Page 27 of She Didn't See It Coming
“She wouldn’t just buzz someone in that she didn’t know,” Sam says.
“Exactly,” the detective agrees. “We think it’s possible she knew this person. That it was someone she trusted.” There’s a moment of silence. “We’ve already got the record of everyone who used their key card to get into the underground garage that day,” the detectivecontinues. “You didn’t use yours till you came home with Clara. But you could have asked Bryden to buzz you in. You could have told her you lost your card.”
“I didn’t!”
Then she says, “Sam, you said earlier that you were at work all day, except when you stepped out for a while around lunchtime. Let’s talk about that.”
“Am I a suspect?” he asks, his voice sharp with fear.
She tilts her head at him. “I’m afraid at this point everyone who knew Bryden is a suspect. We just have to eliminate you from our inquiries. We can do that if we can establish with certainty where you were at the time Bryden was murdered.”
He looks at her fearfully. She watches him, waiting.
“As I told you, I went out for lunch, alone, around noon. I got some takeout from a food truck called Gino’s and sat in Washington Park. I didn’t get back to the office till about two.”
“Why is that, Sam?”
“It was a nice day for a change. I wanted to get out of the office.”
She observes, “Nice for March, you mean. Still a bit chilly to sit on a bench that long.” She pauses. “That’s a bit of a hike from your office. How did you get there?”
“I drove.”
“I see. Where did you park your car when you were at the park?”
“On the street.”
“Which street?”
“What difference does it make?” Sam bursts out, clearly frustrated.
She explains. “We want to be able to confirm, if we can, that you were at that park at the time you say you were. So where, exactly, did you park your car?”
He stammers. “I—I don’t know the name of the street. It’s on the, the north side of the park.”
Jayne knows that park; she lives nearby. Not much likelihood of any CCTV coverage there, but they’d check.
“Did anyone see you?” she asks.
“The people at the takeout place saw me. I was there at about twelve ten, twelve fifteen. I got a BLT and a Coke. I paid with a credit card.”
“Okay. Did you talk to anyone at the park?” He shakes his head. “Speak up for the tape, please.”
“No.” Then he blurts out, “I didn’t kill her, I swear.” He looks at her, naked fear in his eyes. “Do I need a lawyer?”
“That’s really up to you,” she says.
17
Lizzie puts the sleeping Clara down on her living room sofa and covers her with a blanket. It’s after nine o’clock. She was asleep when Lizzie picked her up from Angela’s. She doesn’t yet know her mother has been found. Lizzie’s two cats, Pip and Squeak, swirl around her legs as she feeds them. She gets her parents set up in the spare room. They’d barely touched the sandwiches she’d made them at the condo while they waited for the results of the search. They are like her patients at the hospital—weak and uncomplaining, doing as they are told. They are in shock. She kisses them good night, and hopes they can sleep, because tomorrow will be a terrible day. And so will every day after that. She makes a phone call and reserves a hotel suite for the night at the Marriott. Then she checks on Clara, tucking the blanket up around her chin, and retreats into her own bedroom and closes the door.
Lizzie takes several deep breaths, sitting on the edge of the bed. She finds it helps, in times of crisis, to be alone and practice deepbreathing. It’s how she gets through her most difficult times at the hospital, when a patient dies, or a child is diagnosed with a terminal illness. This feels worse than that. Closer.
She needs to pack her overnight bag but instead gets up and turns on her computer. She has a desk in her bedroom with a desktop computer and a large monitor. She also has a laptop that she uses for most other things. Nobody knows about her hobby. The people she knows online only know her by her other persona. She doesn’t want her online life to spill into her work life or her family life or her meager social life. People might think it’s weird.
She’s not a gamer. She’s never found computer games interesting. She finds people interesting; she finds real life interesting. She finds real crimes most interesting of all. She belongs to numerous True Crime Facebook groups, is fascinated by real-life cases. Madeleine McCann. Elisa Lam. Recently, she has even joined some groups that try to solve actual crimes the police have failed to solve—it’s an odd community of online amateur sleuths.
One Facebook group she is a member of is called True Crimes in Albany NY. It’s a public group, with sixty-six members. It’s a community of sorts, and she feels like part of something, like she belongs. Perhaps she is online too much because she is lonely. She knows it’s an obsession, and that obsessions are dangerous. But she can’t help herself. She can’t resist the allure of the group and what they do. She’s aware that some people might find it strange, or unpalatable. That they wouldn’t understand. Perhaps even more so now, now that her own sister has been murdered. She doesn’t want anyone in her real life to learn about what she does. Especially her parents. And the detectives. The police are dismissive of online sleuths, of what they do. They don’t like it when they succeed where the police have failed.
