You Can Never Tell

by Sarah Warburton

  Helen: According to both Michael and his wife’s testimony, Brady invited him over that night. Now, we do know for the past year they’d been getting together a couple times a week, working on some garden projects and yard construction and hanging out. Maybe Brady was “grooming” Michael?

  Julia: And his wife’s not around …

  Helen: We’ll get back to that in a minute.

  Julia: So Brady thought he’d have a “guys’ night out” for murder?

  Helen: It’s happened. Consider the Hillside Stranglers, cousins Bianchi and Buono; or the Tool Box Killers, Bittaker and Norris, who met in prison; or the Railway Killers, childhood friends Duffy and Mulcahy.

  Julia: But it’s a huge risk. You can’t just come out and say, “Hey, wanna commit some hideous crimes together?” He must have started by dropping little hints.

  Helen: Making comments he could laugh off as a joke.

  Julia: And that’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder, why didn’t Michael pick up on the weirdness? There had to be a creepy factor.

  Helen: Even if we allow for how charming a serial killer can be, you also have to wonder why Brady thought Michael might say yes. I mean, the other thing about serial killers is they’re supposedly good at reading people, right? Picking out likely victims. So why did Brady pick Michael as a potential murder buddy?

  Julia: Do we have his testimony?

  Helen: At first he didn’t say anything. Later he said Michael knew all along what he was doing and wanted to give it a try. But we also know Brady’s a lying liar.

  Julia: We know what Michael says happened that night, but the video evidence only shows the center of the room. There’s no way to see the whole picture.

  Helen: All those recordings are why the police knew there were more victims to find, why they knew Brady was guilty, but it’s also why they weren’t one hundred percent sure about Michael.

  Julia: If I were his wife, I’d want to be more than one hundred percent sure.

  CHAPTER

  19

  JUST BECAUSE I’D decided I needed answers didn’t mean I could get them from Michael. When he walked through the door after work, I asked, “How was your day?” Simple, innocuous, a question from the before time.

  But he hesitated, bracing himself, his shoulders rising. “Fine. The project I’m on involves lots of computer time. And traffic was a bear.”

  “Not on our street, though.”

  At his uncomprehending look, I added, “We have a neighborhood constable. Apparently reporters are not approved by the HOA, so he cleared them out.”

  Did he almost smile, or was that wistful thinking on my part? Suddenly, fiercely, I missed Michael, my best friend, the guy I looked forward to talking with at the end of every day, on the drive home from an event, after the credits rolled at the movie theater. “I also spackled some of those holes. Grace helped. How about you; did you talk to anyone?” Before, he would have told me who he’d seen, what they’d been working on, if they’d gone out to lunch.

  Now he just shook his head. And I imagined Michael hunched over his computer, trying to lose himself in the familiar work, while all around him people wondered, maybe even whispered: Have you heard? Can you believe it? Could you imagine?

  After a dinner neither of us actually ate, Michael went to the bedroom to lie down. Grace and I spent the evening alone. After I fed her and sang to her, I crept into bed beside him.

  In the dark, I could hear his measured breathing, familiar and rhythmic. But was he asleep or just pretending? I couldn’t tell.

  I dreamed again of the museum, its exhibition halls empty, lit only by the emergency lights. Somewhere Grace was alone and in danger, and I had to find her.

  I ran through a room filled with spinning paper curls cut from newspaper that caught in my hair, another with paintings of the houses in our neighborhood, a dozen almost exactly the same, each with a different title: Domestic Abuse no. 1 or Bankruptcy Study 33 or just Death (violent) 5—a house that looked like Lena’s. But I hurried past.

  Finally I entered the room with a modern take on Winged Victory again, a contemporary woman in jeans and a loose tunic wrapped in folds around her torso. Her wings weren’t marble but onyx, polished to catch the meager light, with long feathers angled sharply inward. This wasn’t Nike, goddess of victory, resolute despite the strong winds buffeting her. This was a grave marker, the angel of death.

