The Dead Husband by Carter Wilson (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

But here’s the thing research never reveals: if you’re the killer, all that confidence can be shattered at the faintest shift in the wind. There’s never 100 percent confidence, and rarely even half that. Odds don’t mean anything to your nerves, your gut. And your conscience, if you have one.

“Miss Rose?”

I turn my head and see Abril, the housekeeper. She comes over a couple hours each day during the workweek, cooks, does light cleaning. She’s pleasant enough but quiet, keeping to herself even though we’ve been in the house several hours alone together. I tried to strike up a conversation a few times but received very short answers to my questions.

“Yes?”

“There’s a man at the door. Asking for you.”

I didn’t even hear the door ring. I was too entrenched in my email with Nancy.

“What does he want?” For a moment, I think maybe it’s Alec. One of those flash fantasies where I picture Alec stopping by under some transparent pretense, just to say hi.

Abril shatters this daydream.

“I don’t know. He says…he says he’s police.”

This is a word I neither expected nor wanted to hear.

“Police?”

“Sí. No uniform. But badge.”

My immediate, irrational, horrifying thought is that Cora went to the police and told them everything. But that makes no sense, since she’s much guiltier than I am. But what if she’s so paranoid about the chapter in the upcoming book that she decided to get ahead of everything and craft her own version of what happened to Caleb Benner, leaving me to shoulder all the responsibility?

That would be suicide. My father would cut her off forever.

But the improbability of the thought doesn’t give me comfort. Who knows what Cora is capable of doing? She’s as unpredictable as a rabid dog, and just as dangerous.

“Yes, of course.” I rise from the kitchen table, feeling the heat of my body rushing to my extremities. I’m certain my face is flushed, and even thinking about it is making it more so. My complexion always betrays any kind of heightened emotion: anger, embarrassment, lust, nervousness.

As I head to the foyer, Abril scurries deeper into the house. I want to hide, too.

The door is half-open, and as I reach it, I see the man.

He wears a dopey, disarming grin, as if he’s a neighbor going to ask to borrow a couple of eggs.

This unnerves me more than anything else.

Twenty-Two

“Hi, ma’am. Are you Rose Yates?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Detective Colin Pearson with the Milwaukee Police Department.” He holds up a badge that looks authentic, but I also know how easily those can be faked.

“Milwaukee?”

“Yeah, I know. Long way from home.”

My brain tries to process all the little details at once, hoping to get a step ahead of whatever it is he wants. He’s plainclothes, which makes sense for a detective. Nicely dressed: khaki slacks, crisp, white button-down shirt, blue-and-gold-striped tie. All topped off with a blue blazer, cheap but serviceable, the kind a cop would buy. He’s maybe upper thirties, tall and a bit lanky, fit but not muscular, and he’s avoided the cop gut that usually comes with riding either a desk or patrol car.

And his face. It’s so benign. So aw shucks. Light stubble that looks as if he’s a fifteen-year-old getting his first moss of facial hair. Dark hair that’s short but still manages to be a bit moppy. Eyes that convey both warmth and trust. And that grin…so light and disarming. His is the kind of face that puts someone at ease.

Except right now. With me.

“You’re here to see me?” I ask.

“Yes, I am. And I won’t take up much of your time. Just want to ask you a few questions, if it’s not too much of a bother.”

I look past him and see a Bury police sedan parked on the street. A cop in the driver’s seat.

Pearson follows my gaze and then turns back to me. “Oh, that’s Officer Simmons with Bury PD. He’s just my ride. He’ll wait out in the vehicle until we’re through. Mind if I come inside?”

How many times have I talked to cops, interviewing them as necessary research for my books, asking them questions about their procedures, their psychology, their instincts? Now, it’s the other way around. The way I don’t want it to be, because police officers are trained to detect guilt. Some of them are exceptional at it, and some of them are barely serviceable. I don’t have any idea where Colin Pearson falls on that spectrum.

My choices are limited here, and as I open the door to this man, allowing him to pass into my father’s house, I briefly close my eyes and recall a mantra designed specifically for hard moments. Moments of suffocating darkness, those silent, stabbing seconds when I doubt who I am at my innermost core. Who I’ve been. What I’ve done.

I’m stronger than I think.

I’m stronger than I think.

I’m stronger than I think.

Minutes later, with a digital recorder placed between us, our conversation begins.

Twenty-Three

The house was massive, swallowing Colin without noticing, krill to a whale. But it wasn’t the size of it that had him off-balance. The place had an energy, and not necessarily a good one. There was a sense of occurrence here, though everything was still. Best he could compare it to was a crime scene. A silence reverberating with aftershocks.

He sat across from the woman he’d come to see and pressed the button on his recorder.

“Okay, it’s Thursday, October 15, approximately 14:30 hours,” he started. “I’m at 1734 Rum Hill Road in Bury, New Hampshire, speaking with Rose Yates. I’m not being assisted in this interview. Drew Simmons, patrol officer with the Bury Police Department, is in a squad car outside the residence. Ms. Yates is not in custody and has voluntarily elected to speak with me. The subject of this interview is case 18-33456, concerning Riley McKay, Ms. Yates’s late husband.”

She crossed her legs. “God, this all sounds so serious.”

“I know, and apologies for the formality of it all, Ms. Yates. I prefer to record conversations in conjunction