Anna sat in her living room, watching the news coverage, clicking back and forth among the networks. It was national news now. Her phone was beside her on the sofa cushion. At least a dozen times, she’d picked it up to call Russ and then changed her mind and put it down again.
She hadn’t heard back from Taylor yet—and The Sally Justice Show was on in nineteen minutes.
Anna had left a voice mail with George, asking if he knew about someone at the station appearing on Sally’s program tonight. He hadn’t phoned back. Anna couldn’t believe he was still that angry at her.
There was no follow-up yet from Becky Arnett about Crazy Sandy. But Anna had hope that Sandy was just the tip of the iceberg of potential suspects in Courtney’s disappearance. It couldn’t be just Russ and her. According to the news reports, Russ hadn’t been charged with anything yet. Only one station—a competitor of KIXI-TV—had mentioned her in today’s coverage of the case, and for that, she was grateful.
The phone rang, and Anna grabbed it. The caller ID read: Russell Knoll, MD.
She muted the TV and tapped her phone screen. “How are you doing?”
“I’ve had better days. I know I shouldn’t be calling—”
“I’m glad you did. In fact, I was hoping you would before I broke down and called you first. Are you watching the news?”
“Yes. The police had me come down and identify the contents of the suitcase at around noon today. On the plus side, all of the stuff in the suitcase was stuff I reported as missing when I first talked to the cops this past weekend. So they know I’ve been telling them the truth, at least, about that. But it’s the only plus, the rest is just bad. I mean, this pretty much confirms that Courtney was murdered—as if the luminol test in the living room didn’t already make that abundantly clear.”
“What does your lawyer say?” Anna asked. It was odd to see Russ’s photo flash up on the TV screen while she was talking to him—odd and troubling.
“He said I should prepare myself. Anytime now, the police could charge me with Courtney’s murder.”
“Oh God,” she murmured. “But you’ve been cooperating with them! The fireworks in the park proved you were there when Courtney disappeared—”
“Anna, honey, the way they see it, they don’t have a body or a time of death. I had all night to kill her and dump the body someplace. Proving I was in a park in Magnolia at one in the morning doesn’t give me an airtight alibi for the night she disappeared.”
“That’s crazy. I mean, why aren’t they looking for other potential suspects? I talked to someone from Courtney’s writers’ group today. Did you know Becky?”
“The name sounds familiar. But that was three years ago.”
“Well, this Becky confirmed what you said about Courtney ripping off one of the other authors in the group. In fact, she stole from everyone, but she really burned Sandy. She was the one who had the original idea for The Defective Squad. According to Becky, Sandy was livid that Courtney used it—and Sandy’s also pretty crazy. Becky told me she wouldn’t be surprised if Sandy still held a grudge and maybe on Friday morning, she finally did something about it.”
“Yeah, I remember Courtney got a lot of flak from her.”
“Becky was supposed to e-mail me Sandy’s contact information, but I haven’t heard from her yet. You know, the police should also consider all the men Courtney’s been with, all the hearts she broke. She was no saint—despite how I played her up in her profile on TV.”
“The police know about her infidelities,” Russ said soberly. “But of course, as far as they’re concerned, that just gives me a stronger motive for killing her. But this Sandy person, I’ll be sure to tell them about her. Thanks.”
She heard him sigh on the other end. “Listen, Anna, the reason I’m calling is that I think you should contact a lawyer about this. If they come after me, I’m worried they’ll try to implicate you, too.”
“I haven’t looked into a lawyer yet. I—I’ll do that tomorrow, I promise.”
“I’ll talk to my guy and have him e-mail you a list. And don’t worry about the cost. I’m going to pay for this. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t . . .”
“Please, stop it,” she interrupted. “I knew what I was getting into when we got back together last year. I’m just as responsible as you are. You don’t have to—”
A loud knock on the door interrupted her.
Startled, Anna got to her feet. “Someone’s at the door,” she murmured into the phone. “Just a sec.” At the door, she checked the peephole. Through the slightly warped glass, she saw George standing outside. He looked like he was getting ready to knock again.
