You Will Never Know

by You Will Never Know (retail) (epub)

  “I understand.”

  “You do? Well, that’s nice . . . It was good to see the turnout last night at the town common, wasn’t it? All those people gathered together, offering a memorial to young Sam Warner. Very touching.”

  “It certainly was,” Jessica said, wondering where the detective was going with this.

  “What’s interesting, as past investigations have shown, is that during an event like that, you know what happens?”

  Jessica shook her head.

  “Most times—heck, almost all times—the murderer is there in the crowd, taking it all in. There are two schools of thought on this. One is that the murderer gets off on seeing the reaction, standing with family and friends, keeping his or her secret under wraps. The other is that the murderer is feeling guilty and tries to address that guilt by taking part in a community mourning process. Interesting, isn’t it, that last night, the murderer was in that crowd? Too bad we just didn’t know who he was.”

  She just nodded. She was feeling warm. The purse felt heavy.

  Then he abruptly changed direction. Trap number one.

  “Mrs. Thornton, did you know there was a party Saturday night at Sam Warner’s house?”

  “A party? No. I had no idea.”

  “Huh.”

  Rafferty kept quiet for a few seconds, and it came to her, like a lightning flash from way off, that he was playing with her, trying to get her to say something incriminating.

  She waited.

  “Do you know where your daughter was Saturday night?”

  Jessica’s mouth was drying out. Now she knew.

  “She was out studying with a friend.”

  “What was the friend’s name?”

  “Bertie Woods.”

  “Is Bertie male or female?”

  “Female. Her name is Roberta, but everyone calls her Bertie.”

  “So that’s where your daughter was Saturday night. Studying with Bertie.”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh.”

  Rafferty was staring at the sheet of paper, then looked up. “That party—we don’t have all the details, but something happened that night. It was at Sam Warner’s house, but his parents were away. There were about twenty or thirty students there, some even from Concord and Carlisle. There was shouting, yelling, maybe even a fight that took place outside the house. We’ve managed to get a list of most everyone who was there.”

  She tried to swallow. Couldn’t.

  “It looks like Emma Thornton’s name is on that list.”

  She just wouldn’t say anything at the moment, thinking, Emma, Emma, Emma, how could you? A bit of her knew that there would come a time when her perfect running girl¸ as part of growing up, would start lying to her, keeping things quiet, not revealing secrets or concerns. But now? Here? While Jessica was being interviewed by a police detective?

  “Well,” she managed to say, “I guess that wouldn’t be the first time a daughter lied to her mother.”

  That made Rafferty smile, and he gestured to the framed photo on the desk. “I know. And that’s what my wife, Lara, and I are scared of. That when our girls get older, they’ll turn into teenagers and make our lives hell for several years.” The smile faded away. “But getting back to your daughter . . .”

  Please, no, she thought.

  “You didn’t know she was at that party?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have any indication that she was at the party?”

  Something came to her and she said, “Sunday.”

  “What about Sunday?”

  “She said she wasn’t feeling well. That her stomach was upset. She spent the entire day in her room, curled up on her bed.”

  He nodded. “She’s fifteen, right? Sure. Might have been her very first hangover. Poor girl. Did she go to school on Monday?”

  “Yes, she said she felt better.”

  “But she said nothing about Sam Warner.”

  “Not a word.”

  “Were they friends?”

  “No, they weren’t,” she quickly said. “I mean, she knew Sam, everyone knew Sam. And I know that sometimes Sam and his teammates would come to practice or meets to cheer on the track team. That’s what they did. But I’m positive she and he didn’t spend any time together.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “Wait a minute.”

  “Yes?”

  “You . . . you said something like ‘It looks like Emma is on that list.’ What did you mean? Is she or isn’t she?”

  He smiled. “So far I have one witness who thinks your daughter was there but isn’t certain. Other students . . . they didn’t see her. So right now I’m putting her down as a definite maybe.”

  Emma, she thought. All right, maybe you weren’t there after all.

  Officially.

  Rafferty went on. “But Craig . . .”

  “My stepson.”

  “Right,” he said. “According to school records, he’s had some encounters with Sam at school.”

  “I didn’t know about that,” she said. “Ted . . . my husband for some reason kept that a secret from me. I only learned about it when you brought it up.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But that’s not what he said when I visited your home.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He flipped through a few sheets of paper and said, “Ted said that he signed the report from the school about the bullying incidents but he didn’t know what he was signing. So you’re saying he knew and was hiding it from you.”

  “No.”

  “But that’s what you just said.”

  “I made a mistake,” she said, thinking, Damn, fell into a trap. “I don’t know what Ted knew about the bullying Craig received. All I’m certain of is that I didn’t know.”

  “I see. All right, then. Now, speaking of your husband . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He scratched his left ear. “Just to clarify what we’re looking at for the timeline, Sam Warner’s body was found Wednesday morning. Preliminary investigations indicate that he was murdered sometime Tuesday evening. And although it hasn’t been in the paper yet, we do have someone who was in the town forest that night who said he heard a gunshot.”

