As Long as We Both Shall Live

by JoAnn Chaney

  “Matt Evans told us today that his wife faked her death and is trying to set him up for murder,” Spengler said.

  “And I believe it,” Reid said. “But I’d guess it’s not just her—it’s both of them in on it. They’ve been careful enough for the last twenty years, but I’ve found that if a person gets away with something once, they’ll most likely try it again.”

  Reid flipped over the paper in front of him and slid it across the table. It was a photograph, blown up to eight-by-ten, a nice glossy of a woman standing in front of a tree, her hair blowing lightly in the wind. A posed photo taken by a professional.

  Spengler took her phone out and pulled up one of the pictures of Marie Evans she had saved and looked back and forth between the two. Marie’s hair was darker than the other woman’s, and she was much thinner and had more lines in her face, but both of them were smiling, both had their heads tilted a little to the right as they gazed into the camera. And both women had a small scar on their chins, almost perfectly in the center. Small things, but that’s life. That’s police work.

  “The devil’s in the details,” Loren said. He sounded like he was going to be sick.

  “That’s right,” Reid said. “This picture was taken a little over twenty years ago.” He tapped a bent pointer finger against the photo he’d laid on the table. “That’s a young Janice Roscoe, about a year before she married Matt Evans, and about a year before she faked her own death and started going by another name. And it seems to me that she’s back to her old shenanigans.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  “We believe you, Mr. Evans,” Spengler said. They’d had Evans brought out of holding and back into an interview room once Abe Reid had departed for the warmth of Arizona. “Your wife is still alive and is attempting to set you up for murder.”

  Evans looked sullenly at Spengler. He’d stayed mostly silent since talking to his lawyer.

  “I think you’re saying it wrong, Spengler,” Loren said. He grabbed a chair and dragged it around the table until he could sit right beside Evans. Uncomfortably close, their knees practically touching.

  “What should I be saying, then?”

  “He hasn’t had only one wife,” Loren said. “Evans here’s been married twice. Two different women. Both dead. Supposedly. Unless…” he trailed off, watching Evans closely. He stared back with no reaction. One of the best poker faces Loren had ever seen, except for Gallo. Gallo had been the best, by far. A master.

  “Unless what?” Spengler asked.

  Loren waited to see if Evans would fill in the silence. Nothing.

  “You remember Detective Abe Reid, don’t you?” Loren asked. “Old guy who handled the investigation on your first wife’s murder?”

  Evans nodded slightly.

  “He was a smart ol’ dude,” Loren said. “Noticed everything, took a lot of notes. People thought he was nuts, but he had some good ideas. He wasn’t completely bought in on the idea that O’Neil had killed your wife—did you know that?” Loren waited for a response, didn’t get one. “He didn’t think you were being completely honest about what happened. You’d left out important bits. Reid had a dead woman, your story about a guy breaking in, and O’Neil shot through the head. All wrapped up neatly with a bow. Easy to just close up the case and move on.”

  “Easy to follow, easy to swallow,” Evans murmured.

  “Hey, that’s how your friend Reid put it,” Loren said, leaning back in his chair and slapping a hand against his thigh with delight. “That’s exactly the idea. The best joke is the one easiest to tell, you know what I mean? Simple enough that even a drunk deaf-mute could follow it.”

  “Loren?” Spengler said, frowning. “Maybe you could get to the point?”

  “You got an appointment to get to, Spengler?”

  “No. But your constant yapping is giving me a headache.”

  Loren smiled and turned back to Evans, leaned close.

  “So Marie is still alive, like you said,” Loren said softly. “You told us ‘I didn’t kill my wife’ and that was the truth, because you’ve only ever had one wife. And she’s alive. Marie is alive, and so is Janice. Because Marie and Janice are the same person, isn’t that right? Twenty years ago Janice faked her death, and she decided to do it again.”

  Evans blinked, surprised. It was the first real reaction they’d gotten from him.

  “I know your lawyer said to not tell us anything else, so let’s play a little game,” Loren said. “If I’m right, if Marie and Janice are the same person and she’s still alive out there, don’t say anything.”

  Evans didn’t say a word.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  September 10, 2018

  The press conference the police pulled together was set up outside the station, on the concrete steps that led up to the wide double doors. There was a lectern on the landing, a cheap wood thing kept in the utility closet for occasions like this, weighed down at the base with a sandbag to keep it from tumbling down the steps and blowing away. On the front was a cutout of the city’s emblem, and standing behind it was Detective Marion Spengler.

  She looked terrified, the people on the steps said. Reporters and journalists and cameramen were gathered there, waiting for a snippet to publish about the woman pulled out of the river. And about Matt Evans, because the entire city knew he had been arrested, that he had been taken into custody for the murder of his wife. No one knew the entire story—most reports had come from a woman working at the coroner’s office, who dished to a reporter from the Post, who then quickly spread the word—but that’s how life is, isn’t it? You never know the whole story.

