Someone We Know

by Shari Lapena

  “Get out,” Glenda says.

  Olivia scrambles to her feet.

  Glenda doesn’t even get out of her chair as Olivia turns to leave. Glenda hears the front door close, and then the house is silent. She feels terribly alone.

  For a long time she doesn’t move. Then she springs from her chair and climbs the stairs to the spare bedroom they use as an office. She sits down at the desk and turns on the computer. She tries everything she can think of, which isn’t much. She can’t find the hidden emails. But she believes that they’re there. And though she wishes she didn’t, she believes Raleigh is telling the truth.

  Finally, fighting back tears of frustration, she gives up and collapses onto the spare bed against the wall. And then she reaches for her phone to call her husband.

  * * *

  —

  Webb hears someone tapping at his office door. An officer pops his head in. “Paul Sharpe here to see you, sir.”

  Surprised, Webb says, “Show him into an interview room. I’ll be right in.” He sees Moen on the way; she’s coming toward him down the hall. “Paul Sharpe just came in. Let’s go.” She changes direction and falls in beside him. As they enter the interview room, Webb hopes this might be a breakthrough in the case. He can sense the same anticipation in Moen.

  “Mr. Sharpe,” he says, having reminded him of his rights and turned on the tape, “is there something new you want to tell us?”

  “Yes.”

  Webb looks at him inquiringly and waits. He doesn’t look like a man about to confess to murder. And he hasn’t brought his lawyer with him.

  “I might be completely wrong about this,” Sharpe begins, “but I thought I should let you know. I’ve learned that a friend of mine was cheating on his wife. And I think he may have been seeing Amanda Pierce.”

  “And why are you just telling us this now?”

  “I just found out.”

  “How did you find out?”

  Sharpe looks uncomfortable. “I’d rather not say.”

  Webb looks back at him, mildly annoyed, and exhales heavily. “Why are you wasting my valuable time, Mr. Sharpe?” He doesn’t answer, merely looks stubborn. “What makes you think this man was seeing Amanda Pierce?”

  Sharpe says nervously, “He knows our cabin. He’s been there.”

  “Who?”

  “Keith Newell.”

  The name is familiar. “Right, his fingerprints were in your cabin; we eliminated him.”

  Sharpe nods. “He and his wife visit us there every year.”

  “And you now think he was seeing Amanda, but won’t tell us why you think so?”

  “I don’t know that he was seeing Amanda, but he was seeing someone. He was having an affair. I don’t know who with. And he knows where we keep the hidden key. I told him, when he was out at the cabin last summer.”

  Webb chews the inside of his cheek. “I see.”

  “Look on his home computer,” Sharpe says. “Look for the emails to his girlfriend. Maybe you can figure out if it was her.”

  “And how do you know about these emails? Did he tell you about them?”

  “No.” Paul Sharpe looks away. “But I know they’re there.”

  * * *

  —

  Keith,” Glenda says tersely into the phone. “I think you’d better come home.”

  “What? Why? I’m just heading into a meeting.”

  “Olivia was here this morning. She says Raleigh broke into our house. He got into our computer.”

  “What? What the hell are you talking about? Why would Raleigh do that?”

  She hears the fear in his usually calm voice. She ignores his question. “What are you hiding on our computer? Emails to another woman? To Amanda Pierce?” Her voice climbs.

  The stunned silence on the other end of the line tells her everything she needs to know. She could kill him.

  “I’ll be right home,” Keith says, sounding panicky.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Detective Webb knocks on the door firmly. He’s obtained a warrant to search Keith Newell’s computer. The two men with him and Moen are tech experts; they’ll get his computer and other electronics.

  A woman answers the door. “Mrs. Newell?” Webb asks, holding up his badge. He notes the woman’s pallor; she’s clearly been crying.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Is your husband at home?” They’d already called his office, expecting to find him there—wanting to question him—but were told he’d been called home suddenly. Webb notes her reluctance to answer.

  Finally she says, “Yes, he is.”

  “We’d like to talk to him,” Webb tells her.

  She seems to know what this is about. She opens the door without saying anything further.

  Webb steps into a front hallway, and she leads them into the living room. “I’ll get him,” she says.

  Webb wonders if Keith Newell is at the computer, hurriedly deleting files. It doesn’t matter. They can recover just about anything.

  A few moments later, Keith Newell comes down the stairs looking nervous.

  Webb says, “I’m Detective Webb and this is Detective Moen. We’d like you to come down to the police station to answer a few questions.”

  “About what? Who are they?” Keith says, indicating the two silent techs.

  “They’re the technicians who are here to get your computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and so on.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Actually, I can. I have a warrant.” Webb holds it up, sees the fear in the man’s eyes.

  Keith Newell looks from him to his wife, obviously feeling cornered.

  They leave the techs behind in the house with Newell’s wife, and drive him to the police station. There they lead him into an interview room and advise him of his rights. He says he doesn’t need a lawyer. He says he’s done nothing wrong. “So,” Webb begins. “Did you know Amanda Pierce?”

  Newell looks warily at them. “Yes, I knew her.”

