Chapter 35 #2
“Yeah.” He pulled his sleeve back down. “Used to put cigarettes out on my mom. Until I got old enough to put myself between them. I was a skinny little twerp, though. Eleven years old. Didn’t fill out till I was about seventeen.
Small enough for him to hold me down. Hurts more on the soft skin inside the arm. Easier to hide.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, like he was telling her about modifications he’d used on an old recipe to make it better.
Josie understood this. The way the trauma lived in your marrow, in the cells of your body, and yet, you could talk about it emotionlessly.
Disconnect from it mentally. She did it herself whenever she talked about the things Lila Jensen had done to her.
“Did you tell her?” Josie asked. “Cassidy, I mean? What you were covering?”
“Nah, not at first. When I got it, I told her they were scars from infected spider bites. Of course when she got older, she kind of figured it out.”
Across the room, Spot set the octopus down beside his bowl and nosed around in it. Turner threw the towel on the floor. “My wife wasn’t having an affair, Quinn.”
“How do you know that?”
“She just wasn’t. Couldn’t have been. That would mean that—”
His voice cracked and for a moment he looked sad and broken and Josie could envision the boy he’d been, throwing himself between his father and mother.
Taking whatever violence had been meant for her.
With an extra helping of spite, she was willing to bet.
How many other scars did he have? Was that why he always wore a suit? To cover up his past? Armor? Both?
“Turner,” Josie said. “I told you. I don’t know that she had an affair but it’s a possibility. I know this is hard for you, but—”
“No,” he said. “No. I didn’t hang on, didn’t try for all those years just to end up the one lied to, betrayed. Do you understand what this would mean? All that time, everyone—”
Again, he clammed up.
Spot stopped shuffling his food around and canted his head in Turner’s direction, almost like he could sense his owner’s agitation. He probably could. Trout had always been able to tell what Josie was feeling even before she did.
“Everyone what?” Josie asked.
This was beginning to feel like more of a therapy session than anything else. She needed information from him. His family’s lives might hang in the balance and yet, she couldn’t help but feel like she wasn’t going to get what she needed until they waded through this, whatever it was.
But then he started to shut down. She saw it like he was on a stage performing it for her. His face slackened, then hardened into angry lines. His eyes went blank. His shoulders drew up a little, chest puffing out.
He was armoring up.
“For God’s sake, Turner,” Josie said, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice.
She almost felt sorry about the harshness of her tone but the smirk crossing his lips told her that he welcomed it.
“You don’t need to do this. Just tell me.
What were you going to say? Dani wasn’t having an affair because if she was, that would mean what? Everyone what?”
“And you don’t need me to finish those sentences in order for you to do your goddamn job.”
Josie had a sudden flash of being in the car with Wren, trying to pry emotional secrets from the girl whose heart was locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Spot appeared between them, dropping his octopus and flopping onto the tile next to it.
Josie glared at Turner. Her irritation flamed into anger, searing the lining of her stomach. “What if I want to know?”
A blip of surprise appeared in his eyes, there and gone in an instant. Then he said, “You’re the one who’s always telling me to stay out of your business. To stop standing too close. Stop eavesdropping. Because you don’t like me.”
Josie narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want me to like you.”
He chuckled. “Do I seem like the kind of guy who gives a shit whether people like me or not?”
“Do I seem like the kind of person who can’t tell when someone is full of shit?” she shot back.
“You never noticed before.”
“Yeah, I did, Douchebag. I just didn’t care because you were so infuriating, and if you want to be an irredeemable jackass, well, you do you.
But you know what? My sister likes you. Worse, she respects you.
When my husband was missing, you risked your job to get me information about the case.
Maybe you are just a garden-variety asshole but there is some part of you that’s not.
You don’t want anyone to know that though, do you? ”
“Why the hell would I?”
“Because the most important person in your life has spent the last year and a half, probably longer, pining over you from a few miles away when you’re right here! You saw Cassidy’s corkboard—”
“Don’t,” he snapped venomously.
