by Tom Hunt
And so Teddy had become her confidant. Her sounding board. The person she talked to. Every night, he’d come over to the house and they’d spend an hour or two talking. In a weird way, everything that had happened had brought them closer than they’d ever been, even when they’d dated when they were younger.
“The answer to your question is no,” Teddy said. “I still can’t sleep. It’s starting to really affect me. I’m slow all day at work. Can barely form a coherent sentence. The other day, I drifted to sleep at my desk. Almost got caught by my boss.”
It was surprising how comfortable she felt around him. How smoothly the conversation flowed. Even when there were silences, they weren’t awkward or uncomfortable. Neither of them felt the need to fill them with talk.
Teddy looked down at Joshua’s room. Door closed, again. They could just barely hear the low beeping sound effects of some video game he was playing.
“What about him? How is he?”
“Still down.”
“I was starting to wonder if it was me. I was worried that he blamed me.”
“It’s not just you. It’s everything. Dealing with it all.”
Teddy shook his head.
“I thought that when they found the body, it would bring closure,” he said. “Or start to, at least. Like that was the one thing that would tie everything up. But it did nothing. I still can’t sleep.”
“Closure,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything that can bring it.”
“I started looking online. Looking at tips about moving on after a traumatic event. Time, they always say. Time heals all wounds. Time has passed; it hasn’t done much yet.”
“It’s still early.”
They sat in silence for a while. She was still reeling from being fired. Nursing was such a big part of her life. Far more than just a job. It was how she defined herself in a lot of ways.
She hadn’t started looking for a new job yet. Eventually she would. Not in nursing—she was still waiting to hear whether her license would be revoked. But she’d eventually need some sort of job, something to do. Just not right now. Starting a job and dealing with everything else seemed like too much to happen at once.
She’d reached out to Carmella and apologized profusely. Carmella had insisted that it wasn’t Karen’s fault and said she took full responsibility for stealing the medication, but her words sounded so insincere. Like something she was saying to avoid what she truly wanted to say. The exchange was more awkward than anything else.
Karen got up from the table. Filled a glass with water. Sat back down across from Teddy. Silence.
The door to Joshua’s room opened. He slowly walked down the hallway and appeared in the kitchen.
“How ya doing?” Teddy asked.
“Okay.”
He walked over to a cupboard and looked inside. Grabbed a few Slim Jims.
The doorbell rang. Joshua walked into the living room to answer it. They watched him slouch by the table and disappear.
“I’m worried about him,” she said.
“He has plenty to look forward to. I hope he realizes that. College. Everything after that. His whole life. Hopefully he can move on and—”
“Mom.” Joshua’s voice. From the living room.
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
The tone of his voice worried her. She glanced at Teddy. He shrugged. She stood up from her chair and walked out of the kitchen, Teddy following. He walked with a slight limp from the bullet wound in his leg.
In the living room, Joshua stood next to the front door.
Beside him, standing just outside the open door, were Detective Franny and a man she’d never seen in her life.
THIRTY-FOUR
“Had a few questions for you,” Franny said. They’d sat down in the living room. She, Teddy, and Joshua sat on the couch. Detective Franny was in the chair. The person he was with stood at the edge of the room. He’d identified himself as Detective Rodriguez. Older, dark-skinned. Hadn’t said much beyond a greeting yet.
“Sure,” Karen said. “About what?”
“Actually, I was speaking to Joshua.” Franny turned toward him. “Can you answer a few questions for us?”
Karen looked over at Joshua. He slowly nodded, eyes wide, mouth slightly open.
“There was a news article from a few days ago about a dead body that was found,” Franny said. “Did you happen to see the article?”
“No,” Joshua said.
“A friend didn’t mention it to you, anything like that?”
Joshua shook his head.
“The body was found down in Missouri, washed up on the banks of the Mississippi. The local police identified him as someone from around here and alerted us. William Scanlon. That name ring a bell?”
“No,” Joshua said, his voice cracking.
Franny looked at her and Teddy. “Either of you recognize the name?”
They shook their heads. Karen felt like her heart was going to explode from her chest.
“The case was a weird one,” Franny said. “Best as we can tell, he was missing for about a week. The guy didn’t have many friends. No job at the moment. Hardly anyone even noticed he was missing.”
Franny opened a notebook and looked inside.
“The case is being viewed as a homicide,” he said. “Not an accidental drowning. No water in his lungs, so he was dead before he was thrown in the river. Plus, he had a number of suspicious injuries. One of his knees was pretty busted up. Traumatic injury to the side of his head.”
“Why are you asking us about him?” Karen said. She had no idea why she was playing dumb. Franny was clearly here for a reason. He knew something.
