Chapter 2 Sara Batcher
Sara Batcher
“Oh, I always knew Sara killed David. Meet her and you’ll see that her whole scrawny body is bottled up with the guilt—so much she’s, like, vibrating from it.
I swear, her head’s going to pop off one day from keeping it all in.
I’m telling you, it’s the women with the to-do lists that you should be the most scared of. ”
Sara Batcher was power-walking down the neighborhood’s main avenue, wrist weights on, music pumping through her headphones, when the crime scene investigation vans passed.
An alarm bell chimed in her head at the sight of the white vans with bold green lettering.
Not a good sign, and not something that belonged in this neighborhood, where Rolls-Royces were as common as guesthouses.
The vans meant that someone would receive a visit from a set of uniforms, the officers’ faces grave, their voices somber.
Today’s date would, for the rest of that person’s life, be a painful reminder of what had happened.
That morning, David had joked with her about her inability to knot a tie.
He’d kissed her on the way out, spirits high as his body responded to the pills.
There had been no sense of foreboding. No mental warning that that kiss would be the last one she would receive.
She hadn’t followed him to the door, or called him at lunch, or thought anything strange when he wasn’t home by dinner.
It wasn’t until she’d woken up in the middle of the night, her body tense, her breath short, heart hammering, that she had a hint that anything was wrong.
She’d lain there in the dark and tried to understand what the panic was from—what meeting she had forgotten, what email she hadn’t responded to, what voicemail she’d left unreturned.
It had taken her forty-five minutes to fall back asleep, and she hadn’t, for one moment, considered that David was the source of her anxiety.
A wife, alone in a bed, who hadn’t heard from her husband in more than eighteen hours .
. . she should have at least called him.
Looked to see if his location was turned on.
Sent him a text just to see if he was up.
Maybe he would have answered. Maybe he would have texted her back. Maybe his location had been visible and she would have been able to give the police something to help them in their search.
Instead, she had rolled onto her side and gone through the fine points of the deposition questionnaire her company’s legal department had sent over.
She thought about wording and positions and how the deposition could help or hurt the value of the company, until her eyes grew heavy and she fell asleep.
May 5 had never received the proper level of alarm.
There had never been a knock on Sara’s door or a solemn announcement.
There had been no body, no crime scene, no clues—and therefore, no funeral, no tearful memory recaps or condolences offered.
She had been cheated of all that and, instead, treated with a general mix of suspicion and pity.
According to everyone they knew, Sara had either killed David or run him off.
The judgment seemed to be evenly divided, and neither take garnered sympathy.
A police car passed, then another, then a K9 van.
Sara paused her playlist and turned to look back, curious if there were more.
She had lived in Crestmore for nine years and could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen a law enforcement vehicle inside the gates.
The neighborhood’s security vehicles were always around.
But San Francisco PD? No. Even when David’s disappearance had been deemed suspicious, it was a detective’s unmarked car that had pulled into the gates, not this level of alarm-inducing presence.
“It’s strange, right?” The dark-haired woman in the house with the gaudy red metal roof stood at the end of her drive, one hand to her temple, shielding against the sun. “You have any idea what’s going on?”
“No.” Sara strode across the cobblestone road toward her. “Some forensic vans passed by just a minute ago, so something must have happened.”
“Maybe a murder.” The woman’s eyes gleamed and she craned her thin neck, trying to see down the road in the direction they had gone.
“I gotta tell you, this would be the first exciting thing that’s happened in ages.
Wouldn’t it be something if someone was killed?
You know that big house on the hill? The one with the tennis courts?
The husband was murdered there a few years ago.
The wife cashed in big on the insurance, then started trotting around town with her yoga instructor. ”
Was that what they were saying? Sara shook her head. “No, that was just a rumor. He disappeared. There wasn’t a murder.”
“Oh, because no body was found?” The woman scoffed and moved closer, crossing her arms and tucking her hands underneath her biceps, a move that pushed her already enormous breasts farther out the top of her lavender athletic set.
“That just means the wife was smart. Trust me, I listen to all of the crime podcasts, and if there’s one way to hide a murder, it’s to make sure that the body is never found. ”
It was true. David’s missing corpse was likely what had kept the detectives from pursuing a deeper investigation into Sara.
“The yoga instructor was gay,” Sara said—not that this woman’s opinion mattered.
No one had listened or cared that Philip liked his sexual companions to be well endowed and bearded.
All they cared about was that he was young, gorgeous, and at her home every day.
“I mean, he still is gay,” she corrected. “Very gay.”
The woman snorted. “Oh, I’m sure.”
Sara bit back the urge to underline the point, since arguing with idiots wasn’t on her schedule this morning. “Well, I’ve got to go.” She checked the road to make sure no traffic was coming, then headed back across.
“Be careful!” the woman called. “There might be a murderer out there!”