Chapter Fifty-Six
JILL FEELS LIKE she’s on top of the dizzyingly tall tower again, swaying, about to fall. This time it’s accompanied by a wave of nausea. She looks up from her phone and glances over at Ted, whose eyes are riveted to his own screen. The news they have been expecting has just broken online.
She sinks into a kitchen chair. They knew this would happen.
They’ve been obsessively watching online, waiting.
They assumed Min would send it to the media and take her revenge.
Now she’s done it. It’s all too real, and there’s no going back.
No putting the genie back in the bottle.
Jill suddenly fears they’ve made a terrible mistake.
They should have paid; wouldn’t that have been better than this?
She continues scrolling. COUPLE CAUGHT ON CAMERA CONFESSING TO MURDER.
GREG WESTCOTT WAS MURDERED. She continues to scan and reads with horror about Lara Donleavy visiting their home and accusing them of having her husband killed.
Suddenly Jill feels all the blood drain from her head.
That conversation happened after they were sure there weren’t any more cameras.
‘Ted!’ But before she can say anything more, there is someone at their door ringing the bell.
‘Don’t answer it,’ Ted says quickly. ‘It’ll be the media. They’re going to make life a living hell for us for a while, but then it will die down. Trust me.’
‘Ted!’ she cries again and shows him what it says about Lara’s accusations.
She watches his face lose its colour. ‘We didn’t get all the cameras!
’ she hisses. ‘They know about Ben!’ Whoever it is doesn’t go away.
The doorbell rings again and again, and then they hear knocking on the door.
Frightened, Jill runs upstairs and sneaks a look out a front window.
She sees news vans, but she also sees a patrol car and a pair of uniformed officers on her stoop.
Her knees go weak. Ted had warned her that the police might question them, but there’s nothing they can do to them, as long as they say nothing.
And then she remembers that the police must also know about Ben. She feels rising panic.
She runs back down the stairs and into the kitchen where Ted is still sitting at the table. ‘It’s the police!’ she hisses at him.
‘The police,’ he repeats stupidly. Then he stands up. ‘Let me handle this,’ he says. He walks toward the front door, his back straight. Jill hovers some distance down the hall behind him. Ted answers the door. ‘Yes?’ he says politely.
‘Ted Westcott?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’d like to ask you and your wife to come down to the station and answer a few questions.’
Jill can see past Ted and the officers to the street. People are gathering, drawn by the sight of the patrol car and the news vans. People who know them will have seen the news. It’s begun, she thinks.
‘Can you give us a minute?’ Ted says pleasantly and closes the door. He turns to face her, and she moves closer.
‘It’s okay, Jill,’ he says. ‘I’ll call Alan Siegle, and he will be there with us.
He’s a top criminal attorney. And we’ll have an attorney for you too.
We won’t answer any questions. We just say “no comment” to everything.
There’s nothing they can do if we keep our mouths shut.
Everything on those tapes is inadmissible.
It will be over in five minutes. We just don’t say anything. Can you do that?’
He’s looking at her as if he’s worried that she can’t. She swallows and says, ‘You’re sure? You’re sure they can’t get us?’
‘I’m positive. Just don’t say anything. Okay? Promise me!’
She nods shakily.
She grabs her purse, and he opens the door again, where the officers are waiting for them.
They walk down their steps to the squad car, and as they do bulbs flash and reporters lob questions at them.
They keep their eyes down and their mouths shut.
Despite Ted’s assurances, Jill feels like they’re walking to their doom.
She worries that there is something waiting for them that Ted has failed to anticipate.
They are separated immediately upon arrival at the station, and now Ted has no further opportunity to speak privately to Jill, to warn her again to say nothing. They’ve been put in different rooms while they wait for their attorneys to arrive. He feels a stab of fear.
He has to assume they’ve seen the recordings.
They have separated them; they will try to set them against each other.
They will see that she is the weaker of the two, and they will assume that he pushed his brother off the boat and perhaps try to trick her into a deal.
Will she fall for it and tell them everything?
She’s so terrified of prison. He finds himself sweating, even with his excellent, high-priced lawyer on his way.
He’s cursing himself for not reminding her at home that if she turns on him, and he’s found guilty of murder, then all the money goes away, he can’t have the inheritance, and she will have nothing.
She knows that, but will she remember it, in the stress of a police interview?
He has to rely on her, and he’s not sure he can.
They interview him first, because her attorney has not yet arrived.
Ted finds himself in an interview room that smells of sweat and unwashed clothes.
He doesn’t belong here. He tries to breathe through his mouth.
There is a computer monitor sitting conspicuously on the table.
Introductions are made for the tape and the interview begins.
Ted sits with his attorney, Alan Siegle, beside him, and across from them is a detective from the NYPD by the name of Charlie Cousins, and that bastard Ramirez from the Coast Guard. Ted realizes he hates Ramirez.
Now Ramirez is smiling at him, and Ted doesn’t like it. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Ted,’ he begins.