by Megan Goldin
I think of everything that I gained from Laura’s murder; her husband, her child, her house. They all became mine.
Maybe Matt’s right. Maybe I did kill Laura. I lean forward with my head in my hands. I force myself to remember, to break through my muddled mind.
‘I was with Alex that night.’ I talk slowly as the memories flood back. ‘We stayed in. He watched a movie. I studied for a mid-year exam.’
‘Your story is hardly convincing, given the police believe you killed Alex as well. Your alibi witness is the very person they think you killed.’ He laughs at my discomfort.
‘It was you?’ I say softly. He is silent as he observes me over the rim of his tumbler. ‘You borrowed my car to drive to the conference. You said your car was being fixed. That’s why I was stuck at home that weekend. In the middle of the night, you drove my car back to the lake house where Laura was staying, killed her, and buried her in the forest at Kellers Way. Just the way you described it a moment ago to get me to believe that I did it.’
‘Surely you can do better than that, Julie,’ says Matt. ‘Who would believe such a preposterous story? And with no evidence to support it. Not a shred. Plus I have an alibi. I was with another woman that night, a married woman who has no incentive to lie on my behalf. Chelsea’s already vouched for me to the police.’
‘You drugged Chelsea, Matt. The way you drugged me. Chelsea probably has no idea if you were lying in bed with her that night or not. You fucked with her head as well as the rest of her.’
‘No,’ he says, examining the amber liquid sloshing around in his glass. ‘Chelsea was never susceptible to suggestion. Not like you. You were amazing. I added and subtracted memories from your mind the way I might edit a blog. Your grandmother’s pendant, for example. It was the only thing of value that you brought into our marriage. You treasured it. It was embarrassing the way you told anyone who complimented you that it belonged to your beloved grandma who died when you were five.’
‘Grandma used to tell me that it had been in our family for generations,’ I say stiffly. ‘It’s all that I have left of her.’
‘That’s very sweet, Julie. But none of it is true,’ says Matt, slinging his arm behind my back as if we’re at a cinema on date night. ‘Your grandmother was a drunk who’d been reported to child services half a dozen times. I’m surprised the authorities let you stay with her for so long. Julie, I planted those warm nostalgic memories of your grandma, and her diamond pendant. I’m sorry to tell you that your grandmother didn’t leave you a damn thing except psychological scars that made you clingy and gave you a fear of abandonment.’
I close my eyes and remember my grandmother giving me a homemade cookie and gently brushing a stray hair off my forehead before sending me into the garden to play. I’d been three or four at the time. Was Matt right? Did this cherished moment never happen?
‘Why are you hurting me like this, Matt?’ I ask. ‘Why are you saying such terrible things?’
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ he says. ‘You should thank me for being so honest. I’ll tell you something else. Your grandmother’s diamond is identical to the one in Laura’s engagement ring. The one that went missing when she died. And when I say identical, I mean it’s the exact same stone. That, by the way, Julie, will be one of the most damning pieces of evidence at your murder trial.’
‘You deliberately led the police to think that I’m a murderer, Matt?’
‘Better you than me, darling,’ he whispers into my ear so softly that I wonder if I’ve imagined it. He rubs his thumb over my wrist. ‘Don’t hold it against them. The police are only doing their job. They’re following the evidence. And the trail leads straight to you, Julie. I made sure of that.’
Chapter Forty-Eight
Julie
Matt puts his arm around me slowly and sensuously, pulling us together in an intimate embrace. Confusion and then relief wash over me at his sudden gentleness after all that venom. Maybe Matt was testing me. Maybe it was the drink that made him say all those poisonous, hurtful things.
He slides his arm across my body and rests his hand gently at the nape of my neck. I allow myself to succumb to his heady scent, so achingly familiar after all these years of marriage. My senses are aroused by his soft touch and the warmth of his body pressed against me.
