Someone We Know: A Novel

by Shari Lapena

  “Do we have what she was strangled with?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Any sign of forced entry?”

  “No, sir. We’ve checked the house and grounds. Looks like she let her killer in the front door, and he did it as soon as she had her back turned.”

  “She’s in her pajamas,” Webb observes. “She probably knew her killer.”

  He bends in closer. She looks like she’s been dead awhile—at least a day, maybe more.

  “The medical examiner is on his way.”

  Webb nods. “Who found her—the woman outside?”

  The officer nods. “A neighbor.”

  He catches Moen’s eye and the two of them head back outside. They approach the woman standing on the driveway. She’s not crying, but she looks like she’s in shock.

  “I’m Detective Webb,” he says. “Can I have your name, please?”

  “Zoe Putillo,” the woman says.

  “You found the body?”

  She nods. “She lived alone. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. I noticed that she hadn’t picked up her newspapers. So I knocked on the door. She didn’t answer. I tried the door and it wasn’t locked, so I went in—and I saw her there.” She shudders. “I can’t believe it. She was new to the neighborhood, trying to make friends.”

  “Did you know her very well?” Webb asks.

  “Not really. Just to speak to,” Zoe says, adding, “She was broken into recently, and she was making herself crazy trying to figure out who it was.”

  Webb remembers then that Raleigh Sharpe had confessed to breaking into this house. He remembers the address, 32 Finch.

  The woman says, “She was making a bit of a nuisance of herself, to be honest, telling people they might have been broken into and not know it. Getting everybody worried.” She shakes her head, clearly unnerved. “It’s terrible what happened to her. Nothing ever used to happen around here.”

  “Did you see anyone coming or going from her house in the last few days?”

  She looks at him in sudden dismay, as if something has just occurred to her. She says uneasily, “Actually, now that you mention it, I did see someone.”

  * * *

  —

  Glenda looks up with a start when Detectives Webb and Moen reenter the interview room. They have been gone a long time, leaving her to stew in her own fear and anxiety.

  Webb reads her her rights.

  “I don’t need a lawyer,” she says, frightened.

  “Are you sure?” Webb asks.

  “I didn’t know anything about that key.”

  “Very well,” Webb says equably. Then he says, “Carmine Torres has been murdered.”

  She feels all the blood drop from her head; she fears she might faint. She grabs the edge of the table.

  Webb leans in close. “We think you killed her.”

  Glenda feels herself blanch, shakes her head. “I didn’t kill her.”

  “You were seen,” Webb says bluntly. “Carmine Torres figured out what you’d done—that you’d killed Amanda Pierce.” He looks at her for a long moment, his eyes on hers. Finally she looks away.

  She lets herself fall apart. There’s no way out. Another mistake that she will pay dearly for. She shouldn’t have killed Carmine, the prying bitch. She must have been out of her mind to do it, blinded by fear. She’d acted on instinct. She hadn’t thought things through. Finally she lifts her head, looks at the detectives, and manages to say, “Yes, I killed her. I was afraid she’d figured it out.” She averts her eyes, defeated, and says, “I killed Amanda Pierce. She was having an affair with my husband.”

  * * *

  —

  Webb and Moen leave the interview room and consult quietly, down the corridor.

  “What do you think?” Webb asks.

  “What, you don’t believe her?” Moen says.

  “I believe she killed Carmine Torres. But I think she was lying when she said she killed Amanda Pierce. Her eyes shifted away at that point. Her body language changed. I think she’s protecting someone.”

  “Her husband?”

  “I don’t think she’d confess to murder to protect her husband, do you?”

  THIRTY-NINE

  I’m shaking so hard anyone can see it. I feel nauseated, but it’s not just from the drinking.

  The detectives take me into a room with a camera pointing at me from a corner in the ceiling. I know that my parents are both here somewhere in other rooms like this one. The woman detective brings me a can of soda. They introduce themselves as Detective Webb and Detective Moen; the other woman here is a lawyer.

  Detective Webb goes over procedure but I can hardly take anything in; he turns on the tape. He says, “Adam, your mother has confessed to killing Amanda Pierce.”

  I look back at him, unable to speak, shaking my head. I fight the urge to throw up, swallow the bile back down. She told me never to admit what I’d done. But she never told me she would say that she had done it. I wish she was here beside me, to tell me what to do now. I lick my dry lips.

  “She told us that she went to the cabin and beat her to death with a hammer and put the body in the lake.”

  I start to cry. After a while I manage to say, shaking my head, “No. I killed Amanda Pierce.” It’s such a relief to say it out loud. It’s been like a monster inside my head, screaming to get out. I know my mother has been afraid that I’m going to get drunk and just blurt it out somewhere. I’ve been afraid of that, too. Well, she won’t have to worry anymore.

  The detectives look back at me, waiting. I have to tell them everything. “My dad was sleeping with Amanda Pierce.”

  “How did you know?” Webb asks.

