Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

SHELBY WATCHES HER son break down after he says, ‘Everybody loved her.' She feels her own lower lip wobble, and she reaches for him, seated close beside her, drawing him into a hug, stroking his soft brown hair. She feels his body convulsing in sobs against her. It's true, everybody loved Diana. She was almost too good to be true. They'd been so delighted when their son started dating her. They'd fallen in love with her, too, a little bit. This is all very hard, and she hopes her shattered son can survive it.

She can hardly bear to think of Diana's mother, Brenda. She'll be all alone now, and Diana was everything to her. How bleak her life will be, just like that. Cameron is also an only child; Shelby can't bear to think of what her life would be like if she were to lose him. How fragile life is, she thinks, holding her sobbing son; we should never take it for granted. She still thinks of her son as just a boy – he still seems so young to her. She doesn't like to think of him having sex with Diana in their truck.

Who could have done such an awful thing? She assumes, because she's not na?ve and because of the pointed questions the detective just asked, that Diana was sexually assaulted as well as murdered. It all makes her stomach heave.

How could it have happened? Cameron brought her safely home. This is a small town, where everybody knows everybody else – no one gets murdered here. That question about the door – do the police think someone might have already been waiting inside the house for her last night? She supposes it's possible, if Diana hadn't locked the door. People often don't around here. It makes her sick to think of it, to think that her son might have unknowingly delivered Diana to her killer. How else might it have happened? She wouldn't have gone out again at that hour. Maybe someone came to the door later? Or broke in afterward? She was all alone in that house last night.

Shelby fervently hopes they catch the bastard. The death penalty would be too good for him. How desperately awful for her son to lose his first serious girlfriend this way.

And yet Cameron has told the detectives one small lie.

She tries not to worry about it. But after the interview – which seemed to go on and on – as she drives home alone in her own car, Cameron in the truck with his father, Shelby does worry. She knows something that her husband doesn't. Should she tell him? Confront her son? Because she got up last night, when Edward was snoring heavily beside her. She had to pee. On her way down the hall to the bathroom she peeked into Cameron's room, because his door was slightly open. Usually, it was closed. His bed was empty. He wasn't there. She finished in the bathroom and went back to her room, checking the time on the digital clock on her bedside table. It was almost one a.m. She would have to talk to Cameron in the morning, she thought. He was supposed to be home by 11:30 on weeknights. She and Edward were usually asleep before then, so they didn't know when he came in. They didn't police him. They just assumed he was coming in on time.

As she lay there, worried, her earplugs left out, she heard him creep in. She noted the time: 1:11 a.m. She thought about going out and confronting him on the stairs, but she decided it could wait until morning. Reassured to have him safe at home, she fell back asleep.

But now, driving home in her car, she knows he lied to the police. He did not come home shortly after eleven – it was much later than that. She just doesn't know why he lied. Did he leave Diana safely at home at eleven and go do something else and lie because of his curfew? Or did he leave Diana at home much later than he said?

Brenda Brewer is at the police station, in one of the two interview rooms. She's sitting with a female officer who brings her coffee and tissues and speaks in a soft voice. She doesn't know where the police chief has gone. They wanted to get her out of the house while they looked it over as a possible crime scene. She's been told that they think Diana's body was taken to the field, that she was killed – strangled with some kind of ligature – somewhere else. The house is one possibility. It stuns her: the idea that Diana might have been killed inside their house, while she was at work.

A man in a dark suit quietly enters the room, accompanied by a woman, also in plain clothes, and the uniformed officer exits. He introduces himself as Detective Stone and the woman as Detective Godfrey, from Vermont State Police, Major Crimes Unit. They, too, speak softly. Brenda's ex-husband is on his way, but he lives more than a two-hour drive away now. He is the only one who will feel the loss anywhere near as much as she does, she thinks, but he has another family. He has other children. She has no one.

‘I know this is unbelievably hard,' Detective Stone says gently, ‘but we want to get who did this. Do you think you can answer some questions?'

She nods. She will do her best. But she just wants someone to drug her into sleep and never to wake up.

Stone says, ‘We know Diana was in a relationship with Cameron Farrell. But did she ever mention anyone else being interested in her?'

