He has handled this often over the years. Obviously revisited it again and again.

I find myself hesitating. A turning point. Do I really want to know? Maybe all couples need their secrets. Apparently, I still hoard mine, from a yellow quilt to a stash of scotch.

But I can’t let it go. Having discovered the envelope, I need to know what it contains. So I delicately ease it open, pull out a single item: an old photograph in about as great shape as the envelope.

Faded out, yellow toned, smudged; I still know immediately what I’m looking at. A summer’s day. A ten-year-old girl wearing a familiar floral dress and a small, uncertain smile.

I stifle a gasp. Reflexively clutch the picture.

Vero.

I am holding a photo of Vero.

Which my husband had hidden from me.

Chapter 15

WYATT HATED SECURITY camera footage. On TV crime shows, the quality was always highest resolution. You could blow it up, freeze it frame by frame, zoom in here, zoom out there, read the expiration date on the bread shelved just behind the evil perpetrator.

In reality, gas stations, convenience stores, mom-and-pop shops, were stressed-out businesses with little leftover profit to invest in things like state-of-the-art security systems. They had a tendency to go with the cheapest cameras available, weren’t above purchasing used and/or out-of-date technology and reusing the same discs over and over until the results were filled with ghosts of recordings past.

Wyatt and Kevin had wanted one week’s worth of security footage. The harried clerk informed them he had three days, which was all they kept in rotation. Wyatt and Kevin had hoped for decent-quality images. They got dark, blurry footage of endless cars turning in and out of the gas station. As for cars driving by, the cameras were too far away, while the road lacked adequate lighting. They could track twin beams of approaching headlights sweeping by; that was it.

As Kevin pointed out, at least Nicky’s Audi had xenon headlights, with their particular crystalline-blue beam, meaning the vehicle that swept by at 4:39 A.M. Thursday morning could very well have been Nicole’s car. But could they capture a license plate? No. An image of the driver? Not a chance. A paint color, defining dent, hint of make and model, or anything else that might help them in a court of law? Shit out of luck.

Not like the clerk cared. He’d left them alone in a narrow storage room to sort it all out. From his perspective, security cameras existed to catch the guy who entered the store and placed a gun to his head. Cars idling outside, vehicles passing by on the main road, not his problem.

“Well, at least it tells us what didn’t happen,” Wyatt said at last.

“What didn’t happen?” Kevin asked.

“Nicole Frank didn’t fuel up here. Thomas Frank didn’t stop in for an energy drink to perk him up while preparing to crash his wife’s car. That’s something.”

“And no women, beautiful or otherwise, hung out after one A.M.”

“Meaning if Thomas Frank did have a lover waiting to pick him up, she didn’t wait around here,” Wyatt said.

Kevin agreed. “That certainly narrows things down. I can see why you’re so happy with this case.”

“I like your idea to check his clothes,” Wyatt said after a moment. Because when one door closed, another inevitably opened.

“We don’t have probable cause,” Kevin reminded him. “We’d need a witness who could place Thomas Frank at the scene or, better yet, Thomas Frank personally appearing on one of these video cameras. Without that . . . We can’t tell a judge we suspect him solely on the grounds that he’s her husband and everyone knows it’s always the husband who did it.”

“Policing 101: What do we do when we don’t have probable cause?” Wyatt asked.

“Stir the pot until we do.”

“Exactly. I say we return to the Franks’ home. We request a look at his jackets and shoes, and we do it in front of his wife.”

“Makes it harder for him to say no,” Kevin acknowledged. “He won’t want to look guilty.”

“And maybe we get lucky, find something then and there.”

“Sediment on the soles of his boots,” Kevin deadpanned, “that matches the exact ratio of dirt, sand, minerals, present in the two-foot stretch of road where Nicole Frank’s car plunged to its doom.”

Both men rolled their eyes. Such CSI matches never occurred in real life. Best you could do in New Hampshire was compare road mixes. As in the newly paved two-mile stretch of road in Albany used a rough patch mix versus the more expensive repaving completed in North Conway. But that narrowed you down to miles, or maybe helped place a guy in a particular town. Still hardly a forensic smoking gun.

Of course, one advantage of TV: people watched the impossible enough times, they honestly thought it could be done. And there was nothing illegal about playing to those expectations. Why, sir, I see there’s sand on your shoes. Very interesting, this sand. We’ll definitely be taking a sample. Yep, that’s pretty important sand.

While the sample itself might be bogus, when your suspect chooses to toss the shoes in his burn barrel the second two officers leave his house . . . Even judges grew suspicious of such behavior.

“What if Thomas has already washed his clothes?” Kevin was asking now.

Wyatt smiled. “Perfect. Gives us an excuse to check out the laundry room, scene of his wife’s first accident.”

“Oh, I like the way you think.”

“I’d like it even better if my thinking told us what was going on with Nicole Frank.”

“Give it time, my friend. Give it time.”

*   *   *

THOMAS FRANK ANSWERED the door after the first ring. Less hesitation this time. Clearly a man growing resigned to his fate.

He looked tired, Wyatt thought. Stressed out. From the strain of caring for a concussed wife, or from the stress of covering his tracks? Either way, Wyatt smelled grilled cheese and tomato soup. He loved grilled cheese and tomato soup.

“Are we interrupting dinner?” Wyatt asked.

“As a matter of fact . . .”

“Then we’ll keep it quick. Nicole around?”

Nicky appeared down the hall, by the family room, wearing the same yoga pants and oversize sweater from the morning. Her long brown hair appeared rumpled—maybe she’d been resting—while her face remained a quilted mess of bruises and lacerations.

“Mrs. Frank,” Wyatt acknowledged.

“Good evening, Sergeant.”

He noticed she didn’t immediately approach, but kept her distance. She and Thomas exchanged a glance, and Wyatt began to wonder if they were interrupting more than dinner. Interesting.

“Do you mind if we look at your coats?” Wyatt asked. He and Kevin had rehearsed this on the way over. Rather than go straight after the husband, which might raise his defenses, they would ease their way into it.

“My coats?” Nicky asked in surprise.

“Coat, rain jacket, an article of outerwear you would normally wear to head out at night.”

She gazed at them curiously, then looked at her husband again. When Thomas remained silent, she finally approached, opening the entryway closet. “My coats are in here.”

“You remember that?” Kevin asked.

“In a manner of speaking. I don’t understand. Why do you want to see my coats?”

“We checked with the hospital,” Wyatt said. “Morning you were brought in, you weren’t wearing a jacket.”

“Maybe I left it in the car.”

Wyatt thought back to the mint-clean interior of the vehicle, as pointed out by the dog handler. “No,” he said.

Nicole appeared confused, but she stepped back, let them do their thing.

He and Kevin took their time. Kevin pulled out each jacket that appeared to possibly belong to a female, while Wyatt made note of all the others. None of the coats were wet or particularly filthy; then again, it had now been nearly thirty-six hours since the rainstorm had ended Thursday morning.