Anna unlocked the dead bolt and the lock and then flung open the door. “George . . .”
He seemed frazzled and out of breath. “Anna, I’m sorry.”
She held the phone to her chest. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
His eyes narrowed at her. “Are you on the phone with somebody?”
In response, Anna almost lied, but then she realized he knew about Russ. Everyone knew. “I’m talking to Russ.”
He nodded. “Well, I need to talk to you, too. It’s kind of important.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Do you want some privacy? Do you want me to wait out here or what?”
She opened the door wider. “I’m sorry, George. Please, come on in. Sit down. I’ll be off the phone in a minute.” She retreated to the kitchen. “Russ?” she whispered into the phone.
“I heard. Go talk to George. I was done anyway. I’ll e-mail you that list of criminal attorneys.”
“And I’ll text you the contact information for Sandy as soon as I get it,” she promised. She wanted to ask if he planned to call her again, but decided to leave it be. “I miss you,” she whispered. “Take care, okay?”
“You, too,” he said. Then he hung up.
Anna touched the phone screen to hang up, and then she took a deep breath. “Can I get you anything to drink?” she called.
“No, thanks,” George answered.
She wiped her eyes and stepped into the living room.
His arms folded, George stood by the coffee table. “I thought that you and he were finished,” he muttered. “Or was that just something you said on TV for the viewers at home?”
She frowned at him.
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“We’re finished. That’s the first time we’ve talked in a couple of days. He wants to send me a list of attorneys—just in case.”
George nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
She plopped down on the easy chair and nodded toward the sofa. “Why don’t you take a load off? You’re making me nervous standing there.”
With a sigh, George sank down on the sofa. “Listen, I got your voice mail. So this afternoon, I dropped by the station and started asking people what they’d heard about tonight’s Sally Justice Show. And Janice, the camera operator, said someone in the newsroom told this troll from The Sally Justice Show that you and I were awfully close.” George made air quotes and frowned. “Anyway, I need to apologize for what’s about to happen.”
Anna shrugged. “What are you talking about?”
“Sally Justice’s people, they got to Beebe.” He checked his wristwatch and cringed. “It’s on right now—if you want to catch the shitshow.”
Anna grabbed the remote off the coffee table and switched to the 24/7 News Channel. Sally’s show was already in progress—rehashing the same footage of police searching the water around Russ and Courtney’s dock.
“Bloody bath towels!” Sally exclaimed in voice-over. “That’s what they found in Courtney Knoll’s suitcase, the missing suitcase her husband claimed she must have packed herself the night she vanished without a trace. Does he expect us to believe that Courtney packed those bloodstained towels—along with her purse and her phone? Who packs their own phone and purse in a suitcase? And how did that suitcase end up in Lake Union? That’s what I’d like
to know.”
There was a clip of Russ and Courtney looking happy, beautiful, and glamorous together at some formal function. “Tonight, we’re going to examine Dr. Russell Knoll. Who is this man, who waited two days before reporting his wife as missing? Who is this man that we now know cheated on his beautiful, talented, deaf spouse? And what do we really know about his mistress, the disgraced TV reporter Anna Malone? You might have watched her on the news every week, doing her sweet, cute stories. But obviously, we still don’t know what she’s capable of.”
“I want to throw up,” George muttered, hunched forward on the couch.
“She’s repeating herself,” Anna pointed out. “She called me disgraced in last night’s show, too.”
“As far as we know, Dr. Russell Knoll and Anna Malone were the last two people to see Courtney alive.” Sally described their dinner Thursday evening at the Canlis restaurant as if it were a drunken brawl. Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, she recounted Russ’s narrative of what happened later that night.
