A Stranger in the House

by Shari Lapena

  He takes her hands and gently withdraws them from his neck. “Brigid, maybe last night was a mistake. . . .”

  “Don’t say that!” she cries. Her face is ugly, twisted with fury.

  “But, Brigid,” Tom says desperately, “we’re both married—I’m married to Karen now, and I can’t just abandon her, even if I wanted to. And you’re married to Bob—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Brigid protests. “I love you, Tom. I’ve loved you all this time—ever since you broke it off with me, and started to see Karen. I’ve been watching you from across the street. I feel so connected to you—don’t you feel it? This thing with Karen—maybe it was meant to be. Don’t you believe in fate? Maybe this was supposed to happen, so that you and I can be together.”

  He looks at her, appalled. She can’t mean it. But she does. He’s dealing with a woman who is clearly crazy.

  He feels so manipulated, he feels such rage at the power she holds over him and Karen and their happiness together that he could gladly put his hands around her throat and squeeze.

  Chapter Forty

  The next morning Tom is startled awake. He looks over to the other side of the bed, Karen’s side. It’s empty, of course. Karen’s in jail. It always takes a second, every morning, to remember what has happened, to awaken fully to the nightmare that is his life now. And another second to remember the more recent, paralyzing details. Brigid. She’d been in his bed again last night.

  She’s gone back across the street to her husband. Thank God for that.

  He hears a loud thumping at his front door. He glances at the alarm clock on his bedside table. It’s 9:26 A.M. Normally he would be at work by now, but he doesn’t have a job to go to anymore.

  Tom quickly pulls on a robe and pads nervously down the carpeted stairs to see who’s banging and looks out. It’s Detective Rasbach. Of course. Who else ever comes to his door but that damned detective and the nutcase from across the street? This time, he has an entire team of people with him. Tom feels his head beginning to pound.

  He opens the door. “What do you want?” He can’t keep the surliness out of his voice. This man, more than anyone else—other than Robert Traynor—has ruined his life. And he’s embarrassed by his own unkempt appearance and the fact that he’s wearing nothing but a bathrobe at 9:30 in the morning, while the detective is cleanly shaven, smartly dressed, and raring to go.

  “I have a warrant to search the premises,” Rasbach says, offering him a piece of paper.

  Tom snatches it from him and looks at it. He hands it back. “Go ahead,” he says. This is an inconvenience, nothing more. There’s nothing to find here. Tom has already looked.

  “How long is this going to take?” he asks Rasbach as the detective enters the house and starts directing his team.

  “That depends,” Rasbach says unhelpfully.

  “I’m going to go upstairs and shower,” Tom says.

  Rasbach nods and goes about his business.

  Tom returns to the bedroom. He grabs his cell phone and calls Jack Calvin.

  “What’s up?” Calvin asks with his customary brusqueness.

  “Rasbach’s here, with a search warrant.” There’s a brief silence on the other end of the line. “What do I do?” Tom asks.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” the lawyer advises him. “Let them search. But stick around and see if they find anything.”

  “They’re not going to find anything,” Tom insists.

  “I got in late last night from Vegas. I’m heading over to the jail to see Karen later. Keep me apprised.” And then the lawyer ends the call.

  Tom showers, shaves, and gets dressed in jeans and a fresh shirt. Only then does he go downstairs. Stubbornly, he sticks to his usual routine. He puts on a pot of coffee. Makes himself a toasted bagel and pours himself some juice, all the while watching the police tear his kitchen apart with their gloved hands. Having fun? he wants to sneer at them, but he doesn’t. When they’re done with the kitchen, he follows them around the house, carrying his mug of coffee, watching them. He’s not nervous, for once. He knows there’s nothing to find.

  “What are you looking for?” Tom asks Rasbach curiously, as the morning wears on. Rasbach merely looks at him and doesn’t answer.

  Finally, they seem to be finished. They haven’t found anything. Tom can’t wait for them to leave. “So, are we all done here?” Tom asks.

  “Not quite. We still have to check the yard and the garage.”

  Tom is annoyed at how public such a search will be. But once he steps outside he sees not only all the police cars parked in front of his house, but also the news vans, the reporters, and the curious who have also gathered there. He realizes it doesn’t make any difference; all privacy was lost the night Karen killed someone.

  There’s no way he’s going to talk to the press.

  Rasbach’s team tackles the garage first. It’s a two-car garage, normally empty this time of the year—they only park inside in the winter. For now, there’s just the usual clutter of tools and garden items to be sifted through, the familiar smell of oil on cement. It can’t take much longer; then he’ll be free of them.

  There’s a female police officer crouching down near the workbench. She’s going carefully through a toolbox with an upper, removable tray and a catchall at the bottom. Tom searched through that toolbox himself, when Karen was in the hospital.

  “I’ve got something,” the female officer says.

  Rasbach walks over and crouches down beside her. “Okay, let’s see it,” Rasbach tells her. He doesn’t sound surprised.

  Tom’s curiosity is piqued, but he’s also afraid. What have they found?

  With her hand encased in a latex glove, using two fingers, the woman officer lifts out a handgun.

