by Wendy Walker
In the photo, this man was with a woman.
“That’s not Laura,” Rosie said, looking up from the photograph.
“Exactly,” Conway said. “That’s a still shot from video surveillance in the suspect’s building. Look at the time stamp.”
In the bottom right-hand corner was a date. And a time.
“This can’t be right,” Rosie said. “This was from Thursday night?”
Conway nodded. “This is the suspect and a woman entering the apartment just after ten p.m. There’s footage of her leaving around midnight. He doesn’t leave until the next morning, dressed for work. The cleaning service arrives later that morning. The neighbor drops the mail that afternoon. And then we arrive this morning. That’s it—your sister was never at that apartment.”
Rosie looked at Joe, confused and disoriented. Nothing was what it seemed. Nothing was what she thought.
“I don’t understand,” Joe said, staring at the photograph. “How did he wind up with this woman and not Laura?”
Conway shook his head. “No,” he said. “Laura was never with the suspect. He showed us his account on the dating website. We’ve spoken to his date. They made a plan for Thursday night. They met at that bar by the harbor, like you said—he was there. But he was with this woman. Not with Laura. He never even contacted Laura—never.”
Rosie dropped her head into her hands. “No!” she said. “That can’t be right!”
Conway sighed, hard. “I’m afraid it is.”
“But what about everything else—those women we found who knew things about him…”
“Well, all of that was accurate. He is married. He does lease the apartment under an LLC, a holding company, to hide it from his wife. He works for Eversource—the electric company. Does efficiency checks on houses. Sells new windows on the side. Probably breaching a whole ton of regulations, but that’s for another day. And another cop. But if it makes you feel any better, his wife now knows, so there will be some payback for this asshole.”
“Oh God!” Rosie was in a panic now. Her head spinning with theories and facts from the past two days that now had nowhere to go.
“What about the calls?” Joe asked. “On her phone log?”
“We did get something,” Conway said. “The numbers around the time of the date belong to a company called Klayburn Capital. We got in touch with one of their administrative assistants—that number belongs to a man named Jonathan Fielding.”
Rosie jumped from her chair. “That’s it, then! Jonathan Fields … Jonathan Fielding. Do you know where he is? Can you find him?”
“All we have is an address in Boston. But he has an ex-wife here in Branston, and she gave us the name of a hotel where he was staying up until a few weeks ago. We’ll find him.”
Rosie leaned against the wall and stared at the photograph on the table. “So Jonathan Fields is Jonathan Fielding. Not Edward Rittle…”
“Yes. There’s no doubt about it,” Conway said.
Joe looked up then, surprised. “What did you just say? Edward Rittle? That was the man we’ve been chasing all this time?”
“Why?” Conway asked. “Do you know him?”
Joe stared straight ahead. “I’m trying to follow, that’s all. We thought Edward Rittle was Laura’s date because of the photo—because Edward Rittle was seen at the bar close to where her phone died? But he’s not the guy.…”
“No—he’s not the guy,” Conway said again.
Rosie looked at Joe. He was speaking in a tone she hadn’t heard before. Maybe this was how he sounded when he was with his clients or in front of a judge. Detached and analytical.
“I can’t believe this,” Rosie said. “What can I do?”
“Just stay put. We should have some emails and text messages soon. We may need you to go through them.”
“I’ll go,” Joe offered. “I have something to take care of, and then I should get back to our son. We left him with a sitter.”
He stood up, shook hands with the officer. He looked then to Rosie and started to move as though he wanted to walk around the table and hold her or kiss her—something. But she stood still, her body growing stiff. And Joe retreated, heading for the door.
“Joe…” Rosie said, making him turn. “I’m sorry.” She had all but accused him of sleeping with her sister, and that could never be taken back.
He nodded, acknowledging her apology. But his face was cold.
“So am I.”
FORTY
Laura. Session Number Five. Three Months Ago. New York City.
Dr. Brody: Tell me more about Gabe Wallace.
