by Megan Goldin
‘So you were having an affair that weekend,’ I said. ‘And you lied to us to cover it up?’
‘Yes,’ he responded. He had the decency to look ashamed. ‘I’ve always felt guilty that at the time Laura was murdered, I was with someone else. But equally, I felt obligated to protect the privacy of the other woman.’ He looked straight at me. ‘That’s why I didn’t go into detail about my whereabouts that day.’
‘We’ll need her name.’ I pushed over a notepad. ‘We’re going to have to contact the woman in question to verify your alibi.’
‘Her name is Chelsea Marshal,’ he said. He wrote down a phone number. ‘She’s married. To a colleague. For her sake and her husband’s sake, I’d appreciate it if you could be discreet.’
‘And for your sake,’ added Will. West flinched. Will’s barb had hit its mark.
A few minutes later, I showed him out. I was conciliatory as I walked him to the elevator. I promised to be discreet when we spoke with Chelsea. At the end of the day, we all wanted the same thing, I told him. We wanted to find Laura’s killer.
When I returned to my desk downstairs in the squad room, Will was viewing the video of Matthew West’s conference speech again. Will leaned forward in his seat as if he was watching a championship football game.
‘Have you watched the whole thing?’ he asked.
‘Bits of it,’ I said. It was dense, mostly technical psychology material, aimed at experts in the field. I’d watched the footage mostly on fast forward. ‘Why this sudden interest in psychology, Will?’
‘Look at this,’ Will said. He spooled through the video and then paused it on a shot of Matthew West on the podium. Behind him was a large screen with slides from his presentation.
‘Look at the photograph in the slide behind him on the screen.’ Will pointed at a photo of several people in a laboratory.
‘This guy here,’ he said, touching the face of a young man in the far left of the photograph. ‘Do you recognise him?’
I shrugged. Will created a split screen and added another photograph; an old photograph from a driver’s licence.
‘It’s the same guy,’ he said. ‘Now tell me you if you recognise him.’
‘The face is vaguely familiar but I can’t think of who it is.’
‘That’s because it’s out of context,’ Will said. ‘That guy in the photo is Alexander Henderson. When he was young. Before he lost his good looks to drugs.’
‘Are you saying this guy in Matthew West’s presentation slide is the driver killed in the car accident down at Kellers Way, less than a mile from where we found Laura West’s body?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ he answered. ‘Looks like Alexander Henderson participated in Matthew West’s psychology study. And then, six or so years later, he dies in a single-car accident after overdosing on some weird psychedelic drug, on the same stretch of road where West’s wife was buried.’
‘Jeez,’ I said. ‘The problem with living in a small town is half the time you don’t know if it’s coincidence or a smoking gun.’
Chapter Forty
Julie
The hardest part of buying a gun is deciding which one to buy. I spend the morning in a gun shop, weighing deadly cold steel in my hand. The grip is rough in my palm and the stench of gun oil is intoxicating. It makes me feel in control instead of afraid of my own shadow, as I was last night, terrified to be alone in my own house.
I never thought I’d say this but it’s exhilarating to squeeze the trigger of a gun, even if it isn’t loaded and the barrel is pointed at a faded shop carpet. It makes me feel secure for the first time in a long time, after weeks of feeling helpless and afraid of things that I can’t even describe. ‘You’re not safe, Julie.’ The words ring in my head all the time.
It’s not just fear that grips me. I’ve lost control over my marriage. I am sharing my husband with another woman. A woman as young and beautiful as I had been when I caught his eye. A woman who is accomplished and intelligent. And most importantly, a woman who surely, even just at a subliminal level, reminds him of Laura.
I concede that Matt has not been faithful to me, but there has always been a thread of decency running through him that reassured me he would never leave. Just as he would never have left Laura for me. Not if she’d survived.
This time it’s different. Young women today don’t know their place. Emily is greedy. She won’t be content to share. She wants all of him.
