Beyond Obsession Read Online Free

to the car, and Albert Markov drove to police headquarters, where they arrived at about six. He stayed for a few minutes and then drove back to Rowayton, leaving Karin alone.
    The initial interview with the Glastonbury cops was a tentative one. Though they were pretty sure the body in Massachusetts was that of Joyce Aparo, nobody had any desire to tell the victim’s daughter that her mother had been murdered. They decided to wait for more positive identification. What Caron, who talked to Karin while a civilian secretary, a blond, heavyset woman in her thirties, Beverly Warga, took notes (she was present as well because of the department’s policy that no woman is ever questioned by a male officer without another woman being present), seemed most interested in at that moment was information about Joyce’s movements since the last time Karin had heard from her, the night before, and a detailed description of Joyce. Karin filled him in, though, when it came to a description, she later said, “I lied to them about her weight. I thought my mother would be pretty upset if she ever read my statement and saw that I’d told them how much she weighed.” When she finished her statement, Karin asked if she could go to the condo. Her ulcers were acting up, she said, and she needed her medication. Lieutenant McKee, who was then the head of the department’s detective division, vetoed the request. He didn’t want anybody going there, but if she would tell him what kind of medication she needed, he would have a local pharmacy send over the prescription. She told him.
    The initial interview over, Caron left the office. One of the things he was going to do was call up to Massachusetts and relay the description Karin had given. Alone with Warga, Karin asked if she could use the phone. Warga motioned to one on a desk three or four feet away and went on typing some notes. Karin made two calls. The first was to her father, Michael Aparo. He and Joyce Aparo had been divorced for more than ten years; he was remarried, living in nearby Hartford and working for the city’s Catholic Charities. Karin had not seen much of him over recent years, had, in fact, not even seen him at all since the previous summer; the divorce had not been amicable, and Aparo’s second wife, with her own children to raise, was not overly fond of the child of her husband’s first, failed marriage. Nevertheless, Michael Aparo was Karin’s closest relative and the one she should naturally have turned to in this crisis.
    When Karin told him what had happened, he said he would drive over to Glastonbury to be with her. He arrived at headquarters at about six-thirty.
    Karin then phoned Dennis Coleman. It was a short call merely to let him know that she was in town. She told him she was still at the police station, that the police had sealed her apartment, she had no place to stay that night. Could she stay with him, and would he come down to the station to pick her up? He said he would. She said she would let him know when she was finished. “I didn’t feel comfortable with my dad,” Karin later explained, “and I felt comfortable with Dennis.”
    Everything changed within minutes of Michael Aparo’s arrival at police headquarters. Word reached the Glastonbury police that all the descriptions that had been relayed matched the body; there was no doubt that the victim was Joyce Aparo; the positive identification would be only a necessary formality.
    It was then time to tell Karin that her mother was dead, murdered. It could not be delayed any longer. McKee and another officer took Karin aside. It was their job, they realized, to break the news. “I didn’t know how a person reacts to this news,” McKee recalls, “so we prepared ourselves for any type of reaction.” But the one they got they were unprepared for. “Karin’s only response,” he says, “was one tear. Nothing