  “He keeps all his usernames and passwords written down in a notebook in the back of his desk. I got into his computer and found his private online email account. He’d hidden it. He always deletes his browser history so his email account doesn’t show up. I saw their emails. I knew he was seeing someone, but I didn’t know who because they used made-up names on their email addresses. She was pregnant. I thought he was going to leave my mom and start a new family with her. My mom didn’t know anything about it.” I swallow and stop. I wonder how things might have turned out differently if I’d told my mother what I knew instead of going up to the cabin.

  “What happened, Adam?” the woman detective, Moen, asks gently.

  I blubber out my story. “I knew he was meeting her that night out at the Sharpes’ cabin. I overheard him talking to her on his phone. I wanted to see who she was, that’s all. I didn’t plan to kill her.”

  It’s the truth, and I look at all three of them to see if they believe me, but I can’t tell what they’re thinking. “I took my mom’s car. I don’t have my license yet, but I’ve been learning to drive in her car, and I’d been out to the cabin lots of times with my parents so I knew the way. Dad told us he’d be home that night by around nine. I wanted to get there after my dad left and see her, find out who she was and tell her to fuck off. Tell her that I was going to tell my mother about her.” I pause for minute, gathering courage for the next part.

  “What time was this, Adam?” Webb asks.

  “It was around eight forty-five I think, maybe nine. I’m not sure exactly.” I take a deep breath. “I left the car in the road and walked up to the cabin and looked in the front window. I recognized her. I knew who she was. I’d seen her around the neighborhood. I thought about leaving then. I wish I had. But—instead I opened the door. She was standing at the back of the kitchen looking out the windows at the lake. She whirled around—”

  I close my eyes for a moment, remembering. I’m shaking again; my eyes fly open. “She was smiling, probably expecting my dad. But then she saw it was me. I don’t think she even knew who I was. There was a hammer on the counter. I saw it and I picked it up without even thinking about i
t. I was so mad—at her, at my dad. It just came over me. This—rage. I just—I lunged at her and hit her in the head with the hammer.”

  I stop talking and they all stare at me, as if they can’t look away. I can feel tears running down my face now and I don’t care, I’m sobbing as I talk. “I just hit her and hit her and I didn’t even care that I was killing her—”

  “How many times did you hit her?” Detective Webb asks after a minute.

  “I don’t remember.” I wipe the snot from my face with my sleeve. “I just kept hitting her until she was dead.” I stop talking again. I have no energy left to tell them the rest. I want to go home and sleep. But I know I won’t be able to go home. The silence seems to go on for a long time.

  Detective Moen asks, “What did you do then, Adam?”

  I look up at her in fear. “I sat there on the floor for a while. Once the shock wore off I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I was covered in blood. I didn’t know what to do.” I swallow. “So I called my mother.”

  Detective Moen looks back at me sympathetically. I decide to look only at her. She seems kind and I’m so scared, but I have to go on. I look only in her eyes, no one else’s, as I tell the rest of my story. “I told my mom what I’d done. I asked her to help me.” I start to sob again. “She drove up to the cabin in my dad’s car. When she got there and saw me—I thought she’d hug me, and tell me it was going to be all right, and call 911. But she didn’t.” I’m crying so hard now, I have to stop for a minute. After a while I keep going. “She didn’t hug me but she said, ‘I love you, Adam, no matter what. I’ll help you, but you must do exactly as I say.’ She was wearing gloves and she handed me some gloves, too. She gave me a big black garbage bag and told me to put it over my head and poke my head through, so I wouldn’t get any fibers on the body, and then she told me to pick Amanda up and put her in the trunk of her car. She’d brought me a change of clothes and a lot of plastic bags. Once I had Amanda in the car, she told me to go down to the lake and strip off all my clothes and put them in the bags and wash myself in the lake. The water was freezing.” My voice has become monotonous now. “I put on the clothes she brought me. She scrubbed the whole place down until it looked like it did before. While she was cleaning I went out in the rowboat. It was really dark. I dropped the hammer in the middle of the lake and weighed down the bag of my clothes with heavy rocks and knotted it up tight and dropped it in a different part of the lake, just like she told me. Once everything was cleaned up, Mom got in Amanda’s car and drove it and I followed in her car. She stopped at a bend in the road. By then it was very late, past midnight. I left her car a little distance away and then I joined her. She lowered all the windows and the two of us pushed the car into the water.

  “It sank right away. She told me no one would ever find it. That as long as I kept my nerve and never said anything, no one ever had to know. And then we drove back to the cabin to check everything and to get my dad’s car. Then we drove home. I drove her car and she followed me in my dad’s car.

  “When we got home, Dad had gone to bed. Mom had told him that she was going to her friend Diane’s and that I was at a party. He didn’t seem to question it, but I don’t really know. I don’t know if he noticed that both the cars were gone that night. I know he must have gone back to the cabin the next day like he planned. I stayed in my room all day, sick and terrified. He came home and acted as though nothing was wrong, but I could tell he was tense. We all acted as though nothing was wrong. But I’d killed her, and my mom knew, and I think—I think my dad might have guessed.”

  I look up at Moen and say, “My mom didn’t kill her. She just helped clean up my mess. It was my fault. And hers—Amanda’s. My parents were perfectly happy until she came along.”

  “Your mother is an accessory to murder,” Detective Webb says.

