A Neighbor's Lie

by Blake Pierce

  She paused here and when she did, Chloe found that it was getting hard to breathe. She hated this woman with every nerve in her body and sitting through this was torture.

  “She showed up and I told her. And she got mad, obviously. She believed me right away but told me she’d fight for her marriage, that she was not just going to roll over and give up. I thought that was sort of pathetic. What self-respecting woman would stay with a man that is so sexually active with another woman—a man that does stuff with that other woman that his wife doesn’t do…”

  “Please watch yourself,” Chloe said through clenched teeth.

  Ruthanne nodded, still not looking up. “I knew then that the only way to get rid of her was to kill her. And I had thought about it before, though I had never told your dad. I mean, I mentioned here and there but he thought I was joking—just saying things to make him feel like he was very important to me, which he was. But I had never done anything like that before. I couldn’t shoot someone. Couldn’t stab someone. I thought about poison, maybe. I considered that one for a while.

  “But right then and there, as we were arguing, I saw how close she was to those stairs that led downstairs. And I thought to myself: Just one push. One hard push and down she goes. I figured there was a chance she’d break her neck and die. And even if she didn’t, she’d likely break something. And even if that happened, it would bring everything out into the open. She’d still be there when your father got home and he would have to choose. It was a win-win for me.

  “But then your mother slapped me. Hard. Right across the face. It just about knocked me on my ass. And that’s what it took. I punched her in the face. I think I broke her nose and that’s where the blood came from. She reeled a bit and then I shoved her. She went down the stairs backwards and landed on her head, rolling over right on top of it when she bounced. I heard something snap. I also heard her let out this strangled gasp at the bottom, wet from the bloody nose and blood in her throat, I guess.”

  It was then that Chloe realized that Ruthanne was enjoying this. She was doing everything she could to get under Chloe’s skin. Hoping she might lash out at her. Chloe was shaking, trying to hide it but failing miserably.

  “Why are you shaking?” Ruthanne asked defiantly. She finally looked up at her and when she did, Chloe saw a malevolent glee in the woman’s eyes. “You wanted to hear it. You wanted the truth.”

  “So you’re telling me my father had no idea about any of it?” she managed to ask.

  “That’s right. He was simply expecting to come to his apartment and find me in his bed, waiting for him. Like we’d done so many times before. Instead, he came home to a dead wife. And for a minute, I thought he was going to hurt me. He was upset, Chloe. He did cry for her. But in the end, he chose me. Me. Not your mother, not you or your sister. Me.”

  Chloe nodded. She felt tears welling up in her eyes and she’d be damned if she would let Ruthanne see them. She got up and turned away, heading quickly for the door.

  “Guard!”

  “Is that all?” Ruthanne asked. “Really? You don’t want to know anything else? Maybe about how he spent a weekend with me at your mother’s favorite little lake house up on Union Lake?”

  Chloe realized she was leaving with Ruthanne feeling as if she had the upper hand. And while that hurt, it was worth it.

  The guard opened the door and Chloe quickly went out. Ruthanne was still talking but it was muted by the closed door.

  “You okay?” the guard asked when they were out in the hallway.

  “Yeah,” Chloe said. She reached back into her jacket pocket again, this time removing the phone. She woke it up and smiled in spite of her tears.

  She’d had her voice recorder app running the entire time. When she pressed STOP in the hallway, it read 6:17.

  She’d recorded every single word Ruthanne had said.

  “You sure you’re okay?” the guard asked. “You look a little shook.”

  “I am,” she said, pocketing the phone. “But it was well worth it.”

  ***

  Sitting in the parking lot, she seriously considered heading to yet another prison—to Somerset Correctional, the prison her father had been calling home for the last eighteen years. From Riverside, it would be about a three-hour drive—maybe just two and a half if she sped the entire way—and she would get there around nine. She pulled up the number on Google through her phone and was about to call to check on the protocol. But before she could make the call, her phone rang in her hand. She saw that it was Garcia calling, took a moment to compose herself, and answered.

  “This is Agent Fine.”

  “Fine, it’s Garcia. Look…the test results came back, and you were right. There’s a match between Kim Wielding’s unborn baby and Gerald Denning. We got the call five minutes ago.”

  “So what do we do now? Is that enough to arrest him?”

  “It gets tricky. It depends on how he responds. Listen…his past makes this a very touchy situation. I want you and Moulton to hang back for a while. We’re going to send two men to his home and explain the situation. It’s too late to do much of anything right now without causing a scene, so we will wait until tomorrow. If Denning is smart, he’ll at least comply and come in for questioning. When he gets here, I want you and Moulton on it. I wouldn’t risk placing you on the team to bring him in, but this is your case. This was your call. And you deserve first crack at interrogating him.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’ll call tomorrow. Could be eight in the morning, could be noon. No clue right now.”

  “I understand.”

  “Call Moulton and fill him in.”

  With that, Garcia ended the call. Chloe took a moment to sort out everything she had just learned in the past fifteen minutes and then pulled up Moulton’s number.

