Page 90 of She Didn't See It Coming
“Perhaps you have feelings for him,” Jayne suggests.
“What? No, that’s ridiculous. He was married to my best friend!”
“What about now, now that he’s free?”
“That’s insulting, Detective. We’re friends, nothing more.”
Jayne nods. “All right.” She pauses for a moment. “We have some new information that’s come to light.” She pauses and asks Kilgour to read Paige her rights. When he’s done that, she asks, “Would you like to have an attorney present?”
Paige shifts in her seat, pale but resolute. “I don’t need an attorney.”
Jayne proceeds. “We have a witness who got in the elevator in Bryden’s building at approximately one thirty on the day of the murder. There was someone already in the elevator, with a suitcase, the same suitcase Bryden was found in.” Paige doesn’t visibly flinch, but Jayne thinks she sees something nervous in her eyes. “We know it was you in the elevator with the suitcase, Paige.”
Paige’s mouth drops open in apparent shock. “What? That’s impossible. I wasn’t there that day. I was home, sick. The witness is mistaken. Everyone knows how unreliable eyewitnesses can be.” Jayne waits, letting the silence fill the room, until Paige adds, “I had nothing to do with Bryden’s murder!”
“The witness says you received a phone call in the elevator,” Jayne says. “The ringtone was the opening bars of ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by The Verve.” Kilgour presses a button on his phone. They all hear it, the distinctive opening strains of the song, coming from Paige’s handbag.
“I want a lawyer,” Paige says, visibly shaken.
Jayne suspends the interview.
•••
Paige waits for her attorneyto arrive. She’s outwardly calm, but she’s quaking inside. This is all falling apart. It’s the end of everything. She’s been carrying all this fear inside ever since it happened—she’s been almost paralyzed by it, and now she realizes none of this was worth it.
Her attorney arrives, a woman in her forties named Kate Dixon. They talk quietly together in private. When the interview resumes, they are prepared.
“We know you were in the building at 100 Constitution Drive and were in the elevator with the same suitcase that contained Bryden Frost’s body at approximately one thirty last Tuesday, around the time that Bryden Frost was murdered,” Detective Salter begins. “Do you want to tell us about that?”
Paige doesn’t answer. She feels numb.
“Why did you kill your best friend, Paige?”
“I didn’t!”
“Was it because she was in the way? Because you’re in love with Sam?” When she doesn’t answer, Detective Salter leans in and says, “We know it was you in the elevator, Paige. There’s no getting around this.”
Something inside her breaks. Her beautiful dream is falling apart. She’s not going to marry Sam and be a mother to his little girl. They will find out that she left her apartment that day, and when. She remembers that hideous ride down in the elevator with the suitcase, remembers that someone got on, and got off, a young woman who’d seemed never to lift her eyes from her phone. But she’d heard her get that call.
“I didn’t kill her,” Paige says now, voice breaking. “Sam did.”
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Paige begins to cry. Wrenching sobs and gushing tears. The detective pushes tissues toward her, which she eventually takes and tries to pull herself together. Her attorney rests a hand comfortingly on her back.
“Go on,” Detective Salter prompts.
For a moment Paige thinks of Bryden’s mother, Donna, sitting in her kitchen, calling Sam a monster. At last she manages to find her voice. “He came home in the middle of the day. They had an argument, and he…he smothered her with a plastic bag.”
“Were you there?” the detective asks.
Paige shakes her head. “No.” She sniffs, wipes her eyes and nose. “He called me. I was home that day; I’d called in sick. He asked me to come to the condo. He said he needed my help.”
“Did he tell you what he’d done?”
“No. He just told me he needed my help and to come quickly. Hesounded frantic. I asked if I should call 911 and he said no, not to call anyone.”
“What time was that?”
