Death is in the Details

by Heather Sunseri

  I looked Uncle Henry right in the eye. “Tell me this: after Finch killed Mom, whose idea was it to burn the evidence? Yours or Finch’s?”

  “What is she talking about?” Aunt Leah asked. Her voice was elevated a full octave, bordering on hysteria. She had remained quiet while she listened to me rant, occasionally looking at her husband’s face.

  But he didn’t dare look away from me, even as he placed a hand over his wife’s. “Why don’t you let me talk to Faith alone. And then we’ll—”

  “Henry Ballard Nash! You will not manhandle me in my own kitchen. You will tell me the truth. And if that means I need to sit here and listen quietly, then I will.”

  Uncle Henry nodded, defeat etched in every line in his face. “You have to understand, Faith. It was an accident. Your brother only meant to protect you.”

  My hand went instinctively to my mouth as I smothered a sob. That was when I finally pulled out a chair and sat, if only to avoid fainting. My own brother had murdered our mother.

  Aunt Leah grabbed Uncle Henry’s arm and stared at him in disbelief for a brief eternity. “What in God’s name are you saying?”

  He turned to her. “I’m so sorry. I’ve only kept one secret from you over the years. And I only did it to protect our family. Our Finch only wanted to protect his sister. It was a terrible accident, but he killed his own mother. And Eli. And Lord help me, I helped him destroy the evidence.”

  Aunt Leah stared at her husband. And as the devastating truth set in, she began to weep.

  Thirty-Three

  Uncle Henry helped Aunt Leah upstairs and gave her some anti-anxiety medicine to calm her down. When he returned, he took a seat beside me.

  I fisted my hands on the table, fighting back tears. My brother had killed my mother, and then he’d allowed our stepbrother to take the fall. The grief and anger coursing through me was overwhelming.

  But I needed to be brave. Not only for myself, but for my brother, who had barely been an adult himself when he did what he did. It was now time to learn why.

  I faced my uncle. Instead of looking like the weight of his guilt was piled on his shoulders, he actually looked relieved.

  “I’ve been carrying this burden for twelve years,” he said. He hung his head. “I’m tired. And I’m old.”

  “Do you regret your part in it?” It was a simple question, but it was also a way of stalling, before we got to the question I really wanted to ask. Why did my brother kill our mom?

  Uncle Henry angled his head and studied me for a second. “Not for one second.” His voice was certain. “Your stepbrother was obsessed with you.”

  “Obsessed with me?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “That boy watched your every move. He made sure no other boy ever looked at you, let alone asked you out. The two of you were inseparable, and I watched how uncomfortable you became your junior year.”

  “You saw that?”

  “Everyone saw it,” Uncle Henry said. “And one night, Eli was out at some town event and he mentioned how convenient it would be if you and Ethan got married someday. He might have been joking, I don’t know, but when Finch’s friends told him about it, he became irate. He talked it over with Aubrey, since she was on her way to becoming a psychologist. And she encouraged him to talk to you about your relationship with Ethan. Which he did, right?”

  “I told him Ethan was my best friend.”

  “That’s not all you told him.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It wasn’t. I told him that Ethan thought he was in love with me and that I wasn’t sure how to handle it without hurting the rest of the family.”

  “Finch asked some of his friends to keep an eye on you—friends who were still in Paynes Creek. One of them reported back that Ethan had come on to you at a party after drinking too much, and that you had to shove him away. People were talking about the two of you.”

  “They were,” I recalled. “I hated it. But I knew we’d go to different colleges eventually, and he’d lose interest in me. And the gossip would die.”

  “Not according to Finch,” Uncle Henry said. “He and Aubrey agreed that your relationship with Ethan was highly inappropriate, and that Finch needed to step in, since your mother and stepfather clearly weren’t.”

  “Step in? But he didn’t just step in, he—” My words caught in my throat, and I struggled to breathe. None of this was a reason for Finch to kill my mother.