  Tom feels the blood rushing from his head. He doesn’t understand. “What’s that?” he says stupidly.

  “My guess is that it’s the murder weapon,” Rasbach says calmly, as the officer bags and marks the evidence.

  —

  The police wrap up their search once they’ve checked the yard. They found what they were looking for, Tom thinks hollowly. His mind reels with disbelief.

  The minute they’ve left he packs an overnight bag and throws it in the car. He stands by the car door for a moment and looks across the street at Brigid’s house. She’s in the window, watching him. He feels a chill run down his spine.

  Then he gets in the car and calls Jack Calvin. Calvin picks up the call. “Calvin.”

  “They found a gun!” Tom practically shouts at the lawyer. “They found a gun in the garage! They think it’s the murder weapon!”

  “Calm down, Tom, please,” Calvin says. “Where are you?”

  “I just got in the car. I’m heading for your office.”

  “I’m on my way to see Karen. Meet me at the jail, and we’ll talk about it.”

  Tom tries to calm himself as he heads in the direction of the jail. If the gun they found is the murder weapon—and he knows that tests can prove conclusively whether it is or not—it wasn’t there when he searched the place after the accident. So if it’s Karen’s gun, how did it get there? She wouldn’t hide it in the garage. She couldn’t have. Which means someone else must have planted it there.

  There’s only one person he can think of who would do that. And he’s sleeping with her.

  Chapter Forty-one

  The constant noise around her all night in jail prevents Karen from sleeping. Even with her pillow over her head she can’t keep the din out. She wonders how anyone ever gets used to it. She feels hollow eyed and worn out when morning rolls around, and even worse as the day wears on.

  She’s so alone here, so scared—how quickly jail has crushed her spirits. She has to be tougher than this, if she’s to survive. She reminds herself that she is a survivor. She’s going to have to be realistic now, a
nd tough. She’s not going to be able to just walk away from this.

  A female guard approaches her cell and says, “You got company.”

  Karen almost weeps with relief as she gets up off her cot and follows the woman, who ushers her into a room where Calvin and Tom are waiting. Karen hugs Tom fiercely, tears stinging her eyes. She feels his arms wrap around her and squeeze tight. He smells of the outside, not of the jail, and she breathes in deeply. She won’t let him go. She’s sobbing into his neck. Finally, Tom pulls away and looks at her. She can see the tears in his eyes, too. He looks awful.

  Calvin clears his throat; he obviously wants to get down to business. “We need to talk.”

  Karen fixes her eyes on her lawyer anxiously as they all sit down. Her entire future seems to rest in the hands of this man. She reaches for Tom; she needs to draw strength from him. “Did you go to Las Vegas? Did you visit the shelter?” Karen asks.

  “Yes,” Calvin says. “They confirmed that you went there for help with your husband’s abuse for over a year.” He pauses. “But there’s been a new development.”

  Karen glances anxiously at Tom. Tom squeezes her hand.

  Calvin says, “They executed a search warrant on your property this morning.”

  Karen looks back and forth between her lawyer and her husband; both of them look tense. “So?” she says.

  “So, they found a gun,” Calvin says.

  She’s stunned. “What? How’s that possible?” Karen asks. She turns to Tom for confirmation.

  “They think it’s the murder weapon,” Calvin says. “I’ve just spoken to Detective Rasbach. They’re running tests.”

  “That’s impossible!” Karen says emphatically. She can feel panic rising within her, threatening to choke her.

  Calvin leans forward and looks right into her eyes. “Let’s speak hypothetically for a minute. Is there any way, hypothetically, that the gun found in your garage this morning could be the murder weapon?”

  She shakes her head. “No. It can’t be.”

  “Then what the hell’s going on here?” He shifts his gaze to Tom. “Do you know?”

  She watches Tom take a deep breath. Then he says, “I might have an idea.” He looks at Karen, his expression one of foreboding. “I think someone might have put it there.”

  “And why would you think that?” the lawyer asks carefully.

  “Because I know it wasn’t there when I searched the house after the accident, when Karen was in the hospital. I tore the place apart, including the garage. And I looked in that toolbox, and there was no gun there.”

  Karen stares at him in surprise. He searched the house while she was in the hospital. And he never told her.

  Calvin says, “But the gun was there today. So how did it get there? Karen?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I didn’t put it there.”

  “Think about it,” Tom says to Calvin. “Karen was in that car accident. They didn’t find the gun in the car. She obviously didn’t take it with her to the hospital. How is she supposed to have used the weapon and hidden it in her own garage afterward? And why the hell would she?”

  They’re all quiet for a moment.

  “I can think of one possibility,” Tom says now. Karen looks at him, frightened, hardly breathing.

  Calvin looks back at them tiredly. “Really? And who would that be?”

  “Our neighbor across the street, Brigid Cruikshank.”

  They’re going to have to tell him, Karen thinks.

  Calvin looks mildly interested now. “And why would this woman across the street plant a gun in your garage?”

  Tom says, “Because she’s crazy.”

  Karen looks from her husband to her lawyer and takes a deep breath. “And because she was there.”

  “What?” Calvin says, obviously startled.