“Dr. Russell Knoll, who has been two-timing his poor wife for well over a year, has asked us and the police to believe this cockamamie story,” Sally said—in a stare-down with the camera. “Just who is this man? Well, it’s safe to say that Russell Knoll has gotten by on his looks and his money for most of his overprivileged life. He was born—silver spoon planted firmly in mouth—thirty-four years ago in Bellevue, Washington, a posh suburb of Seattle. His parents were very wealthy. Anything Russ wanted, Russ got. He was the golden boy.”
While Sally described Russ’s accomplishments in high school and college, a series of photos of the handsome young jock playing basketball and baseball, and in a tuxedo at his junior prom, appeared on the screen. There was also a yearbook portrait with a long list of honors and activities beside it; and video footage of him swimming in a friend’s pool. Indeed, he came across as too good to be true. While all these wholesome images flashed across the TV screen, Sally’s tone became more ironic, and the soundtrack took on a menacing quality.
“The stalker music in the background is a nice touch,” George remarked.
“At the University of Washington, he joined a fraternity, of course, and then decided to become a doctor,” Sally said, somehow making Russ sound like a spoiled, entitled, elitist brat. To hear her talk, his medical degree might as well have been dropped in his lap.
Anna noticed Sally skipped mentioning that Russ’s parents had died in a plane crash while he’d been in medical school—probably because such a detail might have made Sally’s audience feel some sympathy for him.
“When he met Courtney Matheson, Russell Knoll had a dream job as a doctor in a plush medical clinic. Courtney was a struggling author, eking out a living teaching sign language to deaf children and their parents. They were a beautiful couple.”
A photo montage of Courtney and Russ together backed up Sally’s statement.
“You may ask yourself, how could this man—this handsome doctor, this golden boy—be capable of deception, evil, and maybe even murder. And I have three words for you: Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald. He was an honors student, a dedicated doctor, and a Green Beret hero. On the surface, MacDonald seemed to be a perfect husband and father—until one rainy night in February of 1970, when he called the military police, claiming hippies had broken into his home and brutally murdered his wife and two little girls.”
A handsome photo of Russ dissolved into a picture of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, convicted of murdering his family.
“Oh God, no,” Anna muttered. On TV, they showed black-and-white photos from the 1970 murder case, including grisly shots of the crime scene: the children’s bloodstained beds, the word PIG written in blood on the bed headboard in the master bedroom, and the bloody carpet at the foot of that rumpled bed, where Colette MacDonald’s body was found.
“Clever,” she murmured to George. “Except for that one photo of the luminol test, Sally doesn’t have any pictures connected to Courtney’s disappearance, so she’s using these—from murders committed fifty years ago.”
“Not very subtle, is it?” George said—over Sally, who was talking about how it came out in the trial that MacDonald had been unfaithful to his doomed wife.
On the TV screen, a photo of Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey MacDonald dissolved into a shot of Dr. and Mrs. Russell Knoll. Then the camera went back to Sally. “When we return, just who is Anna Malone?” she said. A clip obviously bootlegged from Anna’s profile of Courtney—showing Anna interviewing her—came up on the screen.
“Who is this woman some of us Seattleites have allowed into our living rooms at least once a week? It seemed to us that she was Courtney’s friend. Courtney apparently thought so, too. What you don’t know about local TV reporter Anna Malone will shock you! That’s next on The Sally Justice Show! Stick around!”
A commercial for an allergy medication started up, and Anna pressed the mute button of the remote. “I’m going to need a glass of wine for this,” she said, getting to her feet. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”
“What the hell,” George said with a shrug. He followed her into the kitchen. “Pour me a glass of whatever you’re having.”
Anna paused for a moment and just stared down at the kitchen counter.
“You’re dying to call him right now, aren’t you?” George asked.
She nodded. “I keep thinking of him, alone in his hotel room, watching her on TV as she makes him out to be a monster. But Russ and I had a talk on Sunday, and we agreed that it’s over. Since then, we’ve already texted each other a couple of times—and then there was the call you just walked in on a few minutes ago. I can’t keep calling him every time something like this comes up.” She turned, opened the refrigerator door, and took out a bottle of chardonnay.