  “Oh,” Jessica said.

  Rafferty kept quiet again.

  Those damn pauses. She wanted to look at her watch but didn’t want to give Rafferty the satisfaction of knowing that he was making her feel very, very uncomfortable. So she stayed still.

  “Your husband is devoted to his son, isn’t he?”

  “Of course. Any father would be.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he said.

  Another pause.

  A phone was ringing somewhere, once-twice-thrice, and Jessica thought, Pick it up—will someone pick up that damn phone already.

  Rafferty took a pen, moved it around in his fingers. “If we can go back just a bit, you said your husband had been lying to you.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “In a manner of speaking, I’d say you did.”

  “I just said I thought he was keeping secrets, that’s all.”

  “Secrets. All right, then.”

  He went back to another folder, ran his finger down the page as if he were looking for something. “I just need to refresh my memory about something.”

  “Sure.”

  “When I talked to the both of you yesterday, I asked about the whereabouts of your children. You said they were upstairs while you were watching a reality television show, the one about housewives.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure they were upstairs?”

  “Positive.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jessica said, “After dinner Craig went straight upstairs. Emma stayed downstairs for a while, doing homework, and then she went upstairs, sometime around nine or nine thirty.”

  Rafferty played with the pen for a moment. “And you’re sure they stayed up there.” />
  A lump was growing in her throat. She was lying—God, was she ever so lying to this police detective.

  “Yes.”

  “How? Couldn’t they have sneaked out while no one was watching?”

  Now Jessica was really experiencing that sensation of being in a hole and digging yourself—and it—deeper.

  “No,” she said. “You’ve been in our living room. The stairway is just off to the right, near the kitchen. Trust me, detective, with me sitting on the couch, I would see if anyone was coming down to go out.”

  “You and your husband.”

  “What?”

  “You and your husband,” Rafferty said. “You said, ‘with me sitting on the couch.’ Didn’t you mean to say that?”

  “Well, I—”

  “He was there watching television with you, correct? That’s what you said in your statement. That’s what your husband told me yesterday. That he had been home that night, along with you and your stepson and daughter.”

  Jessica felt like she was going to slide off this chair in front of this detective.

  “But maybe he wasn’t on the couch, right? I mean, you could have been saying ‘with me sitting on the couch’ because your husband was sitting elsewhere in the room.”

  With her voice wavering just a bit, Jessica said, “I suppose that’s true.”

  “I see.”

  Rafferty again peered at the papers in the folder. Jessica decided that after this day she would never, ever eat lunch again, so she wouldn’t have any cue to remind her of this hideous day.

  “But ma’am, the funny thing is, when Mr. Donovan was telling me where he was that night, the night we think Sam Warner was murdered, he said . . . Hold on, yes, he said, ‘Heck, I was here all night, Detective. Right here with Jessica on the couch.’” The detective sat up straighter and stared hard at her. “Which was it, Mrs. Thornton? You said he wasn’t on the couch, and he said he was.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Who’s wrong? You or your husband?”

  She couldn’t say anything.

  “It was only two nights ago,” Rafferty went on. “If a week had passed, I could see how the two of you could be in disagreement. But less than two full days . . .”

  She wasn’t going to say anything else to this man, ever.

  “Mrs. Thornton, where was your husband that night?”

  The odor that had been on his body. His lying about being at Harry’s Place. And now she remembered the sounds of the door opening and closing and the closet opening and closing. Lying about the bullying, and most certainly lying about where he had been.

  And having an affair with that bitch Paula Fawkes.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and it felt like a chunk of her had just torn apart and was drifting away.

  This was now. The past was no longer relevant.

  “Mrs. Thornton?”

  “I don’t know where Ted was that night.”

  “I see.” From the tone in his voice, Jessica knew Detective Rafferty was pleased that his hunt was now making progress, that a scent had come to him. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Out with friends, coworkers?”

  His . . . God, what word should she use? Girlfriend, mistress, lover?

  “I don’t know.”

  “Again, are you sure?”

  She just nodded.

  He stared at her, pen in his hand, still resting on his desk.

  “Where do you think he was?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Muffled voices off in the distance at this place of law and order, guilt and innocence, and confessions, always confessions.

  Rafferty lowered his voice, made it softer. “This is very, very difficult. I know from experience. And I commend you for your bravery. Because in the end we need to get justice for Sam Warner.”

  Jessica still couldn’t speak.

  “So I need to ask you this. And I apologize in advance for putting you in this position.”

  She nodded.

  Rafferty let out a bit of a breath. “Is there anything you can tell me, anything at all, that could possibly assist me in this investigation? Anything related to your husband’s . . . absence?”

  His voice sounded so odd that she had a hard time now recognizing it. She waited. Remembered Ted last night, standing next to Paula Fawkes. How she had touched him, and how he had touched her in return. Smiling at each other with the confidence of lovers.