“A few reasons,” Franny said. “Last week, we got a call about him. Turns out Mr. Scanlon was a bit of a hothead, had some trouble with the law in the past, and had been getting anger-management treatment for a few years. His psychiatrist called and told us that Scanlon hadn’t shown up to his weekly appointment. The shrink was worried. We looked into his disappearance but nothing came of our search.
“A couple days passed, and we learned why we couldn’t find him: he was floating in the Mississippi. Dead as a doornail. After his body washed up onshore in Missouri, the local police found something interesting. There was a camera and some film in the pocket of his coat. His shrink told us he liked taking photos in his free time—sounds like the hobby calmed him, helped him with his anger. Now, the camera was ruined from the water, but the film was stored in a waterproof case. It survived, and we developed the photos.”
Karen’s stomach rose. She was going to be sick. She was sure of it.
“Most of the photos were of trees and wildlife. A bunch of pictures taken in some sort of forest. We did some searching around, some comparisons, and we think the photos were taken in Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area. Ever been?”
His eyes were locked on Joshua. Joshua stared down at the ground, unblinking. Looked like he was frozen.
“A few times,” Joshua said.
“Recently?”
“I don’t know. Like a month or two ago.”
Franny reached into his briefcase and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph. He set it on the coffee table.
“This is one of the photos we recovered.”
It was a wide shot of the sun setting in the distance behind a group of pine trees. There was a cluster of bushes to the left of the trees. Nothing much stood out about the photograph—
“Look in the lower left corner.”
Karen did. There was a small, blurry white mark about half an inch wide.
“Can you see what that is?” Franny asked.
No one responded.
“We had our guys tinker around with the photo. Enlarge it. Sharpen it. And this is what it looks like.”
Franny set anoth
er picture on the coffee table. It was a blown-up shot of the white dot. The photo was blurry but clear enough for Karen to see it was of a car.
The six digits on the car’s license plate were barely visible. They were the six digits of Joshua’s license plate.
“That’s your car, right?” Franny said.
Joshua nodded. Karen was having difficulty breathing.
“So your car was out there, the night this guy was,” Franny said. “Did you happen to see him?”
“No,” Joshua said.
“Sure?”
Joshua shook his head.
“I started doing some thinking,” Franny said. “I remembered your car. I noticed the windshield when I was here. It was bashed in. The grille was a little busted up, too. What caused that?”
“My friend knocked over a shelf. The shelf fell onto it.”
“This friend have a name?”
Joshua gave them Aaron’s name. The detective standing on the edge of the room, Rodriguez, wrote down the name in his notebook.
“Can I take a look at the car?” Franny asked.
Joshua glanced at Karen. Back at Franny. He nodded.
They all stood up and walked out to the garage.
* * *
• • •
Joshua was certain he was going to collapse as he walked over to the garage. This was going to be it. The end.
In the garage, Detective Rodriguez looked at the spiderweb crack in the windshield. He leaned in close.
Joshua held his breath. There’d been some blood on the windshield the night of the accident. He’d wiped as much as he could away with the sleeve of his coat, then poured a bottle of water over the windshield to wash away the remaining blood.
Had he gotten all of it? He had no idea. He’d been in such a hurry. Rushed and hasty. He’d meant to clean it again to make sure there was nothing left, but so much had happened and he hadn’t gotten around to it.
Franny stood to the side, staring at them. Not even attempting to hide the fact that he was looking at them.
Joshua looked at his dad and mom. They stared straight ahead, focused on Detective Rodriguez as he examined the windshield.
“Looks like something here,” Rodriguez said.
Franny walked over. Rodriguez pointed at an area next to the crack in the windshield. There was a small, barely visible red smudge on the glass.
“Look like blood to you?”
Franny nodded. “It does.”
Franny turned to Joshua. “Is that what it is? Blood?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Which is it? No? Or you don’t know?”
“I don’t know.” But of course he knew. It was blood. No doubt about it. The police would do testing, link it to the dead man, and there’d be no talking his way out of it. There was nothing he could say to save himself.
“You don’t have to play dumb,” Franny said. “I’ve seen enough blood in my career to know what it looks like. And that right there is blood. So, what is going on here? Earlier, Amber told us that the two of you were standing over a dead body in the forest when she and Ross arrived. Not out looking at stars. We thought she was crazy. But now I’m starting to wonder.”
Joshua looked at his mom, his dad. He stared down at the ground.
“Look, the pictures prove that this Scanlon guy was out in Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area right before he died,” Franny said. “You were, too—at least, your car was. And when we test this blood, we’ll find out if it belongs to Scanlon or not. So if you’re hiding something, the smart thing to do is to be honest.”