But Josie was past caring about his stupid fragile ego. “Don’t what? Point out the obvious? Your daughter worships you, and from what I can tell, despite your many, many flaws, you’re a good dad. Or you want to be. You keep her at arm’s length and it’s killing you. Why?”
She hadn’t even realized how badly the question had been eating at her until now. Sure, he and Dani had been on the outs for a long time, but their relationship was separate from his relationship with Cassidy.
It went against everything she knew about him, strangely enough.
Well, everything she’d come to find out about him in the past twenty-seven hours.
Kyle Turner was a study in contradictions.
As a colleague, he was lazy, his reports were subpar, and he often disappeared during shifts, but when he actually showed up and put in the effort, he was good at his job.
He was a jackass, a douchebag, an asshole and an irritant but more than anything else, beneath all that nastiness, he was loyal. Even when it didn’t serve him.
As a scared, scrawny eleven-year-old shielding his mother from his abusive father.
As a husband doggedly trying to keep his marriage alive.
As a fellow investigator breaking the rules for Josie.
He had a savior complex as big as the sky, but he didn’t want anyone to know it.
Didn’t want anyone to see it. Josie had been in therapy long enough to know that it wasn’t healthy but that was something for Turner to work out.
Whatever good he put into the world was done quietly, in shadows, without the knowledge of anyone except the people he helped.
Turner didn’t like attention. Not good attention, anyway.
“You’re used to it,” Josie said. “Being disliked, hated, even. Because of your dad.”
“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, Quinn.”
“Shut up. I’m figuring this out.”
“Jesus, you’re annoying.”
“Bringing attention to yourself can only end badly,” she went on.
Something wary and skittish darkened the blue in his eyes.
“For a while, with Cassidy, with Dani, you let your guard down. Let them see you. Let them validate you.” She thought about the photos on Cassidy’s corkboard from when she was little.
The carefree look on Turner’s face. The love there when he gazed at his daughter.
She thought about Annette saying he’d changed after the escort killer case.
What happened to Shitbird? He turned into a shitbird. The escort case messed up his moral compass, screwed with his head. We got the conviction but after that, he just changed.
But had he changed because his moral compass had shifted? Or for some other reason? Would someone as fiercely loyal as Turner change that much?
It wasn’t out of the question, of course. People changed for the worse every day, sometimes to unimaginable degrees. In her job, she had a front row seat to it. They both did.
Except she didn’t believe that Turner had.
He’d probably always been an irritating, irreverent pot-stirrer.
Getting a rise out of people was his favorite sport.
His half-assed, late reports and inability to stay focused or even to stay in one place for very long?
That could just be ADHD. All the twitching and tapping of fingers, the obsession with his tiny basketball hoop at work, the incessant phone scrolling—that stuff could definitely be attributed to ADHD.
The other stuff? The sexist and inappropriate names and comments?
Josie was beginning to think it was a facade.
What better way to keep people out? Which begged the question, what would make him want to keep people out so badly?
She thought about what he’d said, or started saying, about what it would mean if Dani had had an affair. About him not trying all this time only to be the one who’d been lied to, betrayed.
The one.
Not lied to and betrayed as well.
Everyone what? The answer was plain as day from her conversation with Annette and every text message between him and Dani. Everyone blamed him for the marriage falling apart. Everyone blamed him because of the affair with Zara.
“You really didn’t have an affair,” Josie said. “Did you?”
“I told you that. You didn’t believe me.”
“Just like everyone else.”
He gave her a bitter smile.
“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “I believe you now. Dani never has, though, has she?”
“No.”
“Neither has Annette.”
He sighed. “That was Dani’s doing. Annette’s loyalty is ultimately to her niece and I’m fine with that.”
“Are you, though?”
“What do you want me to say? Was I disappointed that no one in my life gave me the benefit of the doubt? The answer is yes. Was I disappointed that even though there was no evidence of my having an inappropriate relationship with Zara, everyone still thought the worst? Yeah. I was. It’s not like I kept anything a secret.
I wasn’t sneaking around with Zara. I told Dani what I was doing and why and she still decided that I wasn’t trustworthy.
