“You want to know where I was the night Izzie died.”
Michael nodded.
“Don’t feel bad about that. You have to ask. To be honest, I’m surprised it took you both so long to get around to me.”
Faith felt a stab of guilt at that. “We were following up on other leads.”
“Didn’t pan out, huh?”
Faith hesitated before answering. It was a serious breach of protocol to discuss details like that with anyone, but she felt bad for Izzie, and in any case, if Izzie had something useful to them, then Faith wanted to be as far in her good graces as possible.
“It didn’t yield the results we hoped for,” she finally answered.
Izzie nodded. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. Killing like this? That’s not something anyone can understand.”
I wish that were so,Faith thought.
“Your whereabouts, Izzie?” Michael reminded her.
“Right. I was at work. I’m a foreman for Daughtry Construction. We’re building a new gym for Sioux City High. We have some new kids on the night shift, so I worked a double the night Izzie died to make sure they understood what they were doing.”
“When did you leave work?”
“Nearly four in the morning. The kids really didn’t understand what they were doing.”
“And can anyone confirm that?”
"Sure. You can check the time clock, the security cameras, and talk to the boys. I was there."
Michael smiled with a touch of apology. “Thank you.”
“When did you realize Izzie was missing?” Faith asked. “From what I understand, it was several days before she was found.”
Izzie stiffened slightly, and Faith regretted her bluntness. "I realized she was missing when she didn't come home the following night. I didn't get home until four-fifteen. That's early for Gemma to be awake and out of the house, but she sometimes goes on runs that early before she gets ready for work. I went to bed, and when I woke up at eleven and she wasn't here, I assumed she was at work. When she didn't show up by eight, I called her. I called her a few more times, and then I tried to find my phone thing. It showed that her phone had powered off at nine after I had started calling her. That's when I called the police."
"Thank you," Faith said. "This next question's pretty tough, too, but can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill her?"
Izzie chuckled briefly. “She was a therapist, Faith. I lost count of the death threats she got from disturbed patients. I learned to ignore them. Guess that was my mistake.”
“None of this is your fault,” Michael said, “You understand that, right?”
"I do," Izzie replied. "I mean, my mistake was getting comfortable, believing that since Gemma and I were good people ,good things would happen to us. We weren't excessively wealthy, we were kind to others, we paid our taxes and our bills. We were living the American dream. I guess I forgot I'd have to wake up."
She laughed and said, “You know, it’s funny. I thought after that tornado hit, we had endured our close call already.”
“Tornado?”
“Yeah. About ten years back, there was a really bad tornado. F5. For whatever reason, this one didn’t get reported on the way the one in Waco did, maybe because there are fewer people out here. Anyway, for those of us that did live out here, it was pretty terrifying. I thought for sure that was it for us. I thought the silo was going to collapse.”
Faith’s ears perked up at that. “Silo?”
“Yeah. When I was a girl, my parents taught us to hide in a grain silo if there was a hurricane. Said something about it being more likely to survive because it was round, and air would flow around it instead of slamming through it. I have no idea if they were right, but that’s what I was taught to do, so I did it.”
“What silo?”
“Oh, we tore it down a few years ago when we built the basement. That’s safer than a silo anyway. But we had a big grain silo that came with the property. We never used it, obviously, but we kept it because we thought it was cool. And it was a nice spot for romantic dates. There was a big window at the top we could see the stars through and just lay there and talk about nothing.”
She paused, smiling softly as she recalled tender moments with her lover. “Anyway,” she continued after a moment. “I don’t know who for sure would want to kill her, but if I were you, I would start looking at her patients. I can’t think of anyone else who would want to hurt her in such a brutal fashion.”
