by Shari Lapena
A cell phone pings and Lange reaches for his phone in his suit jacket pocket. She can tell by the look on his face that it’s what they’ve been waiting for. She freezes, watching his face. “The jury’s back,” he says.
They quickly leave the restaurant, the meal finished, and drive the short way to the courthouse. They take their seats as the jury files in.
The judge asks the foreperson if they have reached a verdict. They have.
Stephanie feels like she’s going to pass out.
“What is your verdict?” the judge asks.
“Undetermined, your honor.”
Stephanie looks at Patrick; she sees him actually flinch. She glances at Lange. His expression is grim.
The ensuing silence is one laden with terror. It’s not over, not at all. It might be just beginning. Stephanie stares at her husband. He’s gone bloodless. She realizes, watching him, that he expected a different finding. He expected to be exonerated.
Finally Patrick says to his attorney, his voice quaking, “What do we do now?”
“It’s up to the sheriff,” the lawyer says quietly, “and the district attorney. You go home and wait.”
38
That evening, Sheriff Bastedo sits at his desk in his office, in the dark, deep in thought. He’s not particularly happy that this mess has landed on his desk. He knows it’s an opportunity. And that’s what worries him. It’s an opportunity that could make or break him, and he would rather keep his head low. He’s steady and methodical—that works for him—but he can already tell that this case has all the makings of a circus. But he can’t just turn a blind eye. That’s what the last sheriff did, and it might have resulted in Patrick Kilgour getting away with murder.
He had watched the inquest with great attention, taking careful notes. When it was over, he was just as unsure as the jurors. He’s cautious by nature, but he’s aware of the pressure on him to do something. He must talk to the district attorney first thing in the morning.
* * *
• • •
PATRICK STRUGGLES TO WAKE the next morning when his phone alarm goes off at 5:30. He’d only gotten to sleep after 3:00 a.m. He feels like shit. Stephanie stirs beside him.
“Come on, we have to catch a plane,” he says and gets up and pads to the bathroom of their hotel room. He steps into the shower, letting the hot water wash away the cobwebs. But clarity is worse. He’s terrified of what might happen next. He tries to remember what his attorney said last night, but he was so distraught that some of it hadn’t really sunk in. His mind starts to spin out of control. If he’s arrested, and the case goes to trial, he probably won’t be able to get out on bail. He might have to spend months in prison, away from his wife and children. At trial, they would have to prove he murdered his wife beyond a reasonable doubt. But there is a lot of doubt in this case. There’s no dispute about the facts; they don’t have to worry about forensics. They know his wife got into the running car and that the tailpipe was blocked with snow. “They can’t prove you stuffed the exhaust pipe yourself,” the attorney said bluntly, “or that you let her sit in the running car knowing that it was blocked and that it would kill her.” This is all about his intention, and surely there’s no way they can prove his intention beyond a reasonable doubt. This is what Lange told him last night, trying to reassure him as he felt his once-comfortable life slipping away from him on a tidal wave of fear. “They might feel they have to bring you in,” Lange said. “But it shouldn’t go to trial. They haven’t got sufficient evidence.”
But the stigma—everyone will think he did it. He will be tainted by this for the rest of his life. There is no way for him to prove he didn’t mean to kill her.
No way to prove it—even to his wife.
This was not the result they’d hoped for. Stephanie won’t be able to go home now and put it all out of her mind—she’ll be waiting for the next thing to happen. There will be no chance for her to recover her equilibrium.
And Niall—his partner had been supportive when he heard about the coming inquest, but he hadn’t liked the optics. Patrick told him that he understood. But there has been a deepening rift between the two men since Patrick had told him.
Patrick knows that anything less than a complete exoneration won’t be good enough for Niall. And he didn’t get that.
Now—will Niall want to dissolve the partnership? How would Stephanie take it? Not well, he suspects.
They might have to live for the next while on Stephanie’s money. And the legal costs—they are going to be exorbitant, if this goes any further.
He goes back into the bedroom and Stephanie is up, getting dressed. She doesn’t speak. She’s said almost nothing to him since the inquest ended. He wants to know what’s going through her mind. “Steph?” he says.
“Yes?” she answers, her back still turned to him as she pulls a shirt on over her bra. She doesn’t even look at him.
“Stephanie,” he repeats, “look at me.” She turns slowly around, standing on the other side of the unmade bed, across from him. “It’s going to be okay. I didn’t do this, and they can’t prove that I did.” She nods. He walks around the end of the bed and takes her in his arms. “Steph, I love you. You know that, don’t you?” She looks up at him and there are tears in her eyes. One tumbles down her face and he wipes it gently away with a finger. “We’ll get through this, I know we will.”
She turns away.
* * *
• • •
“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT,” Niall says. “I can’t fucking believe it.”
Nancy can’t believe it either, but they were up early and they’ve both read the online news—everything they can find on the inquest in Colorado. Now Nancy looks up from the laptop at the kitchen table and says, “You’d better eat something.”
