Page 49 of Girl, Accused

‘That's not exactly-‘

‘It’s fine, I know husbands are the biggest offenders. I was a cop once.’

‘You were?’

‘A long time ago, in Columbus. I took medical retirement.’

‘So you’ll know what we’re dealing with.’

'Barely. I'll save you the time. I didn't kill Becca. I was out with my buddy until about nine. I texted Becca just before midnight asking if she was coming home, but she never replied.' Frank fished his cell out of his robe and passed it to Ella. 'I text her from this phone. Get your tech guys to check it. It'll show that it was connected to the Wi-Fi here all night.'

Ella pocketed the cell. Such an alibi wouldn't prove Frank's innocence, but she was welcome of it all the same. Still, her gut told her that Frank had nothing to do with this. If he did, he'd be playing up his grief. Ella guessed it was a cop thing: acceptance in the face of death, even when it was your own wife on the slab. Either that, or he hadn't fully processed it yet.

‘Appreciated. I don’t think you had anything to do with Rebecca’s death, but you might be able to point us towards someone who did. What can you tell us about her?’

Frank lit a second cigarette with the ember of the first one, then flicked the used one into the lake. ‘Where do I start?’

‘What was she like?’

'Always told she wasn't good enough as a kid, so spent adulthood making up for it.'

‘She’s the…’ Ella wondered how best to word it. ‘Ambitious type?’

‘Ambitious? Not really. Becca just knew an opportunity when she saw it.’ Frank admired the cigarette between his fingers. ‘I’ve missed these things.’

‘Forgive me for speaking out of turn,’ Ripley jumped in, ‘but you don’t seem all that upset by your wife’s death.’

Frank made a noncommittal sound. ‘Yeah,I thought you might say that.’

‘So, care to explain? You can see why we might find that suspicious.’

'Yup. Truth is, I lost Rebecca years ago. Used to be a time we'd jet off to Europe on a whim, go wild swimming in the lake, eat grilled cheese at two in the morning. The day she got a job in politics, that all stopped. That Becca, the one who'd wake me up at midnight to dance in the kitchen, she disappeared. Replaced by this... machine. Sometimes I didn't even recognize her. Like we were two strangers.'

Ella asked, ‘And Rebecca became colder?’

‘Her priorities changed. I came second. She became obsessed with….’ Frank gestured to the house, the lake, the oak chair set on the porch. Ella followed his gaze, but didn’t follow his train of thought.

‘Obsessed with what? Material gain?’

‘Small town politicians don’t exactly rake it in and, well, you know how much a police pension is?’

Ripley said, ‘Yup. Not enough to live here.’

Ella watched Frank Torres dance around the truth like a man trying to confess without committing the sin of speaking ill of the dead. Years in this job had taught her that people rarely handed you the truth in neat packages. It came in fragments and implications and negative spaces. Frank Torres was trying to tell them something about his wife without actually saying it.

‘You're suggesting Rebecca found... alternative income sources,’ Ella said carefully.

‘Something like that.’

‘Somethinglike that? Or exactly that?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me the details. Not that I ever asked. All I know is that yearly Range Rovers don’t pay for themselves.’

‘You're telling us Rebecca Torres was corrupt,’ Ripley said bluntly.

Frank flinched slightly, maybe not at the accusation but at the baldness of it. ‘I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I call her out on it? Why’d an ex-cop let it happen? Well, you already know the answer.’

Ella did know. The man was living in a lakefront mansion. Don't ask, don't tell. A convenient arrangement that even Ghandi might have been tempted by. The law might find Frank complicit in his silence, but Ella's priorities were elsewhere. She found herself oddly appreciating his honesty. Mostspouses in his position clung to sanitized versions of their dead partners – posthumous canonizations that erased all flaws. Frank Torres seemed determined to acknowledge his wife's reality, however unflattering.

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