  I barely whispered my next words. “What did he do, Uncle Henry?” But what I wanted to ask was: What did he become?

  “Finch came home that night. He wanted to confront Ethan. And he wanted to tell your mother and Eli that they were making a big mistake by not putting a stop to Ethan’s behavior. And that joking about a relationship that you didn’t want, and that many thought was immoral, was wrong. He wanted for all of you to have a conversation, and to get Ethan the help he needed.”

  Uncle Henry took a deep breath. “But no one was there when he got home. So he went through Ethan’s things. He found a box of photos… of you.”

  “What kind of photos?”

  “Photos from prom… with your dates cut out. Photos he took of you while you were sleeping. Photos clearly taken from a distance. It was obvious he was stalking you.”

  “Did you see these pictures?” I asked.

  Uncle Henry shook his head. “Finch only told me about them.”

  “When? After you burned down my home, or before?” I stood and leaned over him. “When did you decide to burn my house, the evidence, and my mother’s body?”

  “Faith…”

  “Finish the story. What did Finch do after he found the photos?”

  Uncle Henry’s face fell again. His cheeks were flushed, and he appeared to be overheating. “Aw, honey. You don’t need to hear the rest.”

  “I have to hear the whole story.”

  He took in another deep breath and let it out. “Eli and your mom returned home. They’d been out to dinner. Finch confronted them. And when he told them that he suspected Ethan was sexually assaulting you, Eli laughed.”

  I took in a sharp breath. “He laughed?”

  “He laughed and told Finch that you and Ethan weren’t doing anything that two teenagers hadn’t been doing for thousands of years.”

  I narrowed my gaze. “What about Mom? Was she okay with what Ethan was doing?”

  “Your mom tried to pass it off as if nothing inappropriate had happened. She told Finch she was confident you hadn’t taken the relationship too far. But then… but then Eli told Finch that he thought it would be great if you had.”

  I gasped. “What?”

  “He claimed that his son would be the best thing that could ever happen to you. That Ethan would be the only man who could ever accept you for the way your mind and memories worked. So Finch punched him.”

  “He was defending me,” I said.

  “He was,” Uncle Henry agreed. “But Eli fought back. He said some things to make Finch even angrier. And Finch lost control. He spun Eli around and put him in a chokehold until he could no longer breathe. Your mom tried to stop him. She pulled at Finch’s arm, but Finch, purely out of reflex, shoved her away. Your mom fell backwards and hit her head on the edge of the countertop. Her death was a terrible accident.”

  “Accident?” I said.

  “Finch lost control.”

  “He was angry. Because the people who were supposed to protect me… didn’t.” I was talking to myself more than to Uncle Henry, but he heard and understood.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Finch is no serial killer. He’s not even an arsonist. I committed the arson that night. To protect him.”

  “No.” Tears were now streaming down my face, but I was too angry to succumb to the grief I was feeling. “You did more than that. You didn’t just protect Finch—you framed Ethan. You made sure that he would be charged and convicted. You sent an innocent man to prison!”

  “Innocent?” Uncle He
nry said. “You’re calling a boy who raped my seventeen-year-old niece innocent? He deserved to go to prison.”

  His words knocked the breath out of me like a punch to the gut. I stumbled backwards. Uncle Henry started to stand, but I lifted a hand. “Don’t.” My eyes met his. “How did you know?”

  “In the hospital, your Aunt Leah overheard you talking to Ethan from your hospital bed. You said you’d never forgive him for what he did to you that night and that he would never lay another hand on you. She could hear the sheer terror in your voice, and she knew. She knew that he had raped you.”

  The room began to spin. I grabbed the back of a chair. My darkest secret—one I thought would stay secret forever—was already known by the people closest to me. And they had said nothing.

  “But you had already decided to pin the fire on Ethan. You planted evidence to make sure he looked guilty.”

