Chapter 72 Sara Batcher
Sara Batcher
Present day
The interview room of the San Francisco substation was beginning to feel like a second home. Sara stood against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest, and watched Detective Palentick unwrap a cheesesteak sandwich like he had all the time in the world.
Beside him, the female detective wrote something on her notepad. She’d been doing that a lot, so much so that Sara was pretty sure it was just an elaborate doodle at this point. She paused and glanced at Sara. “So . . . you don’t think David had a girlfriend? Or maybe a boyfriend?”
“I don’t think so.”
The woman smirked. “Come on, Sara. He had a condo downtown, which he stayed at frequently. He wined and dined customers. Traveled at least once a month. Every wife has suspicions at times. Did you ever dig? Go through his phone? Hire a PI to follow him?”
Ian spoke up from his spot at the table. “Sara, you don’t have to answer that. Speculation.”
Sara considered the questions and any potential land mines behind them if she told the truth.
The truth was that she had always assumed that David was cheating on her in some way, even if it was only emotional.
She had assumed that, and discovered, when she dug deep into her feelings on the subject, that she didn’t care.
Her therapist had said this lack of caring was indicative of Sara’s own emotional distance from David.
In other words, she hadn’t cared enough about him to care if he was faithful. And she hadn’t exactly been faithful herself.
“I didn’t dig,” she said. “I swear I didn’t.
David was an adult, and what he did on his own, I didn’t have time to babysit.
I was really busy back then. My company was in a precarious position, and I needed to pay attention to it.
I didn’t have time or interest in scrolling through David’s text messages or making sure he wasn’t screwing his assistant.
” That, he was definitely doing. Even with eighty-hour weeks and the pressure of keeping InkRose afloat, Sara had sniffed that one out.
“He was likely sleeping with Keely. His assistant,” Sara added, just in case they had forgotten her name.
“Yes, Keely Plett did confirm that they had a sexual relationship,” the woman said, as casually as when she’d asked Detective Palentick for a pencil.
“Shocking,” Sara drawled.
“I gotta say, cheating husband, life insurance payout, plus the divorce split of your assets . . . it’s a lot of motive stacked up on your side,” Palentick said through a mouthful of his sandwich.
“I didn’t need the life insurance, I didn’t care if he had a recreational sex buddy on the side, and David would have never divorced me.” Sara shrugged.
“But you were poisoning him.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.
“She wasn’t poisoning him—she was medicating him,” Ian interjected. “And she shared that with you willingly. Sara has been your biggest resource in this investigation.”
It was true. She’d had to harass them into even looking into David’s disappearance. When everyone else had said that he had run off or was on a bender somewhere, she’d been the only one consistently saying that something was wrong, that something had happened.
And now look. A murder investigation, five years too late, with a skeleton that was useless in telling them what had happened. Go figure that poison was the only thing they could test for while also being the only thing they could use to implicate her.
She wasn’t entirely sure that admitting to dosing David with lorazepam on a regular basis had been the right move. The police had been unsympathetic, and the line between Ian’s eyebrows had grown more pronounced with each additional question they asked.
But he had told her to trust the process, so she was.
He wanted her to be able to hold her head up high and know that she had shared everything.
To not have a mini heart attack every time her phone rang and the detective’s number flashed on the display.
There was some peace, he promised her, in confession, and he believed that this confession might bring on some judgment but would not lead to an arrest.
She uncrossed her arms. “What about Brody Pitt? Did you find out more with that?”
“It’s a dead end.” Detective Palentick chewed, then swallowed.
“We’ve talked to his family. Maybe you remember this, but five years ago, we questioned them as well.
I don’t want to speak in absolutes, but it’s highly likely that they have nothing to do with this.
David was just an extension of Formatic Medical.
If they were going to go vigilante on Formatic, David wouldn’t have been a likely target. You read his court testimony.”
Yes, anyone who read or had listened to David’s court testimony would have realized that her husband barely knew anything about the heart valves he had peddled. If anything, he could have been killed or sued for his incompetence, but certainly not for intentional malice.
“You’re certain that it has nothing to do with that?” Sara pushed off the wall and returned to her seat, which she had abandoned twenty minutes ago, when her back had started to complain.
“We’re certain,” the woman chimed in.
“So then what was the reason?” Sara pulled the chair closer to the table and looked at both of them expectantly. “Who kidnapped him and dumped him in a lake?”
“You mean, who had motive other than you?” Palentick looked at her steadily, and it was in that moment that she realized they weren’t looking for anyone else. They thought they had the killer and were just looking for the nails to hammer the conviction closed.
She turned to Ian for help, and he gave her a comforting look.
It didn’t help.