Johnson crossed his arms and stepped back to give Amaia room to work. He’d guessed right. Despite the hostile tone, Joseph was willing to talk to her.
“Twenty-five, actually. You’re right, I’m not an FBI agent. I’m a police officer, temporarily with the Bureau.” She jerked a thumb at Johnson. “But that guy is the real deal. We’re in the middle of an investigation, and we’d like to talk to you about what happened to your family.”
The young man smiled bitterly. “What happened to my family? Nothing happened to my family. Disease happens, accidents happen. Disasters too. My family was murdered. I’ve been trying to get somebody to listen to me for eight months. Why is the FBI taking notice all of a sudden?”
Johnson spoke, careful to keep his tone neutral. “We just want to clear some things up.” He didn’t want the boy to think they were reopening the case, as no official decision had been made. “Detective Nelson tells us you believe your family was killed by a stranger. We want to understand why you think this.”
“I saw my father’s body. His face was bruised and bloody. Like he’d been in a fight.”
Johnson gave Amaia a doubtful look.
“And I knew my dad,” the boy added. “He’d never have hurt any of us.”
Johnson nodded. He’d heard that before.
Joseph knew what he was thinking. “You don’t understand. My parents loved us, and they were like lovebirds to one another. We were always making fun of them for all their kissing and hugging. My father was a good man who adored us. Nothing anyone says will ever make me believe he was a murderer.”
“Sometimes a life event like relocation for work can destabilize a family,” Amaia commented. “Moving from California to Texas must have been a big change.”
“Dad’s career was going great, and Mom traveled all over the country for her work. They’d been getting ready for this for months. And as for big changes, Sacramento’s not such an amazing place, and our Galveston house was right on the Gulf. Moving to Galveston was perfect. My sister had new friends, and Mom was really pleased to be there.”
“Okay, but not everybody was happy. I heard your little brother was having problems.”
“He was twelve! He was just a kid! It was hard for him, changing schools and leaving his friends behind. He threw a tantrum like a two-year-old, stomped through our neighbor’s flower bed. The neighbor hadn’t even met us. He called the cops because he thought some punk did it. My parents apologized and hired a professional landscaper to fix it. The man was okay with that, so he dropped his complaint. In fact, after that, he was one of our closest family friends. He’s the same neighbor who went to check on them after the storm, the one who . . . found them . . .”
Amaia knew Joseph couldn’t bring himself to say it. They were discussing murders, but that word—“dead”—was too much for him.
“Did you live with your parents in Sacramento?”
“Yes.”
“Seems kind of strange that they moved and left you behind.”
Two fierce points of light flashed in Joseph’s blue eyes. He exhaled sharply and took a deep breath. She saw this young man was capable of real anger.
“They didn’t leave me behind! My grandmother fell and broke her hip two months before our move. She had an operation and was recovering, but she still had another month of physical therapy left when it was time to move to Texas. Dad tried to negotiate it with the insurance company, but they said she’d lose her coverage if she moved out of state. I was going to be free until my classes started in the fall, so we decided I’d stay with her in Sacramento until she finished her physical therapy. After that, we’d go to Galveston.”
“You were all going to live in Galveston together?”
“That was the plan.”
Amaia glanced swiftly at Johnson. “Your grandmother too?”
“Sure,” the young man said. “After her accident, my parents decided she should stay with us, just like in California.”
“Who knew you were going to move?”
Joseph shrugged. “Well . . . lots of people, I guess. Neighbors, friends, everybody at Dad’s firm, of course. People who worked with Mom. Mom’s theatre group, the principals and teachers at our schools, the health insurance people . . . Like I said, it was all set up months in advance.”
“Detective Nelson told us you decided not to live in the Galveston house, and the dean says you don’t leave campus. You’re even going to stay here despite the hurricane.”
His eyes drifted off toward some far, indistinct point. “I don’t have anywhere to go.” His voice was low and anguished.
“How about your grandmother?”
Joseph looked at his hands, and she thought he was shutting down and they wouldn’t get another word out of him. But they did, and his answer surprised them. “You ever hear the expression ‘to die of a broken heart’?”
Amaia nodded.
“That’s what the doctor said. He told me she died of a broken heart. She’d been getting better after the operation, but after the . . . murders . . . she got terribly depressed. She died six months ago, two months after the rest of my family.”
Amaia saw his expression change. Joseph’s eyes were retreating into that hazy infinity of loss. He was taking refuge somewhere far away. She was certain he was spending more and more time there. Young Joseph was a potential suicide risk.
“I need to understand your reasoning!” she said sharply to jar him out of his distraction.
“My reasoning?” he echoed with indifference, as if awakening from a dream.
“The reason you think your family was murdered. I need more to go on than the infantile faith that your father wouldn’t have done it.” Amaia leaned toward him, emphasizing the urgency of her questions. “What’s wrong with that picture? You knew them better than anyone, Joseph. You’ve got a gut feeling about what happened. Tell me now. I know it had to be something, something Detective Nelson couldn’t see. Some feeling even an army of detectives would have missed. They couldn’t see it because it was hidden from their eyes, but you could. What was it?”
Joseph looked at her, shaken. His breathing had become fast and shallow. She was sure he was about to deliver a revelation, but she sensed how deeply unhappy he was, mired in a state of despair where nothing mattered anymore. For a moment she was afraid they would lose him; he was perilously close to collapsing into himself and retreating into silence. He looked away, but then his eyes returned to hers.
“The violin,” he said firmly. “A violin, but without a bow. And afterward it disappeared.”
Joseph Andrews Jr. told everyone who would listen to him that he didn’t believe for a second his father had murdered the family. His conviction gradually began to weaken as Detective Nelson interviewed him. The policeman was doing his best to sound sympathetic, but the man’s tone betrayed him, and Joseph could tell that the cop didn’t buy his assertions. The detective wasn’t sympathetic; what the man was feeling was pity. Joseph had an innate ability to read other people’s emotions. The cop’s pity undermined Joseph’s certainty, because Nelson’s attitude suggested the police might know something they weren’t telling him.