I sigh in relief. Everything will be alright between us. Without warning, Matt wraps his arm around my throat and pulls me to him in a deadly chokehold. I gasp as I struggle for oxygen. I kick my legs. In vain. A wave of black washes over me. Just as I think that I’m about to die, he eases the pressure around my throat and the darkness recedes. I open my eyes and look straight into his. His expression of curiosity reminds me of a child patiently watching to see how long it takes for an insect to die.
‘When I killed Laura, I was filled with regret. I was upset that she’d put me in that position in the first place.’ His voice is so soft that I have to strain to hear him. ‘My emotions are more mixed when it comes to you.’
‘Why would you kill Laura?’ I ask in a raspy voice that is almost inaudible. ‘She was the love of your life.’
‘Unfortunately, Laura didn’t leave me much choice.’ His lips are so close that I feel them rub against my skin as he whispers into my ear. ‘Laura and I were collaborating on memory research. Then suddenly she had a change of heart. She didn’t want to go as far as I did with implanting false memories of childhood trauma. She said it was unethical.
‘I continued the study at the local community college without her, using students enrolled there as test subjects. Simple people who didn’t ask too many questions. People like you. Laura found out that I was still working on the research. She threatened to report me to the ethics board. To get me fired. Me, her husband!’ he says in outrage. ‘That’s why she went to the lake house that weekend. She was going to divorce me and file for custody of Alice. I’d have lost everything: my career, my reputation, my daughter. And why? Because Laura thought she was too good to work with me. That my research was beneath her.’
He picks up the half-empty bottle of bourbon on the floor and takes a swig straight from the bottle. He offers me a sip. The gesture seems incongruous in the circumstances.
‘Laura thought she was smarter than me. I showed her that she was wrong.’
I run my tongue nervously over my dry lips. ‘What about me?’ I ask. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’
‘For the same reason as Laura. I don’t have much choice.’ He lightly runs his fingers over my neck as he speaks. A knot of fear tightens in my stomach as I brace myself for another assault. ‘You were the most exquisitely beautiful woman that I’d ever seen, Julie. My own personal Helen of Troy. There was a time when I had to have you, regardless of the consequences.’
He lowers his head to kiss my neck. I try to wriggle out of his grip but he holds me firm, his arm still around my throat. I strain under the pressure of his body while he runs his lips across my skin.
‘We had good times, didn’t we Julie? You remember them, don’t you? Our honeymoon in Antigua. Our vacations by the beach, collecting shells with Alice, walks along the sand in front of that quaint little beach house on stilts that we used to rent. Those memories were real. Well, most of them were real.’ He shrugs. ‘And if they weren’t, does it really matter? They felt real to you. At the end of the day, that’s what counts.’
He shoves me hard against the sofa and tightens his chokehold until the pressure is so great that I feel myself falling into a vortex. He loosens his grip and I am conscious again. I open my eyes to see him watching me with amusement. He’s enjoying his game of pushing me to the brink of death and then bringing me back to life.
‘I hope you won’t think me callous if I tell you that I set up everything so that if Laura’s body was ever found, the police would have enough evidence to arrest you. It wasn’t personal. I needed to pin it on someone. I thought you’d make the perfect suspect,’ says Matt.
‘You were the last person to
see Laura alive. Except for me, of course. After her horseback riding lesson Laura went to the lake house. I made sure her phone battery was dying and broke her charger. She fell asleep on the couch thanks to sedatives I’d put in the carton of milk in the lake house fridge. I knew she was a creature of habit and would make an afternoon coffee the minute she arrived. The car headlights probably woke her when I reached the lake house after midnight. Eventually I found her in the boathouse, hiding in the rowboat under a canvas cover. Killing her was the easy part. It was getting rid of her body that was difficult. She was still warm when I put her into the trunk of your little Hyundai and drove down to Kellers Way. The ground there was harder to dig up than I’d expected. Winter came early that year. I dropped into the grave a torn piece of a disposable cleaning glove with your fingerprint on it, taken from your kitchen trash.’
‘You framed me for Laura’s murder from the start?’ I whisper.