‘That piece is too heavy on your wrist.’ The salesman’s voice breaks through my thoughts as I hold the gun in my hand.
He opens a glass cabinet with a key and removes another gun. This one is slimmer, smaller. ‘It feels too flimsy,’ I tell him, and hand it back.
‘Try this one,’ says the salesman, handing over a third gun. ‘Feel the weight on your wrist.’
He’s a big-bellied man in his fifties with a thick moustache and a T-shirt that says ‘Free People Bear Arms’.
He uses words that I’ve never heard outside of movies and TV shows. He calls the guns ‘pieces’. He talks about ‘clips’ and ‘compacts’ and ‘sub-compacts’. For a crazy moment, I think he’s talking about ladies’ accessories.
He shows me mainly small guns designed to fit in purses. Guns that aren’t a dead weight on the wrist. My wrists, he says, are narrow. I need a piece with low recoil. He tells me that for a hundred dollars they’ll let me test out some guns and show me the basics of how to shoot.
I hand over the cash and he calls an instructor to take me to the firing range out back. The instructor swaggers into the store with a bulldog expression on his bearded face. His tarnished dog tags rattle around his neck as he escorts me to the range.
‘Firearms are like shoes,’ he tells me when we’re in a shooting booth facing a target. My selection of handguns is set out in a neat row. ‘The only way to know which one fits is by trying them on for size.’
He shows me how to grip the weapon with two hands and how to position my feet. ‘You need to use your whole arm to act as a shock absorber,’ he explains. He pulls down my earmuffs and I fire my first round. The recoil is so unexpected that it unbalances me. The instructor puts out a hand to hold me steady. I fire five more rounds into a paper target down range. When I’m done, the instructor reels the target towards us via a pulley system, to examine the bullet holes.
The first gun makes me shoot too far to the left. He suggests another gun that he thinks will fix that tendency. Eventually, eight pieces of target paper later, I have a shortlist of two guns.
‘I’ll take the Glock 42,’ I tell the salesman back in the store ten minutes later. ‘How much is it?’
‘It’s $640, including taxes. I assume you have your permit?’
‘I’m working on it,’ I tell him.
‘Afraid I can’t sell it to you without the permit. How about I put it aside? All you need to do is head over to the sheriff’s office and buy a permit. It costs $5. You’ll have to wait a few minutes while he runs a check to make sure there are no exclusions against your name.’
‘Exclusions?’ I ask.
‘You know, a criminal record.’
‘Oh, well, that should be fine then,’ I say. ‘I’ll be back shortly to collect it. Could you put aside a box of ammunition too?’
An hour later, I’m back with my gun permit and filling out the paperwork for my new Glock. I pay in cash. Clean bills with a snap to them. Straight from the bank.
I put the gun in the inside pocket of my purse with a box of ammunition alongside it. It’s not loaded. The safety is on, just like I was taught.
It’s strange, because I’d never thought of myself as the type to carry a gun. But I’m scared. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life.
I pretended to be asleep when Matt came home from the restaurant last night after celebrating his mother’s birthday. It got me out of taking my meds. My mind was clear when I woke this morning. I remembered the asthma attack at the lake house. The events of that morning came back to me with s
tartling clarity. I swam laps alongside the jetty. The water was crisp. Refreshing. After a while, I dragged myself onto the jetty and lay on the beams warmed by the sun.
A loose nail in a beam scratched me. It drew blood that ran down my leg in a single trickle of red. I went into the boathouse to get a hammer to knock the nail back into the timber. I opened a rusted paint tin on the shelf, thinking it might store tools. Inside was a notebook with Laura’s name written faintly on the inside fold.
The notebook pages were stiff and yellowed, and stuck together. The ink had run from water damage, badly enough that it was impossible to read most of the writing. A few lines were vaguely legible. One of them, written in a hasty scrawl, said, ‘I think my husband’s lover is trying to kill me.’