  But the police were going to comment now, which meant that there’d been some new development, and the crowd waited anxiously. None of them had ever gotten a statement from Detective Spengler, who was new to Homicide. Ralph Loren was a familiar face, although Loren had been banned from speaking to the media after an unfortunate incident years before, when a sixteen-year-old girl had been found in a ditch, raped and strangled. The victim’s mother had agreed to speak to the media, which had been a mistake—the questions had somehow become about the girl’s sexual activities before her death, and what she’d been wearing on the night of her murder. And Detective Loren, who’d been standing beside the mother as she began weeping and the questions kept coming, finally intervened.

  Are you saying this girl deserved this? he’d shouted into the crowd of reporters. Without waiting for an answer, he’d kicked over the lectern and dug a handful of change from his pockets, then started flinging the coins into the crowd. A single video of the incident existed, and in it Loren looks like a man trying to skip rocks over water, only he’s throwing coins with deadly accuracy. There were reports of broken cameras and eyeglasses, and one woman claimed to have gotten a black eye from a quarter. The Denver PD paid out on any claims, removed Loren from that particular case, and agreed to never let him speak at a press conference again.

  But Spengler was fresh blood, and no one was quite sure what to expect.

  “I hope she doesn’t throw up,” someone said. There was a smattering of laughter.

  It had rained that morning but had let up just before lunch, leaving the sidewalks and streets dark with moisture. It was cool out, but Spengler was warm. She’d never liked crowds, didn’t like public speaking. She’d barely passed that class in college and now here she was, dozens of eyes—both real and digital—trained on her.

  Keep it simple, stupid. That’s what Loren had told her. Just like we practiced. Easy for him to say from his spot standing behind her.

  Afterward, she could never remember her walk up to the lectern that’d been set up on the steps, a slim wooden thing with a microphone on top, like a cherry balancing at the peak of an ice cream sundae, or even the long moments she spent standing in front of the reporters. She wasn’t thinking about Matt and Marie Evans in those moments, or even Riley Tipton. Instead, she was thinking about men. She’d seen men do terrible things, arrested and testifie
d against them, but no one ever realized a woman could be just as terrible, and when they were everyone was surprised. But times were a-changing, weren’t they? After consulting with his lawyer, Evans had told them his wife was a killer, cold and calculating, she’d roped him into faking her death and then kept him hostage to it for twenty-plus years. She’d killed that first woman and made it look like it was her, and she’d plugged a bullet into his shoulder to make it look like they’d been attacked. She’d tried to kill her boss, she’d killed Riley, and now she was setting him up for murder.

  I know she’s alive because she called, Evans said. When I was in the morgue with Riley. Called my cell just to gloat. She always has to get the last word.

  Spengler had checked and it was true—Evans had received a call from an unknown number during the short time he’d been alone with Riley Tipton’s remains. The call lasted two minutes. Had it been Marie, watching her husband from somewhere nearby, wanting to poke him?

  Women were called the fairer sex, sometimes the lesser sex. They were called delicate and weak and frail. If you wanted to insult someone, you’d tell them not to act like a girl. Don’t run like a girl, throw like a girl, cry like a girl. But when something awful happened it was easy to blame a woman. Women were seductresses, temptresses, witches. They lured men in and turned them into pigs, or their vaginas were lined with teeth and they’d chomp men alive. These women were drowned, they were burned at the stake, they were called hysterical and given lobotomies and shock treatment. A woman could be an easy scapegoat. Or they were ignored, and that might even be worse. Looked over, told to quiet down, to keep their mouths and their legs shut. It started young, and it never stopped, did it?

  But it wasn’t that Spengler thought Janice Marie Evans was an innocent. No, quite the opposite. There was a ring of truth around Evans’s story, but there were areas that seemed gray and blurred. Spots where the puzzle pieces didn’t quite line up to make a clear picture.

  Was Marie Evans innocent?

  Nope.

  But Spengler didn’t think she was the only guilty one.

  Matt Evans declined to have his lawyer present in the interview room while he told them everything. The whole truth, nothing but the truth. His own words. It was, perhaps, the biggest sales pitch of his life, and he had to give it his all. But it’s one thing to say you’ll do something and another to actually go through with it, and Spengler thought he might’ve been struck with a few flights of fancy as he recounted the last twenty or so years he’d spent with his wife. He made himself out to be a saint and Marie the villain—good me, bad her—but one side of the story wouldn’t cut it. Every cop knows there’s three sides of every story. His side, her side.

  And then there’s the truth.

  Spengler didn’t remember later how the crowd shifted uncomfortably as they waited for her to speak, wondering if there was something wrong. She snaked her hands around the top of the lectern and dug her nails into the wood. There was her own husband and there was Matt Evans and there was her father and there was every other man on the planet, and some of them were bad and some were good but most were just okay. Nothing special. Be a man, that’s what people said when they wanted you to be tough and get control of your life, but that was bullshit. She was tougher than most men she knew, and she had a feeling Marie Evans was, too.

  You squeeze all their balls now.

  She cleared her throat.

  “It was widely reported that Matthew Evans had been placed under arrest for suspicion of murdering his wife,” Spengler said suddenly, the words bursting out of her like water through a broken dam. “We did take Mr. Evans into custody several days ago, but we’ll be releasing him today.”

