by Kate White
“You’re not certain, though?” the older trooper asks, the one with a mustache too thin for his face, locking eyes with me.
“No, because she’s lying facedown,” I explain. There’s no reason to waste time describing my initial confusion and the farcical scene with Hannah in the living room.
“And when was the last time Ms. Herrera was seen alive?”
“This morning.” It’s Ash talking, out of the house now and coming up behind us to introduce himself to the police. “She assisted me with some paperwork in the study and left about ten o’clock. Her intention was to return to the city, but first she’d offered to check out an area by the woods. I didn’t notice until a few minutes ago that her car was still here in the driveway.” He chokes up on the last few words.
“Why did she need to go down there?” It’s still the older trooper speaking.
“She was looking at the place we plan to bury my wife, who passed on Sunday,” Ash tells them. “Ms. Herrera was helping with the arrangements.”
His voice cracks once again, but I have no way of knowing if it’s mainly from grief or distress or fear. Could my father-in-law actually be a murderer? I try to push away the thought.
“You weren’t surprised when she didn’t stop in before she left.”
“There was no need to. We’d finished our work and we planned to speak again tomorrow morning.”
The troopers nod, their faces still stony. They inquire who else is here on the property, and after Ash goes through the list, they ask me to direct them to the crime scene, along with the housekeeper, and the two paramedics.
“I should accompany you, too,” Ash announces. “This is my property, and I can answer your questions.”
“No, the rest of you need to remain in the house,” the trooper tells him. “Detectives from the state police are on their way.”
“I’ll get the housekeeper,” Gabe interjects, and I realize that he doesn’t want the troopers going into the kitchen and collecting her in front of Henry. He darts off and returns with Bonnie less than a minute later. As she and I depart with the police, I glance behind me, trying to make eye contact with Gabe so that he can give me a reassuring look. But instead he’s staring off into the distance.
As if reading each other’s thoughts, Bonnie and I lead the troopers and paramedics around the building, avoiding the house, then along the side of the boxwood grove and gardens and down the wide expanse of lawn.
Though the air is damp, the rain continues to hold off. Bonnie’s put on a zippered cardigan since I saw her earlier, but I’m still in only a long-sleeved T-shirt. I shiver, but it’s less from the weather and more from my nerves.
Pretend you’re in a play, I tell myself. Own the stage, own the room, stay in control.
On the way, the troopers ask us a few more questions: Did you notice anyone else in the vicinity when you were down here or hear anything suspicious? No, Bonnie and I say in unison. Did either of you have any contact with Jillian Herrera earlier today? Again, no. Is there any other way to gain access to where we’re going? Bonnie mentions an old logging road that cuts through the woods and ends not far from the stream. I’ve never heard of it before, but I’m relieved to learn another detail supporting the idea of an outside perpetrator.
We’ve reached the first meadow by now and one of the troopers asks if we have much farther to go. I give an estimate of under ten minutes and describe the rest of the route ahead. As we hurry through the wildflowers, their colors dulled from the lack of sunshine, I try to picture Jillian coming through here earlier. Was it right after she left Ash in the study? She must have looked at the sky and grabbed a slicker. I wonder again if she and Ash hiked here together. And then . . .
Finally, when we reach the end of the second meadow, Bonnie freezes in her tracks, as if she can’t bear the idea of witnessing the scene again.
“It’s to the left and then a few hundred feet,” I tell the troopers. “She’s between the stream and an old bird blind.”
Thankfully, they instruct us to remain where we are before they start heading to the spot, followed not far behind by the paramedics, lugging their equipment.
“Come on, get the hell outta here,” one of the troopers shouts a few seconds later. Not to a person, I realize, but to the vultures. I feel bile in my throat again as I picture the birds pecking at the head wound. There are sounds of movement next, the troopers traipsing through the grass and then the murmur of instructions being given into a cell phone or radio.
“You doin’ okay, hon?” Bonnie whispers.
“Um, yeah. You?”
“Hanging in there. I mean, what choice do we have?”
Within a few minutes, two more troopers, a male and a female, come tramping through the meadow behind us, and we point them in the right direction, though the man returns a minute later, announcing that he’s going to escort me and Bonnie back to the house.
“Can you tell us if she’s definitely dead?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says grimly. “I’m sorry.”
We start the return journey. Part of me can’t wait to be in the house again, but then I remind myself that there’s no comfort waiting for me there.
The trooper leaves us at the back door, reminding us not to go anywhere until we’ve been interviewed. Inside the kitchen we find Jake folding napkins on the island, silent and bug-eyed, clearly a little rattled, but also revved up, I suspect. This might be the biggest excitement he’s had all summer.
Gabe and Henry are there, too, parked at the table. Henry’s riveted by something on his iPad, and Gabe assures him that he’ll be right back, then ushers me into the dining room, making sure the door swings closed behind us.
“Is it definitely her?” Gabe asks.
“They didn’t let us near the spot this time, but who else? What’s happening here?”
“You just missed the two detectives. They’re out front now, waiting for one of the troopers to escort them to the scene. And apparently a forensics team is arriving any minute.”
