“Where have you been?” Regan asked. When I didn’t reply right away, he added, “You left the hospital more than an hour ago.”
I thought about the cell phone in my pocket. I thought about the bag of money in my hand. For now, I’d go for the semitruth. “I visited my wife’s grave,” I said.
“We need to talk, Marc.”
“Step inside,” I said.
We all moved back into the house. I stopped in the foyer. Monica’s body had been found less than ten feet from where I now stood. Still in the entranceway, my eyes scanned the walls, looking for any telltale sign of violence. There was only one. I found it fairly quickly. Above the Behrens lithograph near the stairwell, a bullet hole—one created from the only bullet that had not hit either Monica or me—had been spackled over. The spackle was too white for the wall. It would need a coat of paint.
I stared at it for a long moment. I heard a throat being cleared. It snapped me out of it. My mother rubbed my back and then headed to the kitchen. I showed Regan and his buddy to the living room. They took the two chairs. I took the couch. Monica and I hadn’t truly decorated yet. The chairs dated back to my college dorm and looked it. The couch had come from Monica’s apartment, a too-formal hand-me-down that looked like something kept in storage at Versailles. It was heavy and stiff and, even in its heyday, had had very little padding.
“This is Special Agent Lloyd Tickner,” Regan began, motioning toward the black man. “He’s with the FBI.”
Tickner nodded. I nodded back.
Regan tried to smile at me. “Good to see you’re feeling better,” he began.
“I’m not,” I said.
He looked puzzled.
“I won’t be better until I have my daughter back.”
“Right, of course. About that. We have a few follow-up questions, if you don’t mind.”
I let them know I didn’t.
Regan coughed into his fist, buying himself time. “You have to understand something. We need to ask these questions. I don’t necessarily like it. I’m sure you don’t either, but these questions need to be asked. You understand?”
I didn’t really, but this was no time to encourage elaboration. “Go ahead,” I said.
“What can you can tell us about your marriage?”
A warning light flashed across my cortex. “What does my marriage have to do with anything?”
Regan shrugged. Tickner remained still. “We’re just trying to put some pieces together, that’s all.”
“My marriage has nothing to do with any of this.”
“I’m sure you’re right, but look, Marc, the truth is, the trail is getting cold here. Every day that passes hurts us. We need to explore every avenue.”
“The only avenue I’m interested in is the one that leads to my daughter.”
“We understand that. That’s the main focus of our investigation. Finding out what happened to your daughter. And you too. Let’s not forget that someone tried to kill you too, am I right?”
“I guess.”
“But, see, we can’t just ignore these other issues.”
“What other issues?”
“Your marriage, for example.”
“What about it?”
“When you got married, Monica was already pregnant, right?”
“What does that . . . ?” I stopped myself. I wanted to attack with both barrels, but Lenny’s words roared back at me. Don’t talk to the cops without him present. I should call him. I knew that. But something about their tone and posture . . . if I stopped now and said I wanted to call my lawyer, it would make me look guilty. I had nothing to hide. Why feed into their suspicions? It would only distract them. Of course, I also knew that this was how they worked, how the police played the game, but I’m a doctor. Worse, a surgeon. We often make the mistake of thinking we’re smarter than everyone else.
I went with honesty. “Yes, she was pregnant. So?”
“You’re a plastic surgeon, correct?”
The change of subjects threw me. “That’s right.”
“You and your partner travel overseas and repair cleft palates, serious facial trauma, burns, that kind of thing?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“You travel a lot then?”
“A fair amount,” I said.
“In fact,” Regan said, “in the two years before your marriage, isn’t it fair to say that you were probably out of the country more than you were in it?”
“Possibly,” I said. I squirmed against the padless cushion. “Could you tell me what the relevance of any of this is?”
Regan gave me his most disarming smile. “We’re just trying to get a complete picture here.”
“Picture of what?”
“Your work partner”—he checked his notes—“a Ms. Zia Leroux.”
“Dr. Leroux,” I corrected.
“Dr. Leroux, yes, thank you. Where is she now?”
“Cambodia.”
“She’s performing surgery on deformed children over there?”
“Yes.”
Regan tilted his head, feigning confusion. “Weren’t you originally scheduled to take that trip?”
“A long time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“How long ago did you take yourself off the schedule?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Eight, nine months ago maybe.”
“And so Dr. Leroux went instead, correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct. And the point of that is . . . ?”
He wouldn’t bite. “You like your job, don’t you, Marc?”
“Yes.”
“You like traveling overseas? Doing this commendable work?”
“Sure.”
Regan scratched his head too dramatically, pretending in the most obvious way to be bewildered. “So if you like the traveling, why did you cancel and let Dr. Leroux go in your place?”
Now I saw where he was heading. “I was cutting back,” I said.
“On travel, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I had other obligations.”
“Those obligations being a wife and daughter, am I correct?”
I sat up and met his eye. “Point,” I said. “Is there a point to all this?”
Regan settled back. The silent Tickner did likewise. “Just trying to get a complete picture, that’s all.”