My wife. My own wife. As far as Annette goes, it sucks but I’m glad she’s got Dani’s back like that. I don’t hold it against her.”
“What about the rest of your colleagues?” Josie asked. “Did they think you were having an affair with Zara?”
His chin dropped to his chest. “What do you think?”
“Turner,” Josie said. “Did you even try to defend yourself?”
“Only to the person who mattered, and that was my wife,” he said.
“Guess what? She didn’t believe me. Never has.
Everyone who knew me—who I thought knew me—believed the worst of me without ever questioning it.
Do you know how that feels? To realize that all the people around you think so little of you?
That it never once occurred to them to ask questions?
To be skeptical? To give you the benefit of the doubt?
If that’s what people think of me, then I guess that’s who I am.
Why should I bother being anything else? ”
Anger and hurt rolled off him in waves. It was a deep wound.
“Does Cassidy know why you and Dani were having marital issues in the first place?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, honestly.
When things started to go south, she was a lot younger.
The first time we separated, Dani and I decided to just tell her that we were having trouble getting along and we were going to take a break.
Now that she’s practically an adult, I don’t know.
I don’t think Dani would tell her but it’s possible Cass figured it out or heard Dani talking to someone else about it. She’s never said anything to me.”
“You don’t want her to know,” Josie said slowly. “Because if she did, she might think the worst of you, too. That’s why you’re keeping your distance.”
Again, he remained silent, but Josie knew she was on to something.
It was clear from all the texts between him and Dani that, in her eyes, he’d become a source of perpetual disappointment.
Not just to her but to their daughter. Turner didn’t fully own it, but he also didn’t do much to avoid living up to it.
It made a bizarre sort of sense. Get Cassidy used to being disappointed in him so that one day, if she found out about his supposed affair, it would just be par for the course.
For him, it wouldn’t be so painful to see her devastation if she believed he’d actually had an affair. He’d be somewhat inured to it.
Turner was nearly as emotionally messed up as she was, maybe more now that she’d had so much therapy.
“Tell me about this pattern of behavior, Quinn. We’ve already wasted entirely too much time on my bullshit.”
Josie laid out the theory she and Gretchen had come up with as quickly and efficiently as possible. Then she repeated her question from earlier. “Is there anyone you can think of from Alden in the months before you moved who might have had an interest in Dani?”
He scoffed. “An interest? Thanks for watering that down for my benefit.”
Josie smiled weakly. “Maybe I should have led with that.”
“There’s no one,” he said. “At least, not that I remember, but like I said, we didn’t see much of each other back then.
Ask Annette. See if she can get you a list of Dani’s friends and coworkers from back then.
I’d ask her, but I’ll be damned if I try to convince her my wife was the one having an affair. ”
“Noah and the Chief already interviewed friends and coworkers in Alden, but I’ll ask Annette to look at the list and make sure we haven’t missed anyone.” She patted Spot’s side and hauled herself to her feet.
“Quinn,” he said, making no effort to get up, “right before Dani changed her mind about following me here to Denton, there was this day I came home from work, and she was on the front porch with a trash bag. There were buckets and buckets of those yellow flowers they always sell in the fall.”
“Mums,” Josie said. “Chrysanthemums.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it. They weren’t there when I left so I knew she just bought them except she was throwing them away.
Every last one. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me they had some kind of mold on them and they needed to go.
We had an argument. I asked how much they cost and she said it was none of my business.
I told her to take them back for a refund and she said she’d handle it.
” He paused for a deep breath before continuing. “She didn’t buy those mums, did she?”
Josie couldn’t answer that, but she nodded anyway.
“What do yellow chrysanthemums mean?”
“I don’t know.”
But she knew where to find out. The book about the Victorian language of flowers that Professor Dustin Emmer had let her borrow was in one of her desk drawers at the station. By the time she got back, Gretchen was printing out some documents, plucking them frantically from the printer.
“I have something you’ll want to see,” she said.
Josie flipped through the pages of the old book carefully until she found what she was looking for: yellow chrysanthemums, running a fingertip across to their meaning.
Slighted love.