Denials Andrew
Denials
Andrew
Eleven Years Ago
They’d been at it for hours now. The handcuffs bit into his wrists, the chair was hard and uncomfortable, his clothes had been confiscated, and he was wearing an orange jumpsuit—prison orange.
“Just temporarily, Andrew, until your lawyer can bring you a change of clothes. We’re just trying to figure out what happened tonight. ”
The torture of not knowing what happened was maddening. The scent of Chloe’s blood clung to him. Detective Lee was pleasant and sharp, trying to be a friend to him so he’d trip up.
“Let’s go through it again.”
“We’ve already—”
“Again, Andrew. Help me understand what happened tonight.”
A glance at his lawyer. “I arrived home. The door wasn’t latched. I knew something was wrong immediately. I could smell . . . blood. I could see her feet—”
“What was she wearing?”
“Tan UGGs. I gave them to her last Christmas. She wore them all year round inside the house.”
“And she was where?”
“Behind the couch. Between the couch and the dining room table. The record player was on. She was wearing sweats. The blood—” He stopped, swallowed convulsively. “The blood was pooled. It seemed fresh. She hadn’t been dead for long.”
“Are you qualified to make that judgment?”
“Damn it, I didn’t kill my wife! I was on a plane. Flying home. I missed my flight and had to catch a later one. Her time of death proves I was on the plane when she died.”
“Time of death is a very inexact science. It’s a range. Your arrival corresponds with the back end of that range.”
He crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair.
Detective Lee watched him with caution in her eyes.
She believed him. He could tell. They’d been sitting in this room for hours now, and the entirety of the tiny Malogen Police Department was watching from the other side of the mirror.
Andrew wanted to scream, to pound his fists, but he sat in the hard chair ramrod straight and took it like a man, at least for now.
He adjusted his tone. His commanding officers had gotten after him about that tone the entire time he served.
“You’ve known me for years. You watched me grow up, watched me become a man, an airman, a husband. You know me, period. You know there is no way I’d kill Chloe.”
“Did you ask someone to do it for you?”
“Fuck’s sake, Theresa.”
“Language. And it’s Detective Lee.”
His hands are clenched into fists so tight he thinks his fingers might break.
“No, I didn’t arrange for her to be killed.
No, I don’t know who did it. Yes, I loved her.
My God, what sort of monster do you think I am?
She was pregnant, but I didn’t even know she was expecting.
And someone stabbed her with the scissors she was using to wrap the pregnancy test as a Christmas present for me.
It was not me. Her death has ruined my life.
Losing them both . . . No. No more. That’s all I have to say. ”
He glanced at their family lawyer, Aaron Pollan, who nodded. They’d agreed to have this conversation because if he didn’t, they were going to toss him into a jail cell and let him rot. He wanted to talk. He wanted to clear his name. He wanted them to know—on the record—that he hadn’t done it.
But Lee kept at him with that tone of disbelief, like he was an idiot for trying to lie to her.
“Andrew. There was blood in your car. There was blood under your nails. Eden walked in on you with the scissors in your hand.”
“And I’ve told you, when I found her, I grabbed her body and held her to my chest. I hugged my wife, like any sane man would do if he found the love of his life dead.
Eden is mistaken. If I touched the scissors, it was inadvertent.
And when you made me leave the house, I sat in the front seat of my car, waiting.
My God, we’ve been over this a hundred times. ”
And every time, he relived the moment he walked into his house to see the love of his life sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood. Chloe, so pale, her eyes slitted, her body so still. He kept hoping her chest would rise, but there was nothing. She was a shell.
Time stopped.
And then her sister appeared in the doorway, saw him trying to assess what had happened, feeling for a fucking pulse, and started screaming.
He wanted to scream, too. He wanted to hit things. But he’d ended up trying to calm Eden down instead of succumbing to his own grief.
“You disturbed a crime scene. Some might say you did it to cover your tracks.”
“Cover my tracks. Come on, Detective Lee, you have the itinerary. You have the ticket. I’m sure you’ve already talked to the TSA at Hartsfield and pulled the video that shows me walking through the airport. You know I didn’t do this. Why are you trying to pin it on me?”
What he wanted to say: You don’t understand what it was like, seeing her dead.
My heart stopped, and it hasn’t started again.
Every moment we had together flashed through my mind.
From our first kiss to our wedding night, from our first argument to the walks in the mountains through the red rocks near the Academy, to the night under the stars, planning our lives.
The children we won’t have—the moments we will never experience.
A world without Chloe in it is unfathomable.
He couldn’t control it anymore. He started to cry. He wept so hard that he had to put his head on the table, and Aaron put a hand on his shoulder and said, “I think we’re done here, Theresa.”
“Let me ask a few more questions. If you didn’t do this, Andrew, who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you having an affair? Someone is upset that you have a wife?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Any threats? Has Chloe expressed any fears? Was she being watched? Followed? Harassed?”
“This is a small town, Detective Lee. If she had, don’t you think she would have come to you for help, especially with me out of town?”
“Help me remember, Andrew. The layout of the house, can you see into the living room from the front door?”
He shuts his eyes. Every time he does, he sees Chloe’s feet sticking out from the edge of the couch, twisted. “You can see the arm of the couch, but not into the living room, no.”
“And you were supposed to be home tomorrow, right? Christmas Day?”
“I caught an earlier flight. I wanted to surprise her. But I missed the one I scheduled because there was traffic getting to the airport, and I had to go standby on the flight I did take.”
“And did you surprise her, Andrew? Was Chloe having an affair? Did you arrive home early and see her with someone, and murder her in a fit of anger?”
He leaned forward, intense and furious. “If I caught Chloe with someone, I’d murder them, not her.”
Aaron jumped in. “Okay, we’re through here. No more without formal charges, Theresa. You’re fishing, and you’re upsetting my client.”
“Because your client’s wife is lying in the refrigerator downstairs.”
Silence, then. The outburst was too much, and they all knew it.
Detective Lee regained her composure. “Will you agree to a polygraph?”
Aaron looked at Andrew, who nodded.
Theresa looked surprised, but covered it with a gruff “Good. When are you supposed to deploy? This may cause issues with you leaving.”
He mumbled the answer into his arms. “I don’t. I’m not leaving.”
“What do you mean?”
A deep, shuddering breath, and he lifted his head.
“I separated. I’m out of the Air Force. I never wanted that life, everyone knows it, and I have been working for a year to wrap up my service and come home for good.
I just wanted to live here and raise a family.
It was a surprise for Chloe. My Christmas present to her.
I couldn’t wait to tell her that I didn’t have to redeploy, that I got to stay through the holidays, and then forever.
That’s it.” He sniffed, hard. “And now it’s all gone. ”