The End of Her

Sheriff Bastedo waits for the DA to sit down behind her desk and then settles himself heavily in the chair across from her.

‘What a mess,’ Dominguez says. ‘A classic case of he said, she said. Who’s telling the truth?’

‘Or another way of looking at it,’ Bastedo says, ‘which one of them is lying?’ He sees her eyebrows go up. He says, ‘One of them clearly is.’ He adds, ‘I’ll have to bring him in for questioning.’

She nods thoughtfully. ‘Yes, by all means, bring him in,’ she agrees, frowning. ‘But I don’t want to prosecute something I don’t have a good chance of winning.’ She leans forward, over her desk. ‘His wife was in the running car, the exhaust pipe blocked with snow. Did he know? Did he do it on purpose? It will be practically impossible to prove the necessary intent for a murder-one conviction – unless he told someone what he was planning. And I’m sure he didn’t.’

‘Maybe we could go after him on a lesser charge?’

She shakes her head, slowly. ‘No. He either did it deliberately, knowing what he was doing, or he didn’t. If he didn’t, it was an accident. We can’t treat him differently from other cases like this unless he did it intentionally.’

The sheriff nods. ‘I’ll bring him in and ask him to take a polygraph.’

She nods. ‘Try to wear him down. Maybe you can get him interested in a plea bargain.’

Patrick knows Niall isn’t expecting him to come in to work today, but he wants to get this over with. He has to explain the unexpected verdict. Stephanie has a twin in each arm. ‘Why don’t you try to rest,’ he says gently. ‘You look exhausted.’

She nods absently. He kisses her on the top of her head and says, ‘Will you be okay if I go out for a bit?’

‘Where are you going?’ she asks, looking up at him.

‘The office.’

There’s suddenly more tension in the room than there was the second before. To each other, they had always pretended that only one verdict was possible – that it was an accident.

‘How do you think he’ll react?’ she says now.

Patrick shrugs. ‘I don’t know. None of us thought this would happen. We didn’t really talk about it.’

He turns to leave the room and says, ‘I won’t be gone long.’

Stephanie paces the living room, imagining what’s going on at the office. Niall will want Patrick out. Anyone would. You can’t have a business partner with a possible murder charge hanging over him.

She hears Patrick’s car pull into the driveway. She stops and stands in the living room, waiting for him to come into the house. He enters, throws his keys on the table by the door and turns to look at her. She can tell by the look on his face that the news is bad. ‘What happened?’ she asks.

‘He’s going to dissolve the partnership.’

‘Can he do that?’ she asks.

‘Of course he can, according to the terms of the partnership agreement.’ He adds, ‘He’ll buy me out.’

She feels a stab of fury. ‘With friends like that,’ she says bitterly, ‘who needs enemies?’

Erica sits in her apartment, nursing a cup of coffee.

Undetermined. Now the ball is in the sheriff’s court. He will have to do something, after hearing the evidence. Patrick must be terrified. She thinks for a moment about his wife, Stephanie. She’d looked awful at the inquest. Thinner, but not in a good way. Her face was hollow. She must be going through hell, Erica thinks now. She tells herself that’s not really her problem. She’s doing Stephanie a favour. She should know what she married. She hopes they arrest him.

She tells herself that every cloud has a silver lining. She certainly thinks this one does.

CHAPTER FORTY

FOR STEPHANIE, THAT first day back is a blur of fatigue, caring for the twins and worrying ceaselessly about the future. The weather has turned dark and wet, and people have begun preparing their yards for Halloween.

Stephanie can’t stop thinking about the bruises on Lindsey’s body. Did Patrick push her down the stairs? Could he have? She’s seeing signs of stress in him, cracks in the fa?ade that make her wonder. He’d snapped at her that afternoon for allowing them to run out of milk. She’d snapped right back.

