidewalk and headed for the front door to ring the bell.
A woman with dark hair and eyes answered the door. Neveah recognized her as Trisha Carver’s sister Mercy from Trisha’s social media posts. “May I help you?”
Neveah showed her badge. “I’m Detective Neveah Charles from the DC Metropolitan Police Department, and this is Detective Anthony from the Spokane Police Department. We’d like to see Trisha Carver, please.”
Mercy’s gaze darted between Neveah and Anthony before landing back on her. “She’s not seeing anyone right now. I’m sure you can imagine that she’s not doing well at all.”
“I understand, and I’m sorry to intrude at such a difficult time, but I’m afraid this isn’t a social call. We’re investigating her husband’s homicide, and we need to speak to her.”
Mercy stared at her for a long moment before she finally blinked. “Come in.”
Neveah and Anthony entered the home. Shoes littered the entryway, and toys were scattered about. A baby was crying in another room.
“I’ll go get her,” Mercy said.
“Thank you.”
While they waited, Neveah walked toward the sliding glass door to look out at a backyard that contained a wooden swing set, more toys and two tricycles on a concrete patio. She turned back toward the living room as Trisha came into the room, carrying the baby, Mercy trailing behind her.
Trisha’s hair was a lighter shade of brown than her sister’s, and she had clear, cool blue eyes.
Neveah noted immediately that, unlike most grieving people she encountered, the woman’s eyes weren’t red or swollen from crying.
In fact, she looked remarkably well-rested, given that her husband had recently been murdered.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Carver.” She showed her badge again while Anthony did the same. “I’m Detective Neveah Charles with the DC Metropolitan Police Department, and this is Detective Anthony with the Spokane police.”
“You came all this way from DC?”
“I did.”
“Have you found the person who murdered my husband?”
“Not yet, ma’am, but we’re following a number of leads. Could we have a seat and talk with you and your sister for a minute?”
“Um, I guess. I’m not sure what we can do to help.”
“We have a few routine questions for you,” Neveah said.
“Okay.”
“Why do you need to talk to me?” Mercy asked.
“Have a seat,” Neveah said, hoping to convey the message that she wasn’t asking.
The two women sat together on the sofa while Neveah and Anthony sat in upholstered chairs that faced the sofa.
“Sorry for the mess,” Trisha said. “I haven’t been cleaning up after the kids the way I normally do.”
“Are your older children at home?”
“No, they’re at the sitter’s house. I needed a little break. It’s been…” She teared up. “I still can’t believe this has happened to Dale.”
“I was wondering why your social media post didn’t indicate that he was murdered. Rather, you made it sound like he died due to a drug overdose.”
“I didn’t make it sound like that.”
“You did, ma’am. It seemed like an effort to ensure that’s what people would think when, in fact, he was stabbed in the chest.”
“Is this really necessary?” Mercy asked. “My sister just lost her husband. She has three young children and isn’t thinking clearly. Would you be after that happened to you?”
“I hope I never find out what that is like,” Neveah said, “but it strikes me as odd that after he fought such a valiant battle with addiction that you’d want him to be remembered for dying from an overdose.”
“A valiant battle,” Trisha said with a huff of sarcasm. “Is that what it was? To me, it was more of a never-ending nightmare that took over my entire life and left me constantly wondering when something like this would happen.”
“Something like him being stabbed in the chest?”
“Something! It could’ve been anything with the way he was living!”
“How was he living?”
“He was back to all his old habits. Disappearing for days at a time. Coming home looking like a skid-row bum and smelling like death.” Her chin wobbled.
“After the last trip to rehab, he promised me he was done with all of it. He talked me into having another baby to celebrate that we’d survived.
We’d won. It was all lies. He built a house of cards under us, and I’m left to pick up the pieces.
I knew it was only a matter of time before someone killed him. ”
“At least you’ll have the insurance money. That’ll make a big difference for you and your kids.”
The comment obviously shocked them. They hadn’t expected her to know about that.
“Wh-what insurance money?”
“The two-point-five-million-dollar policy your father gave you as a wedding gift. Surely you remember that. If I check, will I find that you’ve already reached out about the payout?”
Trisha’s grief-stricken expression shifted to something much harder in a flash. “What’re you implying?”
“I’m asking you if you’ve already taken steps to redeem your husband’s hefty life insurance policy. The one you just said you didn’t know about.”
“Is this how your department treats widows?” Mercy asked. “You harass them over the kind of details anyone would be dealing with after something like this?”
“Most of the widows I meet aren’t sitting on multimillion-dollar life insurance policies.”
“That’s enough,” Mercy said. “You need to leave. My sister is in mourning and doesn’t deserve this.”
“Did Dale deserve a knife to the chest?”
“Yes!” Trisha said.
“Trisha.”
Ignoring her sister, Trisha said, “He deserved anything he got after the way he lied to me and disrespected our marriage and family for the entire time we were together. He was an addict when we met and hid it from me until it was too late. By the time I found out, we had two children, a mortgage, car payments and stacks of debt from his recklessness. We spent more than a hundred thousand dollars on rehab, and none of it worked. After the last time, he swore to me that everything would be different. He begged me not to leave him and to give him one more chance to show me who he could be when he was clean. Except he was never clean. It was more lies, and look at me now, with another child to care for on my own. So yes, if someone stabbed him in the chest, he probably deserved it.”
“Did you have anything to do with him being stabbed?”
Her face lost all color in an instant. “What?” She glanced at her sister. “What is she saying?”
“I asked if you had anything to do with your husband being stabbed.”
“Get out of here,” Mercy said. “How dare you come into her home and accuse her of such a thing?”
“Did you have anything to do with it?” Neveah asked Mercy.
“Fuck you.”
Neveah reached into her coat pocket, withdrew the warrant and handed it to Mercy. “This is a warrant for both of your phones. I’ll need you to turn them over to me. Now.”
“You can’t take our phones!” Trisha said. “This is outrageous. We haven’t done anything.”
“If that’s the case, they’ll be returned to you as soon as they’re processed.”
“I want a lawyer,” Trisha said.
“You’re free to engage with counsel, but the phones are still coming with us. You can either retrieve them immediately, or we’ll bring in officers to search the house for them.”
“You can’t do this!” Trisha cried.
“That piece of paper says I can. Now, what’s it going to be? I’m giving you two minutes to produce the phones before we call in backup.”
“What’re we supposed to do without our phones?” Mercy asked.
“That’s not my problem, ma’am.”
She engaged in a stare-down with Mercy that ended when the other woman blinked.
Neveah noticed that Mercy’s hands were trembling.
After a long silence, Neveah turned to Anthony. “Detective Anthony, will you ask your colleagues to come in to look for the phones?”
“I’ll take care of that right away.”
“Wait,” Trisha said. “We have nothing to hide. You can have them.”
“Trisha—”
“Be quiet, Mercy, and get the phones.”
With a furious look for her sister, Mercy got up to retrieve both phones from chargers in the kitchen.
Neveah watched her without blinking so she wouldn’t miss it if Mercy did anything to either phone.
Mercy dropped them on the coffee table.
Neveah put on gloves to place them into separate evidence bags. “Which one is which?”
“The blue one is Trisha’s.”
“What are the codes?”
She wrote down the numbers the women recited. “Thank you.”
When the detectives got up to leave, Mercy said, “That’s it? You come in here, harass my widowed sister, take our phones and leave?”
“That’s it for now. If we find anything interesting on the phones, we’ll be back.”
“What does that mean? What would be interesting?”
“I won’t know until I see it.”