The Dead Husband

by Carter Wilson

  How wonderful it must be to feel nothing at all.

  Twenty

  Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin

  Colin Pearson lay next to his wife in bed, his breathing still elevated from sex. He reached out and touched Meg’s hand, feeling her warmth spread into him.

  Anchor, he thought. It was the word that came to him often when he thought of Meg.

  She’s my anchor.

  He wasn’t quite sure where he’d drift off to without her, but he knew he’d drift. All the way out to open sea.

  Silence passed between them, comfortable and familiar, minutes sliding by in the dark. When she spoke, her voice jolted him from the cusp of sleep.

  “I don’t think she did it.”

  Colin turned his head to her voice. “Who?”

  “The Yates woman. I don’t think she did it.”

  He took a deep breath and sank lower into his pillow. “No?”

  Colin was leaving in a couple days for his trip to Bury. He’d told Meg the high-level details of the case, and she’d even started reading the most recent J. L. Sharp book.

  “I don’t know what her motive would be,” Meg said. “Women kill out of anger or for money. We know they didn’t have money.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know the life-insurance policy had lapsed,” Colin said.

  “Maybe,” Meg conceded. “But I doubt it. And if it was about anger, there probably would have been evidence of a fight. Was there?”

  “Not that was noted by the detective working the case,” he replied. “But that’s why I’m going out there. To ask the questions that weren’t asked. Find out about their relationship. See what she’ll be willing to tell me.”

  “If she talks to you at all,” Meg said. “She might just shut the door in your face.”

  “What, on this sweet face?”

  Meg laughed and Colin felt her turn in the bed, and he did the same. He suddenly felt her lips on his as she moved in toward him and then her palm on his cheek.

  “You do have a sweet face,” she said, extending for another kiss. “I just can’t imagine not having you. You would have to screw up really badly to make me want to leave you.”

  The question popped into his head, and he asked it before he fully realized how morbid it was.

  “What would I have to do to make you want to kill me?”

  “God, Colin.”

  “I mean it,” he said. “What kind of thing would make you want me gone forever? And not just a spur-of-the-moment killing. Something you planned for, knowing all too well the consequences of getting caught.”

  “I don’t even want to think of it.”

  “It’s helpful.”

  The ensuing silence was heavy, and Colin knew what Meg was doing. She was running through all the scenarios in her mind and trying not to make them so real as to believe they could happen. But she was thinking about it.

  Finally, out of that silence, she spoke.

  “I think if I found out you loved someone else,” she said, a crack in her voice. “Not just having an affair but truly loved someone else. Maybe even had another family. Maybe even had a kid with her. I don’t think I could handle that.”

  Colin knew how unlikely the scenario was. In love with someone else? A hidden family? A secret love child? That sounded like a nightmare.

  “Even then, I’m not sure I could kill you,” she whispered. “Or at least plan to. Maybe in the heat of the moment, but not otherwise.”

  Colin said nothing. These were the statements you just left there, taking up space.

  She went quiet for a period longer.

  Then she said, “No. The only thing that would make me kill you is if I thought you would hurt us.”

  Us. Colin squeezed his eyes shut against the dark and tried to force away the image of him hurting his wife and unborn child.

  “If I thought you would hurt us, and leaving you wouldn’t stop you, then, I think. Then I could kill you. Make a plan. Carry it out.”

  He couldn’t remain silent any longer. “That’s awful.”

  “I know,” she said. “But you did ask.”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “So you think he was hurting her?”

  Colin had asked himself that same question many times over.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “There weren’t any signs of it from Cooper’s report, and he would’ve noticed anything obvious.”

  “But everyone is different,” Meg added. “Not all women are the same, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe she has a threshold that’s lower than mine. But I still don’t think she did it.”

  He turned to her, though she couldn’t see him. “Because you can’t figure out motive?”

  “Maybe,” Meg said. “But she’s also a writer. Her book seems so…well researched. Organized.”

  “So what, then?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like…somebody capable of writing multiple books is too sound of mind to commit homicide.”

  Meg was a helluva lot smarter than that, Colin knew. Maybe she just had some kind of soft spot for the Yates woman, he thought.

  “Or just the opposite,” he said. “Maybe she knows a lot about killing because of what she writes. And maybe she writes what she does because she has a dark part of her trying to get out. You ever heard of Clara Tomson?”

  “No.”

  “She’s a writer,” he said. “Has over thirty books or so, mysteries. Lots of them bestsellers.”

  “And?”

  Colin thought about the articles he found on Clara Tomson after doing a simple Google search querying writers who have killed people.

  “Formerly known as Elsa Holm. When she was sixteen, she and her boyfriend killed Clara’s father. Stabbed him while he was sleeping.”

  “God. She must have written those books from prison.”

  “Nope. She went to prison, but only for about three years, over in Sweden.”

  “Why’d they do it?”

  “Clara claimed the father was abusive. Maybe he was. Her mother denied it, as did her brother.”

  “Spousal denials are common.”

