Page 78 of She Didn't See It Coming
Maybe she was in on the murder of her mother too. Maybe they killed her together.
“For fuck’s sake!” Alice blurts out loud to the empty house.
But no one seems to have heard about the eyewitness who saw a woman in the elevator, not even Emma Porter, who allegedly has the friend in the police department. So maybe it isn’t true. Maybe Detective fucking Salter made it up to mess with her. She decides to throw these morons a bone. Maybe Emma Porter will confirm whether it’s true or not.
Apparently there is an eyewitness. Someone who saw a person in the elevator with a suitcase at the exact time the murderer is supposed to have been there. And they have a description. But they’re not sharing that just yet.
Brittany Clement
Exciting! How do you know? From your journalist friend?
Alice doesn’t answer. That’s all she’s going to say. Let them chew on that for a while.
She is angry at Deep Diver about that newspaper article. She’d like to get back at him somehow, but she doesn’t know how. His avatar is a cartoon of a scuba diver, with nothing behind that profile either. Alice knows who wrote the newspaper article though. The name is right there, on the byline. She files it away in her mind.
But right now, the person she most wants to stop, toharm, is Detective Salter. Alice ponders whether, if the detective were to meet with an accident, that would stop them digging into Alice. Probably not. But there can be no actual evidence that she killed Bryden. And there’s no evidence that she killed her mother either.
Still, Salter’s interest in her feels personal. And dangerous.
•••
Because it’s Sunday,and Jayne is in the thick of a homicide case, Michael drops by the station at lunchtime to take her out for a quick bite. Jayne is grateful because she feels like she needs a breather. It’s been almost nonstop since Bryden went missing last Tuesday.
They settle themselves in a booth by the window in a diner not far from the station. They order grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee.
“You look tired,” Michael observes.
“Thanks,” Jayne says, smiling wryly. “If I look more tired than Idid when you saw me at breakfast, it’s because I feel like I just went ten rounds with a psychopath.” She takes an appreciative sip of her coffee and asks, “You can’t tell someone’s a psychopath by just talking to them, right?”
“That’s the conventional wisdom, yes.”
Jayne shakes her head and lowers her voice. “I tell you, this woman, Alice, Derek Gardner’s wife, she gives me the creeps. Today, just for a second, I felt like she dropped the façade, and I could see what was behind her eyes, and it was—” She pauses, thinking about how best to describe it.
“What?” Michael asks.
“Like there was nothing there. Just a darkness, an emptiness.” He’s looking at her curiously. “You think I’m imagining things, don’t you?”
“No. But—there’s such a thing as instinct.”
“What do you mean?” Jayne asks.
“Some birds have the instinct to fly south in winter when it gets cold. The purpose is survival. Humans also have instincts for survival.”
“So what are you saying? That on some instinctual level I may be able to tell that she’s a psychopath?”
“Let’s leave the psychopath label aside for a minute. It’s not that helpful. But the ability to sense danger, so that we get physical symptoms—the racing heart, the feeling of the hair rising on your arms or the back of your neck—all that’s coming from your prehistoric brain, which is still there at the base of your skull. We all want to survive.”
Jayne registers what he’s saying. “So you think that my instincts are telling me that she’s dangerous?”
He nods. “I think it’s more likely to be your instincts than your imagination. And I think your instincts are good, Jayne. You should trust them.”
52
Derek has gone to the office downtown. It’s Sunday, and nobody will be there. He can get some space from Alice and everybody else and try to think. He unlocks the sleek glass door at the end of the corridor and locks it again behind him. This is all his, he thinks, surveying the carpeted offices. The cool reception area, the stylish offices, the boardroom at the end with the large walnut table and the impressive view. All first class. All costly. He knows he owes Alice a lot. But right now, he has to fight the urge to strangle her.
No one knows his wife better than he does. No one understands her like he does, so if she’s afraid of what this detective might find if she keeps digging, then it must be pretty bad. Life-in-prison bad. But Alice won’t tell him what she’s hiding. And that pisses him off, because he doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on. Alice can be dangerous. He suspects she’s not telling him because she still thinks he’s holding out on her about Bryden.
He’s got impressive computer skills—he’s in cybersecurity, after all. He can do a deep dive into his wife and see what he can find out. He’s never done that before; he never had the need. Or maybe he just never had the nerve.
