Deon hands me a tube of triple antibiotic cream and some bandages. “Does that mean you’re leaving?”
A smarter woman would, but then again, a smarter woman would have options. With no transportation, little cash, and a desperate need for normalcy, I shake my head because I have no choice but to stay—well, I have some choice, but none I like better than this. I’ll pretend for as long as I’m able that I had made better decisions.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO, I wasn’t sure where this was all headed. Vern. The investigation. Our marriage. I convinced myself I could flee, start over, and forget where and who you were. Forgive myself for what I know, in my heart, I had to do. I considered adopting a nom de plume and pressing forward with The Perfect Suspect. I imagined faking my own death, and when they let you out of prison—which they’ll have to, because you’re innocent—you’d forgive me because you’d have both mine and Matthew’s life insurance payouts with which to settle the debts you’ll never otherwise be able to.
Maybe you’d take pity on me and bankroll my disappearance, as much to get on with your life as for me to get on with mine.
Maybe there are easier ways to be done with me. Perhaps, rather than collect a quiet payout, you’d settle for vengeance because the satisfaction is worth more to you than money. You’re an artistic thinker who believes commerce is trite until the collection notices appear. But it’s more likely that you’ll pursue me as relentlessly as you have Hannah Harman these past twelve years. That she came to you in the end probably matters less than the fact that you never gave up on her in the first place.
I could be your new obsession.
I killed your son after all, and what kind of father would you be to overlook that? It’s easy, now that the obligation is over, to think in these terms; to equate vindication with excellent parenting.
Whether I go or stay—run or turn myself in—the outcome is the same. Intentional or not, I am a murderer. It hurts to admit because I consider myself a good person, but someone is dead.
Deep down, I might’ve known it would one day be Matthew or me. Or you. Or both of us. After all the threats and harsh words exchanged, the violent outbursts and psychiatric medications, hospitalizations, and accusations, something had to give. I’d placed the knife in my nightstand for when it did, which begs the question whether preparation and premeditation is the same thing. Legally, the distinction is critical.
Probably morally, too, which is where The Perfect Suspect comes in.
I turn on my laptop and call up my manuscript, which explores the complications of blended families, of second marriages and infidelity, of success and failure. This is our struggle, filtered through a poignant lens of self-exploration; a cautionary tale with which others may well identify.
Only others don’t matter now.
This story is for you, upon your release, and I hope it explains the things I doubt you will ever give me a chance to. Maybe this has been my reason for writing it all along. Not for fame or financial gain, though those things would have been nice, but for there to finally be honesty between us.
I contemplate the yet-unwritten ending, which has thus far been too painful to get down, and make a first pass. I need to come to terms with what happened before meeting with an attorney, which makes the writing more or less a dry run for my legal defense.
Two thousand words detail my fear, the struggle, and the tragic outcome of that night. I am careful to avoid grim details, but as I read back what I’ve written, it doesn’t seem fair. You asked Deon for specifics, because on some level you needed to understand what Matthew might have endured. I can only make conjectures on physical pain, so rather than assume anything, I write what I know. The first blow went unacknowledged by Matthew, either because of endorphins or surprise, but did nothing to end his assault on me. Unlike mine on him, it was clearly personal. It wasn’t only you he blamed, nor only you he wanted dead. I did what I had to do. There was no purpose in my actions, only instinct. I needed what was happening to stop, and I brought the blade up and down in blind sequence, losing count of how many times I might have missed or connected until the coup de grace, the neck wound, which caused Matthew to briefly gargle his own blood before bleeding to death on our hallway floor. That part was fast, too fast for me to call nine-one-one and expect anyone to save him. I know this won’t make you sleep any better, but you can stop questioning whether Matthew suffered.
Whether or not I would have wanted him to, he did.
All I knew at the time was that someone meant to kill me.
Someone, not Matthew, a fact I reiterate at least twice in the hopes that, rather than focusing on what I did, you can see the reasons why I might have had to do it.
There aren’t words for the terror I felt, not that can make you see past the anger you will surely harbor toward me, but I’ve tried. I’ve been forthcoming with details about what alarmed me and when, and that there might have been other options, had I known to expect him. I might have fled. I might have had time to alert police. I could have called Deon. As much as I imagine you’ll wish the absolute worst for me during my time in prison, you have to understand that you could have prevented this.
Protecting your lies and livelihood, as always, took precedence for me.
I e-mail you the completed draft, hoping that when forensics finally returns your hardware, it will be with this message intact and that you’ll look past your anger and read it.
All of these words can’t have been for nothing, and it is in sending this to you that I accept that my time as a free woman is growing short.
Next, I search local criminal defense attorneys, and I’m shocked by the ease with which I compile my shortlist from the kinds of reviews I’d normally use to select a hotel room or a comfortable pair of slippers. I instantly discount those with fewer than three stars, recognizing a distinct lack of five-star law firms because justice isn’t perfect.
It’s easier for people to place blame on poor courtroom procedure than it is to accept the wrongdoing that landed them there in the first place.
