Someone We Know: A Novel

by Shari Lapena

  It hurts her to look at her son, struggling with this. It feels so brutal, what she must tell him now. “They found some bloodstains in the cabin. They’re going to do some tests and see if it’s Amanda Pierce’s blood.” Her voice is a rough whisper.

  “How can they arrest him if they don’t even know it was her blood?” Raleigh says desperately. “They must have something else.”

  “Our hammer is missing.” There’s another long silence. Finally Olivia says, “Your father has told them he didn’t do it.”

  “Of course he didn’t do it!” There are tears in Raleigh’s eyes.

  She says, her body limp, “The police want all of us—Keith and Adam, too—to give our fingerprints tomorrow, because we’ve all been at the cabin. They want to see if there are any other prints there that they can’t account for.”

  * * *

  —

  Olivia lies in bed, rigid, eyes wide open and staring sightlessly at the ceiling, thinking of her husband in a cell. Glenda is in the next room, staying over for support. She’d made Olivia have a bath, thrown her soiled and smelly clothes in the washing machine, and made everyone soup and toast that mostly went uneaten.

  Olivia glances at the digital clock on her bedside table. It’s 3:31 A.M. Her mind has been going around in circles, an endless loop of horror and disbelief. Paul calling from work that day, saying he was going to see his aunt. Had he been lying? Her thinking nothing of it, watching a movie on her own that night—choosing something she knew he wasn’t interested in seeing. Him creeping in late, after she was already asleep—she has no idea what time he came home. This is what trust does. You don’t notice these things, you don’t question them, because you think you have no reason to. Now she wishes she’d been less trusting; she wishes she’d paid attention.

  What was he wearing when he came home? She has no idea, because she was asleep. Was he still in his office clothes? She certainly didn’t notice anything like bloodstains on his clothes the next day—she would have noticed that, and remembered, no matter how trusting she’d been. If he killed Amanda, he must have gotten rid of his clothes somehow.

  She gets up, turns on the bedside table lamp, and starts searching through his closet, clawing through his chest of drawers. All his suits seem to be accounted for. But Paul has a lot of clothes, especially old jeans and T-shirts. She can’t think of anything that isn’t there. He keeps clothes at the cabin, too. Something might be missing, and she wouldn’t necessarily know.

  He must have been seeing Amanda. She remembers watching all the men fawning over her at the party in the park. Some of the neighbors had got a permit to barbecue. They’d all chipped in twenty bucks per family for hot dogs and hamburgers and soda and beer, and most of them had brought a salad or some kind of dish. There was a bouncy castle for the younger kids and some balloons, but most of the teenagers didn’t bother showing up. Olivia was tidying up the ketchup and mustard dispensers, occasionally throwing a glance at the semicircle of people talking and laughing in the white plastic chairs that had been rounded up for the occasion. She watched the new woman, Amanda something, who had recently moved in on their street. She was absolutely gorgeous and completely aware of it. Why was she bothering to flirt with their much older husbands? She had a hot-looking husband sitting right beside her.

  None of the women liked her.

  Glenda had come up and stood beside Olivia, following her gaze, watching in apparent disbelief as Amanda let her hand—with her long, red nails—rest on Keith’s forearm. “Who the hell does she think she is?” Glenda said.

  Then Becky came up on the other side of Olivia, and the three of them stood watching their husbands, clearly in thrall to this new woman.

  They should all have been more on their guard, Olivia thinks, coming back to the present. Perhaps Becky’s instincts were right after all, and Paul and Amanda had become lovers. Did they meet at the cabin that night? Did Paul beat her to death with their hammer? And then stuff her body in her trunk and sink her car? And then scrub everything clean and come home and behave as if nothing had happened? What other explanation can there be?

  Olivia gets out of bed and pads down the hall quietly, past the spare room, careful not to wake Glenda, who she can hear snoring lightly through the partly open door. She reaches her son’s room and quietly pushes his door ajar. She watches him sleep, completely unaware of her. For the moment at least, he’s peaceful.

