Lena asked, “You think Dale is involved in this, too?”
“Frank ran a credit check,” he said. “Dale and Terri are both in debt up to their eyeballs- credit cards, mortgage, two car payments. They’ve got three medical collections against them. Sara says the kid’s been in the hospital a couple of times. They’re hurting for money.”
“You think Terri killed her?” Lena asked. Frank was right when he said poisoning was generally a woman’s crime.
“Why would she do it?”
“She knew what Cole did. She could’ve been following him.”
“But why kill Abby?”
“Maybe she didn’t,” Lena tried. “Maybe Cole killed Abby and Terri decided to give him some of his own medicine.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think Cole killed Abby. He was genuinely sad that she was dead.”
Lena let it go, but in her mind, she thought he was giving a large benefit of the doubt to one of the sickest fucks she’d ever run into.
Jeffrey opened his cell phone and dialed a number. Someone obviously answered on the other end, and he said, “Hey, Molly. Can you give a message to Sara for me?” He paused a beat. “Tell her we’re heading out to the Stanley place right now. Thanks.” He hung up, telling Lena, “Terri had an appointment with Sara around lunchtime.”
It was half past ten. Lena thought about the gun in Dale’s garage. “Why didn’t we just pick her up then?”
“Because Sara’s office is out of bounds.”
Lena thought this was a pretty lame excuse, but she knew better than to push him on it. Jeffrey was the best cop she had ever known, but he was like a whipped puppy as far as Sara Linton was concerned. The fact that she jerked him around so much would have been embarrassing to any other man, but he seemed to take pride in it.
Jeffrey must have sensed her thoughts- at least some of them- because he said, “I don’t know what Terri’s capable of. I sure as hell don’t want her going ballistic in an office full of little kids.”
He pointed to a black mailbox jutting up beside the road. “It’s up here on the right.”
Lena slowed, turning into the Stanley driveway, Brad right behind her. She saw Dale working in the garage and felt her breath catch. She had met him once, years ago, at another police picnic when his brother, Pat, had just joined the force. Lena had forgotten how large he was. Not just large, but strong.
Jeffrey got out of the car, but Lena found herself hesitating. She made her hand move to the handle on the door, made herself open it and get out. She heard Brad’s door shut behind her, but didn’t want to take her eyes off Dale for a second. He stood just inside the doorway of the garage, hefting a heavy-looking wrench in his meaty hands. The cabinet with the gun was a few feet away. Like Jeffrey, he had a dark bruise under his eye.
“Hey, Dale,” Jeffrey said. “How’d you get the shiner?”
“Ran into a door,” he quipped, and Lena wondered how he’d really gotten it. Terri would need to stand on a chair to reach his head. Dale weighed about a hundred pounds more than she did and was at least two feet taller. Lena looked at his hands, thinking one was large enough to wrap around her throat. He could strangle her without giving it a second thought. She hated that feeling, hated the sensation of her lungs shaking in her chest, her eyes rolling back, everything starting to disappear as she willed herself not to pass out.
Jeffrey stepped forward, Brad and Lena on either side of him. He told Dale, “I need you to come out of the garage.”
Dale tightened his hand around the wrench. “What’s going on?” His lips twitched in a quick smile. “Terri call you?”
“Why would she call us?”
“No reason.” He shrugged, but the wrench in his hand said he had something to worry about. Lena glanced at the house, trying to see Terri. If Dale had a bruised eye, Terri probably had something ten times worse.
Jeffrey was obviously thinking the same. Still, he told the man, “You’re not in trouble.”
Dale was smarter than he looked. “Don’t seem that way to me.”
“Come out of the garage, Dale.”
“Man’s home is his castle,” Dale said. “You got no right coming in here. I want you off my property right now.”
“We want to talk to Terri.”
“Nobody talks to Terri unless I say so, and I ain’t saying so, so…”
Jeffrey stopped about four feet from Dale, and Lena moved to his left, thinking she could get to the gun before Dale. She suppressed a curse when she realized that the cabinet was well out of her reach. Brad should have taken this side. He was at least a foot taller than she was. By the time Lena dragged over a stool to retrieve the gun, Dale would be on his way to Mexico.
Jeffrey said, “Put the wrench down.”
Dale’s eyes darted to Lena, then Brad. “Maybe ya’ll should back up a step or two.”
“You’re not in charge here, Dale,” Jeffrey told him. Lena wanted to put her hand on her gun, but knew that she should take her signals from Jeffrey. He had his arms at his sides, probably thinking he could talk Dale down. She wasn’t convinced.
“Y’all are crowdin’ me,” Dale said. “I don’t like that.” He lifted the wrench to chest level, resting the end in his palm. Lena knew the man wasn’t an idiot. The wrench could do a lot of damage, but not to three people at the same time, especially considering the three people had guns on their belts. She watched Dale closely, knowing in her gut that he would make a try for the gun.
“You don’t want to do this,” Jeffrey told him. “We just want to talk to Terri.”
Dale moved swiftly for a man his size, but Jeffrey was faster. He yanked the baton from Brad’s belt and slammed it into the back of Dale’s knees as the taller man lunged for the gun. Dale dropped to the floor like a stack of bricks.
Lena felt nothing but shock as she watched the normally docile Brad jam his knee into Dale’s back, pressing him into the ground as he cuffed him. One swipe to the back of the knees and he had fallen. He wasn’t even putting up a fight as Brad jerked back his hands, using two sets of cuffs to keep his wrists bound behind his back.
Jeffrey told Dale, “I warned you not to do this.”
Dale yelped like a dog when Brad pulled him up to his knees. “Jesus, watch it,” he complained, rolling his shoulders like he was afraid they’d been popped out of the sockets. “I want to call my lawyer.”
“You can do that later.” Jeffrey handed the baton back to Brad, saying, “Put him in the back of the car.”
“Yes, sir,” Brad said, pulling Dale up to standing, eliciting another yelp.
The big man shuffled his feet on the way to the car, a storm of dust kicking up behind him.
Just so Lena could hear, Jeffrey said, “Not such a tough guy, huh? I bet it makes him feel real good beating on his little wife.”
Lena felt a bead of sweat roll down her back. Jeffrey swiped some dust off the leg of his pants before heading toward the house. He reminded Lena, “There are two kids in there.”
Lena cast around for something to say. “Do you think she’ll resist?”
“I don’t know what she’ll do.”
The door opened before they reached the front porch. Terri Stanley stood inside, a sleeping baby on her hip. At her side was another kid, probably about two. He was rubbing his little fists into his eyes as if he’d just woken up. Terri’s cheeks were sunken; dark circles rimmed her eyes. Her lip was busted open, a fresh, bluish-yellow bruise traced along her jaw, and angry red welts wrapped around her neck. Lena understood why Dale hadn’t wanted them to talk to his wife. He’d beaten the shit out of her. Lena couldn’t see how the woman was still standing.
Terri watched her husband being led to the squad car, studiously avoiding Jeffrey’s and Lena ’s eyes as she told them in a flat voice, “I’m not going to press charges. You might as well let him go.”