A Stranger in the House

by Shari Lapena

  He gestures toward the kitchen, just inside. “Let me get you a drink. What will you have? A beer? Or I can mix you something, if you want.” She follows him into the house. He opens the cupboard, scanning the liquor bottles on the shelf to see what he has to offer her.

  She’s standing behind him. When he turns to ask her what she wants, she’s staring at him with such avidity that it startles him. He turns back to look inside the cupboard. “I have rum, vodka—”

  “Can you make me a martini?” she asks.

  He looks back at her stupidly. When did she get so fancy? He has no idea how to make a martini. He wasn’t expecting her to ask for something so exotic. “I don’t know how.”

  “I do,” she says smoothly, and comes up beside him and looks into the cupboard. She starts taking down bottles—vodka, vermouth. “You must have a shaker around here somewhere,” she says, opening another cupboard and looking up high.

  Her eyes seem to light immediately on a silver cocktail shaker—something he’d forgotten they even had. Another leftover wedding present. They never use it—he and Karen are unfussy, beer and wine drinkers, usually. He remembers how the two of them had needed a shot of whiskey the other night.

  “Do you have any ice?” Brigid asks.

  Tom turns to the freezer and pulls out the ice. While he’s at it, he gets himself another beer. This will be his last one tonight, he promises himself, twisting off the cap and watching Brigid make herself a martini in his kitchen as if she owns the place. It feels strange, having her here, instead of Karen.

  “So where’s Karen?” she asks. She’s finished with the shaker now. She’s grabbed a proper martini glass from the cupboard—he’d forgotten about those, too—and pours herself a drink. She holds the glass close to her lips and takes a sip, looking coyly over the rim at him.

  For a second Tom’s confused. She’s asking about Karen, who’s in jail, but her tone is all wrong. She sounds more like she’s flirting with him, the way she used to. Suddenly he regrets having asked her in for a drink. It’s too dangerous.

  “What’s the matter?” she says, looking more the way she should, and he thinks that maybe he imagined it.

  He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. Then, “Everything.”

  “Tell me,” she says.

  “Karen’s been arrested.”

  “Arrested!”

  He nods. He must keep his feelings to himself. It wouldn’t do to start getting too personal with Brigid. He shouldn’t be telling her anything at all, but the beer has loosened his tongue. And what difference does it make? It will all be in the newspapers tomorrow.

  “Arrested for what?” Brigid says.

  He wonders if he looks as ghastly as he feels. “Murder.”

  One hand flutters to her mouth while the other puts her drink down on the counter beside her. Then Brigid turns her face away, as if she’s overcome with emotion.

  He stands awkwardly, watching her.

  Finally she reaches up into the cupboard for another martini glass and pours what’s left in the shaker into it. She holds it out to him.

  He eyes it warily. And then he thinks, What the hell. He takes the glass from her, lifts it in a silent, cynical toast, and downs it in one go.

  “Tom—”

  The alcohol hits him hard and fast, making everything fuzzy, blurring lines. “Maybe you should go,” he says. He tries to backpedal the seriousness of the situation; he just wants to get her out of here, before he says or does something he shouldn’t. “The police are grasping at straws. They don’t have any other suspects and they’re trying to hang it on her. But she’s got a good lawyer.” He’s speaking slowly, carefully, because, he realizes, he’s drunk. “They’re going to realize she didn’t do it. She told me she didn’t do it, and I believe her.”

  “Tom,” she says again.

  He looks at her uneasily. He can see the outline of her breasts beneath her top. He knows those breasts. For a moment he has a vivid memory of being in bed with her, what she was like. Very different from Karen. He forces the thought aside.

  “There’s something you should know.”

  He doesn’t like the warning tone he hears in her voice. He doesn’t want to hear about any little confidences Karen might have shared with her friend across the street. And he doesn’t want another woman, an attractive woman, with whom he shares an erotic history, offering him comfort when he’s vulnerable like this. He can feel himself becoming aroused at having her so close. It must be the alcohol. His defenses are down. “I think you should go. Please.” Tom says, looking at the floor. He wants her to leave.

  “You need to hear this,” she insists.

  —

  It’s impossible to think in here; it’s like being in the middle of a constant brawl. Karen curls into a fetal position on the uncomfortable cot inside her holding cell in the basement of the police station and tries to keep it together as the night wears interminably on. She’s surrounded by drunks and prostitutes; the stench is unbearable. She tries to breathe only through her mouth. So far she has a cell to herself, but every time she hears footsteps, and shouts, as the cops bring in someone else, she’s afraid that they will open her cell door and put them in here with her.

  She thinks of Tom alone in their bed at home and tries not to cry. If only she were there with him, they could comfort each other. There’s no comfort to be had here.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Tom looks up at Brigid warily.

  “That night, the night Karen had her accident,” Brigid begins. “I was home, sitting at the window. It was around twenty after eight. I saw Karen come running out of the house.”

  “I know all this,” Tom says sullenly.

  “I watched her get into her car and tear away. And I thought—I thought maybe something was wrong.”