He shakes his head, visibly upset as he leans back against the kitchen counter. She pushes back her chair and walks over to the coffee machine, pours him a fresh cup and hands it to him. He turns to her in disbelief and says, “I mean, it must have been an accident. Patrick wouldn’t murder his wife!”
The verdict wasn’t what they’d been expecting. “She’s obviously lying,” Nancy agrees, but the information that had come out at the inquest had been rather shocking. She wonders how Stephanie is handling it all. She feels a terrible pity for her.
But what she feels most is alarm. “He certainly picked the wrong woman to sleep with,” she says spitefully, “and so did you.”
Niall closes his eyes and says, “Nancy, don’t start.”
She takes a deep breath. He’s right. They have to stick together; they can’t tear each other apart, not now. She says, more calmly, “You’re going to have to cut ties with Patrick.”
His eyes open. “Nancy, maybe we should wait and see what happens. They haven’t arrested him.”
“They haven’t arrested him yet,” she says. “You have to cut him loose. More importantly, we have to distance ourselves from Erica. As long as you stand by Patrick, if he’s working with you, you’ll be in her sights.” She adds anxiously, “She keeps calling you—it borders on harassment.” He nods back at her, looking troubled.
She knows she’s right. He’s as worried about Erica as she is.
“I just hate to kick a friend when he’s down,” he says angrily.
“You don’t have a choice. You can end the partnership. Bring in someone else. But be kind about it; surely he’ll understand.”
* * *
• • •
IN DENVER, Cheryl paces the kitchen wringing her hands while Gary stares at the floor. The newspaper is spread out on the kitchen table. They’re alone—Devin went to school early for soccer practice.
“She’s obviously lying about the blackmail,” Gary says eventually. “She did it to us—there’s no doubt in my mind that she blackmailed him.”
“Should we tell them?�
� Cheryl asks tentatively.
“We can’t.”
Cheryl puts her face in her hands and bursts into tears. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she sobs. She hears the scrape of a chair and then feels her husband’s arms around her as he holds her tight. When she’s cried herself out, she pulls back from him and says, “What kind of woman does this? She could be lying about everything at that inquest. She’s Devin’s mother. She could be some kind of sociopath. What if that’s genetic?”
She can feel herself losing it. Her perfect child. Gary looks back at her; she can tell he’s deeply unsettled by this too. She continues, “And what if it’s true that he killed his wife—his pregnant wife—on purpose? He can’t be normal either, and he’s Devin’s biological father. I can’t deal with this. I can’t!”
Gary looks directly into her eyes and says, “Listen to me. Devin’s a great kid. He’s had a great upbringing. He’ll be fine. You’re such a good mother—he’s turning out great, you know that. Please don’t worry. He has us. He’ll always have us.”
* * *
• • •
SHERIFF BASTEDO MAKES HIS WAY to the district attorney’s office. He’d had a quick conversation over the phone with the coroner, Yancik, early that morning. They’d discussed the verdict, what it meant.
“This is messy,” Yancik said unhappily. “How did Mike miss this? It’s making us all look bad.”
Bastedo remembers how sheepish the previous sheriff had looked the day before in court, but isn’t terribly sympathetic. He knows Yancik is feeling defensive; but none of this is making Bastedo look bad. He wasn’t around back then. But he knows what Yancik means. There’s enough pressure on the coroner’s office these days without this kind of fuck-up. And he’s right that it’s messy.
“The question is what to do now,” Bastedo said. He’d been thinking about it all night. “I’m seeing the DA this morning.”
“What do you think she’ll want to do?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll let you know what she says.”
Now, as the sheriff arrives at the district attorney’s office, he sees her nameplate on her door. Aurora Lydia Dominguez. There’s not a lot of crime in their rural community, but this is rather huge. She will want to look at it carefully. She has her own position to consider too. Everyone has their own angle to consider, Bastedo thinks, a little cynically.
“Come in,” Dominguez says when he knocks on her door.
She’s in her late thirties. Her dark hair is in a tidy ponytail, and she’s wearing a good suit, sensible shoes. He spots a pair of black heels in the corner. She’s too smart to wear those all day. He trusts her to make the right decision on this. He doesn’t know what the right decision is—he’s hoping she does.
“Close the door,” she says.
39
The flight home is a nightmare. Stephanie keeps seeing people glancing at her, looking again; they recognize her. The story is in the newspapers this morning, and their pictures too. They have been on TV, clips of them going into and out of the courthouse. Even though she’s put her hair up and is wearing dark sunglasses, people know who she is, because Patrick looks just the same.
When they finally arrive home from the airport and park the car in the driveway, all Stephanie wants to do is drop their things and run across the street to Hanna’s and get her babies. She doesn’t wait for Patrick to accompany her; she’d rather he didn’t. “Can you get things ready here, and I’ll bring the twins home? They’ll need to be fed.”
With that, she walks across the street, her heart bursting with anxiety. How have the twins fared without her? She felt so bad leaving them. But she’d left a bunch of breast milk with Hanna for them, and she’d trust Hanna with her babies over anyone else. But now, as she heads toward Hanna’s house, desperate to see her daughters, she falters. How will Hanna react? It wasn’t the verdict Stephanie had said they expected.