  As it rang, she heard Ruthanne Carwile’s voice in her head and it sparked a furious anger within her.

  He was simply expecting to come to his apartment and find me in his bed, waiting for him. Like we’d done so many times before. Instead, he came home to a dead wife.

  She wasn’t certain it was enough to free her father, but it was certainly a step in that direction.

  The question was whether or not her father would even want her to take that step.

  There was only one way to find out.

  She quickly pulled out of the Riverside parking lot and placed a call to Somerset Correctional to see if it would be possible for her to meet with her father one more time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  It took a little pushing, but she was able to arrange to speak with her father. It took a series of calls to get it done, all of which made the drive pass by even faster. She found that she was not nearly as nervous this time, that she was almost excited to talk to him—not because she had a strong desire to do so, but because she now knew that she had something over him. That she had the opportunity to catch him in a lie and to prove that he was just as monstrous and worthless as Danielle claimed he was.

  As she parked in the Somerset visitors’ lot, she could understand Danielle’s point of view. After all, even to Chloe his memory felt like some demonic entity rattling its chains in her head and demanding attention. And if she wanted to be free of it, she knew what she had to do. She just didn’t know which direction to take the conversation she was about to have. Hell, she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to speak coherently when she saw him, despite the power she felt she’d be going into the conversation with.

  She decided then and there, as she walked into the Somerset lobby, that she was not going to tell her father about the conversation she’d had with Ruthanne. She was not going to let him know that she had a recording that could potentially free him overnight.

  The next several minutes passed by as if she were in a dream. She was escorted back to that row of dirty glass partitions and the CB-type phones. Her father was already sitting at one of them, under the watchful eye of a guard who stood against the wall beh
ind him.

  Chloe sat down slowly, realizing that she was starting to feel very tired—both physically and emotionally.

  Her father picked up his receiver and spoke her name. “Chloe?”

  “Hey,” she answered, still not sure what she would say.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you again after last time. Is everything okay?”

  She let out a strained chuckle. “No. No, things are never okay when they involve you.”

  “So why are you here? What can I do for you?”

  “I wish I could forget you,” she said. “I wish I could forget you like Danielle has. I wish I could hate you, Dad.”

  “Chloe…”

  “Please shut up, Dad. I told you last time that I have to sever everything with you or I’ll go crazy. Tell me the truth.”

  “About what, Chloe?”

  “Did you love Mom? Did you ever really love her?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “That’s bullshit, Dad.”

  “Chloe, I—”

  “Just tell me,” she interrupted. “Just tell me the truth so that I can get it done and be done with you.”

  “Tell you what? Sweetheart, I don’t know what you want to hear.”

  “If you loved us, how could you throw your life with us away? What was so fucking special about Ruthanne?”

  “I don’t know,” he said without reservation. “I could have given you hundreds of answers in the few years after it all went down. But now…now I barely remember. I loved her, too. I know you don’t want to hear it, but I did.”

  Oh, I know, she thought. I know all of this.

  And for just a moment, she nearly pulled out her cell phone. But she decided not to at the last moment. He doesn’t deserve the relief, she thought. And I don’t want him thinking I went to see Ruthanne just because he suggested it.

  “Chloe, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  “Do what?”

  “Torture yourself over me and my mistakes.”

  “The sad thing is that you’re wrong. I have to or you’re going to haunt me forever. I need these answers in order to let you go. And quite frankly, you’re not worth it…all of this stress and sorrow.”

  “So what did you come here to tell me?”

  “That I’m through with you, Dad. Danielle had the right approach. When we found out the truth about Ruthanne, I was so happy. I thought things could be okay with us when you got out. But the more I learn and the more time passes, I know that just won’t happen.”

  Her father could only nod to this.

  Chloe got to her feet, not wanting to see him crying again. It would either break her or piss her off—and she didn’t want to find out which.

  “Bye, Dad,” she said.

  And just as easily as she had come into the room in a dreamlike state, she left in exactly the same way.

  On her way back to her car, she took out her phone. Then she sat behind the wheel for a moment, listening to the recorded confession from Ruthanne. When it was done and she placed it back into her pocket, it felt like a bomb. And it was both horrifying and comforting to know that she was the only one with the detonator.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Chloe got the call from Garcia at eleven o’clock the following morning. When she and Moulton arrived at headquarters just after noon, one of the first things Chloe saw as they headed for Denning’s interrogation room was Cecily Denning. She was holding a cup of coffee and sitting on a bench by herself just outside of the lobby, near the hall that led to the interrogation rooms. She was shaking, had clearly been weeping, and looked absolutely lost.

  So much for trying to keep this all from her, she thought.

  She could not bring herself to simply ignore the poor woman. She stopped at her side, not sitting down but staying close. “Mrs. Denning, has anyone bothered speaking to you yet? Maybe offered to get you some help?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “There’s someone on the way right now, I believe.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I am,” she said. “I needed…needed this, I think. To break away from him. I just…my God, I had no idea. What a bastard.”

