As he passed by, she placed her hand on his arm, and he paused.
“Let me know if you need anything.”
He nodded brusquely, and was gone.
A large lump rose in her throat. Tears pricked her eyes, and she swiped them away. Their night had been so perfect. He had been so wonderful.
To have the moment end like this…it wasn’t fair.
She didn’t know whether to be angry with him for not believing her. For not believing in her. Or to be terribly hurt because he still didn’t trust her after all they’d just shared.
Or maybe she should just take it as a sign that they wouldn’t work anyway…and get out while the getting was good.
…
Sam found it difficult to keep his anger in check as he stood waiting for Detective Johnson to get the hell out of his mother’s house. Not that the detective was treating his mother poorly. On the contrary, he was treating her with patience and quiet respect. But that didn’t mean the guy didn’t suspect his mother of more dastardly deeds. It was his job, and Sam knew it.
He’d taken one glance at the letters on the coffee table and his mother’s nervous glance up at him and knew she’d already admitted to writing them. He nodded to her, as if to signal he already knew. She crooked a slight smile for him. And seemed almost relieved. Sam sat next to her on the couch and placed his hand on her arm as a gesture of solidarity.
Where Detective Johnson had been soft-spoken and respectful towards his mother, Sam didn’t even try to hide his frustration.
“When Ms. McBride turned over the box and these letters, were you aware your mother had written them?” the detective asked him.
“Not with certainty, but I had my suspicions.”
“Care to tell me why you didn’t share those suspicions?” he asked more sharply.
“Like I said, I wasn’t sure. And even if it was true, I respect my mother’s privacy. Whether she had written the letters or not didn’t implicate her as a murderess. Or guilty of arson, or assault, or anything else you might suspect.”
“The night Ms. McBride was assaulted, what time did you say you headed to the school?”
Sam repeated his earlier estimation.
“And you can attest to the fact your mother was upstairs up until that point?”
“Absolutely. As you can see detective, my mother is not well. She has stage three breast cancer and gets exhausted from her treatments.”
“Yes. She told me that,” he said and nodded at his mother. “I’ll be checking the dates you gave me with the hotel’s records and conference registration, if they still have them.”
“The dates for what?” Sam asked, perplexed.
“Your mother recalls that the weekend Jackson Williams went missing, she and your father were attending a medical conference downstate in St. George. They checked out Sunday afternoon and didn’t arrive back in Salt Lake until late that evening.”
Sam nodded in surprise. He had actually forgotten his parents had been gone the weekend Mr. Williams went missing. Possibly because it hadn’t been until Monday afternoon, when Mr. Williams wasn’t at school for his classes, that the alarm initially went up.
“That’s right. And if I remember correctly,” Sam said, feeling more hopeful than he had in a long time, “hikers reported seeing his car parked at the trailhead since Sunday morning, which would make it improbable either of my parents could be responsible.” Sam considered the driving distance from St. George, located in southern Utah, to the Uinta Mountains, located in the northeast. “It would take at least seven hours one way to get up the Uinta’s, fourteen round-trip. At least.”
“I expect you’re right,” the detective said. “Which is why I’ll be calling the hotel to check out your mother’s story so I can eliminate them as suspects. When did you become aware your mother was having an affair with Mr. Williams?”
The question surprised Sam for a minute, as did the intensity in the detective’s eyes. “I heard my parents argue about it once. It was a few months before my graduation.” He heard his mother’s sharp intake of breath, but he continued. It was time for them both to be honest. “Mr. Williams was never mentioned by name, and it wasn’t something I was looking to figure out. It was only this past week I put it together.”
The detective stared at him as if trying to determine if he was lying.
His mother half rose from the couch, her voice high. “Detective, you don’t consider my son a suspect? He was only a child.”
“We made an interesting discovery after going through the contents of that box Ms. McBride provided. The coffee mug had traces of arsenic. Since I understand the box contained items Mr. Williams used while he was at school, it implies the arsenic poisoning probably also occurred at school.” He hesitated again, deliberating over something. “We also may have found the murder weapon. A letter opener from the same box. We’re still conducting tests. In the meantime, we need to consider everyone who had access to Mr. Williams’s classroom at that time. Including your son. However unlikely.”
“Fair enough,” Sam said. He knew he was innocent, and it looked like his mother was soon going to be in the clear, too. He could take the heat.