Fullepub 
Chapter 28
28
Ted looks back at his wife in shock and confusion. “What?”
“I’m sorry, Ted, I lied to you too.” She’s crying again in earnest now, tears coursing down her cheeks.
He pulls farther away from her, staring at her in horror. “How could they already be dead? And you said nothing?” His heart pounds as he realizes that his wife, the woman he knows so well, came home from seeing that her parents had been brutally murdered and went to bed as if nothing had happened. And then blithely told him the next morning that she’d spoken to her mother, and made up some lie about her mother asking her to intervene with her father on Jenna’s behalf. His world spins. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he gasps angrily.
“Don’t be mad at me, Ted!” she begs. “I didn’t know what to do!” She swipes at some tissues from a box on the coffee table and wipes her eyes. She makes an effort to compose herself as he watches her, his heart still beating painfully fast, loud in his ears.
“I went over there to talk to Mom. When I got there, it was late—around eleven thirty. There was still a light on upstairs. So I knocked on the door. Nobody answered, so I knocked again. I knew they must still be up. But I started to think it was strange, because Mom hadn’t answered her phone, and no one came to the door. I tried it, and it was unlocked. So I went in. It was dark in the hall, but there was a bit of light in the kitchen. I glanced in the living room and saw a lamp on the floor—and then I saw Mom. She was lying on the floor in the living room.” She starts to hyperventilate. “I went over to her. She was dead. Her eyes were open. It was horrible.”
Ted sees her obvious pain and fright and listens in dread.
“I wanted to run away, but it was like I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move. I was terrified. I thought Dad had killed her. That he’d finally snapped.” Her voice breaks. “I don’t know how long I was there. But I didn’t hear anything. Then I thought he must have killed himself too.”
Jesus, Ted thinks to himself.
She swallows. “Somehow I walked down the hall to the kitchen. I could see then that there was blood on the floor and I avoided it. And then—” She stops.
Ted watches her, stunned. He can’t process any of this. “Go on,” Ted says. “Tell me everything.”
“I didn’t go in, I just stood at the doorway. Dad was on the kitchen floor. There was blood everywhere. The carving knife was there, beside him.” She seems to freeze, as if she’s seeing it all again in her mind’s eye. As if he’s not there at all. The expression on her face makes him queasy.
“Why didn’t you call 911?” Ted cries. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought—I thought—” But she can’t seem to get the words out.
Ted says it for her, realizing. “You thought Dan did it.”
She nods almost imperceptibly. She’s stopped crying now; she just looks numb. “I thought Dan came back that night and killed them. I knew he needed money and that Dad wouldn’t give him any. And I was afraid.”
“Afraid—”
“That he would be caught.” She turns her eyes on him. “I just wanted to give him some time—some time to get away, or to clean up . . . I knew he couldn’t have been thinking straight.”
“Catherine,” Ted says. He says her name as calmly as he can, but he’s shaken to the core. “Dan should go to jail if he’s done this. He’s—dangerous.”
She covers her face with her hands and sobs. “I know. But I just can’t bear it.” At last she looks up at him and says, as if she’s pleading with him, “He’s my little brother. We have to protect him.”
She doesn’t say it, but Ted can’t help thinking it: And he’s done us all a favor.
• • •the lights are on in Catherine Merton’s house, Detective Reyes notices as he and Barr approach the neighbors’ house directly across the street.
They show their badges and are invited inside by the owners, a man and woman in their sixties. Reyes explains that they are investigating the murders of Fred and Sheila Merton, whose daughter lives across the street. Their eyes grow big.
“Were you home on Sunday night?” Reyes asks.
“Yes, but we went to bed early,” the man says. “Had a big Easter dinner at our daughter’s.”
Reyes says, “Did you by any chance see anyone leave the house across the street—Ted Linsmore and Catherine Merton’s house—anytime after seven thirty in the evening on Easter Sunday?”
The two of them look at each other and shake their heads. Before Reyes can even ask the question, the man offers, “But we have a porch cam and it catches the cars going up and down the street. Do you want to have a look?”
“May we?”
“Sure,” he says, as his wife hovers in the background.
Upstairs there’s an office where the security footage can be accessed via a laptop. He goes back to seven p.m. Easter Sunday and then forward. As they watch the black-and-white footage, the occasional pedestrian or car going past, they see Ted’s car return and park in the driveway at 7:21 p.m.
They continue watching, fast-forwarding through the footage until Reyes says, “Stop.”
The helpful neighbor goes back a bit then plays it again slowly. At 11:09, they see Catherine’s car backing out of the driveway. The video doesn’t capture who got into the car, but as it goes down the street, they recognize Catherine, in the driver’s seat, alone.
She’s lying, Reyes thinks. And her husband is covering for her. He and Barr share a glance over the man’s head.
“Let’s see what time she comes back,” Reyes says, turning back to the screen.
• • •catherine stands to the side of the living-room window, careful not to be seen. The detectives have been in the house across the street for a long time. She waits for them to come out. When they do, she catches both of them glancing at her house as they walk to their car. They’re not questioning anyone else. They obviously don’t need to.
She must have been seen. They must know she went out that night. They know she lied. They know Ted lied. He lied for her, and she knows he’s not happy about it.
If they’re checking on her, then they’re going to check on Dan and Jenna too. Dan says he never left the house that night after he got home from their parents’. Lisa backed him up.
She knows what that’s worth.
• • •dan is in the garage, the wide door open to the street. Soon he sees them. Those two detectives are talking to his neighbors, trying to find out if anyone saw him leaving his house Sunday night. He stands in shadow, terrified.
Maybe no one saw anything.
Catherine had called him on his cell a little while ago, told him what the detectives were doing. Asked him if anyone on his street had cameras. He didn’t know. With his luck, somebody would have fucking cameras. He’d told Catherine—he’d told them all—that he’d been home all night. She obviously doesn’t believe him, or she wouldn’t have called.
Everyone has an alibi, he thinks, but him.
He’s beginning to panic. He returns to the house and finds Lisa in the kitchen, cleaning up. “The detectives are here,” he says tersely.
“What?” she asks in alarm.
“On the street. Go look out the window,” he says sharply. “Don’t let them see you.”
She throws him a look of concern and creeps over to the living-room window, standing behind the drapes.
He hovers behind her and watches her face change as she realizes what it means.
• • •ellen cutter draws herself a bath that evening, humming a little, thinking about Audrey’s long visit earlier. Apparently she is not going to inherit a fortune after all. How quickly things change. She’d spoken rather wildly about Fred’s children—how they must have found out about his plan to change his will and killed him and Sheila too. Ridiculous, Ellen thinks, adding some bubbles to her bath. That’s a bit over the top, even for Audrey, who’s always had a vivid imagination.
They have been friends for a long time, but Ellen is feeling just a little bit of schadenfreude.
