by Shari Lapena
Patrick is about to sit beside her when she flings the gift away as if she’s had an electric shock. She’s still holding the card in her hand, looking at it with distaste. Patrick feels a terrible misgiving. “What?”
She hands him the card—he sees that her hand is shaking. “It’s from Erica.” She says the name with revulsion.
He grabs the card from her and looks at it with alarm. Inside is written, “A little gift for you and the twins. Erica.”
A feeling of dread sweeps over him. He looks at the package that Stephanie had thrown to the floor. It’s small and flat, like a book.
“Don’t open it,” Stephanie says.
He hesitates. He doesn’t want to open it either. Erica is sick and she’s trying to fuck with them. But all the same, he needs to know what it is. He walks over to the gift and bends down and picks it up while Stephanie shrinks back into the sofa. He glances back at her, as if for permission. She doesn’t say anything, so he rips the paper off. He lets his breath out in relief. He turns to Stephanie and says, “It’s just a book. A picture book.”
He comes back to the sofa and sits beside her, reading the title out loud. “The Little Red Hen.”
Stephanie takes it from him and stares at the book. “I know this one. It’s an old folktale. The little red hen has to do everything herself.” She turns to the first page, and they glance through the book together, reading it quickly. It’s about a little red hen who finds a grain of wheat, but no one will help her plant the seed. The goose and the cat and the pig say no. So the little red hen says she’ll do it herself. When it comes time to harvest the wheat, no one will help her. She tells them she will do it herself. Finally, when it comes time to eat the bread that she’s made from the wheat, everyone wants some, but she says that she will eat it herself.
Stephanie has flipped the pages to the end, as if expecting something more. But there’s nothing else. She turns to him, her face grim.
“She’s just trying to mess with us,” Patrick says. But he knows what she’s doing, and it chills him to the core. Erica is sending him a message, and it couldn’t be more clear. I’ll do it myself.
* * *
• • •
THE FOLLOWING EVENING, Wednesday, Erica is walking to work at Hillcrest Hospital in Newburgh, where she is an administrative assistant three days a week. She really should have gone back to school, settled into something worthwhile. But she’s always been restless, not able to stick to anything long enough. Always looking for some quicker, easier way to make money. She’s on the night shift, and it’s already dark. The hospital is not far from her apartment, and she enjoys being alone with her thoughts. She always has so much to think about.
Erica is walking along the edge of the service road that leads to the back entrance to the hospital—there’s no sidewalk—and her thoughts turn to choices she’s made. She has no husband to support her. She gave her only child up for adoption. It had been a practical decision, and a financial one, and not difficult to make. Erica had leaned on the eager, well-to-do couple a little. And then a little more. It was all done very quietly. They were happy to pay.
She wasn’t ready to be a mother. How was Erica, just twenty-two, supposed to raise a child on her own? When in truth, she’d never really considered whether she even wanted children? She knows now that she doesn’t—she’s not the nurturing type. It surprises her a little, how little interest she has in her own child.
She walks briskly along the dark, deserted stretch of road with her head down, engrossed in her thoughts, earbuds in, listening to music. Suddenly she senses something, hears the sound of acceleration behind her. She turns to look and sees the dark, menacing shape of a car bearing down on her at high speed, its headlights off. Acting on pure instinct, she dives into the ditch at the side of the road, landing hard on her side and rolling, as she hears the car speed away.
She lies in the ditch, panting, her heart beating wildly. She sits up slowly, rubbing her shoulder. She’s shaken but unhurt. That was close.
Maybe, she thinks, suddenly afraid, maybe she’s pushed Patrick too hard. He’s made his choice. She’s fucking blown it.
29
It’s late, and Stephanie has Jackie in her arms, the baby’s face red and bawling and covered in mucus and tears. Her little body is hot, even in just a diaper and a light T-shirt. Stephanie is sweating, too, from holding her against her chest for so long. She talks to Jackie, jiggling her as she carries her around the living room, but the baby will not be soothed. If they try to put the babies down, they cry even more frantically, and neither she nor Patrick can stand it. Patrick has Emma in his arms and he’s walking her around the hall and in and out of the kitchen. Night after night they do this, and it’s wearing them down. They can’t even speak to each other through the noise, but maybe that’s a good thing. Stephanie doesn’t want to speak to her husband right now.
She’s angry. At him, at the situation. She’s so tired she can’t think straight. She’s generally a very rational person, but she hardly recognizes herself anymore.
She doesn’t believe that Patrick killed his first wife deliberately. Stephanie knows him. It’s an outrageous claim. If he really was in love with Erica, like she says, then why wouldn’t he just leave Lindsey, like Erica claims she wanted? That’s what anyone would do. There’d be no reason to kill her.
Except—there was going to be a baby, and supporting a young family you’ve left is very expensive. And there was that insurance money.