Brenda tries to think, to claw her way through the fog of shock and grief and disbelief. ‘Not that I recall.'

‘Diana didn't mention anyone who was bothering her, who maybe showed an interest in her that she didn't reciprocate?'

Brenda pauses, remembers. ‘She did mention once that there was a customer where she worked who gave her the creeps.'

‘Where did she work?'

‘At the Home Depot. She had a summer job there, then carried on when school started, doing occasional shifts evenings and weekends.' She answers automatically; she's surprised at how lucid she sounds.

‘What did she say about this customer who gave her the creeps?'

‘Not much.' Brenda looks down at the tissues crumpled in her hands. ‘I didn't like her working evenings, so I was glad she was at the Home Depot because there's always lots of people around. It's a big place. Not like a little corner store where she would have been alone. I wouldn't have let her do that. And I made her promise to always get someone to walk her to her car at the end of her shift, and she always did. They were good that way.' And then she realizes how none of it helped, that her daughter is dead anyway, and she breaks down again.

They let her cry for as long as she needs. Godfrey leaves discreetly and returns with a bottle of water, which she doesn't want. Stone is still waiting patiently; he's not finished. She wants to know who murdered her daughter too. She wants to rip him to shreds with her bare hands. She pulls herself together as best she can.

‘Tell us about her boyfriend, Cameron,' Detective Stone says.

She looks at him. ‘What about him?'

‘What's he like?' Stone asks.

She says, ‘He's a nice boy. They were friends all through school, but they started dating and became a couple at the end of the summer, just before school started again. It was quite sudden, and very intense.'

‘Intense how?'

‘I just mean, you know, they were – it seemed like they were in love. They spent every moment they could together. He was always coming over. He was all over her, holding her hand, kissing her, as if he couldn't get enough.' Her disapproval must have shown.

‘Did you approve of their relationship?'

She gives him a frank look. ‘To be honest, I have nothing against him , but I didn't like to see Diana getting so serious about someone so fast, and so young. He was her first real boyfriend. I was glad she planned on going away to college next year.' She stops suddenly, fights back another sob. She adds pointlessly, ‘She wanted to be a vet. She loved animals.'

‘Did you know they were having sexual relations?' Stone asks.

She lets out a long breath. ‘Diana didn't tell me, but I assumed. Did Cameron tell you that? Have you already talked to him?'

‘Yes. You understand we had to ask.'

She nods, braces herself. ‘Was she – was she sexually assaulted?'

‘We're still waiting for an answer on that,' he says. ‘Have you ever had a break-in at your house?'

She shakes her head. ‘No.'

‘Ever notice anyone loitering outside the house, see a car parked there you didn't know?'

‘No.'

‘Do you keep your house locked?'

She swallows. ‘We usually lock the doors at night before we go to bed, but not always during the day. Fairhill isn't the kind of place you have to lock your doors.' She pauses, because she knows now that that isn't true. Brenda used to lock up at night, but now she goes to work and leaves it to her daughter. It never occurred to her that they weren't safe. She knows better now. Now that it's too late. She says, ‘The door was locked when I arrived home this morning.'

Stone nods. ‘Cameron says he saw your daughter last night, brought her home at around eleven p.m., watched her enter the house, and then went home. Do you remember what she was wearing when you left for work last night, just before ten o'clock?'

Brenda tries to concentrate. ‘Jeans and a plaid shirt, sort of red and cream.'

The detective nods. ‘Can you think of any reason your daughter might have left the house again of her own volition?'

‘No. Have you checked her cell phone?'

Stone says, ‘We haven't found it. It wasn't with her, and we haven't found it in the house. Not yet anyway.' He adds, ‘And the clothes that Cameron and you both describe her as wearing earlier that night are also missing. Her corduroy jacket and sneakers were found in the house. But we're not releasing this information to the public, so please keep it to yourself.' He adds, ‘It's quite possible that it was someone that she knew.'

‘I want to go home,' she says, feeling nauseated.

‘They're still searching there,' Stone tells her gently.

‘I want to go home,' she sobs. ‘Please, I just want to go home.'