  “Were you having an affair with her?”

  Newell looks as if he’s poised on the edge of a precipice. The panic in his face tells Webb the truth, no matter what he might say next. But Newell says, “Yes, I was having an affair with her. But I didn’t kill her.”

  “Tell us about it.”

  “We didn’t want anyone to know. Her husband was very jealous. He made her life miserable at times. She wanted to leave him.”

  “Did you ever see her at the Sharpes’ cabin?”

  He nods. Exhales deeply. “Just once. The weekend that she disappeared.” He stops as if he can’t go on. His hands are shaking.

  “What happened, Mr. Newell?” Moen asks quietly.

  “I knew the cabin would be empty that weekend—I knew the family wouldn’t be going up. I knew where they kept the spare key. Amanda and I wanted to see each other and I didn’t want to go anywhere we might be recognized. Then I thought of the cabin.” He clears his throat, takes a sip of water, his hand trembling badly.

  “She told me that she could go away for the weekend, that she would tell her husband that she was going away with her friend Caroline, shopping. So she packed an overnight bag and I gave her directions to the cabin. She knew I couldn’t stay all weekend. I told her that. I told her I could come out late Friday afternoon for a while but that I’d have to go home, and that I’d come back for most of the day on Saturday, but I couldn’t just leave my family for an entire weekend—it would look too suspicious. She was fine with that. She was happy to spend time with me, but she also liked her alone time. She liked to have time to be away from her husband.

  “So I went up there on Friday afternoon, around five. She arrived about a half hour later. I stayed for a while, but I couldn’t stay too late. I left around eight. Everything was fine when I left her. I went home. The ne
xt day, I told my wife I was going golfing, and I went back to the cabin. The first thing I noticed was that Amanda’s car wasn’t there. I thought that was odd, because I’d brought up everything we’d need. I thought maybe she’d just gone for a drive. I was a bit annoyed because it’s a long drive up there and back and I couldn’t stay late. The door to the cabin wasn’t locked. I went inside and everything was all tidy. None of her things were there. She’d gone. I found the key on the counter. You couldn’t tell she’d ever been there.

  “There was no note or anything. I checked my phone—there was no message, no text—but she’d already warned me that her husband had found her burner phone. I wondered if she’d changed her mind about the weekend, or maybe about me. Or maybe something had come up at home. Anyway, I waited around for a long time, until it was time to go—hoping she’d come back, I guess. But she didn’t. And then I locked up the cabin and put the key back under the oilcan and just went home. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t tell anyone.

  “On the way home, I drove past her house to see if her car was there, but it wasn’t. The next day I drove by her place again and her car still wasn’t there, but the garage door was closed and I thought it might be inside.

  “I had no way to reach her. My texts and emails would go to her burner phone, but her husband had it. I didn’t know what to do. I was a mess, but I had to pretend that everything was fine. Then I heard a couple of days later that she’d been reported missing by her husband.”

  He looks up at Webb, his face haggard. “He’s the one who killed her, I’m sure of it. Back then, the rumor going around was that she’d left him, because she’d told her husband she was going away with a friend and he found out it wasn’t true. But I know she lied to him to be with me. I think now that he knew, and he killed her. But at the time, I thought—I hoped—that she really had just left him. After she was found—” He hides his head in his hands.

  “After she was found, you didn’t come forward with any of this,” Webb says, not bothering to hide his contempt.

  Newell shakes his head, looking remorseful. “I know. I’m not proud of it.” He takes a shuddering breath. “Her husband must have killed her. She told me sometimes that she thought he was a psychopath. He wasn’t the man she thought she’d married. He was manipulative, he played games. She wanted to leave him.” He runs a hand through his hair nervously. “She’d send me texts, telling me what their marriage was like. It was—abnormal.”

  “What are we going to find on your computer?” Webb asks after a bit.

  “Emails to Amanda.”

  “You hid them.”

  “Of course I did. I used a burner phone mostly for Amanda, but sometimes I sent emails to her burner from my laptop. I didn’t want my wife to see them. If it weren’t for Raleigh, nobody ever would have known any of this.”

  “Raleigh Sharpe?” Webb asks.

  Keith snorts. “He broke into our house and found those emails and told his parents, who obviously told you. The little shit.”

  “I see,” Webb says. “And what happened to your burner phone?”

  “I smashed it to pieces and threw them in a passing garbage truck.”

  After a moment’s pause, Webb asks, “Did you know about the other men she was seeing?”

  “Amanda? She wasn’t seeing any other men. Just me.”

  Webb can’t believe the man’s gullibility, or perhaps it’s his ego. “Seriously? You didn’t know? She was meeting someone else at the Paradise Hotel, quite regularly. We have video evidence of it.”

  Newell’s face drops and he looks away. “No.” He asks, “Who?”

  “Larry Harris.” Webb feels a certain satisfaction at the look on Newell’s face. “How do we know that you weren’t the jealous one?” Webb asks. “You were at the cabin with her that Friday. You went back again on Saturday. She hasn’t been seen since that Friday. As far as we know, you were the last one to see her alive. You knew she’d told her husband she was with Caroline, that it would look like she’d simply left. Did you know she was pregnant? Did that not fit with your plans? Did you argue about it?”