She goes wearily around and around the living room, the thoughts going around and around her mind, just as wearily. Erica is a blackmailer, a cold-blooded liar. But she’s so persuasive, so believable. Still, even if Erica, with all her lies, is able to make the authorities believe that the affair was serious, that’s not enough, surely, to prove that Patrick murdered his first wife? But then she remembers the money, and feels a wave of nausea sweep over her. Her knee bumps the sofa and she stumbles a bit. And then she remembers the warning that Erica had left her with: If he did it once, he could do it again. She closes her eyes for a moment and stands still. No. She will not go there. Erica was just trying to mess with her mind.
Stephanie bites her lip and resolutely refuses to allow her mind to go down that treacherous path. She tries to stick to what she knows for sure. Erica knows they’re not going to pay. She certainly won’t get anything out of them once she goes to the police. She might go to the police anyway, out of spite. If she does, this thing is going to take on a life of its own. With any luck it will be dealt with quickly in Colorado and no one here will ever have to know.
But if it isn’t—if it comes to the attention of the media, if she doesn’t get some sleep—she’s afraid that she’s going to snap.
* * *
• • •
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Erica drives to LaGuardia Airport for her direct flight to Denver.
She’d thought about it all through her shift the night before. Then she’d gone home and packed an overnight bag for Colorado. She’s going to pay a visit to the Sheriff’s Office. It’s the best way she’s got of protecting herself from Patrick.
She sleeps the entire flight, and once she’s landed, she picks up a rental car—a convertible. She sits in the driver’s seat for a minute, thinking of what’s behind her, and now, what’s ahead of her.
She used to live in Denver. Her son is here. She’d moved downtown—out of Creemore—after Lindsey died. But today she will go back to Creemore, where it all happened. She will visit the sheriff and tell him everything. She really hadn’t thought this would be necessary. She’d misjudged things.
But she’s starting to consider another possibility. When one door closes, she thinks, another one opens.
* * *
• • •
STEPHANIE FUMBLES THROUGH THE MORNING, forgetting what she’s doing, bumping into things, berating herself for not payin
g enough attention to the twins. She stands in the kitchen, her mind in a fog, knowing that she should get the girls ready for the stroller. But she doesn’t have the energy to face it all, the enormous effort it will take. She reaches automatically for another cup of coffee, but the caffeine isn’t helping. Maybe she should stop drinking it altogether. But then how the hell would she manage? It’s not easy looking after twins all day and most of the night too.
She takes her coffee and her laptop into the living room. With one eye on the babies, she turns on her computer and googles sleep deprivation. What she sees disturbs her. There can be physical effects—clumsiness and being prone to accidents. She knows. But it’s the psychological effects that are even more concerning. Forgetfulness. Yes. Emotional instability, mood swings. Yes, but it’s hard to tell if that’s from lack of sleep, considering the circumstances. Loss of perspective. Quite possibly. Acting impulsively, uncharacteristically. Imagining things, hallucinating. Will all these things happen to her, if she doesn’t soon get these babies to sleep on a schedule?
Are they happening already? In her darkest moments, she has actually imagined Patrick packing the snow deeper into that exhaust pipe, leaning on his shovel, taking his time, waiting for the carbon monoxide to work, to rid himself of his unwanted family. . . . She gives her head a quick shake, and then another. Tells herself to stop it.
She doesn’t know if her wild imaginings are a result of not sleeping, or a legitimate response to what she’s learning about her husband. When she’s feeling awake, and lucid, she knows better. She knows Patrick would never hurt anyone, let alone someone he loved. She’s beginning not to trust herself, her own thoughts. No wonder she’s starting not to trust him.
And Patrick—he, too, is affected by the lack of sleep, and being under all this additional stress. They would both be handling things better if they were more themselves, and not trying to cope with this cycle of colic and exhaustion.
But she doesn’t see any sign of the babies changing their routine any time soon.
She sits on the sofa, overwhelmed with fatigue, and she can feel herself starting to go down the rabbit hole. She stares at the pattern in the rug and can’t seem to drag her eyes away, even if she moves her head. Her mind shifts to Erica and what she might be doing now. Suddenly Stephanie gets up, knocking her coffee mug over on the floor at her feet, but she ignores the spill and rushes to the front door and looks out at the porch, to see if Erica is there. But the porch is empty. She locks the door and wanders back to the living room. Erica is the enemy, she reminds herself, the serpent who has intruded into their almost-perfect lives to destroy them. Her husband isn’t guilty of what she accuses him of.
She thinks about getting the stroller ready and taking the twins out for their morning walk. But what if Erica is out there? Patrick says she’s dangerous, possibly a psychopath. Patrick doesn’t want her to talk to Erica ever again.
Stephanie sits on the sofa, almost catatonic, too tired and afraid to go out of the house at all, while the spilled coffee seeps into the rug.
30
Erica sets off on the hour-long drive from the Denver airport to Creemore. She skirts the city, and soon leaves it behind. Her route takes her into the Denver foothills; it’s a beautiful drive, but she’s not taken with the scenery. The familiar road unwinds in front of her.
