by Blake Pierce
She started the car and peeled out of the parking lot.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Jessie was so pumped up with nervous adrenaline that it wasn’t until she was pulling into her neighborhood that she noticed the voicemail from Detective Hernandez. It looked like he’d called when she was on the boat, which had spotty cell service, so her phone had never even rung.
She was about to check it when a call came in. It was from Dr. Farah, the young OB-GYN who’d told her she lost the baby that day in the hospital. She sent that straight to voicemail too. Then she listened to both messages.
Hernandez’s was brief and his voice sounded harried. “Sorry I missed you. Happy to answer any questions I can. Call me back when you get a chance.”
Dr. Farah’s was only slightly longer and also got straight to the point.
“Hello, Mrs. Hunt,” he said, sounding more confident and professional than he had in person. “We got your blood work back today and there were some…unusual results. We found an unexpected medication in your system. I was hoping you could come in sometime tomorrow. I’d like to rerun the tests to make sure there wasn’t an error. Please call me back at your earliest convenience.”
That was weird.
What kind of medication could be that unexpected? Other than the prenatal vitamin she’d been taking at the time, Jessie hadn’t had any change in medication since she got the revised antidepressant prescription from Dr. Lemmon two months ago.
She was tempted to call him right back but she was just pulling into the driveway. She opened the garage door and saw that Kyle’s car was already there. Any calls would have to wait. This wasn’t a time to be distracted. She needed to keep all her focus on what she was about to do.
She pulled in next to him, put her phone on silent, turned on the recorder, and walked inside. Kyle wasn’t in the kitchen or breakfast room but she did see an open bottle of bourbon on the counter.
“Kyle, I’m home,” she said in the most casual voice she could muster.
“In here,” he called from the living room.
She walked in to find him sprawled casually on the couch, a near empty glass in his hand. On the coffee table in front of him were two plastic containers of supermarket sushi. One was mostly empty. The other was unopened. Behind him, a roaring fire, complete with crackling logs, was burning in the fireplace.
“First fire of the season,” she noted, trying to sound playful. “These brutal Southern California winters require it, I guess. I think it might dip below fifty tonight.”
“I got you dinner,” he said, ignoring her attempt at a joke as he nodded at the table. “But you didn’t show up.”
She noticed he was slurring slightly and wondered how many of those bourbons he’d already had. She pretended not to notice.
“I see that. If I had known you were going to take the initiative, I would have tried to get back earlier.”
“Where were you?” he demanded. “Why are you back so late?”
“I hit bad traffic on the way back from my practicum. And then I stopped by the school to check out something in the library. You didn’t call or I would have skipped that last stop and come straight home. You know how I love sushi. And now I can eat it again.”
There was a bite to that last line that she wished she had held back. But Dr. Farah’s message was still swimming in her head and it had led to a thought.
What if the unexpected drug in my system didn’t get there accidentally?
Kyle didn’t seem to notice her tone. He took another swig before speaking again.
“You better get started. It’s been sitting out a while.”
“Sure, just let me get comfortable,” she said, returning to the kitchen to put down her purse and take off her jacket. She made sure her phone, in her pants pocket, wasn’t visible before she returned.
“I don’t think you’re being completely honest with me,” Kyle said when she returned.
“What are you talking about?” she asked as innocently as she could, considering the sudden cold ripple that ran through her body.
“You almost never show up late. And when you do, you always call to let me know. The fact that you didn’t makes me suspicious about your whereabouts. Should I be suspicious, Jessica?”
He sounded even more slurry than before. But the sharpness of his question made her wonder if he was drunk at all or just pretending in order to get her guard down. She wouldn’t put anything past him at this point.
“I show up late once and I get the third degree?” she countered. “I can’t count how many times you’ve stayed out late without letting me know. I get that you’re bummed about the miscarriage, but please don’t look for reasons to poke at me.”
She paused for a moment, debating whether to continue. If she said the next line, there’d be no going back. Then again, she suspected her husband of killing a woman and framing her for it.
At this point, what is there to go back to anyway?
“And please,” she continued before he could respond, “don’t blame me for your whole plan falling apart.”
His eyes narrowed and he sat up straighter.
“What plan?” he asked sharply.
She noticed he still had the slur, suggesting the drunkenness was legit. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing but suspected she was about to find out.
“Your plan to frame me for killing Natalia,” she said, letting it hang out there, watching his reaction.
His eyes widened but when he spoke, his voice was steady.
“What are you talking about?”
She pressed, knowing that she only had a brief window to get a true reaction before he regrouped and entered “cover mode.”
“You know, how you killed that young waitress, and then tried to convince me that I did it, even though I was unconscious the whole time.”
She could tell from his eyes that, despite the mild alcohol haze, he had already recovered and was thinking of his next move, now that his feigned ignorance had fallen flat. But what he said next genuinely surprised her.
“Teddy made me do it,” he said, his voice thick with shame.
“What?” she asked, taken aback.