“I guess it’ll be a while then before anyone interviews Bonnie and me.”
“It turns out we all have to give statements, and not from the comfort of the living room. At the state police station, wherever that is.”
My stomach roils. I have no reason to feel guilty and yet I sense land mines ahead.
“Did your dad find a lawyer yet?”
“Yep, they’ve been on the phone. And Amanda’s coming. I called and asked her to pick up Henry today instead of tomorrow. I can’t have him around when there are police all over the place and people in hazmat suits.”
I nod, aware it’s the right thing to do. And yet it seems like a warning that the things we care about most in life are in danger of being wrenched away from us.
“I’m going to take Hen over to the cottage now,” Gabe adds. “All I’ve told him is that Dad’s assistant has been badly injured, and he needs to go back to the city. I’ll pack his bag and hang with him there for a while.”
“But aren’t we supposed to stay put?” I ask.
“We’re not leaving the property, Summer.”
“Okay, okay.”
After he departs, I stand there, uncertain of what to do next, my eyes on the oiled, wide-plank pine floor. Will I ever feel at ease in this house again? Will I ever be able to sit by the stream again, savoring the memory of Gabe’s proposal?
“Summer?”
I look up to see Keira a few feet from me, tucking a hair behind her ear.
“Hi.”
“Can I talk to you for a second?” she asks.
“Uh, sure.”
“Did you hear we all have to give statements . . . at the police station?”
“Yeah, Gabe just told me.”
She glances to the left, lips pressed.
“I know, it’s scary,” I say when she doesn’t go on. “But we’ll get through it.”
“What do you plan to do—you know, in regard to Jillian?” I guess Marcus filled her
in.
“You mean, am I going to tell the police about seeing Ash embrace her? No.”
“Not about that. About Jillian’s thing with Marcus and Gabe this morning. You aren’t going to say anything to the police about that, are you?”
22
For the next two hours all of us except for Gabe mill around the first floor of the house. At one point, Blake, Nick, and Marcus press me to share more details about the crime scene, and I do, hating myself for the way I study Nick’s and Marcus’s reactions. But nothing about their demeanor seems suspicious. When the chance arises, I sidle up to Wendy, who’s sitting quietly at the end of a sofa, still dressed from her trip to the medical center and hugging her leather tote to her chest.
“Was the sonogram okay?” I whisper.
“Yes, thank god, everything’s fine,” she says, smiling wanly. “I’m just shell-shocked from all this.”
Ash spends much of that time sequestered in the study, talking on the phone, except when one of the detectives asks him to step outside to identify the body before it’s loaded into the ambulance. When he returns, he looks shaken.
For our trip to the state police station, we’ve been put into two groups, and I’m in the first, along with Blake, Marcus, Keira, and Bonnie. We say good-bye to Wendy—because of her condition, the police took her statement in the den—and Marcus quickly ushers Keira into their car. I jump into Blake’s black Mercedes, along with Bonnie, who insists I take the front seat.
“Would you mind cranking up the AC?” I ask Blake.
“Of course. You feel okay?”
“Uh, not great, no.”
“If you’re at all faint, put your head between your knees, okay? It really works.”
I thank him, but actually, I wish I could faint. I wish I could face-plant on the asphalt the second we arrive at the station, be hauled off on a stretcher, and then medevacked to a hospital in another state where, for some reason, they decide I need to be placed in isolation for a week.
Because I need time to concentrate, to decide what the hell I’m going to tell the police. Jillian’s been murdered, but I feel sure Claire was, too. I contemplate hinting at my suspicions in the interview and yet I know that if I do, I’ll probably sound utterly ridiculous to the police, and it’s possible I might complicate things even more for the Keatons. But then does that mean Hannah goes free?
The jumble of thoughts is causing a weird rushing sound in my head, like wind in a tunnel. And making it worse: my anxiety over the conversation I had with Keira in the dining room earlier.
“What do you mean?” I’d exclaimed, taken aback by her comment about Marcus, Gabe, and Jillian, which clearly implied something had happened that I shouldn’t bring up to the detectives.
“Oh, it’s nothing important,” she’d said. “They had some words with her about work stuff. In the driveway. I’m not going to bring it up, though. Marcus said we shouldn’t.”
I tried to get more out of her, but she scurried off. At least now I understand why Marcus and Gabe shot each other a look in the den and decided that the less said, the better.
“We’re almost there,” Blake announces, shaking me from my thoughts.
“Did Wendy give you any idea about the questions they’ll have?” I ask him.
“She didn’t have a chance to tell me much but said it was mostly what she expected—how well did she know Jillian, had she spoken to her that day, did she see anyone suspicious on the property. My guess is that it’ll be pretty much the same for all of us other than my father. None of us knew Jillian well besides him, so we have very little to contribute.”
Not long after, he makes a sharp right turn off the road and pulls up in front of a fairly large, nondescript brick building. In the utilitarian lobby, we see we’re the first of our party to arrive, and the officer at the desk tells Blake to take a seat on the bench, and then Bonnie and I are led away by a trooper into separate interview rooms. The one I’m in smells faintly of spray bleach cleanser, and there’s a long mirror on the far wall—two-way, I assume.