  Newell looks back at him in growing fear. “No. I mean, yes, I knew she was pregnant. But we didn’t argue about it. She was going to terminate it.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you,” Webb says.

  “I want a lawyer,” Newell says, his voice frightened.

  Webb gets up to leave the interview room and signals to Moen to join him. He sends an officer in to facilitate Keith Newell’s call to his lawyer. They’ll let him sweat and shake while he waits for his lawyer to arrive.

  * * *

  —

  Glenda paces restlessly around her house. The two techs left long ago, taking all of their computers and electronics with them. She’s terrified. Keith told her he’d deleted the emails, but she’s afraid that isn’t good enough; she’s pretty sure that the police know how to recover deleted files. That’s what they do.

  Keith has been gone for hours. She doesn’t know what’s happening and it’s driving her mad. They obviously suspect him of murdering Amanda. He was seeing her; he admitted it to her and will probably admit it to them. They’ll find the emails. They’ll charge him and try him for murder. What will she tell their son?

  She thinks regretfully of Olivia. She has never needed a friend more than she does at this moment, but Olivia’s the last person she wants to talk to right now.

  * * *

  —

  When Adam gets home from school, Glenda is waiting for him. He drops his heavy backpack to the floor just inside the front door with a familiar thud, and sweeps past her on his way directly to the kitchen for something to eat. He doesn’t even seem to register that she’s standing there.

  “Adam,” she says. She follows him into the kitchen. “We need to talk.” He opens the fridge door and then looks over his shoulder at her warily. She swallows. “Your father is down at the police station.” He goes still as a stone. “He’s being questioned about Amanda Pierce.”

  A look of dread comes over her son’s face. There’s a drawn-out silence. “They’re questioning everybody, though, right?” Adam says.

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll let him go,” Adam says. “Like Raleigh’s dad. They let him go.”

  “I don’t know,” she says, her voice tight. “I don’t know what’s going on at the station. But the police took your father’s computer away.”

  Adam stands completely still for a moment longer, his face pale. Then he turns away from her abruptly and leaves to go upstairs. “Wait, Adam, I need to talk to you.”

  But he’s taking the stairs two at a time.

  * * *

  —

  Raleigh is a wreck. He’s the one who saw Keith Newell’s emails. Because of him, his dad went to the police. Because of him, Keith Newell is sitting in the police station, probably suspected of murder. Raleigh just got a frantic text from Adam.

  Raleigh finally got his cell phone back from his parents after he told them the truth about the break-ins and swore he was done with hacking. But now he almost wishes they hadn’t given it back to him. He stares at the text again. Well, what did he expect? He knew that as soon as he told the truth about Adam’s dad, his parents might go to the police. He didn’t feel like he had a choice, with his own dad still under suspicion of murder. Raleigh knows that Keith Newell is an asshole, but could he actually be a murderer? It’s less outrageous than the possibility of his own father being a murderer.

  He looks again at Adam’s text, then tosses the phone aside.

  He won’t be able to contain it. It will all come out now, that he broke into the Newells’ house and their computer, too. If Adam’s dad goes on trial, Raleigh will have to testify about those emails. Everyone will know. Raleigh could be in big trouble. But if Keith Newell killed Amanda Pierce, at least his own father will be free.<
br />
  * * *

  —

  Webb enters the interview room again, late that afternoon, Moen behind him. Keith Newell now has his lawyer beside him.

  They resume the interview. Newell stubbornly shakes his head back and forth. “I didn’t kill her. When I left her there Friday evening she was fine. When I came back on Saturday, at around ten thirty in the morning, she was already gone. Everything was cleaned up. I thought she’d changed her mind. I had no idea what had happened to her.” He stifles a sob, the exhaustion and the strain getting to him. “I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw her car was gone. I tried to open the door but it was locked. I got the—” He stops suddenly.

  Webb feels Moen snapping to attention beside him. “It was locked,” Webb repeats into the silence.

  “No,” Newell says quickly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I’m tired. It wasn’t locked. I walked right in and saw that the place was empty.”

  “You said it was locked. I got the—you were going to say you got the key, is that right?” Webb says.

  “It was definitely not locked,” Newell repeats. “I went right in and the key was on the counter.” He looks at his lawyer, seems to signal something to him with his eyes.

  “No more questions,” the lawyer says. “My client is tired. That’s it for now.” The lawyer stands up. “Are you going to detain him?”

  “Yes,” Webb says. “We certainly are.”

  * * *

  —

  Olivia arrives at Glenda’s door. It’s late, after ten o’clock. The street is dark, and it’s cold out. She pulls her coat closer. She’s tried calling, but Glenda isn’t picking up the phone. Olivia knows she’s home; Raleigh told her that Adam has been texting him because he’s worried about his mom, and asking him to send his mother over to help. So she’s not exactly imposing; she’s been invited over. But she’s nervous because she’s pretty sure Glenda won’t want to see her.