  Uncle Henry shook his head. “No. I didn’t plant the gas cans until after that. When Finch called me that night—right after he found the photos—he was so angry. I went over there immediately, but by the time I got there, it was too late. Eli and your mother were already dead. Your brother was beside himself. Inconsolable. So I found the gas cans in the barn, and I burned the evidence by burning the house. And that was all.

  “But then your Aunt Leah discovered what Ethan had done. And then… yes, I planted the gas cans in Ethan’s car. And since I was in charge of the arson investigation, it was easy to make sure Detective Reid saw what I needed him to see. I made sure that boy got what he deserved.”

  “Did Chief know Ethan was innocent?”

  “He didn’t care once I told him Ethan had raped you.”

  “And then the two of you buried the evidence that would’ve proven his innocence.”

  Why had I never allowed Ethan to tell me his side of things? If he had, I would have tried to help him—wouldn’t I? Or was it unfair to ask that question of the twenty-nine-year-old version of me? It was the seventeen-year-old Faith Day that had just been raped.

  “How did you figure it out?” Uncle Henry asked in a quiet voice.

  I swiped at the moisture on my face. “The photo. One of Aunt Leah’s leashes is hanging there. Ethan thought it was your leash for Scout. But I recognized it as Finch’s leash for Sally Brown.” Aunt Leah had used the Auburn University colors of blue and orange, because Finch had just been accepted to the vet school there. “Then I just started thinking about the timing of everything, and why Finch didn’t come home immediately. And I realized, he had come home. He just didn’t come see me in the hospital right away.”

  With my hands on the back of a chair, I bent over at my waist and stared down at the floor. The chain reaction that had begun the moment I realized that Finch’s leash was left on the hook of our childhood home had been overwhelming.

  “Who have you told?” he asked.

  Technically, I’d told no one. But Ethan was close to the truth, and I’d left Luke enough details to put it all together. To not just connect Finch to this crime, but to the others. I had used Post-Its to mark down where Finch was during each of the crimes on Luke’s wall—and he had been out of town for every crime that had occurred after we both moved back to Paynes Creek, except of course for the ones that had occurred right here in town. I wasn’t able to pin down Finch’s whereabouts in the earlier crimes, because we were both still in school, but it was enough.

  It would take time for Luke to accumulate hard evidence that proved Finch had become a monster leading a double life—devoted husband and animal-lover most days, but cold-blooded killer and vigilante when the mood struck. But Luke would do it.

  “Why do you want to know?” I asked.

  “I want to know how long I have to get my affairs in order,” Uncle Henry said. “I’m assuming you’ve told the FBI agent. Can I call Finch and Aubrey and warn them?”

  “Warn them?” I asked. “Aubrey knows what he did?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “How can she live with that?” I waved the question off. “It doesn’t matter. I hate you and Finch for doing what you did, and if Aubrey knew and said nothing, I hate her too. Your idea of protecting me sent a kid to prison for life. Yes, you should prepare yourself. And God help Aunt Leah.”

  Thirty-Four

  I slipped behind the wheel of Luke’s SUV and knew that my life was about to change again. But worse than that, I was about to lose my brother—the brother I thought I knew so well. Turns out I didn’t know him at all.

  And then there was Aubrey. How could she act like my friend—my sister—all these years, knowing all the while that my own brother had killed our mother?

  All this time, my entire family, except for Aunt Leah, had clung to the lie that Ethan was guilty. When he was released from prison, they claimed it was a mistake. And they knew that I had been raped, yet all along, through all those years I spent in therapy, not once did my family let me know that I didn’t have to suffer alone. That I could talk to them.

  Except, in a way, Aubrey. She had set me up with a really good psychologist. Perhaps that was her way of reaching out. I couldn’t talk to her, but she made sure I could talk to someone. I wish she had just told me the truth—but she had done the next best thing. She had tried.

  And now it was time for me to return that favor. I was about to send my brother to prison, and destroy Aubrey’s life. And she had a baby on the way. I at least owed it to her to go warn her. To tell her about the storm that was coming.