  Karen says, “She told Tom that she followed me that night.”

  “Why would she do that?” the lawyer asks suspiciously.

  “I don’t know,” Karen says.

  “I know why,” Tom says suddenly, turning to her. “She’s obsessed with you, Karen, and even more obsessed with me. She sits in that living room window across the street and watches us all day long, watches everything we do, because she’s in love with me. And she hates you, Karen.”

  “What?” Karen is shocked.

  “You don’t know her,” Tom says tersely, “not like I do.”

  “What are you talking about? She doesn’t hate me,” Karen protests. “That’s ridiculous. And you hardly know her at all.”

  Tom shakes his head. “No.”

  “Tom, she’s my best friend.”

  “No, she isn’t,” Tom says harshly. “When she came over and told me that she followed you the night of the accident—” He hesitates.

  She stares at him. She wonders anxiously what’s coming, what he knows that she doesn’t. What is it that he doesn’t want to tell her?

  Tom looks away, as if he can’t meet her eyes. “There’s something you need to know, Karen. Before I met you, Brigid and I—we had an affair. It was a mistake. I broke it off just before I met you.” He looks at her, ashamed.

  Karen stares back at him in disbelief, utterly still. For a moment she can’t even speak. Finally she says, “And you never thought to tell me?”

  “It wasn’t relevant to you and me,” he says, quietly desperate. “It was over before we met.”

  She continues to stare at him, thinking of all the times she spent with Brigid, not knowing that she’d slept with her husband. She feels sick.

  Tom says, “We agreed not to say anything about it because—it would have been awkward, for everyone.”

  Karen stares at him with something akin to loathing. “She’s married, Tom.”

  “I know, but she lied to me—she said they were separating, seeing other people. She’s very manipulative—you have no idea.” Tom continues, “That night that she came over and told me that she followed you—she—she came on to me, and told me that if . . . if I slept with her, she wouldn’t tell the police that she was there, that she saw you that night—that she heard the shots and saw you run out of the building right after.”

  Karen is stunned. “You had sex with her—that night? With Brigid? While I was—in jail?” For a moment, she doesn’t even think to pull her hand away from his, but then she does. Tom flushes to the roots of his hair. He hates that he’s hurting her this way.

  “I didn’t want to! I did it to protect you!” Tom says. “And now she has some crazy idea that she and I are meant for each other, and that now that you’re in jail, we can be together. She thinks it’s fate. Don’t you see? She must have planted the gun in our garage. She’s trying to make sure you go to prison for murder!”

  Karen tries to think, her heart racing. “Brigid was there—she must have picked up the gun.”

  Tom nods. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Karen says to Tom, thinking it through, “Maybe Brigid left some prints at the murder scene. You said she told you she opened the door.” She turns to the lawyer. “Are you going to have them look for Robert’s prints inside our house?” Calvin nods. “Maybe while they’re at it, they’ll find some of Brigid’s, too. They must be there. And get them to compare them to any they might have found at the murder scene.”

  Tom and Calvin are watching her intently.

  She looks up at the two men staring at her. “There’s our reasonable doubt,” Karen says. “I’m being framed by my crazy neighbor across the street. Because she’s in love with my husband.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  For the second time that day, Detective Rasbach is at the Krupp residence.

  How quickly things change, he thinks. Just yesterday he was telling himself that this case had become quite straightforward, that all the pieces of the puzzle were slipping nicely
into place. But now he’s feeling like the picture that’s emerging isn’t the same as the one on the box.

  He was leery of the caller with the tip from the get-go. Someone with inside information, obviously, since she knew about the gloves. A possible witness. It could be someone who was there, who saw Karen Krupp peel off the gloves and flee. Someone who maybe saw her shoot the victim, and then went in afterward and picked up the gun. Who? He thought that maybe someone from the neighborhood picked up the gun before the body was reported. But maybe it’s not that simple.

  If the gun has turned up in the Krupps’ toolbox, someone else must have been at the crime scene and nabbed it. Someone who wants to see Karen Krupp go to prison. Because otherwise why not just leave the gun there, at the scene? Why pick it up at all, unless you have plans for it?

  Rasbach sees Jack Calvin coming toward him from the kitchen, Tom Krupp right behind him. Rasbach respects Calvin; he’s dealt with him in the past and he knows Calvin is a straight shooter. “What’s this about, exactly?”

  Calvin says, “My client believes that someone was stalking her for the last few weeks, coming into the house and going through her things when they were out. She thinks it was Robert Traynor. He’d obviously tracked her down. If we find Traynor’s prints in the house, it’s strong evidence of the danger she was in. It also goes to her state of mind.”

  Rasbach nods. “Fair enough. We got his prints off the body. We’ll have a look. If they’re here, we’ll find them.”

  Calvin nods. “And one other thing,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Someone was sneaking into the house. If it wasn’t Traynor, we need to know who it was. My client did not put that gun in the toolbox. Someone else must have. We need to know who.” He pauses and then says carefully, “We need to know if there are any prints in this house that match any of those at the murder scene.”

  Rasbach studies the lawyer—Calvin is trying to tell him something. He nods and says, “Okay. Let’s see what we get.”