Laura: We were friends. We still are.
Dr. Brody: Never more? Is he someone who loved you that you pushed away?
Laura: It was never like that. I kept his secret. I’m the only one who knew.
Dr. Brody: What kind of secret?
Laura: The kind I can’t tell anyone. Not even you.
FORTY-ONE
Laura. The Night Before. Friday, 1:30 a.m. Branston, CT.
Gabe drives us away from downtown. Away from Jonathan Fielding, who lies on the floor of his apartment. Unconscious. Bleeding.
He drives slow and steady. Stopping at lights. Keeping within the speed limits. He is consumed with concentration. If I didn’t know him so well, if he hadn’t been my best friend all through childhood, it would have caused alarm. I am shocked and confused, but not that—not alarmed. I know there must be an explanation.
“Gabe,” I say. “Please tell me what’s going on.” I’ve been asking him for the past five minutes. Since the moment we got in the car.
“No one saw us,” he says, as though he doesn’t understand my question. “I covered the security cameras with spray paint.”
I stare at him now and he can feel it. He turns for a second to smile at me.
“What?” he asks. “You’re safe now.”
He says this like I should be relieved.
“Gabe … you have to tell me what’s going on.” I try to keep my voice calm, but I feel like reaching over and shaking him until the answers fall out. “What you did to him … we have to call the police. He could bleed to death.”
His hands clench the wheel tighter. One hand at ten and one hand at two, just like they taught us in driving school. Eyes on the road. Back up straight. Gabe always followed the rules. Meticulously. Obsessively. If I hadn’t been on the other side of that door, I would never suspect he’d done anything out of the ordinary before getting behind the wheel.
“Don’t worry,” he says now. “They’ll notice the cameras aren’t working and they’ll check the apartments. They’ll find him in time.”
This does not settle me.
“No!” I insist now. “That could take hours. Did you see his head? All the blood…” He doesn’t flinch. “Gabe!” I yell at him. “Tell me what the hell is going on!”
He sighs the way a parent sighs at an unruly teenager—frustrated that he has to deal with my insubordination.
“He was going to hurt you. Maybe even kill you,” he says. “There. Are you satisfied now? Do you still want to save his life?”
I feel my mouth hang open. Wide-open as I stare at Gabe. His face has changed again; this time he looks smug.
“How do you know that? And why…”
He takes one hand off the wheel and holds it to face me.
“Stop,” he says. “I’ll explain everything when we get to the house.”
I’m scared now. Scared like I’ve never been scared in my life. I’m so scared, I start to cry. “Gabe…”
I feel his frustration turn to anger.
“You’ve been getting notes. Threats. Haven’t you?” he asks. “Joe told me.”
“How does Joe know?”
“I didn’t ask—does it matter? You’ve been getting them—threats, right?”
I nod. “I got one tonight. It was in my purse.”
“And how do you think it got there?” he asks.
I think about the
note and the conversation I had with Jonathan Fielding right before Gabe hit him with the door. How he suggested Rosie was the one leaving me the notes. And how I turned it right back on him. He was angry at the accusation, but now my mind is flooded with every moment I spent with him. I think about the list of wrong things. His fake name. The car. The story. The route he took to the bar and his bare apartment. The wedding ring in the medicine cabinet, hidden in a bottle of pills. He had excuses for everything, except for one thing—and it glares at me now. Why was he like a dog with a bone when it came to Mitch Adler’s murder?
I hear his voice turn lurid. I want to fuck you again.
But I couldn’t make sense of these things. I make mountains from molehills but then don’t see danger when it’s standing in front of me. When it’s stroking my face and kissing my neck.
I am suddenly grateful.
“Who is he?” I ask. “Why did he want to hurt me?”
Gabe shakes his head now. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to find out. I knew he wasn’t real—Jonathan Fields. I looked into him for Joe. He was worried. And then I just wanted to get you out of there. Get you someplace safe.”