“I know this doesn’t absolve me,” he said, his head down, refusing to make eye contact. “But I wasn’t sure what to do—I panicked.”
“What are you saying?”
“Teddy was having an affair with Natalia,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “When I got back to the boat that night after getting water and ibuprofen for you, I found him below deck with her lying at his feet. He’d strangled her. He said she was going to tell Mel about them and he just lost it. I told him that we had to go to the police. But he turned on me. He said we should pin it on you; that you wouldn’t remember what happened that night after your argument with Natalia and that if I tried to persuade you that you’d done it, you’d believe me. He said to convince you that you were guilty and then dump the body. I refused. Then he got nasty and said that if I didn’t do it, you and the baby would be in danger; that I’d never know when or how, but that you would pay for it if I didn’t go along with his plan. It was like he was a different person.”
Jessie tried to process whether this was even possible. She was unconscious at the time this was supposedly going on so there was no way to know if what Kyle described had happened. The camera on the boat didn’t show the main cabin so there was no way to verify the story.
Kyle took her silence for skepticism and pressed on.
“Teddy said that if I came clean to you, you’d be in danger. That’s why I was hesitant to say anything until now. And that’s why I’ve been so out of it lately. First that happens, then you losing the baby? I was completely lost. And Teddy visited me while you were in the hospital just to tell me not to get any smart ideas; that even though you’d miscarried, he could still do something to you. He was so cold about it.”
Jessie turned over his words in her head. Everything about his story was techn
ically plausible but something just didn’t sit right. First, she knew Teddy Carlisle. And unless he was the best actor in the world, he didn’t strike her as the type who could come up with a plan like that. He was weak and craven. But he was also kind of thick-headed. She just didn’t buy that he was capable of such Machiavellian maneuvers.
And while she had no reason to doubt her husband’s honesty until recently, a decade of knowing him had proven one thing. He was a quick thinker. She’d seen it in his work life many times—his ability to massage supervisors or clients. It was a gift. But for some reason, it had never occurred to her that he might use that same gift on her. Not until now.
“I don’t believe you, Kyle,” she said matter-of-factly. “Teddy isn’t exactly a criminal mastermind. And when I spoke to him this afternoon, he did not act like a man who had covered up the murder of his mistress and threatened my life. Try again, babe.”
She saw a glint of anger pass across Kyle’s eyes, followed by momentary frustration. That was quickly replaced by an expression she couldn’t identify at first.
“Okay,” he said in a resigned tone. “I’m going to come clean. Clearly I’ve lost your trust and I’m just going to lay it all out there and hope that you’ll see things from my perspective.”
“I’m all ears,” she replied.
“It’s pretty simple. I slept with Natalia,” he said, refusing to look at her. “It was only one time but I did do it. It was on a night when someone at the club gave me Ecstasy. I don’t know why I took it. I told myself it was to win over clients but I’m not really sure anymore. Regardless, the next thing I knew I was…with her. I regretted it immediately. I tried to forget about it. I avoided the club. That was one of the reasons I agreed to stop going. I let you think it was because you asked but this was as much the reason. And then the night of the party, she approached me. She said she was going to tell you about that night. I begged her not to and I thought I’d convinced her. But when I came back to the boat later with the water and medicine, she was there, about to open the bedroom door. I guess I just snapped.”
“You strangled her?” Jessie asked.
“I was so angry. This woman was trying to destroy my family and I just…yeah, I just couldn’t stop myself.”
“And then you blamed me?” Jessie pressed.
Kyle nodded and as he was about to resume talking, she noticed the same expression on his face, the one she couldn’t quite identify before. Only now she could. It was determination. That struck her as odd, considering his confession.
“I sat there next to her body for a while,” he admitted. “I debated calling the police. And then I got this idea, like a thunderbolt, a way to get rid of the threat she posed and keep you from trying to leave. I was in a dark place, I’m ashamed to say. But once you woke up and saw her body, I was committed.”
He hung his head and he slumped down in the easy chair across from the couch where she sat. He seemed completely deflated. And yet…
I can’t see his face. I don’t know what he’s thinking.
“I can’t help but think that the stress of all this is why you lost the baby,” he muttered under his breath. “And I don’t know how I’ll ever live that down.”
And that’s when she finally knew. He almost had her for a second. But he pushed just a little too hard, tried to wring out one bit of pathos too many.
“Mentioning the miscarriage was a mistake, babe,” she said, impressed by the lack of emotion in her own voice. “It reminded me of the real reason it happened: you drugged me. Whatever you put in that champagne made me pretty volatile. And then you placed me in a position where conflict with Natalia was almost inevitable. You set it up so that everyone would see me go off on her. And then, whatever that drug was knocked me out, conveniently right next to Teddy’s boat. You drugged me. You planned my public outburst. You planned for me to end up on that boat. You probably lured Natalia there while I was sleeping. Then you killed her and pinned it on me. But you didn’t expect the drug you gave me to make me miscarry. And you couldn’t have known the doctor from the hospital would call me to tell me about an unexpected medication in my blood work. You did all this, love. I’m just wondering why.”
