by Shari Lapena
At last they turn down a gravel road and finally stop at a classic wood cabin that looks weathered, nestled in among the trees.
Webb sees a car parked in front. Paul Sharpe is here ahead of them. No surprise there.
They climb out of the car. The air is fresher here, and smells of earth, wet leaves, and pine needles. Breezes rustle through the remaining leaves on the trees overhead. They can see a small lake farther down, a dock jutting out into the water.
The door to the cabin opens and Paul Sharpe steps out, looking wary. His wife, Olivia, is right behind him.
* * *
—
Olivia decided to come along because she couldn’t stand the thought of staying home and worrying about what was going on out here.
Olivia had tossed in bed the night before, unable to sleep, thinking about the cabin. It wasn’t the same, now that Raleigh was sixteen. He still enjoyed the cabin, loved the lake, but he didn’t look forward to it with gleeful excitement the way he had when he was little. By Sunday afternoon he was usually missing his friends and his wi-fi, so they tended to go back earlier than when he was a little boy, when she and Paul practically had to drag him into the car to go home.
She hadn’t noticed anything different about the cabin two weekends ago when they’d come up to start closing it up for the winter. It had been Columbus Day weekend, the weekend after Amanda had disappeared, the weekend before they’d had the Newells over for dinner and Olivia had found out that Raleigh was breaking into houses. Everything had been just as it was the last time they were at the cabin. She doesn’t understand what the hell the detectives want.
She’s always loved their little cabin in the woods. It’s not fancy—just one large room that’s part kitchen, part living room, with a view down to the lake along the back, and two bedrooms and a small bathroom on the other side of the living area. The floor is linoleum, the walls are wood paneled, the furniture is mismatched but comfortable, and the appliances are outdated, but that’s all part of its charm. She hopes that this doesn’t spoil it for them. They didn’t tell Raleigh what was happening today. He’d gone to school early for basketball practice, leaving before they did. It will be over soon enough, and he will never have to know that the police were even here.
She steps out of the cabin behind her husband and is surprised to see that it’s just Webb and Moen. She was expecting an entire team. It makes her relax a little bit. “Good morning,” she says. She knows that Paul will be brusque with them; that’s the way he is. She must try to smooth things over. “Can I offer you some coffee?”
“That would be great, thank you,” Webb says, smiling his quick smile.
“Yes, that would be lovely,” Moen says, warmly. “Beautiful spot you’ve got here.”
They all go inside and Olivia turns away and busies herself with the old, serviceable coffee maker. She takes down four blue enamel cups. These old, chipped cups comfort her, remind her of relaxed, happier times. Morning coffee on the deck, with the mist rising off the water; hot cocoa for Raleigh when he was little, wrapped in a red-and-black plaid blanket against the chill. She glances over her shoulder and sees the detectives each pulling on blue latex gloves, and just like that, all her happy feelings abruptly disappear.
TWENTY-NINE
She brings the coffee over to the detectives; they accept it gratefully. Olivia finds the sight of those latex gloves holding her cups unsettling. The detectives begin to go about their work. Olivia and Paul sit silently at the kitchen table, trying to pretend that they don’t mind, that they’re not watching the two cops’ every move.
When the detectives leave the main room of the cabin and go into the bedrooms, Paul gets up and follows, taking his coffee with him. Olivia gets up, too. The detectives open drawers, look under mattresses. They put everything back the way they found it. She has no idea what they expect to find. They return to the kitchen and go through it methodically, silently. The longer it goes on, the more anxious Olivia becomes. She watches as Webb studies the navy curtains carefully. Silently, he waves Moen over. Together they look at the curtains, both sides, with the aid of a flashlight. Webb’s face seems to turn grim.
Finally, Webb turns to Olivia’s husband and says, “Do you have any tools?”
“Tools?” Paul repeats.
Olivia wonders if they want to take something apart. She’s not going to allow that, and she’s sure Paul won’t either. If they want to start tearing up the floorboards they will have to get a damn warrant.
Paul must be thinking along the same lines she is, because he says, “What for?”
“Where do you keep them?” Webb asks, avoiding the question.
Without answering, Paul leads them outside to a small shed, not far from the cabin. It’s full of firewood, plastic lawn chairs, a lawn mower, and other accumulated junk. Olivia peers around Paul as he opens the door to the shed, and points. Webb pulls out his flashlight and flicks it on, playing the light over the interior of the shed. There’s a hatchet leaning up against the wall. The light lands on a battered red metal toolbox. The detective steps inside and squats down and opens it. He uses an index finger to search inside the toolbox, his blue gloves stark and clean against the dusty interior. Olivia wonders what the hell he’s looking for. She can see the tension in Paul’s shoulders.
“Do you have a hammer?” Webb asks.
“Yes,” Paul says, “it should be there.” He bends down to look inside the toolbox.
“It doesn’t appear to be here now,” Webb says, and turns his attention to Paul. “When was the last time you saw it?”
“I have no idea,” Paul says. “I don’t remember.” The two men stare at each other for a long moment.