  Tom’s staring at her now, wondering where this is going.

  “So I got in my car and I followed her.”

  Tom feels as if his heart has stopped. He hadn’t expected that. This is going to be worse than he thought. He wants to cover his ears and refuse to listen, but he just stands there and hears it all.

  “She was driving a bit fast, but she had to stop at a couple of lights, and I was able to keep up with her, a ways behind. I was worried when I saw her run out of the house like that.” Brigid picks up her martini from the counter and takes a quick gulp, and then another, as if she needs courage for what she has to say next. “I realized she was heading into a bad part of town. I couldn’t think why. I was wondering what she was up to. It occurred to me that she might not like me following her—but she’s a friend, and I was concerned. I just wanted to make sure she was all right. So I stayed with her, but far enough back so that she wouldn’t see me. After a while she pulled into this little parking lot off the main road. I drove past while she was parking and then I did a U-turn and came back and parked across the street.”

  Tom’s watching her closely through eyes that refuse to focus; he’s trying to tell if she’s lying. He’s so bad at telling when someone is lying, judging by his past performance at it. He fears that she’s telling him the truth. He’s thinking that Brigid is a witness, and it’s making him sick with fear. She’s going to put Karen away.

  “I was almost afraid to get out of the car. But I was so worried about Karen. I saw her go behind a boarded-up restaurant. I got out of the car and walked closer. And then I heard shots. Three gunshots.” She closes her eyes briefly, opens them again. “I was petrified. It sounded like they came from inside the restaurant. Then I saw Karen come bolting out of there and hightail it for her car. She was wearing these pink rubber gloves, which I thought was odd. She tore them off before she got in the car. I stood there in the dark, against the building—I’m sure she didn’t see me—and watched her take off out of the parking lot. She was driving way too fast. I thought about going after her, but I
knew I’d never catch up to her, going at that speed. So—I went into the restaurant that she came out of.” She pauses to catch her breath.

  Tom’s heart is beating wildly, and all he can think is, She didn’t actually see Karen pull the trigger.

  “I got to the door and I opened it and went inside. It was pretty dark, but I could see that there was a body, a man, dead on the floor.” She shudders. “It was horrible. He’d been shot in the face, and the chest.”

  Brigid walks up closer to him, until she’s within arm’s reach. “Tom, she shot him. She killed that man.”

  “No she didn’t,” Tom says.

  “Tom, I know this is hard for you to hear, but I was there.”

  Tom says desperately, “You didn’t see her shoot him. You heard shots. You saw Karen run away. Maybe someone else was in that restaurant. Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He knows how frantic he sounds, how foolish.

  “Tom, I didn’t see anybody else come out of the building. And she was carrying a gun when she went in there. I saw her.”

  “You didn’t say that you saw her carrying a gun when she went into the building.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “Did she have it when she left?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see the gun there, when you were in the restaurant?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know, Tom! I didn’t pay attention to the gun. It was dark. She must have left it there somewhere. I was too freaked out by the dead body, by what she’d done, to notice the gun.”

  Jesus. Tom’s thinking furiously. This is not good. This is very, very bad. He has to know what Brigid’s going to do. His head is spinning with fear and alcohol. He says slowly, “What are you going to do, Brigid?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you going to tell the police what you saw?”

  She looks at him and comes closer. Her eyes soften. She bites her lower lip. She reaches up and touches his face gently. He’s frozen in place, confused, waiting for her answer.

  She says, “No, of course not. Karen’s my friend.” And she kisses him deeply.

  He reaches for her and succumbs helplessly to the comfort she’s offering.

  —

  Karen hasn’t slept at all. She has an arraignment this morning, and right now, her lawyer is sitting across from her in a small interview room trying to get her to drink strong coffee. But it tastes bitter and sour in her mouth and she pushes it away. Besides, she doesn’t think she can keep anything down. She feels grimy, unwashed. Her head aches and her eyes burn. She wonders if this is how she’s going to feel for the rest of her life. Is she going to spend the rest of her life in prison?

  “Karen, you need to focus,” Calvin tells her urgently.

  “Where’s Tom?” she asks again. It’s nine o’clock already. Her arraignment is this morning. Why isn’t he here? His absence makes her feel abandoned. She doesn’t think she can do this if he isn’t by her side.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here,” Calvin says. “Maybe he’s caught in traffic.”

  She reaches for the coffee, like a good client. Right now, everything depends on what her lawyer can do for her.

  Calvin says, “The evidence against you is all circumstantial, meaning there’s no direct evidence—no gun with your prints, no trace evidence from you at the scene—and no witnesses tying you to the crime. At least none that we know of so far. They may find some. The tire track evidence isn’t conclusive. The gloves are at the lab but they haven’t gotten any DNA off them yet. The lab’s a busy place, but they’ll get to it. They’ll probably find DNA. I’ll fight getting that admitted every way I know how. But they may be able to prove that they were your gloves, in which case we’ve got a big problem.”