  A fury started within Jessica as she recalled the closeness of the two of them, being so open and blatant with their affection, with Jessica just feet away, watching her humiliation unfold live in front of all those people on the common. Ted had hurt her so much.

  “There is one thing.”

  “What’s that, Mrs. Thornton?”

  “Ah, I was upstairs, getting ready for bed”—Liar!—“and I heard the door to the house open and close. You know how hard it is to open and close.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, there was something else Ted did.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He opened and closed the closet door.”

  Rafferty tilted his head. “And why did that get your attention? Couldn’t he have been putting a coat away?”

  “No,” Jessica said. “Ted only puts his coat away during the winter. Times like now, he just drops his coat off in the entryway, on a chair.”

  “I see. So why do you think he was opening the closet?”

  “Because of what’s in the closet. I think . . . I think he might have been putting something away.”

  Rafferty narrowed his eyes. “Like what?”

  “In the closet, Ted keeps something.”

  “Which is?”

  “A locked gun cabinet.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  Jessica felt her head move in an automatic nod.

  The detective said, “What weapons does he keep in that cabinet?”

  “A rifle. And a shotgun.”

  Rafferty slowly nodded. “Mrs. Thornton, I can’t tell you how helpful you’ve been.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The rest of Friday went by in a dull blur, and at one point Jessica couldn’t imagine why she was so hungry, until she remembered that her lunch break had been taken up almost entirely by the interview with Detective Rafferty. She barely remembered walking back to Warner Savings, and when she walked into the familiar lobby and saw the faces of the customers and her coworkers, she felt as if she were going into some sort of safe harbor.

  As she cashed checks, received deposits, helped customers with questions about their mortgages or money market accounts, she kept thinking about what she had just done at the police station with Detective Rafferty. She had betrayed her husband to the police.

  With no evidence, no real hard proof of anything, she was sure she had just pushed Ted into the top tier of suspects in the death of Sam Warner. Rafferty had kept his composure during the interview, but something had changed in his eyes when she had told him about the gun cabinet and the sound of doors opening and closing.

  And there were Ted’s lies, saying he had been at home that Tuesday night when in fact he was out with . . . Well, not with his partner, Ben Powell. That was for certain. So he had been someplace else, and because of the scent she had detected on him on Tuesday night and last night, she was certain he had been with Paula Fawkes, his office manager.

  All right, then. Ted had betrayed her. She was just repaying the favor.

  A young girl came in, shepherded by her proud mother, and an old-fashioned passbook was slid across the counter, along with four single dollar bills and a filled-out deposit slip in shaky printing.

  Despite everything, Jessica smiled at the young girl, who could barely see over the counter. “Good job,” she said. She ran the slip and passbook through, passed it over to the girl, grabbed a lime-green lollipop from the jar, passed it over.

  Her mother smiled, took the lollipop, and sa
id, “What do you say, Pammy?”

  Pammy looked serious. “I like grape.”

  Her mother look horrified, but Jessica said, “No problem.” She took the lime-green treat back, replaced it with a grape one, and to young Pammy she said, “Never be afraid to ask for what you really, really want, okay?”

  But that piece of advice went right by both the girl and her mother, and as they sauntered out of the lobby, that voice came back to her:

  She had betrayed her husband to the police.

  Then another voice spoke up in her mind, one tinged with the syllables of her own mother. So what? If there’s betrayal, he went first.

  Which was true!

  Ted had been the first to betray her. Ted, lying about where he was, lying about a meeting to get necessary financing and then sleeping with his office manager.

  Sleeping. The word sounded so bland, so innocent, so quiet. No, they weren’t sleeping together, they were—

  “Jessica?”

  She looked up from her counter. Ellen Nickerson was standing outside.

  “Got a minute?”

  Rhonda gave her a sideways glance, a look of Hey, be careful out there.

  “Sure,” Jessica said.

  She locked her cash drawer, logged off the computer, put up the next teller please sign, and went out to the lobby.

  Ellen ushered her into the office, closed the door, and sat down. Her face was heavily made up, her hair and face looked sharp enough to cut paper, and today she had on a gray-and-black pants-and-jacket ensemble that seemed to cause the office’s temperature to drop ten degrees. The office was spare, clean, and ordered. No personal photos, no souvenirs, no knickknacks.

  Quite a contrast to her predecessor, Larry Miles, who had loved the outdoors and who had piled up snowshoes, cross-country skis, and climbing gear in the corners of the office. He had liked to post photos of himself skating on the frozen Walden Pond or climbing Mount Washington in February or skiing at Wildcat.

  Ellen looked like she was collecting herself to speak.

  And Jessica recalled one of the last times she had talked to Larry, here in this same office, when he had said, “Jessica, I need your help. Rhonda’s a drag on this branch, she’s too old and set in her ways, and if you help me get rid of her, I won’t forget it.”