“Rosie…” I start to say, suddenly picturing her and Joe standing in their kitchen, watching me leave last night. The fear in Rosie’s forced smile. The hope in Joe’s eyes—or so I thought. Maybe I misread that too. Maybe he was fearful as well.
“I’ve been following you all night. You and this man.”
A chill runs through me. He says the word “man” with disgust, like I’ve been spending time with a monster posing as a man.
“I told them I’d get you and keep you safe. The police won’t look for you at my house. Not right away at least.”
“Why would the police be looking for me?” Nothing is making sense. My mind spins and spins.
“Because,” he says. And then he pauses as though it should be obvious. “Laura…” he continues. There is nothing but dismay on my face, so he lays it out. “He’s bleeding on the floor. He’s been struck in the head. And you were the last person seen with him. Given the past, I think it’s only a matter of time before they put the pieces together.”
“But he’ll tell them, won’t he? He’ll tell them that I was with him when the doorbell rang.”
“Will he? He lost his chance to hurt you one way. Now he has another.”
Tears soak my skin. Gabe is right. If Jonathan Fielding was really out to punish me for what happened to Mitch Adler, he’ll lie now. He’ll tell them I assaulted him. Tried to kill him.
Maybe he’s already dead. Maybe I’ll have another murder to account for.
“It will never be over,” I manage to say through the tears. “What happened that night … to Mitch. To his family. It will never end, will it?”
Gabe turns the wheel. We are at his house now, pulling into the driveway.
He puts the car in park. Turns off the engine.
“Melissa’s traveling for work. It’ll be safe here,” he says.
I lean across the console and fall into his arms.
“It’s going to be okay now,” he says.
I don’t answer. I don’t know if I believe him.
A man found me. Lured me on a date. Wanted to hurt me. And I ignored every sign that appeared. I told him my darkest secrets. I slept with him. Christ. And now I will be a suspect in his assault. Or his murder. How can it possibly be okay?
Gabe rocks me back and forth.
“I always kept you safe and I always will,” he says. And I pull away, startled by his words.
“What do you mean?” I ask. Gabe was never my protector. It was always the other way around. From the first time I saw his brother hit him, it’s been me saving him. Me keeping him safe. Me keeping his secret from the world.
He looks at me, perplexed. “From my brother,” he says. “Remember? He used to follow you into the woods. Stalking you. Hunting you. He would come out of nowhere, pin you to the ground. Try to smother you. Or hit you. Or strangle you. Or put a knife to your throat. Just enough…” he says, then he pauses to reflect, and remember carefully. “Just enough,” he continues, “until you thought you were going to die. Only then would he let you go.”
Am I losing my mind? He is dead serious as he describes these events, only I was the one watching as his brother did these things to him. I was the one who saw the bruises on his neck. I was the one who found them in the fort that day, Rick on top of him, a knife to Gabe’s throat. I was the one who picked up a branch from a tree and struck Rick in the head. I told him I would kill him if he did it again. I told him, and he believed me because he knew it was true. I had more anger inside me than an army of men. He left for military school a few weeks later. Gabe said he’d asked to go and I had always thought it was because of me. Because I had put the fear of God into him.
But now I wonder if that’s what happened. I wonder if Gabe invented this story about Rick hurting me, and used it to make his parents send him away.
I don’t know how to ask him. Am I remembering it wrong? Have I lost my mind? I can see Rick holding that knife. I can feel the branch in my hands the same way I can feel the bat in my hands—the bat that killed Mitch Adler.
Gabe’s eyes are wide with something soft and warm. Affection, I think. Affection like I’m his ward. His pet. His child.
“After this,” he says, “you have to stop, okay?”
“Stop?” I ask, cautiously.
“No more of these men who want to hurt you. I know you can’t help it, just like you couldn’t help it when you kissed my brother. When you liked kissing him after everything he did to you.”
I try to make sense of things, but I know I am incapable of making sense.
