“Just lock me up. I don’t deserve my freedom.” Simon was being maudlin, but there’d always been a flare for the dramatic inside him. If this wasn’t the time to let it out, he didn’t know when was.
Detective Bechdel rolled her eyes. “This is getting us nowhere. He didn’t do anything.”
“Why did you come here?” Detective Kirkpatrick straightened his posture.
“I have a drinking problem,” Simon said. “I black out. I can’t remember things I’ve done. Places I’ve been. Entire evenings are lost.”
The two detectives shifted in their seats. Kirkpatrick made to leave, but Bechdel held out her hand as if she were going to touch her partner’s shoulder, and he settled back in.
Simon wondered if perhaps they were lovers, the almost-touch was so tender. But, then again, they worked together in high stakes situations. Life and death. Simon did the same thing with countless colleagues, seeking out a platonic closeness with them after an eight-hour surgery, bumping knees under the table while getting something to eat from the lackluster cafeteria.
“So you knew Dermot before he met Trina?” Bechdel tried again. She’d decided to go back to the beginning, as though they hadn’t been speaking in circles for the last thirty minutes.
“Yes. We’d been intimate, several times.” Simon’s last several texts to Dermot were ignored. He’d become more distant over the last week or so, ignoring Simon’s calls and messages. It wasn’t the first time Simon had been ghosted—such a strange, perfectly descriptive word. Like a person had never existed. Even though you’d seen each other naked, and smelled their scent after they’d woken up, suddenly they were gone. At least from the world you lived in.
“Sunday evening, I was lonely. Joyce was out, and I’d spent the afternoon doing paperwork in the office, drinking myself through a very expensive bottle of Scotch. I wanted to see him.” All of that was true, Simon noted.
“So you and Dermot had been together?” Kirkpatrick asked.
“Not together, as in a couple. He didn’t want that.”
“Where did you meet?” Bechdel’s eyes flicked to the side. Something was bothering her.
“I frequent a few online forums. Dermot had an account at one of them. They cater to older men looking for younger…” Simon paused on the word. “Friends,” he finally settled on.
“And you messaged him first?” Bechdel was taking the lead on this interview now.
“I did.”
“Can you show us your account?”
“Yes, of course.” Simon waited while Kirkpatrick pulled a laptop out of his bag, opened the lid, and slid it over the table to Simon.
Simon tapped a few keys and his account showed up. He’d taken the photo himself with his phone, in their backyard. Roses bloomed behind him. He wore a crisp white shirt, and he’d filtered the photo to make his eyes seem bluer.
“Would you like to see our messages?”
Simon turned the computer around so the detectives could view his conversations with Dermot.
“Where did you meet up for the first time?”
“In the parking lot behind the bowling alley. He met me in my car. It wasn’t terribly romantic.”
Simon’s palms had gone sweaty waiting for Dermot to show up. He’d been one of the few younger men to have a picture that was wholesome on his account. The photo showed Dermot in the woods, looking up at a bright sky. It was a photo far enough away that someone else must have taken it for him. Sometimes, while Simon was kissing his neck and waiting for Dermot to slip his hands down his pants, he’d wondered about the person who took that picture.
“Did it become more romantic?” Bechdel asked.
Simon didn’t hesitate. “It did. We started meeting in hotels. We went away for the weekend once. I told my wife I was at a conference.”
“Does your wife know about you and your extra relationships?” Simon could tell Kirkpatrick was being particularly careful with his wording.
“I’m not sure,” Simon admitted honestly. Joyce was a smart woman, with a quicksilver mind and a cruel streak that she contained just below the surface of everything she did. Simon knew what she was capable of. “This past year has been difficult. Both she and I have struggled.”
Kirkpatrick scrolled through the messages. Simon waited for him to find it.
He saw precisely when the detective read the message.
Simon still recalled the words appearing as he waited for Dermot to respond to his first message.
Hi there. I’m happy to meet up. You’re gorgeous. Does it matter that I’m also doing your wife?
Simon had replied that it didn’t, although of course it turned out to matter very much.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO LAURA
The woods were dark and life throbbed out of the shadows as Laura made her way down the path towards the stream. Birds settled into their shelters and night creatures ventured out for their evening’s adventures. There was a large oak tree nearby, its trunk almost as broad as a car, that Laura could hide behind. From that vantage point she could still see the trailer and whoever was visiting her on this cold night, but it was nearly impossible to see the ground in the dark, and she’d turned the flashlight off to avoid having herself discovered before she was ready.
Laura’s legs were freezing. She wished she could afford a better coat.
She peered towards the trailer, trying to make out who was there, but all Laura saw were the two shadowy figures standing on the doorstep. The darkness leached color from everything around it, and the outer light above the trailer door gave no clues as to who was looking for Laura.
Laura wrapped her arms around her chest. Her teeth were beginning to chatter. A woman’s voice broke through the air.
“Laura? Laura, are you out there?”
She didn’t recognize it.
“Hello?” a second woman called out. “Laura, are you there?”
This voice registered in Laura’s brain somewhere, but she couldn’t quite place it.
I can’t trust anyone, Laura reminded herself. Except Rosie, she corrected. She wondered how long it would take for Rosie to start worrying when Laura didn’t arrive at her apartment. And then Laura wondered if Rosie might come to the trailer, if it were safe for her friend to come here in the first place.
Something yowled in the distance. A fox or an owl, Laura wasn’t sure.
Dermot would know what it was, she thought. Her feet stumbled along the path.
“I’m here!” Laura called out to the two figures. She hoped she was right about the voice she recognized. “I’m coming.”
Laura came into view of the two women waiting for her. She swallowed hard.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I came to see you,” the taller, darker woman said, her voice smooth as silk but unfamiliar. Although Laura recognized her face immediately. She’d seen pictures of her on Dermot’s phone. Not those kind of pictures. Pretty pictures, of her standing out in the woods or in front of a trail sign. Laura had thought she was a coworker of Dermot’s, or maybe an old family friend. She was just so much older, Laura never even thought she was a threat. “I’m Joyce. And you must be Laura.”
She couldn’t help it—Laura blushed hearing such a posh woman say her name, like it was a special award announced only for her.
It was easy checking Dermot’s phone when he’d go to the bathroom at the diner. Laura watched Dermot log in when he checked it and she memorized the passcode. It was simple. He didn’t even try to hide it from her, which made her think it meant he trusted her more than anyone else. What she realized now was that it hadn’t even occurred to him that she could be so smart.