  She moves closer and looks down at him. His young face is angular, and constantly changing these days. He’s growing some whiskers. It’s a face she adores. She would do anything to protect him. She wants to sit down on his bed beside him and stroke his hair, the way she used to when he was little. But Raleigh doesn’t want his mother stroking his hair anymore, not like when he was very young. He doesn’t want her hugs and kisses anymore; he’s almost grown up. And he keeps things from her—he never did that when he was little. He told her everything. But now he has secrets. Raleigh is keeping things from her. Like his father. They both have secrets.

  She’s the only one in the house who has nothing to hide.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Becky Harris stands staring down at the morning newspaper in her hands. The headline screams in large print ARREST IN AMANDA PIERCE MURDER. Her first thought is, They’ve arrested Robert. She feels an intense relief. And then, as she reads, Oh no.

  She can’t believe it. She thinks of Olivia. She can imagine what she’s going through because Becky’s been imagining herself going through the very same thing.

  She takes the paper through to the kitchen. She’s alone in the house; Larry has already gone to work.

  The evidence—as much as the article reveals—sounds damning. Blood found in the Sharpes’ cabin, now thought to be the scene of the murder. A missing hammer, the possible murder weapon, yet to be recovered. And the car with her body in it found not far from there, on a route familiar to Paul Sharpe. Stunned and incredulous, Becky thinks back to that time she saw Paul with Amanda in her car. Was she right? Were they lovers after all? Was he jealous of the affair she was having with Larry? Maybe that’s why he told her to break it off with Larry, rather than any altruistic concern about Larry getting into trouble at work.

  She hadn’t thought Paul was capable of hurting anyone. But she hadn’t thought Larry was either. She imagines how it must have been. They argued at his cabin and he struck her. Maybe the hammer was lying close by, and he acted impulsively. He was probably horrified at what he’d done, probably regretted it immediately. But then—he covered it up. He put her body in the trunk and sank it. What must life have been like for him since it happened? Especially since the body was found. It must have been a living hell.

  There will be a trial. Larry will have to testify about his affair with Amanda—his sordid meetings with her in that awful hotel. The thought of all of this out in the open sickens her. How horrible it will be for her and the kids.

  But it will be far worse for Olivia and Raleigh.

  She rereads the newspaper article. Things look very bad for Paul. But at least she knows now that her own husband, despite all his failings, didn’t kill Amanda Pierce. She really hadn’t been sure.

  * * *

  —

  Carmine Torres is shocked by what she reads in the newspaper Tuesday morning. They’ve arrested Paul Sharpe for the murder of Amanda Pierce.

  She thinks of the poor woman she spoke to at the door—Paul Sharpe’s wife—and how ill she looked that day. Maybe she knew. Maybe it wasn’t only her son she’d been worried about.

  * * *

  —

  Paul Sharpe has lawyered up, but Webb still hopes to get somewhere with him when they question him this morning, with his lawyer by his side. His lawyer hadn’t been available the night before, but now that Paul Sharpe has had a night in a cell to think about his situation, maybe he will be more cooperative.

  As he enters the
room, he sees Sharpe sitting, no longer cuffed, beside his attorney. He looks as if he hasn’t slept at all. He has to be scared shitless. Good. Maybe he’s ready to talk.

  Sitting next to Sharpe is Emilio Gallo, a well-known criminal lawyer from a respected firm. Webb has dealt with him before. He’s good. Expensive. Gallo will stop at nothing to help a client, as long as it’s legal. His dark, nicely tailored suit, pressed shirt, and smart silk tie contrast starkly with the rumpled jeans and wrinkled shirt of his client. Sharpe is tired and scruffy and Webb can smell the sweat and fear coming off him. Gallo is well rested and well groomed, smelling faintly of expensive aftershave.

  Webb and Moen sit down. The tape is turned on. “Please state your name for the tape,” Webb directs.