“And Mitch Adler. He just wanted to use you. And that doctor in New York—he had a wife and children. He was using you too. All of them just trying to hurt you. Don’t you see that?”
The breath leaves quickly but rushes in again. The rest of me remains still. Frozen.
How does Gabe know that Kevin was married? Had children? I’ve told no one because I knew what they would have thought. I knew what they would have said. No one would have understood our situation.
I never told anyone his last name. I never told anyone that he was a shrink.
“Rick is in prison. Did you know that?” Gabe asks me. And I shake my head. I had no idea. Neither did Rosie or Joe. Last we heard, he was stationed overseas somewhere.
“He killed a man in a bar fight. He had a military trial and he’s in military prison. He got what he deserved. But it destroyed my poor mother. My father’s dead. My brother’s in jail. It’s just me now. I’m all she has.”
“Okay,” I manage to say because I’m afraid to say nothing. Our mother told us Mrs. Wallace moved to a nursing home. Surely Mrs. Wallace would have told her if Rick was in prison. Or maybe not. Maybe she was too ashamed.
“We should get you inside,” he says. “You should rest.”
I look out the window at Deer Hill Lane. I can’t see much in the darkness. I can barely make out the frame of Gabe’s house. So many memories live in this neighborhood. Happy memories. Sad memories. Fear and trauma. They twist around one another in a tangled web. I haven’t been back here since I left. Not to this street. I haven’t come back because I want no part of them. I have that one picture on my screen so I won’t forget what this place did to me.
Gabe opens his door and goes outside. He waits by the front of the car for me to join him.
Something is wrong. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s Gabe. If it’s Rosie or Joe. If it’s Jonathan Fielding.
But I get out of the car anyway. I follow Gabe into the dark, quiet house. I let him close the door behind us because I don’t know what it is that I think is wrong.
And because it’s entirely possible that what is wrong is me.
FORTY-TWO
Rosie. Present Day. Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Branston, CT.
Both officers sat with her now, with al
l of the evidence spread across the table. Rosie cradled a cup of stale coffee in her hands, trying to pull together thoughts amid the exhaustion and emotional turmoil.
“Let’s go back to the very beginning,” Pearson said. Her voice was calm and soothing, unlike earlier when she was screaming at Rosie in the open room. Rosie felt like an idiot for going after that man, Edward Rittle, who wasn’t even with Laura Thursday night. But then she reminded herself of the other women he had lied to and used, and wished she’d gotten in at least one sucker punch. Laura would have done it. She would have leveled him and he would have deserved it.
At least now his wife knew. And his employer. The women he hurt got some payback for the pain he caused them.
“Okay,” Rosie said. “The beginning.”
“Start when she told you about the date.”
Rosie remembered it clearly. Laura had come downstairs from the attic, where she’d been working. She said she’d gone on a website, findlove.com, to look for older, divorced men. Men who had a proven track record for commitment. Men who were eager to settle down, and maybe one who already had his own children.
“She thought that would be perfect—a man with children who only came to visit every other weekend—”
Conway interrupted her. “Doesn’t she like children?”
“She loves my child. Mason—her nephew. But we had a complicated childhood. Our father left when we were barely teenagers. So she’s never been sure about wanting kids.”
“Okay—so she said she found one. Did she tell you his screen name?” Pearson asked.
Rosie shook her head. “No. But she described him. And that description sounds a lot like Edward Rittle, but I guess now that doesn’t mean much. All she really said was that he had a full head of brown hair, tall, in good shape. Handsome face. God, it could be a lot of men, now that I think about it. It sounded specific at the time, but it wasn’t really.”
“What about a picture? Didn’t you ask to see it?” Pearson had obviously been down this road with other women.
“No, honestly. She only had the site on her laptop upstairs, and I didn’t want to encourage it. I didn’t think she should start dating so soon. She’d just been back five weeks after leaving her entire life in New York. And it was over a breakup with a man. It seemed pretty extreme to me.”