  “Yes, they are,” Colin said. “Anyway, justified homicide or not, Clara did her time and now writes mystery novels. I think she’s in her eighties now.”

  “So she writes about murder?”

  “I haven’t read her books, but yeah, I assume so. Wouldn’t be a mystery novel without a corpse, I’d think.”

  He felt Meg shift in the bed, and her toes touched his.

  “So are you extrapolating this Tomson’s life onto the Yates woman? You think she writes what she does because she has some dark past?”

  He had never formed those exact words in his head, but now that Meg had suggested it, Colin wondered if there was some truth to the idea.

  “I’m not extrapolating anything,” he said, stifling a yawn. “I’m just saying there might be a reason J. L. Sharp is good at writing books about violent crime.”

  Meg offered a hmm and nothing more. A few minutes passed in silence, and then Colin heard the slow and steady breaths of his sleeping wife. Sleep came easy for her, always had. But Colin’s mind still churned with thoughts of Rose Yates and what might or might not have happened in that Milwaukee apartment on the night of July seventh.

  As he turned to the side, gathered the pillow up in a ball beneath his head, and tried to fall asleep himself, Colin couldn’t keep four words from looping in his mind. That old phrase from decades past, a basic piece of advice for authors.

  Write what you know.

  Twenty-One

  Bury, New Hampshire

  October 15

  My editor is pissed.

  I’m hunched over the laptop at the kitchen table, reading her response to my email requesting a ch
ange to the manuscript.

  Rose—

  As I told you very clearly, the last round of edits were the final edits. We can’t make changes at this point unless they are obvious typos, etc. Certainly not the scope you are talking about. Even if we could, I wouldn’t want you to change the death scene on the stairs, as it’s a powerful, impactful scene. As you know, the galleys are already out and we’ll be getting trade reviews in about a month. I hate to say it, but we simply cannot accommodate your request.

  Best,

  Nancy

  Shit.

  When Cora freaked out about the scene in the book, I admit it rattled me. Made me second-guess the idea of it all. But after my father insisted I have the scene changed or removed altogether, I outright panicked. That night, I went back and read the chapter from a viewpoint of paranoia and suspicion and concluded Oh my god, what have I done?

  My father was right. I need to change this, but I can’t do it on my own.

  I write back.

  Nancy,

  I understand and it’s difficult for me to explain my reasoning other than I’m fully convinced the scene doesn’t work as is. I want to change the method in which the character dies and the character’s name as well. I really hate the name Corey Brownstein and don’t know why I used it initially. I’d like to use the name John Simms instead. I think it works much better, and just changing the name should be an easy fix. Let me know if at least this is possible, and thank you.

  Rose

  I’ve done enough police-procedural research to know many murders are never solved, and once a crime is in cold-case status, there’s almost no hope of solving it unless new technology exposes a previously hidden clue or the killer makes a deathbed or prison-cell confession. If a murder has gone unsolved for twenty years, the killer (or killers) should have a high degree of confidence of never being caught, especially if that murder was the only one they committed.

  But here’s the thing research never reveals: if you’re the killer, all that confidence can be shattered at the faintest shift in the wind. There’s never 100 percent confidence, and rarely even half that. Odds don’t mean anything to your nerves, your gut. And your conscience, if you have one.

  “Miss Rose?”

  I turn my head and see Abril, the housekeeper. She comes over a couple hours each day during the workweek, cooks, does light cleaning. She’s pleasant enough but quiet, keeping to herself even though we’ve been in the house several hours alone together. I tried to strike up a conversation a few times but received very short answers to my questions.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a man at the door. Asking for you.”

  I didn’t even hear the door ring. I was too entrenched in my email with Nancy.

  “What does he want?” For a moment, I think maybe it’s Alec. One of those flash fantasies where I picture Alec stopping by under some transparent pretense, just to say hi.

  Abril shatters this daydream.

  “I don’t know. He says…he says he’s police.”

  This is a word I neither expected nor wanted to hear.

  “Police?”

  “Sí. No uniform. But badge.”

  My immediate, irrational, horrifying thought is that Cora went to the police and told them everything. But that makes no sense, since she’s much guiltier than I am. But what if she’s so paranoid about the chapter in the upcoming book that she decided to get ahead of everything and craft her own version of what happened to Caleb Benner, leaving me to shoulder all the responsibility?

  That would be suicide. My father would cut her off forever.

  But the improbability of the thought doesn’t give me comfort. Who knows what Cora is capable of doing? She’s as unpredictable as a rabid dog, and just as dangerous.

  “Yes, of course.” I rise from the kitchen table, feeling the heat of my body rushing to my extremities. I’m certain my face is flushed, and even thinking about it is making it more so. My complexion always betrays any kind of heightened emotion: anger, embarrassment, lust, nervousness.

  As I head to the foyer, Abril scurries deeper into the house. I want to hide, too.

  The door is half-open, and as I reach it, I see the man.

  He wears a dopey, disarming grin, as if he’s a neighbor going to ask to borrow a couple of eggs.