George had been to her place enough times that he knew where she kept the corkscrew. He opened her utensil drawer and took it out. “I’ll bet he calls after Sally takes her potshots at you.”
She handed him the wine bottle. “Maybe. Then again, he knows I’m with you.”
“I’ll get lost if he calls.” George went to work on opening the bottle.
“No, please, don’t, George. I’m glad you’re here.” She smiled at him.
He stopped to gaze at her—with just a trace of longing in his eyes.
Anna turned away and reached for the wineglasses from the cupboard. “Did Beebe give you any indication on just how she plans to skewer me live, coast to coast?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.” He went back to twisting the corkscrew. “As soon as I found out that Sally’s people wanted to talk to Beebe, I called her—again and again. I must have left about six messages. I finally got ahold of my daughter, and April didn’t know anything except that she and Lucas got dropped off at their aunt’s house. So I talked to Beebe’s sister, Cheryl, who now thinks I’m the Antichrist—”
“Is this the same one who wouldn’t lift a finger to help with her sick mother?”
George popped open the cork. “That’s our Cheryl. All she’d tell me was that she had the kids for the evening, and Beebe would be ‘telling it like it is’ on The Sally Justice Show tonight. That’s all I know.”
He poured the wine and handed her a glass. “Are you ready for another round of Sally’s abuse?”
“I feel like I need a cigarette and a blindfold.” Anna took a swallow of the chardonnay and nodded. “Okay,” she said.
Then they headed into the living room together.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tuesday, July 14—6:38 P.M.
Leaning back in a swivel chair, Officer Ken Stoecker had four small TV monitors in front of him, all of which had split-screen images. They showed what the security cameras picked up at every exit of the Silver Cloud Inn—as well as the elevators and the two levels of the underground parking garage.
Ken was forty-four, slightly out of shape, and losing his hair. He felt he was too old and too experienced for this mindless assignment. Cushy as it was, the job seemed
more appropriate for a know-nothing rookie. He and his thirty-year-old partner, Deshawn Bailey, were keeping tabs on murder suspect Dr. Russell Knoll, now temporarily residing in room 227 of the hotel.
Knoll hadn’t been charged with his wife’s murder yet. But that was expected to happen anytime now. Meanwhile, Sweaty Betty—Ken’s nickname for Detective Kit Baumann—had decreed that a couple of cops needed to keep an eye on the doctor to make sure he didn’t skip town or kill someone else. Ken and Deshawn got the assignment. Ken had it slightly better than Deshawn, who was now in the unmarked patrol car, parked in the garage’s lower level, watching Knoll’s BMW.
Though the hotel security office was tiny, windowless, and cramped, and the security guard was a blowhard who considered himself utterly fascinating, at least Ken could get up and stretch his legs every hour. He made it a point to walk by the front desk and chat with the cute clerk, named Jen, who was working tonight.
Despite all the TV monitors in front of him, Ken started to pay more attention to the movie he’d brought up on his phone, the 1980s comedy-drama Nothing in Common. He had his earbuds in and listened as Tom Hanks told his mom, Eva Marie Saint, that his diabetic dad, Jackie Gleason, required surgery and might lose his foot.
Ken was getting into the movie and lost track of the time. But he was pretty sure he’d checked the monitors just a few minutes ago. And certainly Deshawn would have called him if he’d seen Knoll get inside his BMW and drive away.
So Ken couldn’t figure out why, on the monitor showing the lower level of the hotel’s parking garage, it looked like Knoll’s car was suddenly gone. Leaning forward, Ken squinted at the screen. He knew where the doctor’s BMW should be—in the third parking space after the support beam on the far left side of the monitor. Right now, that spot was empty.
“Shit,” he muttered, putting down his phone.
The security guard had shown him how to operate the monitors. Ken pressed the control to slow-rewind the security video for the garage’s lower level. While he watched the video back up, Ken grabbed the two-way radio: “Hey, Deshawn. Can you hear me? Over.”
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