‘Don’t you think that’s important?’ I press. ‘I mean, what if he’s who we’ve been looking for this whole time? What if he’s one of the men who broke into the house?’
Nate nods. ‘Maybe, yeah. It’s a possibility. But at the same time he could just be a journalist digging for dirt. He could have given a false name so he didn’t get into trouble.’
‘But what if—’
Nate cuts me off. ‘We have our suspects. Robert’s pleading no contest.’ He looks at me pityingly. He really believes that Robert is guilty, that he’s got this whole case sewn up, but I can’t just let it go. Not until I’m shown absolute proof.
‘Just promise me you’ll look into it?’ I beg Nate. ‘Please.’
He sighs. ‘OK. I’ll look into it.’
He’s about to go back inside when the door opens. It’s the deputy who left his post yesterday when he should have been guarding June’s room. He sees me and nods. ‘Mrs Walker,’ he mumbles, tipping his hat in my direction, before turning to Nate. ‘Their alibis checked out.’
‘Shit,’ Nate mutters.
‘What does that mean?’ I ask.
‘Are they reliable?’ Nate asks the deputy, ignoring me.
He shrugs.
Nate huffs. ‘I’ll call you later,’ he says as he strides off.
I watch him vanish into his office. That’s good, isn’t it? If their alibis checked out that means they weren’t involved, it means that Robert is innocent . . . doesn’t it? But if he’s innocent of hiring them to rob us or kill me, what was he meeting with them about?
‘Wait,’ I say to the deputy, Jonathan, grabbing his arm to stop him from leaving too. I notice his badge, Jonathan Safechuck. ‘What happens now?’
He turns to me. ‘We have to let them go. We’ve got nothing to hold them on.’
‘What about Robert? Will they let him go too? That proves that he didn’t plot any of this.’
‘We’ve still got him on the conspiracy to commit insurance fraud charge.’
‘But the conspiracy to commit murder?’ I ask. ‘Are you dropping it?’
He grimaces. ‘You should talk to his lawyer.’
He tips his hat and then rushes off after Nate, leaving me standing there, swaying slightly, wishing the world would stop spinning for a moment and let me catch my breath.
Chapter 26
DAY 7
The door to June’s room opens and I look up in alarm. It’s Gene, looking like the vagrants who sleep under the bridge in the park. He’s wearing wrinkled, dirt-stained clothes, and looks like he hasn’t showered in days. His hair is lank and hangs in his face.
‘Where have you been?’ I ask.
He shrugs sheepishly. ‘Around.’
I narrow my eyes as he shuffles to the bed and looks down at June. Did he see the news?
He frowns and then drops into a chair on the other side of the bed. Is he stoned? He doesn’t seem it. His foot is bouncing up and down like he’s jazz drumming and his eyes keep darting about the place. If anything, he seems the opposite of stoned. He seems amped on something.
‘Where have you been?’ I ask. ‘Laurie said you weren’t staying with her and Dave.’
‘I’ve been at the house,’ he mumbles.
‘We have to move out,’ I tell him.
Gene darts a glance in my direction. ‘I know,’ he says, his eyes sliding back to June. ‘Dave told me.’
I finally checked my messages and the bank have given us a very generous extra two weeks before they’re sending around the enforcement agency to bodily remove us. I called the bank manager, full of apology, begging for more time, but she was unmoved. I need to sort out all our belongings. I don’t know what I’m going to do – sell what I can, put the rest in storage, I suppose, until I figure it out. The irony is that the insurance policy that Robert bought would cover us for all our medical costs and would pay off the bank loans, leaving us well off, but because he’s been arrested for fraud we can’t get a penny of it.
There’s a pause as Gene and I both sit and stare at June, who seems to have shrunk even more into herself. She resembles some kind of macabre doll. Her eyes have hollowed into her skull, the fine bones of her hands and wrists are carving out of the skin as her muscles start to waste away.
‘I need your help,’ I finally say, wondering why he hasn’t asked anything at all about his father or the police investigation. Why doesn’t he want to know what’s happening? Does he wonder, like me, if his father is guilty and he’s just too scared to voice it?