He sat across from her with his head down for several seconds before moving at all. Then he reached into his pocket and for a second, Jessie thought he was going to pull out a gun. But it was just that obnoxious money clip with the dollar sign on it. He tossed it on the coffee table and looked up. His eyes were glinting with something close to mischievousness.
“I know you hate that thing,” he said mildly. “But I had to take it out. It was digging into my thigh and making it hard to concentrate.”
“Concentrate on what?”
“On what to do next,” he said. “After all, things can’t continue this way, can they?”
Jessie felt the vitriol rise up in her throat and for the first time, decided not to even try to hold it back.
“You mean with me living with the man who murdered some girl, framed me for it, and gave me a drug that made me lose my unborn child? Yeah, I’d say this is breakup material.”
“You asked me why,” he reminded her, untroubled by her tone. “Do you really want to know the answer, Jessica?”
“I really do.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I’m not sure you’re going to like it. Here goes. I’m tired of you. I’m tired of being married to you. I just wanted a little fun, to spice things up. I heard about this club that made that sort of thing possible. But I knew you’d never go for it.”
“For an open marriage?” she asked. “Yeah, very perceptive on that one.”
“You make things so hard, Jessie. You’ve got all these demons that haunt you. The job you want is in this dark world and it weighs you down. I just wanted to have a good time, mess around a bit. I thought maybe you’d embrace it. And then, when it became clear that you wouldn’t, I decided to embrace it on my own. But you made even that effort miserable.”
“Why didn’t you just leave me if you were so unhappy?” she asked.
“I can’t do that, Jessica. You know the firm doesn’t look kindly on broken marriages. No one who’s been divorced has ever made partner there. They all eventually get dumped. But happily married men, especially ones with little ones, seem to move up the ladder at lightning speed. I couldn’t jeopardize that. So I came up with a plan.”
“To force me to be the perfect little wife?” she volunteered.
“Exactly. It wasn’t my first choice. But I figured that if you feared that leaving me or moving away might lead to prison time, you’d find a way to make do. And once the kid was born, you’d be so entangled in the community that you’d give up on the idea of moving back downtown.”
“So you killed someone to keep me in line?” she asked, still barely able to process it.
“Desperate times, desperate measures,” he said, shrugging. “Which is why the next little bit is going to get kind of ugly.”
“What does that mean?” Jessie asked, as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
“What it means, my dear,” he said, standing up, “is that things are going to end badly for you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Jessie stood up too, trying to anticipate whatever might happen next. But she wasn’t prepared when Kyle stepped quickly forward, reached across the coffee table, and punched her flush on the jaw.
Her legs wobbled and she crumpled back down on the couch as stars exploded in front of her eyes. Even as the pain radiated down her torso, she tried to push up from the couch. But before she made any progress, he was above her. He hit her twice more in the face and she slumped down, stunned and unable to move.
She couldn’t see but over the rush of hot pain in her ears, she heard him moving around nearby. After a minute, he was above her again. She could feel him grab her wrists and hold them together as he wrapped them in duct tape. Then he did the same thing with her ankles.
She blinked away the tears i
n her eyes and saw him going through his phone.
“I guess you’re wondering what the plan is now,” he said in a more relaxed voice than she would have expected under the circumstances. “Unfortunately, it looks like I’m going to have move on to plan D. Or is it E?”
He looked over at her as if he expected her to reply, then must have realized she was incapable of speaking. He continued.
“Plan E is to make it look like one of the explanations I gave you earlier was legit. You see, for the purposes of this evening’s alibi, it was Teddy who had the affair with Natalia. He did threaten your life when I found out he killed her. And after you went to talk to him, he realized he had to follow through. So he came over here and shot you with an untraceable gun I just happened to buy last week. I was upstairs and rushed down here. When I saw what happened, I went at him. He shot me but I kept coming. We struggled, fought over the gun. It went off and killed him. I called the police, devastated by the turn of events, the only survivor of my high school friend’s descent into madness. It’s very sad, really.”
Jessie tried to tell him he’d never get away with it but it only came out as a mumble.
“That reminds me,” he said as he cut off another piece of duct tape and put it over her mouth. “I can’t have you warning him by calling out or something. I know it’s uncomfortable and I’m sorry for that. Under other circumstances, I’d just shoot you now and put you out of your misery. But for this to work, both of you have to die around the same time. I don’t need a curious coroner noting times of death that don’t fit my story. So you’ll have to wait until he gets here for all this to end. Besides, who else can I tell about my grand plan? After tonight it’ll have to be my little secret. So can you blame me for blathering on a bit to someone who won’t be able to tattle? And if I don’t brag on myself, no one will.”
He had found Teddy’s number and was about to call when the doorbell rang. As Jessie watched, he disappeared into the front room. A moment later, he came back.