  A murmur swept through the crowd, then stilled. Spengler had read about cases where press conferences were used to a certain advantage—most killers were ego whores and loved to follow the news about themselves—and the media had been used to communicate a message. Send a message, or draw the killer out.

  “We don’t believe Mr. Evans has committed any sort of crime,” Spengler said. “We apologize to Mr. Evans for any inconvenience. Our investigation will continue in a different direction.”

  Send a message, that’s how some cops used press conferences. Appeal to a person’s humanity. But Spengler didn’t give a damn about anyone’s humanity. She wanted to catch a killer. Draw them out into the open.

  Both of them.

  I told you I didn’t do anything wrong, Evans had said that morning when they’d gone in to tell him he’d be released soon. But Spengler had seen the flash of surprise in his eyes. He hadn’t been sure they’d believe him. This is all Marie’s doing.

  She’d been there when Riley Tipton was pulled from the water. Floater, that’s what they called those victims. The body had been swollen up like an inner tube. More cushion for the pushin’, she’d heard a tech on the scene say, but his laughter dried up when he saw her staring at him. She’d been watching, so he’d behaved himself. But that was people for you. They acted right when they knew they were being watched. The only guy she’d ever met who acted the same under any circumstance was Loren, and that was because he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.

  There was nothing worse than a man laughing behind his hand at a woman, she thought. A man thinking he’s getting away with whatever he wants, that he’s so smart, that he’s pulling the wool right over everyone’s eyes.

  That’s what Evans was doing. Laughing.

  “Mr. Evans will be immediately returned to his home and has said he will cooperate fully with our investigation,” she said.

  This whole thing was less about sending a message and more about setting out the bait.

  “What about the woman found in the Three Forks River?” one of the reporters shouted. “Has she been identified as Marie Evans?”

  Spengler paused and smiled. She’d been practicing it in the mirror. She’d practiced that same smile before telling Evans they believed him and he’d be released. Kept her lips relaxed, lots of teeth. Practice makes perfect, after all, and if things were going to play out the way they wanted, Evans had to think they’d swallowed his story.

  Swallowed it and licked the bowl clean.

  “We will release more information as it comes to light,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Marie’s not going to just turn herself in, if that’s what you think, Evans had said. He was different once he thought they were on the same side. Confident and opinionated. She liked him better when he was quiet and scared. She’s not stupid. She’s out there, watching. Probably laughing at me. And what are you fucking cops doing about it?

  That was what Spengler was counting on—that Marie was watching all this unfold, that she’d see her husband had been seemingly cleared of wrongdoing in her death. She’d think they were all laughing at her, that her husband had gotten away scot-free, and she’d be infuriated. Female black widows eat their mates once they’re done with them, and that was what Spengler was hoping for—that the spider would learn her mate was still alive and well and come out of her hidey-hole, that she’d show up in her web again, hunting for her man.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  September 11, 2018

  Matt slept through the night like a baby, hard but fine, even though he was sure he’d be up all night trying to figure out what was going on. But he hadn’t gotten much sleep over the last few days and was exhausted. It was nearly impossible to sleep on the hard cot in the cell where they’d kept him for two days—there were the noises from the other prisoners and the footsteps of the guards that echoed up and down the bare hallway, and there was his own brain, not wanting to shut up, yammering on, asking if he’d made the right choice in talking to the cops. His lawyer had advised against it, but he’d done it anyway. A cop dropped him off at home and he’d gone inside and made himself a turkey sandwich and then went to bed, was asleep before he could even manage to climb under the covers. Back in his own bed, in his own home, it was difficult not to be comfortable.<
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  The bed was a king—California king—and he’d never before realized how much room there was without Marie in it, but that was how life with her had always been. She’d come into a room and suck all the air from it, all the life, like a black hole. It was part of the reason he’d fallen for her to begin with. She’d sucked him right in.

  He might’ve even slept better than usual since Marie wasn’t there to press her cold feet up against his legs, or keep him up with the light of her phone when she woke up at three in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. She’d been doing that a lot over the last year—he’d tried to get her to take sleeping pills to help her make it all the way through the night without waking, but she’d refused. Typical Marie. She didn’t even like to take aspirin.

  I’m not trying to poison you, he’d say.

  How can I be sure about that?

  He was confused when he first woke up, because the sun was out and the birds were chirping, and he’d gotten used to the dry dark of his windowless cell. Two days, that was how long it took for him to get used to something, and now he was startled to wake up in the brightness of his own house. It smelled clean in here, like coffee and laundry detergent and home, and he was glad to be back but also confused. The cops had let him go, just like that. Asked him to hang around the house for a few more days, cooperate with the investigation, and he didn’t know what the detectives had done or where they’d gone because neither of them had come back, and then a cop he’d never seen was unlocking his cell and handing him his clothes and offering him a ride home. He was free to go, any charges had been dropped.

  Just like that.

  But what about my wife? he’d asked the officer.

  They’re taking the investigation in another direction, the cop had said, shrugging. Loren said your story checks out. Easy to swallow, easy to follow, something like that. They said to let you go.