‘We need to sell some things,’ I say, taking a deep breath. ‘The paintings – there’s a Simon Caldwell painting that must be worth something – and my car too, maybe the dealer will take it back. I’ve hardly driven it. I need your help with that.’
‘What?’ Gene says.
‘We need the money,’ I tell him, as if it wasn’t obvious.
Gene takes that in and then turns back to June. He doesn’t react at all, just stares at her. What the hell is going on? Did he not hear what I just said? I need his help!
I’m about to yell at him but I stop myself abruptly, a sudden thought occurring. What if I’m being blind? What if it’s something worse than being stoned? I study him closer. His skin is paler even than June’s and sweat beads his brow at the hairline. His lips are chapped to the point they’re bleeding, and he’s fidgeting, scratching fiercely behind his ear as though he’s got a bite there. I wrack my brains, trying to remember the signs of meth addiction.
‘Gene?’
He looks at me finally and I see that his pupils are fully dilated. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask him. Please God. Not this too, is what I’m thinking. But then I stop my little prayer, cut it short, because it seems that whoever is up there has already decided that I’m his current plaything, like a Rottweiler with a new chew toy, and any exhortation on my part only seems to spur him on to maul me further.
‘I’m fine,’ Gene says, looking quickly away, scratching again at that invisible itch behind his ear. He jumps abruptly to his feet. ‘I need to go,’ he says, making for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask, getting to my feet. He only just got here.
‘I’ll get started on selling stuff on Craigslist, I guess. Can I take your car?’
‘Are you OK to drive?’ I ask.
He frowns at me. ‘I’m fine,’ he mumbles, pulling a face like why wouldn’t I be?
‘Gene,’ I say, with the tone of a mother who’s caught their five-year-old by the empty cookie jar with crumbs down their shirt and chocolate smears all over their face.
‘I’m fine,’ he repeats impatiently. ‘I’m good.’ But he won’t look me in the eye.
‘You don’t look good.’
‘I’m just not sleeping, is all.’ He swipes at his nose. ‘I think I might be coming down with something.’
‘Gene,’ I say, walking over to him. I touch his wrist and he jumps in alarm, pulling away from me, but not before I’ve felt his skin. He’s clammy to the touch and up close I can see the capillary starbursts in his eyes and something else that surprises me. He looks afraid, like he’s seen a ghost. His eyes are darting all over the place, refusing to settle.
I glance down, looking for tracks up the inside of his arms, but his sweater covers them. Is he shooting up? Or smoking meth? There’s a big meth problem in the valley and I know of one or two kids from his year at school who have fallen into it.
Gene wrenches his arm free from my grip. ‘Can I borrow your car?’
‘What did you do with yours?’ I ask him.
‘I sold it,’ he says.
‘Why?’ I ask him.
‘We need the money, don’t we?’ he says.
I think about asking him where the money is, what he’s used it for, but I don’t because I’m afraid to know. I can’t handle hearing he’s on drugs. I have too much else to deal with. So I let Gene snatch the car keys from my hand and watch him scurry out the door.
Chapter 27
D
ave meets me outside the hospital to give me a ride home so I can start packing our things and sorting out items to sell. Laurie, he tells me, has had to get on with some school work. Of course. I’m embarrassed at how reliant I’ve become on her. I should have realized it was too much for anyone, let alone someone who works full time and has her own life and own problems to deal with.
‘Don’t feel bad,’ Dave says, intuiting my discomfort. ‘She wanted to come. She just has a backlog of stuff to get through.’
He starts driving, glancing over at me a few times until he finally breaks the silence. ‘How are you doing?’ he asks.
‘Well, you know,’ I say, ‘I think I’d be doing better if my daughter woke up from her coma and our house wasn’t about to be repossessed by the bank and my husband wasn’t in jail for trying to murder me.’
Dave winces. ‘Yes, sorry, stupid question. I meant how’s your head?’