From the gun shop I drive straight to Alice’s school. I wait on the front lawn with the other mothers until the school bell rings and the kids come running out of the front entrance. My handbag is heavier than usual from the gun. I slip my hand inside to feel its weight.
When we get home, Alice and I go into the garden to water the strawberry shrubs she planted with Matt a few weeks ago. There are no signs of strawberries but she checks on them every day, just in case a berry grew while she was at school.
I’m baking banana muffins for her school lunch tomorrow when the doorbell rings. Through the intercom monitor, I see the detective’s familiar face. What does she want now? Doesn’t she know she throws our lives into disarray each time she stops by?
I press the button to open the gate and wait by the front door, holding it half open.
‘I’m afraid my husband’s not home yet,’ I tell her. It’s just past three. Surely she realises that he works.
‘Actually, I wanted to speak with you, Mrs West.’
‘Come in,’ I say wearily. ‘Can I offer you a cup of coffee, detective?’ I ask as I return to my baking ingredients set out on the kitchen counter.
‘No, thank you,’ she says. ‘I have to get going in a moment.’
She spreads photos on the counter as if she is dealing cards. They’re mostly of me riding horses, or training kids at the ranch. My face is rounder, less angular than it is today. My hair is light brown with blond streaks. It feels as if I am looking at someone else’s life unfolding in these faded photographs. I pick up a couple of photos to look at them more clearly. I was happy in those days. I can see it quite clearly on my face.
‘That’s me,’ I tell her. ‘Why are you showing these to me?’
‘I thought it might jog your memory about the period you taught Laura horseback riding,’ she says.
‘It doesn’t,’ I respond curtly. ‘I taught many students. Usually children, and occasionally adults trying to overcome phobias.’ I crack eggs one at a time into the mixing bowl while she watches.
‘Laura West was taking lessons to overcome a fear of horses,’ the detective says quietly. ‘But you already knew that, didn’t you?’
I’m not listening. I’m back in the paddock with Laura, holding her trembling hand as she sits on the horse. I am telling her to calm down, to take a deep breath. I’m telling her that horses know when a rider is nervous. I tickle the horse’s face to distract it while Laura pulls herself together. Gradually, the colour returns to her face and the look of terror fades.
I hold the mixing bowl to my chest and beat the mixture with a wooden spoon extra fast until my arm aches and I have to stop.
‘How did you meet your husband?’ The sudden change of topic surprises me.
‘Are you asking out of politeness, to make small talk? Or because of your investigation?’ I try to keep my tone light. I want to tell her that maybe she should focus on finding Laura’s killer instead of dissecting my marriage. I’m smart enough to hold my tongue.
‘A bit of both,’ she says lightly, like she’s a close friend. She sits on a counter stool and waits for me to talk.
‘After Laura died,’ I say, ‘Matt needed someone to take care of the baby. Alice was less than a year old at the time. I applied and got the job. After a few months, well, we fell in love.’
‘How did you find out about the job?’
‘I was studying at college, the community college in town. If I remember correctly the career centre on campus contacted me because I’d been looking for child care work.’
‘That was the first time you met him?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I say after a pause. ‘He taught seminars at my college, but we didn’t have any direct contact until he hired me to work as his babysitter.’
‘That’s strange,’ she says, her eyes fixed on my face. ‘Because I’ve spent most of the morning talking to people from your college days. A couple of them told me there was a rumour going around at the time that you and Matthew West were sleeping together months before Laura West died.’
‘Well, that’s rubbish.’ I’m relieved I don’t have to meet her eyes as I pour the mixture into the muffin tins. ‘I don’t know why people make up stories like that.’
‘You’re a lot younger than him, aren’t you?’ she asks.
‘You make it sound like he’s a geriatric,’ I respond without looking up.
‘It’s a big age gap.’
‘Matt is twelve years older than me. It’s not like he’s a sugar daddy or anything.’ There’s a bitchy note in my voice. I can see that she’s noticed it. She misses nothing. She observes my hands as I pour the muffin mixture into each compartment in the tray. It takes everything I have to keep them steady.