  I faltered. At her shoulders and neck, the stone was unfinished, rough and raw. There was a plaque at her base, one I’d never seen before, and I took a step forward, squinting to make out the engraving. Two words—a name? But it was smudged with something dark. I reached out to wipe it clean, and then I heard someone cry out.

  I wheeled around. Michael stood behind me with an expression I’d never seen on him before. He smirked, just like Brady, and then he gave me a slow wink. “I’ll get the baby,” he said, and disappeared.

  I woke with my heart pounding, every muscle tensed to the point of pain.

  Someone was whimpering. Michael. His forehead furrowed, his hands pushing the bedclothes away, his head shaking: no no no. I reached out for his arm, to wake him, to reassure him and myself as well, to bring back my husband with his kind eyes and his unflappable calm. But when my fingers touched his skin, he shuddered and swung his arm out, catching me right in the face and knocking me back. Shocked, I slid off the bed with a cry, and he sat up, gasping. “What? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. You were dreaming.” Speaking felt strange, like I’d had a shot of Novocain, and I blinked back the tears in my eyes.

  But he turned on the light, squinting at me. “Kacy?”

  “I’m fine.” My voice sounded funny too, but I couldn’t tell if it was the moisture in my throat or the ringing in my ears.

  “You’re hurt.” But he didn’t sound sure; he didn’t recommend an aspirin or an ice pack. He just sat there, bolt upright, his hair mussed and his eyes glassy.

  “Everything’s okay. Just go back to sleep,” I said.

  And like a marionette with its strings cut, he collapsed, asleep.

  Everything wasn’t okay, Michael was acting so strangely, and it felt like the shadow of my smirking dream-husband was still with me, giving me that ominous wink.

  * * *

  The next morning Michael came into the kitchen, and I hastily lifted my mug of coffee, wishing I could hide my black eye behind it. He stopped, stricken. “What happened?”

  “Last night—”

  “I did that? I thought it was just a nightmare. I’m sorry, honey. Let me see.” He took my chin in his hand and tilted my face upward. “Does it hurt?”

  I shook my head, savoring the warmth of his attention. “It’s just a fancy bruise. No big deal.”

  “I’m so sorry. I took a sleeping pill, and then I dreamed …” He let go and turned away. Even in sleep, he hadn’t been able to escape what he’d seen. And now he felt guilty for hurting me on top of the guilt he already felt. And I’d seen for myself how terrified he must have been, and I wished with every atom of my being that I could banish those fears and promise him safety.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, knowing what his answer would be.

  He opened the cabinet, but instead of taking out his coffee mug, he just stood there with his back to me.

  Of course he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about it. He wished it had never happened, or that it had happened somewhere else, to someone else. And I knew firsthand how little medication could do here. A pill could dampen the anxiety, force you to sleep, but it couldn’t erase the past or dispel your demons.

  “Would you talk to someone else? A professional?”

  “Maybe.” With a flick of his hand, he shut the cabinet. “I’m going in early to work.”

  “Do you want coffee to go?”

  But he was already scooping up his computer bag and heading to the garage. “I’ll get something on the way.”

 
; “I can phone Dr. Lindsey’s office for you,” I called after him.

  The only answer was the slamming door.

  In the silence, I could feel the tension seep from my body. I’d never had to be on guard like this around Michael. From the outside, nothing had changed for us, not really. Michael and I loved each other and Grace. Michael still had his job and we had a lovely home, but the foundations of our faith in humanity were crumbling, and that made everything look as bleak as a post-apocalyptic landscape. If we hadn’t seen the truth about our friends, our closest neighbors, how could we be sure about each other?

  I was going to find out everything I could about this case and any others like it. The police wouldn’t tell us anything, the journalists were scrambling, but they didn’t know any more than I did. What made a person a killer? Why would Brady have killed Lena, if he’d killed Lena? And how could Michael and I not have known?

  Did I really know anyone?

  * * *

  On an ordinary morning, Michael would have asked how I planned to spend the day. I’d had my answer all ready: “Taking Grace to Mother Goose Story Time at the library.” And I would. Because I wasn’t a liar. I just wasn’t volunteering the whole truth.