  “Paul Sharpe,” he says, his voice shaky.

  “Also present are Emilio Gallo, attorney for Paul Sharpe, Detective Webb, and Detective Moen of Aylesford Police,” Webb begins. He doesn’t mince words. “Your client is going to be facing a murder charge,” he says, looking directly at Gallo.

  “Good luck with that,” Gallo says mildly. “My client didn’t do it.”

  Webb turns his gaze on Paul Sharpe. He waits until Sharpe finally looks up at him. “I want to hear it from him.”

  Sharpe says, “I didn’t do it.”

  “The evidence against you is pretty compelling,” Webb says.

  “It’s all circumstantial,” the attorney counters. “A missing hammer? Blood on the floor? You haven’t even confirmed that it’s the dead woman’s blood.”

  “When we do, perhaps you’ll see things differently,” Webb says.

  “I don’t think so,” Gallo replies. “Anyone could have been in that cabin, anyone could have found the hammer in the shed and used it. You have nothing against my client except that he wasn’t home that night. And he has a perfectly reasonable explanation for where he was.”

  “That he can’t prove,” Webb says. “He was seen arguing with the victim before she disappeared.”

  “And he has a perfectly good explanation for that, too,” the attorney says smoothly.

  “Maybe we don’t believe him.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you believe,” Gallo says. “What matters is what will hold up in court.” Now the attorney leans a little closer and says, “I think we both know you’ll have a tough time getting a conviction. There are other rather obvious suspects in this case—the husband, who may have known about his wife’s infidelity, and her lover. I understand there was a lover? My client denies having any kind of relationship with the victim. Lots of reasonable doubt, if you ask me. You’ll never get this to stick.”

  Webb sits back in his chair, lifts his chin at Paul Sharpe, and says, “She was murdered in his cabin.”

  “And anyone could have killed her there.” The attorney stands up, indicating that the interview is over. “You either have to charge my client or let him go.” Webb turns the tape off.

  “We can hold him a bit longer,” Webb says.

  After Sharpe has been taken back to his cell and his attorney has left, Moen says to Webb, “With Gallo representing him, he’s never going to break down and confess.”

  “So we have to build a case,” Webb says. “We have work to do.”

  * * *

  —

  Olivia looks back at her husband. He’s sitting across from her in a small room at the police station. There is a guard nearby. She stares at him in his messy, slept-in clothes. He is barely recognizable as her husband. Is he, or is he someone else altogether? She doesn’t trust her own judgment, her own senses anymore.

  “Gallo thinks he might be able to get me out of here,” Paul says.

  She can’t speak.

  “Olivia—say something,” Paul demands. He is distraught. His eyes are bloodshot, and he already smells—of the cells, of fear, and desperation. She can’t stop staring at him. He looks so different. He already looks more like a prisoner than he looks like her husband of a week ago, going off to work in an ironed shirt, a good suit. The world has gone all tilted, and she can’t find her balance.

  “What did he say?” she asks finally.

  “He said that they’ll have trouble getting a conviction.”

  He looks both desperate and hopeful at the same time. A drowning man reaching for a life raft. Does she extend her arm and help him, or does she push him away? “Why did he say that?” she asks. She feels and sounds like an automaton. Surely he’s wrong, she’s thinking. Why would he tell his client such an obvious lie? Somewhere in the back of her mind she’s also thinking that this is going to cost them a fortune. Probably everything they have. If he did it, maybe it would be better for everyone if he just admitted it and pleaded guilty, she thinks.

  “We know I didn’t kill her,” Paul says. “Which means somebody else must have.”

  She looks at him, wanting to believe him. She would rather he be wrongly accused, to know in her heart that he is innocent, and stand by him and fight tooth and nail to get this sorted out. But she’s not sure. She needs convincing. She wants to be convinced. She wants to believe him.

  “What did Gallo say, exactly?” she asks, daring to hope he has some good news.