Olivia feels her stomach drop. She’s been telling herself that the detectives are on a fool’s errand, that they won’t find anything, and then they’ll leave them alone. But there it is again, the doubt niggling at the back of her mind—Do the detectives know something that she doesn’t?
Webb looks up at Moen and says, “I think we need to get the crime team out here.”
“You’re going to need a warrant for that,” Paul says angrily.
Olivia stares at her husband, her heart pounding.
“I can do that,” Webb says, “with a phone call. And I can have a forensic unit out here within a couple of hours.”
* * *
—
Webb watches Paul Sharpe, standing by the shed in the sunlight filtering through the trees, his hands down by his sides.
“What’s going on?” his wife blurts out suddenly, her face ashen. “Paul had nothing to do with Amanda Pierce! Why aren’t you after her husband—he’s probably the one who killed her!”
“Olivia, you’re not helping,” Sharpe says. “They’ve obviously made up their minds. Let them search. There’s nothing to find.”
While they wait for the crime scene team to arrive, Webb and Moen explore the area outside the cabin, while the Sharpes stand by mutely and watch. Finally they all turn as a couple of police cars and a white crime scene van pull up to the cabin.
Webb knows that if this cabin is a crime scene, it has already been compromised. But they must search it regardless. Webb points out the suspicious stains on the kitchen curtains—the stains that look like blood—to the technicians. If it is blood, they will be able to get DNA from the stains. Webb and Moen watch silently while the technicians close all the blinds and curtains to darken the room. A tech begins to spray luminol in the kitchen. The kitchen floor lights up near the back windows and shows a path from there to the sink on the opposite side of the room.
The tech gives the detectives a meaningful glance.
“What’s that?” Paul asks.
“The lit-up areas show the presence of blood,” Webb says, “even when it has been cleaned up and is invisible to the eye.” He looks at the couple standing at the edge of the kitchen.
Webb doesn’t know who looks worse. Olivia Sharpe looks like she’s about to faint. Paul Sharpe is standing completely still, staring at the floor, his face slack with incomprehension and shock.
The tech then sprays the area around the sink and it lights up, too. But as they proceed, the biggest area where blood has been scrubbed clean—at least to the human eye—is at the back of the kitchen on the floor in front of the windows that face the lake. There is evidence of wiped-up blood spatter on the walls and even the ceiling as well. The luminescence fades after a few moments, but they have all seen it.
With the help of the chemical, it has become obvious that Amanda Pierce—or somebody—was attacked in the kitchen near the back windows, and that something—probably a weapon—was carried from where the attack occurred to the kitchen sink. The evidence of blood spatter arcing on the nearby walls and ceiling indicates that she was struck violently and repeatedly with something hard. The missing hammer.
Webb steps forward and says to Paul Sharpe, “You are under arrest for the murder of Amanda Pierce. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense. Do you understand these rights?”
Olivia Sharpe slides to the floor before anyone can catch her.
THIRTY
Olivia is so disoriented that she can barely function. She hardly remembers the drive back to the city. Her husband went in the police car—handcuffed—on his way to the police station. She followed in the back of the detectives’ car, her mind numb, Webb driving, while Moen drove the Sharpes’ car back to the station and the forensic team was left behind to finish processing the scene.
Now she’s sitting at the station, waiting for someone to come out and tell her what’s happening, and what will happen next. She couldn’t bring herself to meet Paul’s eyes when he was arrested. She keeps seeing the lit-up areas where the blood had been in their cabin. She has to fight down the bile that’s rising in her throat. That stain had been there, but invisible, since Amanda was murdered. Olivia had stood on it a couple of weekends ago, the last time they were at the cabin, looking out at the water in the morning, holding her coffee, thinking that everything was right with the world. The last normal weekend. The weekend before she found out Raleigh had been breaking into places. The weekend before Amanda’s body had been found. But nothing had been right at all. These things had already happened, and she had simply been unaware of them. It seems like a lifetime ago. She’s appalled at her own monumental ignorance. She’d had no idea that a murder had taken place where she stood. She can’t get it out of her mind, can’t stop seeing it, the lit-up pattern on the floor, the evidence of blood spatter on the wall and all the way up to the ceiling. She thinks about their missing hammer—heavy and familiar, its old wooden handle with layers of white paint on it. Did Amanda know she was going to die? She must have screamed. Out there, no one would have heard her. Olivia imagines the hammer coming down on the woman whose face she knows only casually, and from that one photograph they keep showing online. When Olivia closes her eyes, she sees the trail leading from where she was murdered to the kitchen sink. Her sink, where she washed the dishes two weekends ago, while Paul stood beside her and dried, making idle chatter, knowing all the while what had happened there the week before, what he’d done. Thinking he’d cleaned it all up.
She remembers Paul’s face, pale as chalk, as they took him away, and he said to her, “I didn’t do this, Olivia! You must believe me!”
She wants to. But how can she believe him?
What will she tell Raleigh?
Suddenly she needs a toilet, but there’s no time—she throws up all over her own lap, the chair, the floor.
