by Shari Lapena
* * *
—
As Olivia walks rapidly down the street, she sees something in front of the Pierce house. There’s a crowd of people standing around, gazing at the white house with the bay window and black shutters.
The house is unremarkable, like any number of houses on the street. But the usually peaceful scene is quite different now. There are police cars parked along the street, and a white police van. A reporter is interviewing one of the neighbors on the pavement. Olivia doesn’t want to be one of those ghoulish people who feast on the pain of others, but she can’t deny she’s curious. From here, she can’t see anything of what’s going on inside, except the occasional figure passing in front of one of the windows.
Olivia moves on quickly. She thinks about the people on the street, gossiping, speculating. She knows what they’re saying. They’re saying that he probably killed her.
Olivia thinks about Robert Pierce, inside his house right now with the police, people outside watching. He has forfeited his right to privacy because his wife has been murdered, and he might not have had anything to do with it.
She finds herself hoping, selfishly, that the renewed interest in Amanda Pierce will make people forget all about the break-ins and anonymous letters.
TEN
Becky Harris looks out her daughter’s bedroom window at the side of the house, obscured by the curtain. From here she can see the street below, and the Pierce house next door. She spots Olivia out for a walk, making her way past the little crowd on the street. Becky tears nervously at the skin around her nails, an old habit she’d quit years ago, but that has recently resurfaced. She turns her attention back to the Pierce house.
She wonders what they’ve found, if anything.
Two people come out of the house. A man and a woman, both in dark suits. She remembers seeing the same two people yesterday, bringing Robert home. Detectives, she thinks. They must be. They stand in front of the house for a moment speaking to one another. She watches as the man’s eyes sweep up and down the street. His partner nods in agreement, and they start off down the driveway.
It’s obvious they’re going to start questioning the neighbors.
* * *
—
Jeannette observes the detectives from behind the window. She knows they will be at her house soon. She tries to ignore how anxious she feels. She doesn’t want to talk to the police.
When the knock finally comes, she jumps a little, even though she has been expecting it. She walks to the front door. The two detectives loom on her front step—beyond them she has a perfect view of the Pierce house, directly across the street. Her eyes flit nervously away from the detectives.
The man shows his badge. “I’m Detective Webb, and this is Detective Moen. We’re investigating the murder of Amanda Pierce, who lived across the street from you. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Okay,” she says, a little nervously.
“Your name?”
“Jeannette Bauroth.”
Webb asks, “How well do you know Robert and Amanda Pierce?”
She shakes her head. “Not at all, really. I only know them to see them,” she says. “They just moved in a little over a year ago. They kept to themselves, mostly.”
“Did you ever see them arguing, or overhear them arguing?” She shakes her head. “Ever see any bruises on Amanda Pierce, a black eye, perhaps?”
“No, nothing like that,” Jeannette says.
“Did you happen to notice Robert Pierce coming or going on the weekend of September twenty-ninth, the weekend his wife disappeared?”
She doesn’t remember seeing Robert at all that weekend. “No.”
“Did you ever see anyone else coming or going from their house?” Moen asks.
She has to answer. She doesn’t want to. She bites her lip nervously and says, “I don’t want to cause anyone any trouble.”
“You’re not causing trouble, Mrs. Bauroth,” Detective Webb assures her, his voice quiet but firm. “You’re cooperating in a police investigation, and if you know something, you must share it with us.”
She sighs and says, “Yes, I saw someone. Their next-door neighbor, Becky Harris. I saw her coming out their front door, in the middle of the night. I’d gotten up to have a glass of milk—sometimes I have trouble sleeping—and happened to look out my window. And I saw her.”
“When was this?” Webb asks.
She doesn’t want to answer, but she really has no choice. “It was very late Saturday night, the weekend that Amanda disappeared.” The detectives share a look.
“Are you absolutely sure of the date?” Webb asks.
“Yes,” she says miserably. “I’m certain of it. Because by Tuesday, there was a rumor going around that Amanda hadn’t come home and he’d reported her missing.” She adds, “Becky’s husband is away on business a lot. I think he was away that weekend. The kids are off at college.”
“Thank you,” Webb says. “You have been very helpful.”
She looks back at him, feeling sick at heart. “I never would have said anything, except you’re the police. You won’t tell her where you heard it from, will you? We’re neighbors.”
The detective nods good-bye at her as he turns to go, but doesn’t answer her question.
Jeannette retreats inside the house, closing the door with an unhappy frown. She hadn’t told anyone what she saw. If Becky wants to cheat on her husband, that’s her business. But the police, that’s different. You have to tell them the truth.
She remembers Amanda at the neighborhood party, her big wide eyes, her perfect skin, the way she flipped her hair back when she laughed, mesmerizing all the men. She remembers Robert, too, just as handsome, but quietly watching his wife. He could have any woman he wanted, if he wanted.