  He hadn’t asked anyway.

  I pulled out of the driveway, pausing to savor the sight of a street free from reporters and white vans, but I couldn’t pretend things were back to normal. Yellow crime scene tape still crisscrossed Lena’s front door, and an unmarked police car was stationed in the driveway. As I turned onto the main street, I saw Rahmia on her way back from dropping Emir off at school. Under her pale-green hijab, her face was serious, and even Bibi seemed subdued. Rahmia glanced at my car, and then her eyes widened like I’d been marked with crime scene tape: Danger. I glanced in the rearview mirror, where my shiner was still abundantly clear, and I could see her concerned face retreating into the distance.

  At the library, I went up and down the shelves with Grace in her stroller—really just a lightweight set of wheels and a handle that snapped onto her car seat. I filled the bottom with books about murderers and the murdered, the psychology of violence, psychopaths and how to recognize them. All the things someone like Dr. Lindsey must have studied. On one of these pages, there had to be an answer.

  But after I checked them out, I realized I couldn’t take these books home. Even having them in my car was risky.

  I texted Elizabeth: I need help with something. Can I come over?

  Of course. Don’t use the buzzer, just knock. Theo must be sleeping. Elizabeth wasn’t a walk-right-in kind of person, unlike Lena. None of us were anymore. Even before Brady, there had been stories of home invasions, people tied up while their houses were ransacked, people shot as they answered the door, people followed into their garages.

  So it was a relief to knock softly on Elizabeth’s door and hear her undo the dead bolt. I set Grace in her car seat just inside and ran back to get the armload of books.

  Elizabeth looked from my face to the stack in my arms. “What’s going on?”

  I could feel a flush rising. Would she think I was a freak, a voyeur getting off on the grisly details of other crimes, no better than the women who whispered about me in the supermarket or texted each other any new tidbit they’d heard? There wasn’t any excuse I could think of, nothing I could say except the truth.

  “I have to know, have to understand more about what happened. But if I do this at home, I’m worried it will upset Michael.”

  She tapped her own cheekbone. “Your eye, what happened?”

  “I fell out of bed. Last night.” After Michael hit me. But in his sleep. There was no way I could explain that wouldn’t sound like a lie. Even what I’d just said sounded so fake. “It looks worse than it is.”

  One corner of her mouth tightened. She didn’t believe me.

  “Really,” I added. “I was having a bad dream, and I started flailing. I must have caught the edge of the nightstand.”

  “Okay,” she said. Had she bought my sort-of-true story, or was she just reluctant to push the issue? Either way, she added, “Tell me what’s going on with these books. You want to understand what Brady did? Like the details, or”—her gaze fell on the top book—“what?”

  “Why he did it. And about Lena.” And Michael, I thought but didn’t say. If I didn’t know anything about people, if I made friends with liars and thieves and murderers, how could I trust my judgment about my husband? Despite my doubts, my heart yearned for Michael, the way he’d rubbed my back when I wouldn’t get out of bed in the depths of my depression, the careful, surprised way he’d held Grace that first time, and the way he’d clutched me close when we’d gotten home from the police station. I believed him. I trusted him. But I’d been wrong before. “I want to know what might have happened with Lena,” I added hastily.

  I couldn’t tell from Elizabeth’s expression what she thought about Lena. Dead, complicit, got-what-was-coming-to-her, or some combination of the three. Then she gave a little nod, and I knew that whatever Elizabeth’s opinion of Lena, she was on my side. “I can help, if you want. I mean, I’m still not completely sure what you’re looking for, but I’ll try to help.”

  * * *

  By midafternoon, Elizabeth and I hadn’t found anything that gave me answers. I could imagine Dr. Lindsey asking, “Now what answer could there be that would satisfy you? Do you think there is an acceptable answer?”

  But there had to be. There had to be a reason some people were bad, a way to identify them and explain their crimes. Otherwise … on the other side of otherwise loomed a chasm, a deep pit into which I couldn’t afford to fall.