A duo of female detectives is waiting at the smudged metal table, both in dark, lightweight blazers, and though they don’t rise out of their seats, they introduce themselves politely—Detectives Russo and Callahan. Callahan’s the one who came into the house at one point and designated what groups we’d be in, but it’s Russo, the older of the two, who asks me to take a seat across from them and explains that our conversation will be taped.
In acting classes you’re taught that one of the best ways to project confidence is to claim territory, and I try to do that as soon as I sit, positioning both hands on the table a few inches from my body. Part of my nervousness is due simply from being inside an interview room at a police station, but it’s more than that, of course.
The salt-and-pepper-haired Detective Russo kicks things off, asking for basic details, like my name and relation to the family, then telling me to describe how I happened to come upon the crime scene today, while Callahan takes notes. Needless to say, I don’t mention that one reason I’d gone in search of Bonnie was to ask if she’d noticed any signs of someone drying poisonous leaves in the carriage house kitchen. Instead, I explain that I’d seen a coyote on the property the night before and had headed to the stream to warn her—also true, of course. Russo’s expression never changes, but Detective Callahan’s face contracts slightly, perhaps in skepticism, as if I’m trying to convince her of some mythical story, like those involving a winged horse or a she-wolf.
“Did you or the housekeeper touch the body—or go near it?” Russo asks. It’s clear she’s going to do most of the talking.
“I didn’t, and I assume Bonnie didn’t before I got there. It was hard for us to even look. And it was pretty clear it was too late to help her.”
“Did you see anyone else in the vicinity?”
“No, not a soul.”
“And this was at about what time?”
“Uh, I didn’t have my phone with me, so I can’t be precise. But probably about fifteen or twenty minutes before I called 911 back at the house.”
Russo makes a show out of opening a folder in front of her, then thumbs through a thin stack of papers, skimming the handwritten notes on one of the pages before finally returning her gaze to me.
“How well did you know Jillian Herrera?” She asks it easily enough, still polite.
“Not well. In the six years since I’ve been with my husband, I probably only met her six or seven times, usually at certain events the Keatons had at their apartment.”
“Did you see or speak to her today?”
“No, I never saw her,” I say. “I had no idea she was even on the property, and that’s why at first I didn’t realize it was her lying on the ground. Bonnie and I thought it was Hannah Kane who was dead. Nick’s . . . fiancée. Because of the dark hair.”
So much for my vow to myself to keep things simple. The two detectives exchange looks.
“When did you realize it wasn’t Ms. Kane?”
“When we reached the house and saw Hannah. She hadn’t been around earlier.”
“And the last time you did see or speak to Ms. Herrera? When was that?”
“Well, I saw her yesterday at the memorial service for my mother-in-law—on the lawn—but I barely had any contact with her. I did speak to her, though, on, uh, Monday. We discussed a few details related to the service, since Jillian was helping with the arrangements.”
“Did she share any concerns with you about her safety?”
The question catches me off guard. Do the police think someone was after Jillian, stalking her? No, that’s not it. What the question suggests is that if Jillian was killed by someone in the household, she might have felt nervous during the days beforehand, nervous enough to even hint at it.
“No—and she seemed perfectly fine to me. By the way, I need to point out something important. Before she died this weekend, my mother-in-law told me that local hunters had been trespassing on the property. The
re’s apparently a way to reach the woods the Keatons own—the ones near where Jillian was found—from an old logging road.”
Russo drums her fingers on the table briefly.
“Did your mother-in-law elaborate on that?” she asks. “Had she made any formal complaints?”
“I’m not sure if she did, but Bonnie is aware of it, too. I’m sure Ash—Mr. Keaton—would know of specific examples.”
“And you hadn’t noticed anyone on the property who shouldn’t be there?”
“No, but I haven’t strayed very far from the house this week.”
Russo taps her fingers again. Her cuticles are ragged, bitten or torn, but right now at least it seems nothing could faze her.
“Just a few more questions, Ms. Redding. How well did other family members seem to know Ms. Herrera?”
My pulse quickens. This is when I might have to skirt the truth. You’re in a play, I tell myself for the second time today. Own the room, stay in control.
“Probably not much better than I did—though Nick might have had more contact with her. Because he works with my father-in-law.”
“And how about your husband? Gabe, is it?”
Why is she asking about him specifically? Only because I’m married to him, I tell myself. It’s surely just a routine question.
“Yes, Gabe. Jillian started around the time we met, so he only knows her as well as I do. Though he may have bumped into her occasionally when he dropped by his dad’s office.”
What the hell would she make of the fact that he was talking to Jillian this morning—but doesn’t want to admit it? To my relief, Russo redirects the conversation.
“And just to clarify,” she says after a few beats, “what is the reason everyone is staying at the house this week?”
“It was supposed to be our annual summer get-together week. A vacation. Then my mother-in-law passed, so we’re all still here, but of course it’s not a holiday anymore.”
Russo’s perusing her notes again, and Callahan has stopped writing, her pen poised right above the page.
“That has to be tough at moments,” Callahan offers. “So many adults in one house.”