* * *
—
Detective Webb pauses outside the door of the interview room. Moen is already in there, with Paul Sharpe. Webb is tired, and takes a moment to prepare himself mentally. Then he opens the door.
Sharpe is slumped in the chair, his cuffed hands on the table in front of him. He looks terrible. His eyes are watery, as if he’s trying not to cry.
What had he expected? Webb thinks. Why do they always think they can get away with it? He remembers what Sharpe was like at the beginning. He denied knowing Amanda Pierce. Then he admitted to being in the car with her, but only after they told him that he’d been seen. The story about Larry Harris—it had had the ring of truth because it was true; they’d subsequently confirmed that Larry had been seeing Amanda. But why had he been “warning her off” Larry, as he claimed? Maybe it wasn’t because he was trying to protect a friend; maybe he was jealous. Maybe he was involved with Amanda himself. He’d argued with her that night, a little more than a week before she went missing. What happened that Friday night? They couldn’t confirm he’d been at his aunt’s. He could have been at the cabin. He could have met Amanda there, killed her with the missing hammer, thrown the murder weapon in the lake. He could have driven her car to that spot at the neighboring lake and sunk it and walked back to his own car at the cabin. The walk would have taken a little over an hour. He could have done it. They don’t know what time he got home that night.
Webb sits down across from Sharpe and looks at him for a moment. “You’re in a lot of trouble,” he says. Sharpe raises his eyes to him and gives him a look of pure fear.
“I want a lawyer,” Sharpe says. “I’m not talking to you without a lawyer present.”
“Fine,” Webb says, standing up again. He hadn’t expected anything else.
* * *
—
Glenda hears the ping, glances down, and sees the text on her cell phone. I’m at the police station. Please come. It’s from Olivia.
What is Olivia doing at the police station? Glenda doesn’t tell Adam, just home from school, where she’s going, just that she’s going to see Olivia.
She parks the car and rushes up the steps into the police station. She asks for Olivia, and is directed to a small waiting area. The smell of vomit assails her and she sees immediately that Olivia has been sick, but someone has tried to clean her up.
“Olivia, Christ, what’s the matter? What’s happened?”
Olivia starts to tell her, crying, and Glenda gets the gist of it, feels her body growing colder and colder as she pieces things together from Olivia’s sobbing account. The worst possible news. She’s stunned. Paul, arrested for the murder of Amanda Pierce. Evidence of blood found in the cabin. Olivia has her face buried in Glenda’s shoulder; Glenda is grateful that for the moment, at least, Olivia can’t see her horrified expression. Glenda must pull herself together; Olivia needs her.
Finally, she pushes Olivia away gently, so that she can look at her. “Olivia,” she says. “I’m going to help you get through this.” Olivia looks back at her as if she is the only thing keeping her together. “Okay?”
Olivia nods dumbly.
“You need to get Paul a lawyer. The best one we can find.”
Olivia nods again, almost distractedly, and whispers, “What am I going to tell Raleigh?”
I don’t know, Glenda thinks. They can’t hide it from him. She says, “We’ll figure it out. We’ll tell him together. Come on, let’s get you home.”
“Wait,” Olivia says.
“What?”
Olivia looks at her desperately and lowers her voice to a whisper. “Do I tell Raleigh that he didn’t do it?”
Glenda doesn’t know how to answer. Finally she says, “What did Paul say?”
Olivia averts her eyes. “He said he didn’t do it.”
“Then that’s what you tell Raleigh,” Glenda says.
She bundles Olivia into her car and drives her home. Paul’s car can stay there overnight—she’ll come back for it in the morning. The sight of the familiar house a
s they pull up makes Glenda’s heart sink. She’s dreading what’s to come. But she will stick by Olivia, no matter what. No matter how ugly it gets. That’s what friends are for.
* * *
—
Raleigh must wonder where she’s been all day, Olivia thinks dully. She’d texted him somehow from the station, saying she’d be home soon. Olivia doesn’t know where to find the courage to tell him. How do you tell your son that his father has been arrested for murder?
She wants to believe it’s all a terrible mistake. The police make mistakes all the time. But then she remembers the bloodstains. She can’t forget them.
When she opens the door, she hears Raleigh’s steps hurrying down the stairs to greet her. His face falls when he sees her and Glenda; he can tell something’s wrong.
“Mom, where have you been?” he asks.
Olivia wants to protect him. But she can’t protect him from this. Everyone will know. She can’t keep it from him. Her son’s life is going to be ripped apart in the next few minutes. You try so hard to do everything right, but then—
Suddenly she is so tired that she can hardly stand.
“Let’s sit down,” Glenda says, and leads Olivia into her own living room, guiding her by the elbow until she slumps down on the sofa.
“What’s wrong?” Raleigh demands, in a hollow voice. “Where’s Dad?”
“Your father is at the police station,” Olivia says finally, trying to keep her face from crumbling.
He looks back at her with blank incomprehension. But then he seems to get it; she can see it in his face, the dawning dread.
“He’s been arrested,” she says.
“What?” Raleigh asks. “For what?”