  Hearing those last three words made Chloe think that Cecily would indeed be okay within a few days. Maybe she had been waiting for something like this to happen so she could finally break away from the man who had already committed so many sins against her.

  Not knowing what else to say, Chloe gave the woman an apologetic little nod and headed down the hallway. Moulton pulled up beside her and whispered, “You think she really had no idea?”

  “I think with what Denning put that poor woman through, she was probably pretty oblivious—consciously or not—to just about anything he did.”

  They came to an intersection in the hallway and took a right. A few doors down, she saw Garcia and several agents gathered around. They stood by an open door which, Chloe saw as she approached, was the observation room. She and Moulton stepped inside with Garcia and looked out through the double-sided glass. Gerald Denning was sitting in the room, nervously tapping his foot at the table. He was not handcuffed, holding a cup of coffee with one hand and looking through a small stack of papers with the other.

  “Has he said anything at all incriminating yet?” Chloe asked.

  “He hasn’t really said much of anything,” Garcia said. “The men that went for him told him they needed his cooperation with a case. When they told him what case, he got a little defensive. When the threat of leading him out of his lovely home in handcuffs for all of his neighbors to see came up, he was a little more willing to play ball.”

  “I passed by his wife on the way in,” Chloe said. “I take it she knows he was sleeping with Kim Wielding?”

  “Oh yeah. When you get in there, have a look at the red splotch on the left side of his face. That came compliments of his wife.”

  Chloe did her best to hide her nervousness. It was not the interrogation itself that she feared, but the feeling that this moment could be vitally important to her career. The man she was about to interrogate was not any normal suspect. His history and scandal made it a loose-wire sort of situation. She could feel Garcia’s eyes on her as she opened up the door to the interrogation room. Moulton followed behind her and she was a little relieved to see the obvious unease on his face.

  Once inside the room, Moulton leaned against the back wall with his arms folded. He looked intimidating not because of his size—he was, after all, of average build and size—but because of his expression. He looked cold and calculated. Chloe knew this was really just an act, but Denning would not.

  Noting Moulton’s posture, she also knew this was a sign that she was to do most of—if not all of—the talking. She slowly approached the table and sat down in the chair on the other side.

  “You lied to me, Mr. Denning. And we have DNA tests to prove it.”

  “I was trying to protect my wife.” He was close to tears and his voice was ragged.

  “It seems to me that you were trying to protect yourself. If you were trying to protect your wife, you wouldn’t have had sex with Kim Wielding.”

  “Don’t you dare judge me.”

  “Oh, I’m not judging. I’m just stating facts. But you know…I’ll even give you that. I can see you not saying anything to us while we were there. You revealed a bit but not the pregnancy bombshell. I understand you not wanting your wife to know about that part especially.”

  “So let me guess,” Denning said, his tone mocking and sad at the same time. “You think that she told me about the pregnancy and I just couldn’t have that get out. So you think I killed her. Is that right?”

  “Based on your history of trying to keep secrets, yes, my mind went there. The minds of several others as well. Which is why you and I are currently meeting in this interrogation room.”

  “I had no idea she was pregnant, by the way. The first I heard of that was when the agents came by to pick me up this afternoon.”

 
“You’ll forgive me for not believing you, I hope.”

  He shrugged and slapped the table in frustration.

  “So please…tell me,” Chloe said. “For real. When was the last time you slept with Kim Wielding?”

  “A little over two weeks ago.”

  “And how regular were your encounters?”

  “There was no schedule. She’d text me and ask if I was free.”

  “Was she always the one to initiate these meetings?”

  “No. Sometimes it would be me.”

  “Are there text conversations on your phone to back this up?”

  “Not my personal phone. We used a few of those cheap burner phones that you can get at any drugstore. I paid for them in cash so nothing would show up on the credit card bills or checking account.”

  She nodded. “Really doing your best to protect your wife.”

  He looked at her with pure fury, but she also watched a tear trickle out of the corner of his eye.

  “I’m not proud of the things I’ve done. But when Cecily started going through her mess, she was not at all responsive to my needs. She had absolutely zero desire for me and I got desperate. That’s where the scandal with the prostitute came from. That’s why I jumped at the chanced to be with Kim when the opportunity arose.”

  “Is this supposed to make me feel sorry for you?”

  “With all due respect, Agent, I don’t give a shit how you feel about me. But I did not kill Kim Wielding. And there are text messages on my burner phone that will back that up.”

  “And where is this burner phone?”

  “It’s in my car, between the seat and the center console. It’s hidden by a folded up scarf that is also tucked into that space. The code to unlock it is 1905.”

  “And what about Kim’s? Do you know where she kept hers? Did she hide hers as well?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Chloe stood up from her seat and looked back at Moulton. He nodded and exited the room. Chloe turned back to Denning and gave him a cursory look. “We’re going to check your phone and see what we can do about finding Kim’s. For now, is there anything else you lied about earlier that you’d like to fess up to?”