‘Oh,’ I say, reaching up to touch the thin line of stitches that are hidden beneath my hair. The bruise is still tender but the constant ache has gone. I get the odd slicing pain, as though someone is inserting a red-hot needle into the jelly of my brain, but otherwise it’s OK. ‘I’m fine.’
I sigh and, sinking back in the seat, close my eyes. The car smells as if someone has upended a can of Fanta over the upholstery, but beneath it is the unmistakable whiff of something else, something pungent: weed.
I reach down and grab the aerosol can I’ve just caught sight of in the side panel of the passenger door. Tropical Tango air freshener. I’ve found the source of Laurie’s paranoia about Dave having an affair. Not cheap perfume at all, but air freshener to disguise the smell of marijuana. I glance around the car. An SUV. Of course. How did it take me so long to figure it out? This is the car I saw outside the house the night of the break-in. The car Gene got into.
‘Have you seen Gene?’ I ask Dave, keeping my voice casual.
Dave grips the wheel tighter, his knuckles blanching. ‘Um, no. Well, earlier this week I drove him to the hospital. And to the jail to see Robert.’
‘Robert?’
Dave darts a glance my way, his eyes round. ‘Um, I thought you knew.’
‘He went to see Robert?’
Dave nods, eyes on the road. Damn it. Why didn’t he tell me? I can’t lie, it hurts that Robert agreed to see Gene but still won’t agree to see me or a lawyer. What did they talk about?
I’m sick to death of not knowing anything, of getting no answers. Not about June and her prognosis, not about my own husband’s involvement in what happened, not even about Gene and why he sold his car. Even Nate has kept things from me. I feel like I’m being swept along by currents outside of my control, hurled against rocks and boulders. I’m barely managing to stay conscious and to keep my head above water. I keep hoping that at some point someone will fish me out and haul me onto dry land and tell me that it’s all going to be OK, but perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps I need to stop waiting to be saved and for someone to come along and provide me with answers, and instead I need to drag my own sorry ass to shore and start looking for them.
I stare at Dave out the corner of my eye. Maybe I should start right here.
‘Since when have you smoked weed, Dave?’ I ask.
He looks at me, eyes wide, before turning back to the road. ‘Don’t tell Laurie,’ he says. ‘You know how she feels about drugs.’
Laurie isn’t a puritan; it’s just that as a teacher she’s always had to be careful. Being caught in possession would have cost her job a few years ago, but now marijuana is legal in the state of California. There are two or three dispensaries in town selling everything from infused gummy bears to chocolate brownies to skunk. ‘It’s legal now,’ I say to Dave. ‘Why would she care?’
Dave shrugs, apparently not having an answer.
‘Gene was with you the night of the break-in, wasn’t he?’
Dave startles again, his hands gripping the wheel. ‘Yes,’ he finally mumbles.
How and when did Dave and Gene become such good friends? There’s a twenty-year age gap between them.
‘Is Gene smoking?’ I ask him, figuring if they’re such good friends perhaps he knows what’s going on.
‘Just occasionally,’ he says.
‘He told us he quit.’
‘Shit,’ Dave mutters. ‘I don’t want to drop him in it. He’s a good kid.’
‘He’s not a kid,’ I hiss back. I’m so angry at how I’ve been duped. Gene and his overnight reformation . . . what a fool I’ve been to believe his promises that he’d turned over a new leaf.
‘It’s just some weed, Ava,’ he says. ‘Come on, didn’t you ever smoke, at college even?’
‘No.’ I’ve never smoked a joint in my life. I always worried about losing control.
Dave falls silent and I sit there, musing and fuming. ‘Is it just that he’s doing?’ I ask. ‘Nothing more serious?’
Dave looks at me oddly, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Is he on meth?’
Dave almost swerves into oncoming traffic again. ‘What? No! I mean, well, I don’t think so. Why would you think that?’
‘Because he’s acting all wired and strung out.’
Dave pulls a face. ‘He’s just stressed.’
I chew on my lip and look out the window. Would Gene admit it if he were on meth?
‘What were you doing the other night?’
‘What night?’
‘The night of the break-in. I saw you. You picked Gene up and drove off somewhere.’