  I was driving down Main Street when an orchestra of police sirens erupted behind me. As I pulled over to let them pass, I saw it wasn’t local squad cars, but a caravan of black SUVs with police lights in their front windows. That could only mean Luke had seen my notes. They were on their way to Finch’s veterinary office. To arrest my brother.

  As I watched each car speed by, I flipped through memories of my childhood. We’d started out as a happy family—Mom, Dad, Finch and me. Until Dad died, changing us all, it was a pretty good life. A great life.

  And now my brother was about to make headlines—in the worst way.

  My phone buzzed in the passenger seat. I looked over and saw Luke’s name on the screen. I answered. “Hi,” I said softly.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “But I’ll find my way again.” I watched the taillights of the feds fade in the distance. “Sorry about taking your car. I’ll leave it at Coop’s. I’d like to pick up Gus.”

  “I wish I could meet you there.”

  “It’s okay. I need to be alone. Besides, you have a job to do, Special Agent Justice.” I paused. He would have to interrogate my brother, hoping to get him to confess to a string of murders. “Finch didn’t mean to kill Eli and Mom,” I added weakly. “Uncle Henry said that Finch lost control and killed Eli in a rage. And Mom’s death was an accident. She fell.” I stared out the window at icicles dripping from a couple of the storefronts. “I guess it’s cliché to say, ‘He led such a quiet, simple life. He was a family man. Went to church on Sundays.’”

  “Are all those things true?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah.” I laughed under my breath. “I saw your agents driving past. Picking up my brother, I assume.”

  He hesitated. “I’m watching video of them arriving at the vet clinic now—live feed from one of the officers’ body cams.”

  “And Uncle Henry?”

  “He called the police station. He’s turning himself in. We’ve also temporarily relieved Chief Reid of his duties while we question his involvement.”

  I sniffed loudly. “What about Aubrey? I assume you’ll be detaining her for interviews?”

  “A couple of uniforms should be on their way to her soon. And an evidence response team is on their way from the FBI office in Louisville. ”

  “One thing still doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I don’t think Finch is the person who’s been harassing me.”<
br />
  “Why do you say that?”

  “For one, whoever it was snuck into my trailer while I was sleeping, and with Gus there. But Gus always screams and hisses when Finch comes in. To Gus, Finch is the evil man that spayed her and gives her shots. For another, Finch could easily carry me. He wouldn’t have needed to drag me through the snow to the fire that night. And finally… why? Why would he do any of this?”

  “Good points.” Luke seemed to be thinking. “I’m going to keep someone stationed at your home.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And we’ll need you to come in later today or tomorrow. You’ve given me enough information to begin the initial interrogations and interviews, but I would like to talk some things over with you.”

  “It doesn’t seem real,” I said.

  “Faith, I’m really sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  Finch’s and Aubrey’s house was dark when I arrived. I wondered where Aubrey was—she was supposed to be staying in bed. I hoped she wasn’t out shopping for baby accessories again. I would hate for her to hear this devastating news while out and about.

  I knew an evidence team was on its way, and I wondered if I would be breaking any sort of laws if I went in. But I did have a key. It wasn’t breaking and entering.

  My curiosity got the best of me. I grabbed my camera and let myself in.

  I stepped lightly down the hallway to their bedroom, just in case Aubrey was there and asleep. But the bed was made, and the room looked like it had just been freshly cleaned. I walked over to their dresser and looked at a framed photo from their wedding. Finch was smiling into the camera, and Aubrey’s head was thrown back, her face full of laughter. They got married at their church and had a reception in the gardens of a local historic home. It had been a beautiful sunny day. Now it only brought me sadness.

  I left the bedroom and went to Finch’s home office. He often brought his paperwork home so that he could be with Aubrey while she cooked dinner. The office was not tidy at all; paper was strewn about the desk. I recognized some of the reports. It appeared Finch had been working on his clinic’s accounting. Beneath the reports was a folder, with the edges of newspaper peeking out from inside.