When she arrives in town, she finds herself taking an unplanned detour back to where it all happened, to the residential street where Patrick and Lindsey had lived. She parks her rental car across from the old brick house where they had the second-floor apartment. She gets out of the car and stares at the front window on the second floor. That was their living room. Erica can still picture it perfectly; cheaply furnished, crowded with items—some new, some secondhand—for the expected baby. Erica turns and looks at the little cul-de-sac where their car was parked that day, the day Lindsey died. It’s late August, and it’s hard to imagine, right now, this street buried in four feet of snow. She tries to remember exactly where Lindsey’s body lay that day, but there’s no snowbank, so she can’t be sure. Then she closes her eyes and suddenly she can see it all.
After a few minutes, she gets back into the car and drives to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office. It’s a large concrete-and-glass building set back from the road. She parks in the lot and takes a moment to mentally prepare herself. Finally she gets out of the car and strides up to the front doors and walks in. She approaches the uniformed woman at the front desk.
“Can I help you?” the woman asks.
“I’d like to speak to the sheriff, please.”
“Can I ask what it’s regarding?”
“It’s about an old case,” Erica says. “I have some important information.”
The other woman studies her for a moment. “Wait here,” she says, and leaves the desk. She soon returns and says, “Come this way, please.”
They walk down a shiny corridor, their footsteps noisy on the floor. They arrive at an office, its door open. “In here,” the woman says, and departs.
A tall, burly man wearing a dark uniform stands up from behind his desk and approaches her. He looks to be in his early forties, she thinks. “I’m Lorne Bastedo,” the sheriff says, shaking her hand.
“Erica Voss,” she says.
He offers her a seat and sits down behind his desk. “What can I do for you?”
“I have information,” she says, “about a murder.” As she speaks, he listens attentively. She sees his face grow more serious. Finally, when she’s told him all of it—the affair, the pregnancy, the look Patrick gave her, the insurance payout—she waits for his reaction. She’s told her story well. And she’s confident that her actions since—staying away from Patrick, giving their baby up for adoption, coming forward now—will assure him that she had nothing to do with it. That it’s only her conscience that’s making her do this now.
“This is a serious allegation,” the sheriff says pensively, sitting back in his chair. He studies her for a moment. “This case was before my time,” he says finally. “Let me get the file.” He steps out of the room and she can hear him talking to someone in the corridor. He comes back and sits down and soon after someone drops a file on his desk and leaves. He reviews the sparse-looking file silently, while she watches. She knows there’s not much to it.
“It looks like there wasn’t much of an investigation,” he says, echoing her thoughts. He looks up at her, considering. “Leave it with me,” he says.
* * *
• • •
ONCE ERICA VOSS DEPARTS, Sheriff Bastedo looks at the file again. Notes the name of the coroner, George Yancik. Yancik has been the coroner in Grant County for almost twenty years. It seems that Yancik and the previous sheriff, Michael Bewdly, quickly agreed that this was simply a tragic accident. On the face of it, that’s certainly what it appeared to be. But Bastedo’s curiosity is aroused, and he’d found the woman who just left to be compelling. She spoke clearly and persuasively, and what she said had the ring of truth.
But is there anything to what she’s saying? It obviously looked like an accident at the time. On the other hand—if it was murder, he’d gotten away with it. The perfect murder. If you had to get rid of your wife and unborn child, it was an easy way to do it. Brilliant, really.
He picks up the phone and calls George Yancik. When he answers the phone, Bastedo asks, “Mind if I pay a visit?”
“Sure, when?”
“Now,” Bastedo says. “I’ll be right over.”
He hangs up, grabs the file, goes outside, and gets in his black-and-white truck with SHERIFF emblazoned across the door and drives the short distance to the coroner’s office. When he arrives, he’s met by Yancik, and they go to his office. “What’s this about?” Yancik asks when they are seated.
Bastedo places the slim file on the other man’s desk. “This case. Nine and a half years ago. A woman died of carbon monoxide
poisoning sitting in a running car on Dupont Street while the husband shoveled it out of a snowbank. She was eight months pregnant.”
Yancik’s eyes sharpen. “Yes, I remember. It was tragic.”
“I have some questions.”
“Okay,” Yancik says, “but it was a very straightforward case.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
The coroner settles back in his chair. “There was a big snowstorm. Record snowfall—everybody was digging out. The plows were running. If I remember correctly, they were going on a trip and the wife waited in the running car. She fell asleep. End of story. An autopsy confirmed she died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Very open and shut.”
“And the husband? No one seems to have investigated him very thoroughly.”
Yancik’s eyes sharpen and he leans forward. “Sheriff Bewdly questioned him, and we spoke afterward. I found, based on what I had before me, that the death was accidental.” He sits back again in his chair and asks, “Why?”
Bastedo tells him about the new information. As he talks, he sees Yancik’s brow cloud over.
“We didn’t know about any of this at the time,” the coroner says. “Why didn’t this woman say anything then?”
“She says she was afraid of being implicated,” Bastedo answers, “and that now she wants to do the right thing. In any event,” he continues, “we know about it now. The question is, what do we do about it?”
* * *
• • •
YANCIK SITS BACK in his chair, thinking about the case. He feels uneasy. What the sheriff has just told him is disturbing. If what this woman said was true—if she was having an affair with the husband, if he told her that he wanted out of the marriage, if there was insurance money—they really should take another look. Just to be sure.