‘Matt’s a good husband,’ I say with a smile that I hope doesn’t look strained.
‘Laura’s disappearance must have been hard on him,’ she says, again in that conversational tone. I am not your friend, lady, I want to tell her. I bite my tongue.
‘To this day, he is devastated,’ I say instead. I speak with the utmost honesty.
‘He described Laura to me as his soul mate,’ the detective tells me. ‘It’s not easy losing a soul mate.’ Her eyes bore into my face to record the slightest reaction to her intrusive question.
I turn pale at her words. My hand trembles and I spill muffin batter on the side of the tray. She’s hit me where it hurts most.
‘He’s a handsome man, your husband. Charismatic. Loads of sex appeal.’
‘Yes,’ I say helplessly.
‘I sat in on his lecture this morning. His female students practically threw themselves at him afterwards. Does that bother you?’
‘I honestly don’t give it a second thought.’ My indifference rings false even to my own ears.
‘Of course you don’t,’ the detective says. She watches me until I can’t hold her gaze any longer. I bend down to slide the muffin pans into the oven.
Chapter Forty-One
Mel
I called Helen Williams just before bedtime, asking her to come in for questioning the next day. The call was deliberately timed. I wanted her memories of Laura to rise to the surface as she tossed and turned in bed all night, thinking about our upcoming meeting. I wanted her subconscious to do the work for me, to sift through old memories so she’d be ripe for the picking by the time she came into my interview room.
The next morning Helen arrived five minutes early, wearing fresh lipstick and a wave of heavy perfume that did nothing to mask her trepidation. The moment she walked into the interview room, I knew I’d pressed her buttons just right. She struck me as very different from the rather plain, introverted woman I’d spoken with at her office.
‘Thanks for coming in. This shouldn’t take too long.’
She swallowed hard from nervousness and nodded slightly.
‘I understand that, contrary to what you told me before, you actually helped out on the study that Laura and Matthew West collaborated on?’ My tone was icy. ‘Ms Williams, homicide detectives don’t take kindly to witnesses who lie to us. It wastes our time, and quite frankly raises suspicions about the person doing the lying.’
She looked at her hands like a rebuked schoolgirl. And then, as if remember
ing she’d come to cooperate, she sat forward in her seat. ‘I didn’t think it was important. It was a minor study that didn’t go past the first phase. Laura wanted her involvement kept confidential and I was trying to respect her wishes.’
‘Laura is dead,’ I said. ‘I don’t care what she wanted kept confidential, I need to know everything there is to know about her work and her private life as part of my investigation. Do you understand?’
She nodded.
‘Is it true Laura wanted to kick you out of her department shortly before she died?’ I asked the question as an aside but I was very interested in her reaction. She looked like she’d just been slapped.
‘We’d had an argument,’ she said in a nervous voice.
‘About what?’
‘It’s not a subject I feel comfortable discussing.’
‘We’ve gone over this already. I need to know everything.’
She sighed and began speaking so fast it was hard to keep up with her. ‘Laura was convinced that I was having an affair with her husband. She said she couldn’t have someone working for her who she didn’t trust. I told Laura that nothing had happened between us but she wouldn’t listen.’
‘It turned out to be good for your career when Laura died, didn’t it?’ I asked, taking the conversation on an abrupt tangent. ‘You’re now an adjunct professor, heading for tenure from what I hear.’
‘I’ve never thought about it in those terms,’ she said stiffly.
‘What was Laura and Matthew’s study on?’ I changed the subject again.
‘Their study was on memory.’
I sat forward in my chair. This was going to be like pulling teeth.
‘Can you tell me specifically what aspect of memory they were studying?’
‘Memory implantation,’ she said. ‘Whether memories can be planted and then processed by the brain as if they really happened.’
‘You’re talking about feeding people false memories and making them believe they’re real?’
‘Yes, that’s more or less correct.’
‘That sounds like the scary end of psychology,’ I remarked.