So what does he see in Becky Harris?
* * *
—
Raleigh wrenches his locker open after his last class. He just wants to grab his stuff and go home. He’s had a crap day. He screwed up a math test. He smiled at a cute girl and she looked right through him, like he wasn’t there. All part of his crap life.
“Hey,” Mark says, appearing suddenly behind him.
“Hey,” Raleigh says, without enthusiasm.
Mark leans in closer and says, “Where were you after school yesterday?”
Raleigh looks over his shoulder to make sure no one is listening. “My mom picked me up—I had to go see the lawyer.”
“That was fast,” Mark says, surprised. “So, what did he say?”
Raleigh answers in a low voice, “He said if I ever get caught I’ll go to juvie.”
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much.”
Mark snorts. “How much did your parents pay for that?”
“I don’t know, and this isn’t funny, Mark.” He looks him in the eye and says, “I’m done. I’m not going to do it anymore. It was fun for a while, but I’m not going to jail.”
“Sure, I get it,” Mark says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“I gotta go,” Raleigh says.
* * *
—
When the knock comes, Becky jumps out of her skin. She’s standing in the kitchen, shoulders tensed, waiting for them.
She opens the door and sees the two detectives. From the window they looked ordinary. Up close they are much more intimidating. She swallows nervously as they introduce themselves.
“Your name?” Detective Webb asks.
“Becky Harris.” The detective has an alert, probing look about him; it makes her even more nervous.
He asks, “Did you know Amanda Pierce?”
She shakes her head slowly, frowning. “Not really. I mean, my husband and I had drinks with her and her husband on one or two occasions—just ca
sually. We had them over once, when they first moved in. And they had us over, a few weeks later. But we didn’t do it again. We didn’t have that much in common, other than the fact that we’re neighbors.” The detective waits, as if expecting more. She adds, “And I believe Amanda sometimes did temp work at my husband’s office. But we barely know them, really. It’s just awful what happened to Amanda.”
“And you’ve never spent time with Robert Pierce other than on those two occasions?” the detective asks, looking at her closely.
She hesitates. “I used to see Robert over the fence sometimes, in the summer, sitting in the backyard, reading, drinking a beer. Sometimes we’d chat, very casual. He seems like a nice man.” She looks back at the two detectives and says, “He was devastated when his wife went missing.”
“So you’ve spoken to him since his wife disappeared?” Detective Webb asks.
She shifts uneasily. “Not really. Just—across the back fence. When Amanda didn’t come home, he told me that he’d reported her missing, but he didn’t want to talk. He looked awful.”
The detective tilts his head at her, as if considering something. Then he says, “So, you weren’t in his house until very late at night on the Saturday of the weekend his wife disappeared?”
She feels herself flush a deep red; they will know she’s lying. But she must deny it. “I—No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where did you get that idea?” Did Robert tell them?
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she says sharply.
“Okay,” the detective says, obviously not convinced. He hands her his card. “But if you’d like to reconsider your story, you can contact us. Thank you for your time.”
* * *
—
Robert Pierce watches from the window as the detectives knock on the neighbors’ doors, one after another, and question them on their doorsteps. He watches them interview Becky, next door. She’s shaking her head. She glances over toward his house. Does she see him, watching from the window? He ducks his head back out of sight.
* * *
—
Olivia has made a penne with pesto and chicken for supper. Paul is eating quietly, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. They’d had a short, stricken conversation about Amanda Pierce when she got home from book club the night before. Then, when he got home from work, he told her that the news about Amanda had been all over the office. She wonders if Raleigh has heard about it, or if he’s simply oblivious. Raleigh is wolfing his meal down wordlessly. He’s been sullen and quiet since he got home from school, obviously sulking. She feels a spurt of annoyance. Why are they all such hard work? Why is it up to her to inquire how everybody’s doing, to make conversation at the dinner table? She wishes Paul would make an effort. He didn’t use to be like this—so . . . removed. And Raleigh’s recent problems hang over them all like a dark cloud.
“How was school today, Raleigh?” she asks.
“All right,” he mumbles, his mouth full, declining to elaborate.
“How did your math test go?”
“I don’t know. Fine, I guess.”
She says, “The police were searching the Pierce house today.” Paul frowns at her. Raleigh looks up. Olivia knows that teenage boys pretty much live in a self-absorbed bubble—Amanda isn’t on his radar, even though he’d broken into her house. She turns to him. “The woman who lived down the street from us, Amanda Pierce—she went missing a couple of weeks ago. Everyone thought she’d left her husband.”
“Yeah, so,” Raleigh says.
“It turns out she was murdered. They found her body yesterday.”
Paul puts his cutlery down and goes rather still. “Should we really talk about this at the dinner table?” he says.