Late that night, staring into the dark, she finds herself wondering what it was like for Lindsey, to marry so young, to be pregnant, to be alone all day in a place away from her family. They didn’t have much money. Love flies out the window when the wolf is at the door. Did she know he had cheated on her? Did she suspect? Did she accuse him? Maybe she did, and he didn’t like it. Maybe that’s why he pushed her down the stairs … No. She can’t think this way, she can’t. It’s just anger making her think like this, anger at him, at everything. Anger that he cheated on his first wife and brought all of this on himself, on her and their beautiful daughters. They could lose everything because he slept with an attractive woman a couple of times when he shouldn’t have. She’s angriest of all at Erica – for sleeping with a friend’s husband, for persisting with this crazy story about murder. For lying on the stand about the blackmail.

She tries not to blame Patrick for what he’s done. Sleeping with his wife’s best friend is unforgivable. So why has she forgiven him?

Has she forgiven him?

She still hasn’t decided. She goes back and forth. He hasn’t cheated on her, as far as she knows. Should she leave him anyway, on principle? Because once a cheater always a cheater? Even if nothing more happens with the case, and it all just goes away – the best they can hope for – people will look at her for the rest of her life and wonder if she’s married to a murderer. She remembers the expression on Hanna’s face when she offered to take Teddy.

If she left him now it would look like she didn’t believe him, that she thought he was a murderer. She can’t do that to him. And she has the babies to think of – he’s their father. They can’t grow up thinking their mother believes their father murdered his first wife. Especially since it isn’t true.

The next morning Patrick is out picking a few things up at the grocery store when the phone rings, and Stephanie reluctantly answers. ‘Hello?’

‘May I speak to Patrick Kilgour?’ a man asks. Immediately her body tenses. The voice is serious, authoritative.

‘He’s not here. May I ask who’s calling?’ she says, her heart racing.

‘It’s Sheriff Bastedo with the Grant County Sheriff’s Office. Could you please have him call me as soon as he gets in?’ He gives her a number, and she writes it down, her hand trembling, her mind panicking. When she hangs up the phone she walks into the living room and collapses onto the sofa. It’s happening – they’re going to arrest him. She feels dizziness wash over her. She puts her head down between her knees before everything goes black.

Moments later she hears Patrick return home. He must see her, she thinks, bent forward in what looks like a faint, but she can’t lift her head.

‘Stephanie, what is it?’ Patrick cries. And then he’s kneeling in front of her, his voice worried. ‘Are you all right?’

But she can’t catch her breath. It feels like there’s a band across her chest and black spots are dancing in front of her eyes.

‘Breathe,’ he tells her.

The moment passes. The black spots recede and she’s able to lift her head and look at him. He brushes a lock of hair away from her face. ‘What’s wrong, what happened?’ he asks, his voice tense.

‘You had a call,’ she says. ‘From the Grant County sheriff.’ She sees the fear settle on his face; they’re both terrified. ‘He wants you to call him back. He left a number.’

Patrick stands up quickly and looks down at her with frantic eyes. ‘What did he want?’

She looks back at him, frightened. ‘He didn’t say. He just wants you to call back.’

He begins pacing the room. ‘Fuck. Fuck.’

There’s no way out of this, Stephanie thinks, starting to panic. They’ll arrest him. He’ll go to jail. He’ll go to trial. She doesn’t think she can survive a trial. The inquest was almost more than she could stand.

‘I’m going to call Lange. Ask him what to do,’ Patrick says. She nods as he takes out his cell and makes the call.

Stephanie watches as Patrick talks to the attorney. It’s a short conversation.

‘What did he say?’ she asks nervously.

‘He told me not to panic,’ Patrick says with heavy sarcasm. ‘Easy for him to say. He wants me to find out what they want and call him back.’

Patrick paces around the room a few more times, too agitated to phone the sheriff. She watches him go into the kitchen, hears him pouring himself a drink. He comes back into the living room with the glass of liquor and downs it in two gulps. He waits for a long moment and then says, ‘Where’s the number?’

She finds him the piece of paper with the number on it. He swallows and then calls. She can only hear one side of the conversation, but it’s easy to piece together what’s happening.

‘What does that mean, exactly?’ Patrick says. ‘Are you arresting me?’