S Is for Silence

too embarrassed to call us.”
    “Shoot. No mug shots and no fingerprints. That’s too bad,” I said.
    “She was clean as they come. She didn’t have a Social Security number because she never held a job, so that’s one more dead end. The only outside dispute she had, she took Jake Ottweiler into small-claims court. His pit bull attacked her toy poodle and killed it outright. I think she collected a couple hundred bucks. Foley probably borrowed every cent of it to pay the bills.”
    “Daisy remembers the two brawling. She says neither one went after her, but it had an effect.”
    “I don’t doubt that,” he said. “We sat Foley down more than once and gave him a talking-to, but like most abusers, he was busy blaming someone else. He maintained Violet was provoking him, which made it her fault, not his.”
    “This was over what period of time?”
    “Two, three years, running right up to the last anybody ever saw of her. After we spoke yesterday, I called one of the deputies and had him pull the old file. He went back through the reports and says the two got into a bad one on June 27, a Saturday, the week before she disappeared. Foley flung a pot of coffee at her and it caught her on the chin. She called us. We went out to the house and arrested his sorry ass and then held him overnight until he had a chance to cool down. Meanwhile, she filed a complaint charging him with misdemeanor battery…”
    “Why misdemeanor?”
    “Injuries weren’t that serious. He’d broken her jaw, it’d have been another matter. We advised her right then to get a restraining order out against him, but she said she was fine. Minute he got out, he went straight to the house. He begged her to drop the charges, but before anything could come of it, she was gone and that was that.”
    “When did he report her missing?”
    “July 7. In those days, the law required a seventy-two-hour wait if there was no suggestion of foul play, which there wasn’t. So Sunday passed, and then Monday without a word from her. Tuesday morning, Foley came over to the station and asked to file a report. I was the one who took the information, though the story was already out by then, and we knew we had a problem on our hands.”
    “How did he seem?”
    “He was obviously upset, but in my estimation, mostly for himself. Given his history, he had to figure he’d be first in line when it came to close scrutiny. We put out a countywide bulletin, giving a description of Violet and the car she was believed to be driving, and then expanded that to statewide within two days. We contacted the papers up and down the coast. Didn’t generate much interest, to tell you the truth. Most ran two column inches in the second section, if they bothered at all. Radio, same thing. The story got some local airplay, but not that much.”
    “Why no splash? What was that about?”
    “The media wasn’t prone to jumping on stories the way they do now. Violet was an adult. Some had the feeling she’d run off of her own accord and she’d come back when it suited her. Others leaned toward the notion she’d never left at all, at least not alive.”
    “You think Foley killed her?”
    “That’s what I thought at the time.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the violence had escalated and she was serious about pressing charges, which would’ve been bad news for him. It’s like the deputy DA told me, ‘You don’t have a witness, you don’t have a case.’ If he’d gone to trial, chances are he’d have ended up in jail. It certainly worked to his advantage that she was gone.”
    “I’m assuming there was an investigation.”
    “Oh, yes. We could pretty much trace her activities up until the time she left the house that night. This would have been six fifteen or so, after the babysitter showed. It wasn’t dark yet and wouldn’t turn dark until closer to nine o’clock. Couple of people saw her drive through town. They said it looked like she was alone except for her little dog, standing in her lap yapping out the window. She stopped and bought gas, filling up her tank at a service station near Tullis, so we know she made it that far.”
    “What time was that?”
    “Six twenty-five, round about then. The fellow at the pump cleaned her windshield and checked her tires, which he needn’t have done. The car was brand new and he was interested in hearing how she handled. They spent a few minutes talking about that. I asked him if he noticed anything unusual because I was