“Well, it’s all over the news,” she says. “They’re saying now that she was beaten to death.”
“Where did they find her?” Raleigh asks.
“They haven’t said exactly. They haven’t said much, actually. Somewhere out toward Canning, out in the Catskills,” Olivia says.
“Did you know her?” her son asks.
“No,” Olivia says, glancing at her husband.
“No, we didn’t know her,” Paul echoes.
She looks at her husband and notices something pass fleetingly across his face, but it’s gone so quickly that she’s not sure she saw it at all. She looks away. “It’s too close to home,” Olivia says, “having someone on your street murdered.”
“Do they know who killed her?” Raleigh asks uneasily.
Olivia says, “I think they suspect her husband had something to do with it. Anyway, they were searching the house today.” She pushes her pasta around her plate and glances up at her son. He looks disturbed. Suddenly she realizes what might be bothering him. What if they find Raleigh’s fingerprints in the house?
ELEVEN
Becky feels shaky as she walks into the police station downtown on Wednesday. She got the telephone call this morning, just after nine o’clock. Even before she picked it up, she just knew. She stared at the phone, watching it ring, but finally answered.
It was that detective, Webb. She recognized his voice before he’d even identified himself; she’d expected it. He’d figured in her dreams the night before, and not in a good way. He’d asked her to come down to the station, at her earliest convenience. He meant as soon as possible.
“Why? What for?” she asked cagily.
“We have a few more questions, if you don’t mind,” the detective had said.
They know she was in Robert’s house that night. Robert must have told them. They’d known she was lying. Her heart is pumping loudly in her ears. If this gets out, it will destroy her marriage, her family.
Of all the shitty luck! How was she to know, when she slept with her handsome next-door neighbor—only twice, as it turns out—that it would all come spilling out because his wife would be murdered and he would become the center of a police investigation? Of course they questioned him, put him under a microscope—he would have to tell.
She’d never been unfaithful before, in over twenty years of marriage.
Now here she is, climbing the steps to the police station, hoping no one who knows her will see her. And then she thinks, what difference does it make, if all of this ends up in the newspapers anyway? She’s absolutely mortified; she has children, nineteen-year-old twins—what will they think of her? There’s no way they will possibly understand.
The officer at the front desk asks her to wait and picks up a phone. She sits in a plastic chair trying to slow her breathing. Maybe she can persuade them not to use her name. She wonders if she has any rights at all. She wonders if they’re going to charge her with anything. Detective Webb approaches her. She stands up hurriedly.
“Thank you for coming in,” he says courteously.
She can’t even answer; her tongue is stuck in her throat. He leads her to an interview room, where she finds Detective Moen waiting. She’s grateful that there’s another woman here. She doesn’t want to be alone with Webb. He frightens her.
“Please, have a seat,” Moen says, and offers her a chair.
Becky sits down and the two detectives sit across from her.
“No need to be nervous,” Detective Webb says. “Answering our questions is purely voluntary and you can leave at any time,” he tells her.
But she has every reason to be nervous, and he knows it.
“Would you like some water? A cup of coffee?” Moen offers.
“No, I’m fine,” Becky says, clearing her throat. She sits with her hands in her lap, beneath the table, where they can’t see her picking at the skin around her cuticles, waiting for her life to collapse.
“Were you having a sexual relationship with Robert Pierce?” Webb asks bluntly.
She can’t help it; she starts crying. She’s sobbing so hard she can
’t answer the question. Moen pushes the box of tissues on the table toward her. They let her cry it out. Finally she sniffs loudly, wipes her eyes, and looks up at them.
He repeats the question.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t mention that when we talked to you yesterday,” Webb says. “You denied that you were in his house on the night of September thirtieth.”
She glances at Moen, who looks at her with what might be sympathy.
“I didn’t want anyone to know,” she says miserably. “I have a husband, kids. This is going to destroy my family.”
Moen leans in toward her and says, “We don’t want to destroy your family, Becky. We just need to know the truth.”
She looks at the two detectives through swollen eyes. “I didn’t tell you because I know he didn’t hurt his wife. He wouldn’t have hurt her and he certainly wouldn’t have killed her. Robert wouldn’t hurt a fly.” She fidgets with the tissue in her hands. “So I didn’t think you had to know. I didn’t think it was relevant that we slept together. It only happened twice. I can understand that he had to tell you. I just wish he hadn’t.”
“It wasn’t Robert who told us,” Detective Webb says.
Her head shoots up. “What?”
“He denies having had sexual relations with anyone other than his wife during his marriage.”
Becky feels like she might faint. Who else knows? And then she realizes that because of her, Robert has been caught in a lie.
“Someone saw you coming out of the Pierce house in the middle of the night, and put two and two together.”