Dave swallows. ‘We just went for a drive, smoked.’
I narrow my eyes at him. His face has gone the color of a strawberry and his Adam’s apple is bouncing around like a live animal as he swallows repeatedly.
Dave’s a terrible liar. I glare at him and he shrinks beneath my gaze like a turtle retreating inside its shell. I won’t get anything more from him. I need to confront Gene.
Chapter 28
I stand in the hallway, looking at the stairs. Fingerprint smudges dirty the bannister, and a trail of blood snakes down the steps – mine or June’s?
I guess Robert never got around to cleaning up the house and the idea of cleaning has never occurred to Gene before, so why would he start now? Hannah hasn’t been back since that first visit. Alone, I stand there and think through what’s happened, forcing myself to go back over that night. My brain tries to resist it but I know if I’m to get to the bottom of this I need to face it. I need to walk through the events of that night and see if I’ve forgotten something important, something that could help shed light on the truth.
I came in through the garage door, following June. I walk into the cold kitchen and try to picture it. June had left the milk out on the side. I put it away in the fridge. Then I poured myself some wine. Or did I do that after I went to see Robert? After, I think.
I walk out of the kitchen and, shoes echoing on the floor, I cross through the house to Robert’s study. The door was closed. I knocked. It was locked. He answered it. How did he seem? Alarmed? Nervous? He was anxious that June was home, I remember that. Is that because he knew what was about to happen and wanted her out of the house so she wouldn’t get hurt? God, I don’t know. It could be that, or I could be misreading the situation entirely. Maybe he was just worried that she was sick. Which is it? My memory is Swiss cheese. I feel like I have blind spots at the edge of my vision and I’m not seeing the whole picture properly.
Leaning against the door to Robert’s study, I close my eyes and try to picture the expression on his face. He was so distracted, desperate to get me out of the room so he could go back to whatever he was doing. And what was he doing? Was he working? Watching porn? Readying himself for the imminent break-in he had himself plotted and planned? Did my arrival throw a spanner in the works? But no, how could it? He had planned for us to be out at dinner that night anyway. None of us were meant to be home.
I bang my hand against the door, frustrated. It doesn’t make sense. How can I believ
e Robert masterminded an insurance fraud or that he was plotting to kill me? That’s not who he is. He’s a good man. It’s why I chose him. He’s a kind man. One of the best men I’ve ever known. I remember saying that to my father when I told him I was quitting school to get married and have a baby.
I cast my mind back. When I first met Robert he was a post-grad at NYU, studying computer science. I liked how nerdy he was, how serious and decent, but also how his shyness gave way to passionate discourse about politics and history and books. I loved how I could talk to him about art and literature, whereas whenever I talked about those things to Nate he’d glazed over. I liked how when we made love it was less about conquering and more about sharing. He was gentle, sweet, skilled. When I told him I was pregnant Robert offered to marry me straight away. I often wondered if he regretted it but the few times I asked he always reassured me no. I don’t think he was lying. Robert always tells the truth. I find it infuriating at times. I asked him not long ago if my crows’ feet were visible and he said yes. He didn’t seem to understand why the truth wasn’t what I was looking for.
And yet, he lied to me about our finances. Not outright, but by omission. Was I wrong to think of him as honest? What if he’s lied to me all along about other things that I don’t even know about?
And he knew about you and Nate, the voice in my head whispers. Is that enough of a motive combined with the fact he was bankrupt? Perhaps it is. How else does it explain what he was doing in Oxnard, meeting those men and giving them money?
Goddamn it, I’m going around in circles. I open the door to the study and scan the room, my gaze falling on the blood spattered all over the cream rug, dried now to a dark brown the color of rust, before moving on to the safe. It’s set into the floor, normally hidden seamlessly beneath the floorboards. The door is open and I take a step closer and peer inside.
It’s empty, of course.
I don’t know for sure what happened in here – I haven’t been allowed to read Robert’s statement. All I know is what he told me before he was arrested, which was only the barest details.
In Her Eyes Page 13