Page 137 of Our Last Resort

Picture it: Sabrina collapses. William doesn’t realize what just happened. He waits for her to move. When she doesn’t, he walks up to her. Maybe he whispers, “Darling?” He puts a hand on her arm. Shakes her, gently at first, then harder. He panics. Sabrina bleeds, bleeds, bleeds.

Head wounds bleed profusely. When we were kids, a girl slashed her scalp on the corner of a table in the cafeteria. While a mother sewed her skin back together, we were recruited to clean up. The cafeteria looked like—well, a crime scene: blood on the table, on the nearby chairs, on the floor.

Maybe William is smart about this. Maybe he doesn’t touch his wife’s body. Maybe he picks up the murder weapon, handles it cleanly, between two fingers, brings it back to his suite, hides it, and washes his hands.

But I don’t believe it. Because he’s not a planner.

He’s not likeme.

He is angry, abusive, messy.

And so I have to imagine that William, in his frantic state, touches at least some of the blood. Maybe he puts his fingers to his wife’s head wound. Maybe his hand goes from her body to his. Maybe the blood gets on his shoes. Maybe it gets on the clothes he was wearing that night: his dinner suit, his white button-down shirt.

Where did he put them? His murder clothes?

No dumpster here. And it’s not like he could’ve handed them off to the hotel’s laundry service.

William stashed the murder weaponsomewhere.He held on to it until he could deploy it in the perfect way, at the perfect time. As he did with the phone.

This is what those two items tell me: that William Brenner has found a hiding place.

Where is it?

Somewhere the police wouldn’t have been able to access without a warrant. Obviously.

William’s hotel suite?

Maybe. Except the cops would have needed a warrant to search it,unlessthey had William’s permission. Which they would have asked for at the very start of their investigation. And which William would’ve had to give, if he wanted to appear willing. Cooperative.Innocent.

That’s what happened with Gabriel. I was there when the police showed up for that first search in New Jersey. “Mind if we take a look?” an officer asked. His tone was casual, but the question was a test:And if you mind, may I ask why?

Gabriel allowed the police inside his house. He had nothing to hide.

Of course, the cops didn’t find anything. They returned after Annie’s body was found, this time with a warrant.

They asked Gabriel to wait outside. For three hours, they searched the house, bagging Annie’s hairbrush, dusting doorknobs and windowsills for fingerprints, collecting DNA samples. After that, Gabriel was allowed back in.

That part, people can’t get over. Somewhat understandably, I suppose.

“He never lost access to the house,” one person wrote on Reddit about a year ago. “Two weeks is an eternity when we’re talking about evidence. Think of all the stuff he could have gotten rid of. They might as well not have searched it at all.”

“It’s not just the house,” someone else commented. “Think about their electronics. Their garage, their car.”

I come to a halt.

Their garage.

Their car.

Oh my god.

The weakest part in my own plan.

The thing that could have done me in. If someone had seen it. If anyone had said anything to the cops about the make, model, or color.

My rental car.

The papers had all the information the police needed. My name, my address, my signature.

---