  “I don’t think I killed him,” she says stubbornly.

  He waits a few beats. “So we have to try to figure out who did—come up with a plausible alternative theory. Because even if you did kill him”—the lawyer speaks carefully, as if not wanting to upset her—“they can’t convict unless they can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s our job to furnish that reasonable doubt. We have to come up with a credible theory of who might have killed him, other than you.”

  “I don’t know. Did he have a new wife? Because if he did, she probably wanted to kill him.” She laughs hollowly.

  “No, he didn’t.” Calvin presses her. “You said before that he might have enemies.”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in years. I thought he dealt with some questionable people, but I don’t know who they were. I stayed out of the business. I didn’t want any part of it.”

  “I’m going to start having some people look into his business contacts, see if he’d pissed anybody off.”

  She looks at the clock on the wall and wonders again where Tom is. She’s starting to feel uneasy about Tom. Can she count on him? Maybe he doesn’t believe her; maybe he thinks she’s a murderer. Is he going to come?

  “Did you see anyone else there?” Calvin asks. “Think. Did you hear anything inside the restaurant? Could there have been someone there, hiding in the shadows?”

  She tries to concentrate. “I don’t know. I can’t remember everything. I don’t remember being inside. There could have been somebody there.” She blinks her eyes. “There must have been.”

  Calvin takes a sip of his own coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “You told me before that you felt that your husband had been in your house in the weeks leading up to the phone call.”

  “Yes, I’m sure of it,” she says. She gives an involuntary shudder. “When I think of it now—it still disturbs me. I wonder if I’ll ever stop being afraid of him, even though I know he’s—”

  “Do you still have the photos on your phone? The ones you took of the house in the mornings before you went to work?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good. Those photos show that you were in a particular state of mind—that you thought you were being stalked by him in your own home. You were in mortal fear. We need to preserve those photos—in case we need them.”

  “But isn’t that worse?” she asks, her voice catching. “If I thought he’d found me, and was breaking into the house, stalking me, doesn’t it make it look more likely that I killed him?”

  “Yes,” the lawyer says. He pauses. “But it also gives you a defense. If we can prove that he was in your house.” Calvin makes a note on his legal pad. “We need to get fingerprints taken. I’ll look into getting that done.”

  She looks at him with dismay but says nothing. She knows how bad it looks. No one’s going to believe her. Her own lawyer doesn’t believe her. And she’s not sure about her husband either.

  She hears a noise outside in the corridor and looks up quickly. The door opens, and a guard ushers Tom into the interview room.

  Karen feels immense relief. She wants to ask him what the hell took him so long, but one look at him stops her. He looks like hell. And she’s the one who spent the night in a cell. She feels a surge of annoyance. She needs him to pull himself together; she can’t do this on her own. She says nothing, but eyes him closely.

  “Sorry, I overslept,” Tom says, flushing. “I couldn’t get to sleep, and then when I finally did—” He trails off.

  “She’ll be appearing in court soon,” Calvin tells him.

  Tom nods, as if it’s completely normal for his wife to be going to court on a murder charge.

  Karen wants to shake him. He seems so . . . removed.

  “Can we have a moment alone?” she asks, looking at Calvin.

  The lawyer takes a quick glance at his watch and says, “Sure, a few minutes.” He gets up with a scrape of his chair and exits, leaving the two of them alone.

  Karen stands up and ta
kes a step toward Tom. They eye one another. Karen breaks the silence first. “You look like hell.”

  “You don’t look so good yourself.”

  It breaks the tension, and they both smile a little.

  “Tom,” Karen says, “I don’t think Calvin believes me.” She’s testing him. She knows it doesn’t really matter what her lawyer believes; his job is to defend her anyway. But she wants to hear Tom say that he believes her. She needs to hear it. “I don’t think I could have killed him, Tom, and if you don’t believe me—”

  He steps forward and takes her in his arms and holds her tight as she presses her face into his chest, stifling a sob. “Shhhhhh . . . Of course I believe you.”

  It’s comforting to be held by him, to hear him say it. Even so, she begins to shake uncontrollably. Suddenly the enormity of what she’s facing is catching up with her.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Across the street from 24 Dogwood Drive, the big picture window is empty. No one sits looking out today.

  Brigid has things to do. Last night . . . last night was the beginning of a whole new life for her. She feels as if she might explode with happiness.

  And if someone else has to suffer for her to be happy, if someone else has to go to jail for the rest of her life—well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Life is a zero-sum game, after all.

  Brigid thinks back to the day it all happened, the day that has changed everything. It started out like any other day on sleepy Dogwood Drive. She was doing a bit of housework, glancing outside occasionally, when she noticed a strange man poking around the Krupps’ house. She turned off the vacuum cleaner and watched him. He mounted the front steps and looked in the window at the top of the door. But she noticed that he didn’t knock or ring the bell. He seemed to know that no one was home. There was no car in the driveway. Then he walked around the back. Brigid’s curiosity, and her indignation, were aroused. She wanted to know who he was and what he was doing there.