  “He said there are other, better suspects—her husband. Larry, who probably was having an affair with her. They need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, and there’s plenty of room for reasonable doubt.”

  She was hoping for something more conclusive. Something that would exonerate her husband, clear him once and for all. She doesn’t want him to simply get away with it. If he did it—if he was sleeping with this woman, and killed her in a rage, and covered it up—she wants him to go to prison for the rest of his life. She will never forgive him. If he did it, she doesn’t ever want to see him again.

  “Gallo said anybody could have used our cabin,” Paul says. “Taken our hammer, and killed her and cleaned it all up, and we would never even know.”

  “But the cabin was locked,” she says.

  “Someone could have broken in. Or found the hidden key.” He lowers his voice now to a whisper and another look comes over his face, a pleading look. “We could say we’d had break-ins before, but since nothing was ever taken we didn’t bother to report it.”

  She whispers back, “That would be a lie.”

  “Just a small one,” he says very quietly. “I didn’t do it, Olivia. And my life is on the line.”

  She looks back at him, her dread growing, and starts shaking her head. “No, we can’t do that. Raleigh would know it was a lie.”

  He slumps in his chair and looks down at the table, suddenly defeated. “Yeah, you’re right. Forget it.” Finally he looks up, completely exhausted, and says bleakly, “How is Raleigh doing?”

  “Not good. Not good at all.”

  He hasn’t asked about her.

  * * *

  —

  Robert Pierce is biding his time in his kitchen. When he picked his newspaper up off his front step that morning, there was already a crowd of reporters on the street in front of his house. They saw him and started to surge toward him, but he quickly stepped inside the house and slammed the door. He looked down at the front page of the Aylesford Record.

  As he read, a slow smile came over his face. They’d made an arrest. And it wasn’t him.

  The news has put him in a very good mood. Maybe he will be able to relax now. Maybe he will be able to return to work. It’s been wearing, the police always at his door, always looking at him as if it’s just a matter of time until he screws up. But now they have arrested Paul Sharpe. All attention will be on him. Robert can start living his life again, put all this behind him.

  He looks out the window and sees that the reporters are still out there. He knows they will wait all day until they get a statement from him. He’s something of a celebrity. He goes up to his bedroom and dresses carefully. A ni
ce pair of pants and a dress shirt. He combs his hair, admires himself in the mirror. And then he goes downstairs and opens the front door and steps out.

  The cameras flash repeatedly; he keeps his expression suitably serious. A bereaved husband, grateful at last that his wife’s killer has been arrested.

  THIRTY-TWO

  An officer sticks his head in Webb’s office door and says, “The Sharpes and the Newells were all fingerprinted this morning, sir. And something very interesting has turned up.”

  Webb looks down at the report. What the hell was Paul Sharpe’s son doing in Amanda Pierce’s house?

  * * *

  —

  Olivia sits on her bed and looks at herself in the dresser mirror. She’s ashen. The detectives have called and want to see her again. They have asked her to bring Raleigh, too.

  Raleigh is in his room, having stayed home from school. Glenda is sticking by Olivia and Raleigh—showing people that she supports them. Olivia feels better having Glenda here. She remembers how people had stood and watched outside of Robert Pierce’s house, not that long ago, thinking that Robert Pierce had murdered his wife. And now there are people outside of her house, thinking that Paul is a killer.

  When she and Raleigh arrive back at the station, she is directed into an interview room, while Raleigh is asked to wait outside. Webb and Moen are there waiting for her. She’s caught them in the middle of a conversation, which they abruptly break off.

  “Mrs. Sharpe,” Webb says. “Thank you for coming in. Just so you know, this interview is purely voluntary; you are free to leave at any time.”

  Detective Moen brings her water and looks at her as if in sympathy. Men can be such shits.

  Olivia’s mouth is dry. She swallows. There’s absolutely nothing she can tell them, one way or the other. She doesn’t know anything. Nothing that happens in this interview will change anything. She must just get through it.