There are nine top firms in the greater tri-city area, and based on gender alone, I am able to cut my list by two-thirds. I want a female lawyer, preferably someone with older children, who has dealt with tantrums and puberty and who has experienced the inner struggle that comes from parenting when no answer seems like the right one.
I need to be understood, now more than ever.
I settle on four-star Karen Carr, an experienced attorney with three children. The oldest of who, in the accompanying family photograph, has the telltale sagging of someone with ear plugs and tattoos peeking out from his shirt sleeves. Someone’s tried hard to make this rebellious boy appear conservative, and if stereotypes hold, I just know she’s had trouble with this one. He stands apart from the others, not only physically—there is a gap between him and the man I can’t imagine is his father—but in appearance. Unlike the predominantly blue-eyed brood, this boy’s eyes are dark. His hair is, too, when the others are shades of red and blond. It’s in my nature to contrive stories, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, Karen Carr is the perfect fit for an imperfect problem. I arrange for the consultation after which I may or may not turn myself in.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
I WISH I COULD TELL you that accepting blame is liberating, but that hasn’t been my experience. Acknowledging blame isn’t going to be any easier, but I realize the time is nearing for me to do so in the instant Deon walks through the door wearing a look of hurt and disappointment. He sees me—I mean really sees me now—for the calculating, selfish woman I am.
A murderess, whether or not I ever intended to be.
A survivalist who has exploited him, which calls into question everything I might have said or done in these past few months. I wish I could defend every word, but now it’s time to be honest—at least about what Deon and I will never be.
“Ansley Davis is at the station,” he says. “She alibied Ber
t for the night of Matthew’s murder.” Last I knew, she was restricted to an inpatient mental health ward, so calling this a surprise would be an understatement. “She says Bert was at her house the entire night, working to get Matthew to visit him there. She also says any of her immediate neighbors could corroborate his car being in her driveway.”
I’m well aware of how nosy Hannah’s neighbors are, and isn’t that hearsay or speculation or something? As far as alibis go, I was at a hotel, avoiding paint fumes. And what the hell happened to Deon being on my side? To being in love with me, blindly when necessary, and overlooking things like infidelity and murder?
“From what I understand, Ansley’s been recently hospitalized.” I circle my ear with my finger, knowing that stronger than Deon’s suspicion is his need for me to be innocent because how could he, a detective, have missed it if I wasn’t?
Unfortunately, Deon’s never been much of a case closer. Even as he stands before me, thinking he knows everything, he knows nothing. He has no idea who Ansley really is or why any of this has happened. “Released,” he said. “Early this morning, and she’s pregnant.”
“The baby is supposedly Matthew’s. I know. She sent Bert an ultrasound photo from the hospital.” I’m not the one out of the loop. “She also confirmed that Bert had been paying her regularly, and that they’re working on a book.”
“I bet she didn’t say what it’s about, though, did she?”
We’re all liars.
We all have secrets.
We all have self-serving agendas.
“She didn’t, but she mentioned you specifically when she told me. She says you took something from her house she wants back.” Marjorie’s box of supporting evidence, which is ironically probably in an evidence locker along with everything else the police confiscated when they searched our home. If Hannah wants it, she’ll have to get it from them when and if the time comes.
“Do you know what she’s talking about?” Deon asks.
“Of course not,” I lie, even though I said I wouldn’t. I don’t know what Hannah suddenly has against me, but I’m the one trying to keep this family together.
“She also says she believes she is the last person to talk to Matthew before he died”—he pauses—“right before he went into your house.”
“Went in, right.” I scoff. It’s more like he broke in, because I assure you, the doors—including the one to the bedroom—were locked. “What am I supposed to say here?”
“I don’t know. That she’s lying?” he says. “That this is all part of some scheme cooked up by Bert’s lawyer to explain the payoffs?”
“When did Bert get a lawyer?” Among my many failings as a wife, leaving you unrepresented and to rot behind bars for a crime I committed might be my worst transgression yet. Might be. Estranged or not, it probably pales in comparison with me killing your son.
“A couple of days ago, his agent sent Jacob McKinnon.”
Had I wanted a male attorney, Jacob McKinnon would have topped the list. It is unsurprising Tim would have hired the best with an investment to protect. I don’t respond.
“But you didn’t answer me,” Deon says. “Tell me you weren’t at the house that night, and that you haven’t been using me to interfere with this investigation. Tell me Vern put the right person away, and this isn’t an escalation of the crazy bullshit between Bert and you that has gone on for years when any sane person could see you should’ve divorced. Tell me it wasn’t you.”
Deon is asking for a profession of innocence that I can no longer give.
I am not who he thought I was.
I’m not who I thought I was, either.
“I can’t.” It’s all I can muster. I’m sick of keeping track of who knows what, and which details make me look more or less guilty, and which shift the blame onto you. I did interfere. I have at every turn, and I’ve tried to reallocate the blame. Yes, maybe I even set a few people up, but you weren’t one of them. I have Vern to thank for that.
“Can’t what? Tell me you’re innocent? Harper, what did you do?”
What I had to.
