‘We’d better get over there. Send Moen to me, would you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Webb grabs his jacket and meets Moen on his way out.
‘What have we got?’ Moen asks.
‘We’ll know when we get there,’ Webb says.
They park on the street in front of an attractive grey house with blue shutters and a red door. There’s yellow police tape across the front step, and a uniformed officer from Patrol Division standing guard.
‘The crime team is on its way, sir,’ the officer tells him. Webb notices a woman standing off to the side, on the driveway, being comforted by another officer. She’s probably the one who found the body.
Webb steps into the house. The victim is sprawled on the floor. The woman is wearing a pink terry-cloth robe and a nightie underneath. It’s clear from the obvious bruising around her neck that she’s been strangled with some kind of rope or cord. Not something thin enough to cut the skin.
‘Do we have what she was strangled with?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Any sign of forced entry?’
‘No, sir. We’ve checked the house and grounds. Looks like she let her killer in the front door, and he did it as soon as she had her back turned.’
‘She’s in her nightwear,’ Webb observes. ‘She probably knew her killer.’
He bends in closer. She looks like she’s been dead a while – at least a day, maybe more.
‘The medical examiner is on his way.’
Webb nods. ‘Who found her – the woman outside?’
The officer nods. ‘A neighbour.’
He catches Moen’s eye and the two of them head back outside. They approach the woman standing on the driveway. She’s not crying, but she looks like she’s in shock.
‘I’m Detective Webb,’ he says. ‘Can I have your name, please?’
‘Zoe Putillo,’ the woman says.
‘You found the body?’
She nods. ‘She lived alone. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. I noticed that she hadn’t picked up her newspapers. So I knocked on the door. She didn’t answer. I tried the door and it wasn’t locked, so I went in – and I saw her there.’ She shudders. ‘I can’t believe it. She was new to the neighbourhood, trying to make friends.’
‘Did you know her very well?’ Webb asks.
‘Not really. Just to speak to,’ Zoe says, adding, ‘She was broken into recently, and she was making herself crazy trying to figure out who it was.’
Webb remembers then that Raleigh Sharpe had confessed to breaking into this house. He remembers the address, Thirty-two Finch.
The woman says, ‘She was making a bit of a nuisance of herself, to be honest, telling people they might have been broken into and not know it. Getting everybody worried.’ She shakes her head, clearly unnerved. ‘It’s terrible what happened to her. Nothing ever used to happen around here.’
‘Did you see anyone coming or going from her house in the last few days?’
She looks at him in sudden dismay, as if something has just occurred to her. She says uneasily, ‘Actually, now that you mention it, I did see someone.’
Glenda looks up with a start when Detectives Webb and Moen re-enter the interview room. They have been gone a long time, leaving her to stew in her own fear and anxiety.
Webb reads her her rights.
‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ she says, frightened.
‘Are you sure?’ Webb asks.
‘I didn’t know anything about that key.’
‘Very well,’ Webb says equably. Then he says, ‘Carmine Torres has been murdered.’
She feels all the blood drain from her head; she fears she might faint. She grabs the edge of the table.
Webb leans in close. ‘We think you killed her.’
Glenda feels herself blanch, shakes her head. ‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘You were seen,’ Webb says bluntly. ‘Carmine Torres figured out what you’d done – that you’d killed Amanda Pierce.’ He looks at her for a long moment, his eyes on hers. Finally she looks away.
She lets herself fall apart. There’s no way out. Another mistake that she will pay dearly for. She shouldn’t have killed Carmine, the prying bitch. She must have been out of her mind to do it, blinded by fear. She’d acted on instinct. She hadn’t thought things through. Finally she lifts her head, looks at the detectives, and manages to say, ‘Yes, I killed her. I was afraid she’d figured it out.’ She averts her eyes, defeated, and says, ‘I killed Amanda Pierce. She was having an affair with my husband.’
Webb and Moen leave the interview room and consult quietly, down the corridor.
‘What do you think?’ Webb asks.
‘What, you don’t believe her?’ Moen says.
‘I believe she killed Carmine Torres. But I think she was lying when she said she killed Amanda Pierce. Her eyes shifted away at that point. Her body language changed. I think she’s protecting someone.’
‘Her husband?’
‘I don’t think she’d confess to murder to protect her husband, do you?’
Chapter Thirty-nine
I’M SHAKING SO hard anyone can see it. I feel nauseated, but it’s not just from the drinking.
The detectives take me into a room with a camera pointing at me from a corner in the ceiling. I know that my parents are both here somewhere in other rooms like this one. The woman detective brings me a can of soda. They introduce themselves as Detective Webb and Detective Moen; the other woman here is a lawyer.
Detective Webb goes over procedure but I can hardly take anything in; he turns on the tape. He says, ‘Adam, your mother has confessed to killing Amanda Pierce.’
I look back at him, unable to speak, shaking my head. I fight the urge to throw up, swallow the bile back down. She told me never to admit what I’d done. But she never told me she would say that she had done it. I wish she was here beside me, to tell me what to do now. I lick my dry lips.
‘She told us that she went to the cabin and beat her to death with a hammer and put the body in the lake.’
I start to cry. After a while I manage to say, shaking my head, ‘No. I killed Amanda Pierce.’ It’s such a relief to say it out loud. It’s been like a monster inside my head, screaming to get out. I know my mother has been afraid that I’m going to get drunk and just blurt it out somewhere. I’ve been afraid of that, too. Well, she won’t have to worry any more.
The detectives look back at me, waiting. I have to tell them everything. ‘My dad was sleeping with Amanda Pierce.’
‘How did you know?’ Webb asks.
‘He keeps all his usernames and passwords written down in a notebook in the back of his desk. I got into his computer and found his private online email account. He’d hidden it. He always deletes his browser history so his email account doesn’t show up. I saw their emails. I knew he was seeing someone, but I didn’t know who because they used made-up names on their email addresses. She was pregnant. I thought he was going to leave my mom and start a new family with her. My mom didn’t know anything about it.’ I swallow and stop. I wonder how things might have turned out differently if I’d told my mother what I knew instead of going up to the cabin.