  This unnerves me more than anything else.

  Twenty-Two

  “Hi, ma’am. Are you Rose Yates?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Detective Colin Pearson with the Milwaukee Police Department.” He holds up a badge that looks authentic, but I also know how easily those can be faked.

  “Milwaukee?”

  “Yeah, I know. Long way from home.”

  My brain tries to process all the little details at once, hoping to get a step ahead of whatever it is he wants. He’s plainclothes, which makes sense for a detective. Nicely dressed: khaki slacks, crisp, white button-down shirt, blue-and-gold-striped tie. All topped off with a blue blazer, cheap but serviceable, the kind a cop would buy. He’s maybe upper thirties, tall and a bit lanky, fit but not muscular, and he’s avoided the cop gut that usually comes with riding either a desk or patrol car.

  And his face. It’s so benign. So aw shucks. Light stubble that looks as if he’s a fifteen-year-old getting his first moss of facial hair. Dark hair that’s short but still manages to be a bit moppy. Eyes that convey both warmth and trust. And that grin…so light and disarming. His is the kind of face that puts someone at ease.

  Except right now. With me.

  “You’re here to see me?” I ask.

  “Yes, I am. And I won’t take up much of your time. Just want to ask you a few questions, if it’s not too much of a bother.”

  I look past him and see a Bury police sedan parked on the street. A cop in the driver’s seat.

  Pearson follows my gaze and then turns back to me. “Oh, that’s Officer Simmons with Bury PD. He’s just my ride. He’ll wait out in the vehicle until we’re through. Mind if I come inside?”

  How many times have I talked to cops, interviewing them as necessary research for my books, asking them questions about their procedures, their psychology, their instincts? Now, it’s the other way around. The way I don’t want it to be, because police officers are trained to detect guilt. Some of them are exceptional at it, and some of them are barely serviceable. I don’t have any idea where Colin Pearson falls on that spectrum.

  My choices are limited here, and as I open the door to this man, allowing him to pass into my father’s house, I briefly close my eyes and recall a mantra designed specifically for hard moments. Moments of suffocating darkness, those silent, stabbing seconds when I doubt who I am at my innermost core. Who I’ve been. What I’ve done.

  I’m stronger than I think.

  I’m stronger than I think.

  I’m stronger than I think.

  Minutes later, with a digital recorder placed between us, our conversation begins.

  Twenty-Three

  The house was massive, swallowing Colin without noticing, krill to a whale. But it wasn’t the size of it that had him off-balance. The place had an energy, and not necessarily a good one. There was a sense of occurrence here, though everything was still. Best he could compare it to was a crime scene. A silence reverberating with aftershocks.

  He sat across from the woman he’d come to see and pressed the button on his recorder.

  “Okay, it’s Thursday, October 15, approximately 14:30 hours,” he started. “I’m at 1734 Rum Hill Road in Bury, New Hampshire, speaking with Rose Yates. I’m not being assisted in this interview. Drew Simmons, patrol officer with the Bury Police Department, is in a squad car outside the residence. Ms. Yates is not in custody and has voluntarily elected to speak with me. The subject of this interview is case 18-33456, concerning Riley McKay, Ms. Yates’s late husband.”r />
  She crossed her legs. “God, this all sounds so serious.”

  “I know, and apologies for the formality of it all, Ms. Yates. I prefer to record conversations in conjunction with any case I’m working. Makes it easier to remember things. I’m a bit of a stickler for details and procedure.”

  “You can call me Rose.”

  “Thanks, Rose. And you can call me Colin, or Detective Pearson, whichever you prefer.”

  “Well, then.” She leaned back and pulled a strand of hair off her face as he started asking questions.

  He went light and easy, as was the plan, telling her he had a few routine follow-up questions in the matter of her husband’s death. He was only a few questions in when it became clear she wasn’t buying it.

  “Routine things are usually handled through the phone,” Rose said. “But you came all the way from Milwaukee to New Hampshire. That means you had to get approval for a travel budget from your department, which I’m sure isn’t easy. And certainly not something approved for routine questions.”

  Colin nodded rather than smiled; that would come off as patronizing. “I suppose that’s the mystery writer in you coming out. I imagine you’ve researched a lot of police procedure for your books.”

  There was a brief widening of her eyes. She was surprised he knew she was a novelist, Colin guessed. “I have. Talked to a lot of cops, a few in your own department even. But not you.”

  “Well, I normally don’t work cases like this. But I transferred from Madison not too long ago and I’m helping the department pick up some slack.”

  Then followed a slight beat where Rose seemed at a loss for words, compensating by gesturing to the table between them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never offered you coffee. This is usually the time I have my last cup for the day. Can I get you some?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am.”

  “Rose.”

  “No, thank you, Rose. But you go right ahead.”

  The moment she left the room was when he felt the relief. Her relief. The relief of someone who didn’t want to be interviewed getting a brief reprieve. Rose didn’t want coffee, Colin thought. She wanted to get away.