The knee-jerk reaction is nearly true, though I didn’t have to go as far as I did. A lifetime of latent resentment may have factored into my actions. A better person might have found an alternative.
I want to be someone who doesn’t hold grudges, who doesn’t cling to fear so completely as to obsess. I don’t want to have wished Matthew dead, but my feelings for and about him are too complicated to dissect under this much stress.
Rather than confess what Deon should already know—I mean, I did walk to his house, turning up nearly dead on his doorstep, and he didn’t even ask where my car might be—I refuse to say anything. He can’t know what I did, not for certain, when he will undoubtedly be questioned, and while it’s good to have him on my side to this point, there’s no one I need more right now than my lawyer.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
HAVING A LAWYER MEANS that I also have to pay her.
If being a writer has taught me anything, it’s that no one likes to work for free—or for what amounts to little, in the case of my first and only novel. I would hate to have calculated that hourly rate. If we hadn’t sustained our lifestyle so long on your success, I wouldn’t have thought anyone earned more than scraps in this business, but this affliction, at least in our household, seems unique to me. The surrogate parent. The housewife. The quitter. So much has been made about money recently that I’m beyond tired of the subject, but it’s a necessarily evil, if not the root of all, and something Deon’s said shows me a way out. Not out of trouble, but out of the monetary vortex in which I find myself floundering.
Poetic justice, if such a thing exists.
Deon and I say nothing to one another after my refusal to plead innocent. He’s probably shocked. More likely he has no idea what to do next. He has questions he doesn’t want to have to ask, and I have answers I’m not willing to give, and somewhere between the things neither of us wants to say is the stalemate from which I walk away.
I know Deon well enough to know he won’t chase me. He needs time to digest and accept that he has been aiding and abetting—and yes, pining for—a killer. He needs distance, as do I with as many things as need done by morning, and I wait until he’s gone to the bathroom to snatch his car keys, gathering my things quickly and leaving.
I don’t believe for a second that, under these circumstances, Deon has any interest in reporting his car stolen. Particularly not by me, someone with more intimate ties to the police than anyone will be comfortable with when this is over. Deon turning me in at this point would only invite the kind of trouble he’s obsessed with steering clear of, a career-altering mess that may be unavoidable for him now, regardless of what kind of damage control he attempts.
Add grand theft auto to my running list of unintentional charges, because I’m again on the run. No better at it than last time, and already seeing the places where my haphazard plan is set to fail. There are clues leading to my whereabouts, to Deon, the friend anyone should be able to see is more-than. What will he say when the police retrace my most recent steps and find his car missing? Will he lie? And if he does, what happens when the truth comes out because it always does?
It doesn’t matter.
I won’t let him be caught.
Even someone as terrible at evading capture as I am can hold out for fewer than twenty-four hours.
I keep my head down and drive the speed limit. Not a mile over. I set the cruise control on straight-aways, signaling every turn and lane change. I’m a model driver, maybe for the first time in my life, because I can’t risk being pulled over. It’s with an air of relief that I park, praying this isn’t the move Vern expects me to make.
I have come to realize that if he is not one step behind, he is one step ahead. Running into him at the hospital could have been disastrous. I’m thankful to have dodged him, but his visit with Hannah has become the beginning of the end of everything.
I sc
an the lot for his car and for police cruisers with long or too many antennas or low-profile light bars, anything colored dark blue or black. Anyone suspicious-looking who might be tailing me is suspect. I am alone, as I should be, and I hate the feeling not only of being the center of this investigation but enduring it unsupported. I don’t even have Deon, and I hope meeting with an attorney brings the relief that so far has evaded me. I need a day off from the unending cycle of panic. I need a glass of wine and a hot bath. I’d kill to escape into a good book right now. Well, I wouldn’t kill. Not again, but there’s nowhere I’d rather be than poolside in Mexico, sipping a margarita.
That could have been my life.
Pool boys, sunshine, and writing.
Tequila, mariachi, and aguas frescas.
I could have been the gringa that got away, but instead I’m dumb old Harper.
Pity party of one.
Stuck.
I’ve waited too long, over-thought everything and border patrol has surely been alerted. Even if I tried to flee, I wouldn’t make it far, so I won’t because this is not the new plan. The new plan includes a trip to Key Bank, where I request to see the manager. She’s a plain woman, not unlike Marjorie from twelve years ago: five-feet tall in kitten heels, and wearing a skirt suit that should fall low on the thigh. The hem settles mid-knee-cap, where no skirt should sit, and I can’t help thinking this unintimidating, soft-spoken woman must be horrible under pressure. Fortunately, it seems I won’t need to apply any. She, perhaps not “gladly” but efficiently, closes the joint account from which you had been paying Hannah, the one you foolishly put my name on.
I convert a portion of the balance into a check for my attorney, and take the remainder in cash: thirty thousand dollars in total, plus interest.
How you pay Tim back isn’t my problem anymore. In fact, none of your problems are. No matter what happens next, you and I are finished. I am guilty of something from which our already ailing marriage cannot recover. That I am not sadder tells me I don’t even want it to.
Where We Went Wrong Page 22