  “No,” I protest. “She didn’t have anything to do with it.” I slump in my chair, exhausted. I look at Detective Moen. I’m too scared to look at Webb, or the lawyer. “What’s going to happen to me?” I ask.

  She frowns at me, but there’s a grim sort of kindness in her frown, and sadness in her eyes. “I don’t know.” She glances at my lawyer. “But you’re only sixteen. It’ll get sorted out.”

  * * *

  —

  Webb sits back in his chair and watches quietly as Moen consoles Adam, his attorney beside him.

  “Do you know Carmine Torres?” he asks.

  Adam’s face is puffy and blotchy. He looks surprised at the question. Webb is certain Adam has no idea that his mother has killed her.

  He sniffs. “Yeah, I know who she is.”

  “How do you know her?” Moen asks.

  “She came to the house, talking about the break-ins. And I’ve seen her around.”

  “She’s dead,” Webb says bluntly.

  Adam looks startled. “I saw the police at her house—”

  “She’s been murdered.”

  Adam glances at his attorney, obviously confused.

  Webb has to tell him. “Your mother killed her. To protect you.”

  * * *

  —

  Glenda raises her eyes as the door opens and Webb and Moen walk back into the interview room. She has been sitting here for hours. She now has a lawyer, who has been summoned and is sitting beside her.

  Webb and Moen sit down across from her, and she can tell from their demeanor that something has happened. She steels herself for what’s coming. Webb takes his time telling her.

  “Adam has confessed.”

  She tries to remain calm, in case he’s trying to trick her, but he starts telling her all the details, things that only Adam could have revealed. She begins to cry, silently, tears running down her cheeks, staring at the table in front of her. She’d finally understood, when she arrived at the cabin that night, about Adam’s drinking, that he’d started because he’d found out about his father and Amanda.

  “He’s a juvenile,” Webb says. “Amanda’s murder was impulsive, not premeditated. He could be out by the time he turns eighteen.” She looks at him then, feeling a tentative hope. “But you’re going to be in jail for much longer.”

  Her body sags. She doesn’t know now how she withstood it, how she’d borne it without cracking. How had she ever thought that Adam could handle it? Of course he confessed. She thinks of the terrible burden of hiding the truth from everyone, hiding what they’d done from her husband, her slow realization that he might have figured it out. Her fear that Adam would get drunk and tell someone what they’d done. Her dawning realization that she had made a terrible mistake.

  She looks up at him desperately. “I just wanted to protect my son.”

  Webb says, “It would have been better for everyone if you’d just called 911.”

  EPILOGUE

  Olivia looks blankly out the window. The nightmare isn’t over, it has simply changed shape. Paul has been completely cleared. Adam has confessed. Olivia can’t wrap her head around it—all along, Adam was the one who had killed Amanda, and Glenda had helped him cover it up. And Olivia had had no idea.

  The thought of what happened at their cabin makes her shrink in revulsion. She will never go out there again. They will have to sell it. One more piece of her old life—gone.

  And Glenda has confessed to murdering Carmine. The shock of it. Olivia imagines Carmine, dead on her floor. They say she was strangled with a cord. She tries not to think of Glenda throttling Carmine from behind; it gives her a feeling of vertigo. Apparently Glenda had seen Carmine as a threat—afraid that Carmine had seen Adam and Glenda driving home in separate cars the night that Amanda was killed, afraid she’d figured it out and would tell the police. Perhaps Glenda had become completely unhinged by then, Olivia thinks. Glenda thought she was protecting her son. A mother will do almost anything to protect her son.

  Olivia wonders if this surreal feeling will ever go away.
She wonders how she and Paul will go on. He knows that, for a time, she thought he might be guilty. That lies between them now.

  Her eyes well up. How will she cope without Glenda? She can’t bear to think of Glenda as a murderer; she will always try to think of her as just Glenda, her best friend. She already misses her more than she can bear. She must manage somehow without her.

  Raleigh will plead guilty to three counts of breaking and entering and unauthorized use of a computer; because he’s a juvenile, his lawyer thinks he can get him off lightly, with community service. Raleigh has promised them that his hacking days are over. He’s said that before. She’s not sure she believes him.

  * * *

  —

  Robert Pierce is delighted. As delighted as his cold, dark heart allows.

  He hadn’t known about Keith Newell. He’d thought, when Paul Sharpe was arrested, that he had been the secret second lover. But it was Keith Newell his wife had been seeing, his son who had killed her. It’s good to know, finally, what happened. It’s good not to be under a cloud any longer.

  Robert recognizes that he’s better off without Amanda. Things were becoming impossible between them. He’d considered killing her himself.

  Robert watches Becky go out in her car. Now, he pulls on the gardening gloves, grabs the trowel, and goes to the back of the garden to dig up the buried cell phone. Everything has come to a satisfactory close, but still, he must get rid of Amanda’s phone once and for all. He hasn’t forgotten about that damn teenager, who might have looked in it. There are things on that phone that he really doesn’t want anyone else to see. Amanda was smarter than he’d thought.

  He’s going to retrieve the phone and drive a couple of hours north along the river to a deserted place he knows. He’s going to wipe it clean again and toss it into the deep water of the Hudson.