‘It turned out to be unnecessary,’ he says. ‘I had a stroke of luck when that serial killer, Pitt, confessed to murdering Laura. He thought he’d get money out of it. The case was closed. The coroner even gave me a body burned beyond recognition. I happened to know it was the wrong body, but I buried it anyway and put an Italian marble tombstone on top. Laura would have liked it. I played the grieving widower for a while so the gossips wouldn’t talk. And then I married you. I wanted you badly in those days, Julie. You were my obsession. Plus Alice needed a mother, and you were exceptional in that regard. You have a wonderful way with children, Julie. It’s a shame you were never able to have any of your own.’
My face stings as if he’s slapped me.
‘Marrying you wasn’t a terrible sacrifice on my part, Julie.’ He lifts up my chin again. ‘You were exquisite, flawless in those days. I don’t regret our marriage. You shouldn’t either.’
‘All these years. Everything we shared was based on lies and deceit. And murder,’ I say, shaking uncontrollably. ‘Our marriage was a sham.’
‘Sham is too strong a word. Admittedly, it did get boring after a while. I met someone, of course. Not that silly little student you abducted tonight. The police told me all about that when they brought Alice home. No, I fell in love with someone else. She’s smart. Not Laura smart, but smart enough. And very beautiful, though perhaps not as beautiful as you were in those days. She’s young, too. We’ll have children together. I want more kids. You weren’t much help in that regard. I realised a while ago that it was time to move on. There was one thing in the way.’
‘Me,’ I complete his thought. ‘You wanted to get rid of me so you could marry someone else.’
‘When a man’s first wife is murdered, it’s highly suspicious if his second wife dies unnaturally as well. One has to be patient. And when one finally does get around to it, one needs to make it look like something else. An accident, perhaps. That’s where your old beau Alex Henderson came in.’
‘You sent Alex to kill me?’ My voice catches as I recall his car swerving off the road towards me. It was as if the driver was deliberately hunting me down.
‘He wasn’t the first,’ Matt says. ‘It turns out that it’s very hard to kill you, my sweet wife.’
He proves his point by tightening his grip around my neck again until I’m light-headed. He holds the pressure while he talks, keeping me on the edge of consciousness as he whispers into my ear.
‘Alex’s predecessor killed poor Roxy before Christmas, when it was supposed to be you who died in the hit-and-run. I felt bad about Roxy. I was fond of that dog. After that, I tracked down Alex. He needed money desperately. Like all reformed addicts it wasn’t hard to get him using again, except the syringe I gave him that morning contained a drug that made him highly suggestible.’
I gasp in shock at the realisation the accident happened just the way I remembered. ‘Alex warned me as he lay dying that I was in danger and I should get away. I should have listened to him.’
‘I suppose even the scopolamine couldn’t completely override his sense of decency,’ Matt mutters. ‘If Alex had survived the crash then he wouldn’t have remembered a damn thing. Just like you don’t remember anything half the time. Not your fault really. I’ve tried every psychoactive drug in the book on you. Even the occasional dose of scopolamine to wipe your memory and make you delusional.’
‘You tried to kill me twice!’ I rasp. I am overwhelmed by the implication of what he’s told me. ‘First when Roxy was killed and then when Alex tried to run me down in Kellers Way.’
‘Three times actually,’ says Matt, rubbing his hands on my neck menacingly. I am too afraid to move. ‘I’m particularly proud of my third attempt. It was inspired. I took your asthma spray out of your bag the morning you went to the lake house and included a respiratory suppressant in your medication to trigger an asthma attack. I made sure to drain your phone battery that morning too so you wouldn’t be able to call for help. If you had an asthma attack then you’d die a straightforward, natural death. Nothing suspicious about it. Just another terrible tragedy for poor Matthew West, who has suffered so much tragedy already.’
He tightens his arm around my neck again. I feel the warmth of his body underneath my own. I struggle to get out of his grip but he has me pinned. I can’t move. The pressure on my throat is immense. As darkness engulfs me and my body falls limp, he eases the pressure and I’m back looking into his flawless blue eyes. He’s like a cat cruelly playing with a half-dead mouse before he loses interest and goes in for the kill.
‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Why did you want me dead? Why not divorce me?’
‘Why?’ he asks rhetorically. ‘Divorce was never an option. Aside from crippling alimony, who knows what a woman scorned is capable of.’
‘I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt you, Matt,’ I sob. ‘I loved you.’
‘Our marriage had nothing to do with love,’ he scoffed. ‘There was sex. The chemistry between us was amazing. But once it ran its course, I didn’t want to waste my life staying married to you. You’d lost the vitality that attracted me to you in the first place, the breathtaking beauty. And let’s face it, you were never my intellectual equal. Plus you knew too much, Julie, even if you didn’t realise it.’
I try to squirm out of his grip but he pulls me back and tightens the pressure around my throat in a silent warning.
‘The police were here for most of the night, searching for evidence that I carefully planted. Like the bag of scopolamine that killed Alex. You should have seen the look on the detective’s face when he found the ziplock bag filled with powder in your underwear drawer this evening,’ he says in a soft, silky voice. ‘It was almost as priceless as the look on Laura’s face when she realised that she was going to die.’
The paralysis that has gripped me is overtaken by a fierce rage. I turn my head and bite his arm until I taste blood. He groans in pain and loosens his grip. I elbow him hard in the solar plexus. He hisses and bends over in agony. I pull away from him and quickly remove my gun from my purse on the floor. I stand back and point the barrel at his chest with shaky hands.
‘I’ll tell the police everything I know,’ I warn him. ‘You’ll spend the rest of your life in jail.’
‘They’ll never believe you,’ he whispers through his agony. ‘You don’t have any evidence to prove it. All the evidence points to you.’
His words make my blood run cold. ‘The police think that I’m a saint. It’s you they want, Julie. It’s you who has a documented history of mental instability. It’s you who tried to kidnap and kill one of my students in a jealous rage. There’s not a chance in hell they’ll believe a word you say.’
I click the safety off my gun and aim at his chest with careful concentration. My arms are outstretched just the way I was taught. I remember the instructor’s words. Squeeze the trigger gently and press your hands together as you fire.
‘You were right earlier when you said you’re not capable of murder,’ he tells me. ‘More than that, you’d never deprive Alice of her daddy. It wou
ld break her little heart.’
I count to three and close my eyes. When I open them Matt is watching me with the same unconcerned expression. I lower the gun. I can barely see through the tears.
‘Go,’ he orders. ‘Get out of here. Tell the police about your terrible, murderous husband and his horrible crimes. Let’s see if they believe you.’
I run into the hall and unlatch the front door. I step out onto the porch and walk down the pathway until I’m blinded by a spotlight shining straight into my eyes. There’s shouting. I can’t hear the words through the hum in my ears.
Within the red-and-blue glare of police car lights, I see the familiar face of the female detective. She’s pointing a gun straight at me. I walk towards her with my gun by my side. I want to explain that there’s been a terrible mistake. That I never killed Laura. Or Alex. Another spotlight fixes on me. The brightness is agonising. I lift my hand, holding the gun to shield my eyes from the blinding lights.
The detective shouts something. I ignore it. I’m tired of the noise.
A loud bang rings out. Another sharp crack follows. I look down and see my gun by my feet. A red stain spreads on my chest. Blood is such a beautiful colour, I think to myself, as my shirt turns crimson.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Mel
The ticking of a clock high up on the wall echoed through the spartan, windowless interview room. I looked out at a metal door at the end of a long, empty corridor. The door opened with a clang. Julie West walked down the corridor towards me in an orange prison jumpsuit with her hands cuffed in front of her.
A female guard with cropped hair and a humourless face escorted her into the room. I was sitting at the end of a scuffed table. The guard attached Julie’s handcuffs to metal loops screwed onto the other end of the table. She stood behind Julie with her legs slightly open and her hands behind her back.
I motioned with my head for the guard to leave. She didn’t like it but she grudgingly went out of the room. Julie immediately straightened her shoulders. Her meekness was nothing more than the survival instinct of the incarcerated. I pushed a cup of water towards her.