A few weeks ago, she’d told Hanna about the impending inquest. She’d gone over to Hanna’s with the babies. She put the girls with little Teddy on play mats on the living-room floor. Stephanie had never said anything to Hanna about it before, but the date for the inquest was looming and she knew she had to tell Hanna the truth about why she needed her to watch the twins for two nights. It would be on the news. She would find out soon enough.
Watching the different emotions on Hanna’s face as she stumbled through the story—disbelief, uneasiness—intensified the acute dismay Stephanie had been feeling over the last weeks. She knew Patrick had had a similar, difficult conversation with his business partner. He’d told her Niall took it well. She wasn’t sure she believed him. But Hanna had been surprisingly supportive, once she’d gotten over the shock. Now Hanna feels like the closest thing she’s got to a shoulder to lean on. Stephanie wishes again that she had family—that her parents were still alive, that she’d had siblings. She feels terribly alone in the world. The one person she’d come to depend on was Patrick.
Hanna answers the door with a sympathetic frown on her face and immediately reaches out to hug her. Stephanie feels herself sinking into the comfort of Hanna’s arms. The two women separate and without speaking of the verdict—which Hanna must already know from watching the news—Stephanie asks breathlessly, “Where are they?”
Hanna steps back and Stephanie can see her twins in the living room from here. She slips off her shoes and rushes to them. She sinks down on the carpeted floor and pulls her babies to her, breathing them in, feeling their warm bodies against her. She tries not to cry, but the tears spill forth anyway. And then she thinks, fuck it, what mother wouldn’t cry on seeing her babies again after a whole day and two nights? She cuddles them, knowing that she would do anything for her children. They are the world to her.
She looks up as Hanna comes into the living room, smiling down at her. “They were great. Fed well and slept well. But they’re obviously happy to have you back.”
Stephanie regards her smiling, babbling infants, both of whom are starting to root for her breasts. She needs to take them home.
“I’ll help you gather up their stuff,” Hanna says, beginning to pack toys and blankets into the baby bag.
“Thanks so much, Hanna. If there’s any way I can ever repay you—”
“Oh, please don’t worry about it. It was my pleasure.”
“I know, but if you ever want to leave Teddy with us, we’d be happy to take him.”
Stephanie notices something come over Hanna’s face, but it quickly disappears. And she realizes that Hanna will never leave little Teddy with them. Because Patrick may have murdered his wife.
The chill Stephanie feels follows her all the way back across the street to her own house and settles in her heart, to make a permanent home there.
* * *
• • •
SHERIFF BASTEDO WAITS for the DA to sit down behind her desk and then settles himself heavily in the chair across from her.
“What a mess,” Dominguez says. “A classic case of he said, she said. Who’s telling the truth?”
“Or another way of looking at it,” Bastedo says, “which one of them is lying?” He sees her eyebrows go up. He says, “One of them clearly is.” He adds, “I’ll have to bring him in for questioning.”
She nods thoughtfully. “Yes, by all means, bring him in,” she agrees, frowning. “But I don’t want to prosecute something I don’t have a good chance of winning.” She leans forward, over her desk. “His wife was in the running car, the tail pipe blocked with snow. Did he know? Did he do it on purpose? It will be practically impossible to prove the necessary intent for a murder-one conviction—unless he told someone what he was planning. And I’m sure he didn’t.”
“Maybe we could go after him on a lesser charge?”
She shakes her head, slowly. “No. He either did it deliberately, knowing what he was doing, or he didn’t. If he didn’t, it w
as an accident. We can’t treat him differently from other cases like this unless he did it intentionally.”
The sheriff nods. “I’ll bring him in and ask him to take a polygraph.”
She nods. “Try to wear him down. Maybe you can get him interested in a plea bargain.”
* * *
• • •
PATRICK KNOWS NIALL isn’t expecting him to come in to work today, but he wants to get this over with. He has to explain the unexpected verdict. Stephanie has a twin in each arm. “Why don’t you try to rest,” he says gently. “You look exhausted.”
She nods absently. He kisses her on the top of her head and says, “Will you be okay if I go out for a bit?”
“Where are you going?” she asks, looking up at him.
“The office.”
There’s suddenly more tension in the room than there was the second before. To each other, they had always pretended that only one verdict was possible—that it was an accident.
“How do you think he’ll react?” she says now.
Patrick shrugs. “I don’t know. None of us thought this would happen. We didn’t really talk about it.”
He turns to leave the room and says, “I won’t be gone long.”
* * *
• • •
STEPHANIE PACES THE LIVING ROOM, imagining what’s going on at the office. Niall will want Patrick out. Anyone would. You can’t have a business partner with a possible murder charge hanging over him.
She hears Patrick’s car pull into the driveway. She stops and stands in the living room, waiting for him to come into the house. He enters, throws his keys on the table by the door, and turns to look at her. She can tell by the look on his face that the news is bad. “What happened?” she asks.