It was time to confess. Time to do what he should’ve done from the start. Come clean. Admit to everything and deal with the consequences. He would—
“I have something to tell you.”
His dad’s voice. Joshua looked over at him. Teddy was staring at the two detectives, his expression solemn and serious.
“What is it?” Franny said.
“A confession,” Teddy said. “I was out there that night. I was driving Joshua’s car. And the man whose body you found . . . I’m the one who killed him.”
* * *
• • •
Karen stared at Teddy, barely able to believe what she’d just heard.
“What are you talking about?” Franny said.
“Joshua and I, we were out in the forest a week ago,” Teddy said, speaking slowly. “Late at night. I was driving his car and hit a man. Injured him. When we went over to check on the guy, he was furious. He was big, much stronger than either of us. All of a sudden, he went crazy, pushing and shoving us. At one point, he had Joshua pinned to the ground. I thought he was going to seriously hurt him, so I grabbed a rock. Hit him in the head with it. Everything was so frantic. It happened in an instant. Right after I hit him, he stopped moving. I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“You didn’t report this?”
“I was worried. I dumped the body in the river. Told my son to keep it a secret. It was a mistake. That’s all I’ll say.”
Karen listened to it all, stunned, in total shock. There was a part of her that wanted to tell the police that Teddy was lying. Just come clean and tell the truth. But she couldn’t. This was how it was going to end. With Teddy ending it for good. Making a sacrifice for Joshua.
“We’ll need to bring you down to the station and get your full statement,” Franny said.
Teddy nodded. “That’s fine.”
* * *
• • •
So much happened over the next few days that it was difficult to keep track of it all.
Teddy gave his statement and took the blame for everything that had happened. The story was heavily covered in the news. Karen had so many questions for him, so many things she wanted to say, but he was locked up in jail and there was no way to talk to him without the conversation being recorded. She wanted to ask him why he’d done it. Wanted to ask him what he’d been thinking. And, she supposed, she wanted to thank him, too. Thank him for sacrificing himself for their son.
The last she’d heard, it sounded as though he might get off with only a few years. It wasn’t really the crime he’d get in trouble for. It was the cover-up.
Teddy had insisted that he’d pressured Joshua into not reporting the crime. Even so, Joshua would face some sort of punishment. He hadn’t reported the car accident or the dead body. But his punishment would be nowhere near as severe as Teddy’s. His lawyer seemed confident he could keep him out of jail.
In the meantime, Joshua was allowed to return home. He seemed so down. He truly loved his dad, and she could tell his absence pained him deeply. Karen talked a lot with Joshua in the days that followed. They cried a lot, too. Joshua told her he wasn’t going to Clemson, that he didn’t want to be so far from home with everything going on. She said to think about it, give it some time, but she could tell his mind was made up. He couldn’t leave.
The days kept passing, but even so, she couldn’t begin to move past everything that had happened. Mostly because so much had taken place in their house. Every single day was a reminder of it all. When she slept at night, it was in the same room Amber had almost died in. When they grabbed something from the storage room, it was the same room where they had been tied up and nearly lost their lives. Even seeing Joshua’s car in the garage was a reminder of the accident that had started everything.
Reminders everywhere. Every feeling still lingered.
She held out hope that maybe all she needed was time. She’d never be able to forget about everything, but she hoped that, with time, she might be able to start to move on. Maybe eventually details would be difficult to remember and her sadness would start to disappear.
Time. That was all she needed. That was all Joshua needed, too. She hoped so, at least. There was no magic potion or cure. Just time.
With the pas
sing of time, she hoped they could both eventually start to move on.
They might not get a happy ending, but they would at least get an ending.
And maybe that was all they could hope for.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my agent, Laney Katz Becker. Both books I’ve written have been improved tremendously through her expert advice, and I truly owe her everything.
I’m so fortunate to work with an amazing editor, Danielle Perez at Berkley. Her knowledge and insight helped this book become the best book it could possibly be. Plus, she’s a genuinely great person who’s just plain fun to work with.
I also want to give a special thank-you to my publicist, Lauren Burnstein, and marketer, Fareeda Bullert, who are both incredible. And a huge thank-you to Ivan Held and the entire team at Berkley.
Thank you to my copy editor, Eileen Chetti, who did an amazing job making sure the book’s details were consistent and accurate.
A majority of this book, like my first novel, was written at Y Café at Twelfth Street and Avenue B in New York City. Thanks to Tommy and Gigi and the rest of the staff for the countless great meals and drinks they served me while I wrote.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Hunt is an award-winning advertising copywriter. He has worked for some of the nation's largest and best-known agencies, including J. Walter Thompson and Saatchi & Saatchi. Killer Choice was his first novel.
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