  The babies lay next to each other on a quilt, their feet kicking. Theo could already rock from side to side, pausing at the farthest point for a long moment when he might have rolled over, but he didn’t, not yet. Grace waved her hands at the bright baby toys dangling from a soft padded arch over the quilt. She looked like she was casting a tiny spell, trying to shift the toys despite being unable to touch them.

  “It’s getting late.” Elizabeth put her hands on the small of her back and stretched her shoulders. Between us the stack of books now sprouted tags, each marking a case that was remotely like Brady’s: blue for psychology of serial killers, yellow for forensics, red for biographical similarities—suburban, construction workers, married couples. “What should we do with these?

  “Can I leave them here?” I didn’t want to ask her to lie to Wyatt, and I wouldn’t lie about them to Michael, but I also didn’t want either of them to know. And that made me feel a weight of shame and guilt I hated.

  Elizabeth didn’t blink. “Of course. I’ll put them in the guest room.” She didn’t say that Wyatt wouldn’t see them there, because she wasn’t hiding them, but she wasn’t going to leave them lying around either. Her profile was inscrutable. She was here, doing something she might never have done, because she hadn’t wanted me to be alone. That was more than a spark; that was steel, to put a friend first.

  “You never liked Lena.” I was testing the waters. It wasn’t Elizabeth’s way to say something unkind or unnecessary. But I’d be able to tell by the things she didn’t say. There was a habit she had of pausing, and I’d grown to see that was her way of mentally counting to ten. My father would like Elizabeth. He always recommended using the three questions: Does this have to be said? Does it have to be said now? Does it have to be said now by me?

  And of course, my sisters and I would continue our barrage of accusations and defenses, screaming our inconsequential manifestos at each other, because nothing had to be said by us at any time, so we might as well say it all at the top of our lungs the minute it crossed our minds.

  And Elizabeth paused, the stack of books in her arms. I could feel something gathering in her. Did I want her to say she’d never liked Lena? That Lena was too brash, too loud, too judgmental, definitely the kind of person who’d end up on the nightly news? Maybe hearing that would make it okay for me to be angry; maybe it would
make me want to defend Lena. Maybe it would be an indictment of me, the kind of person who hadn’t seen the real Lena, who’d either been taken in or been complicit.

  But all Elizabeth said was, “I didn’t really know her.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  BACK AT HOME, I was on my laptop while Grace pushed up on her forearms and then rocked on her little tummy. I sat on the floor, my back against the sofa.

  A text buzzed on my phone. For a moment my heart leaped, as if I expected it to be Lena, but of course it wasn’t. And then the wave of grief pressed up, rising in me until I could feel the heat of tears and my vision blurred. It wasn’t fair. My best friend was gone. Impatiently, I swiped at my eyes. I was lucky that Michael was alive, that we had Grace and a home and an income. We had been so close to danger, only a few feet away, and we’d survived.

  I glanced down and read a message from Elizabeth: I don’t know if this is what you were looking for, but there’s an online crime forum discussing the case. She’d included a link.

  And I clicked on it.

  I knew there was a world on the internet beyond comments on articles and reviews of restaurants. I’d been in online forums for art historians, but this was something else. Elizabeth had sent me to a site that offered discussions of thousands of crimes—current, centuries old, unsolved, famous, fictional. And it looked like every kind of person had a chat space specifically devoted to them. On my art historian forums, I might have found a neoclassicism discussion and one on Banksy and one on unionizing museum employees, but here there was a discussion group for forensic breakthroughs, another on a new theory of Jack the Ripper, and one titled Serial Killer in Sugar Land. In order to post, or to view the full profile of anyone who did, I’d have to register, but I could view the site anonymously.

  At least I hoped I could. The camera on my laptop had been covered up ever since Michael purged every electronic camera and listening device from our home. And surely my IP address wouldn’t out my identity. My finger hovered, but I didn’t enter the Sugar Land forum. There was a reason I’d gone to the library first. Books were safe, static like a painting in a frame. What lived on the internet was a dangerous mix of investigative photography and in-your-face performance art. It had taken me so long to scrape the stench of internet troll off my soul. Was I strong enough to dive back in?