Chapter 32
It can’t be true, can it? But as the car thumps along the dark road, I realize it all makes horrible, terrifying sense.
And if true, it means I am responsible for Riley’s murder, tapping the first domino when I called Morgan and shared my concerns about the timeline.
She must have made contact with Riley soon afterward and found out by midday that Riley was going to come clean.
And she couldn’t let that happen. My stomach turns as I imagine her driving to Hilary’s house, plotting to take Riley’s life.
The ride seems interminable, but finally I’m knocking on the door of Logan’s room. He ushers me inside and immediately pulls me into an embrace. I feel my eyes well up against the threads of his sweater.
“Bree, what the hell is going on?” he says.
“I think I know who killed Mel,” I say, pulling back. “And it wasn’t Ruck.”
“What?” I can tell from the expression in his eyes that he thinks I’ve gone down a rabbit hole again.
“Please, Logan, it’s going to sound crazy, but you need to hear me out.”
“I will, but just tell me. I’m going out of my mind.”
From a quick glance around, I realize I’m in the sitting room of a suite rather than a bedroom. I move quickly to the couch and collapse on it, while Logan takes a seat in the armchair directly across.
Peeling off my coat, I start with what I discovered this morning about the creek water, my call afterward to Riley, and then my visit to Alison’s studio and what she confessed about her affair with Mel.
Logan’s eyes widen, and he begins to pepper me with questions, but I hold up my hand, asking him to let me finish first because the worst is yet to come.
Next, I describe the heart-wrenching scene of finding Riley’s body at Hilary Brown’s house and how our suspicions became aroused. Finally, I tell him about my meeting with Morgan, her comment about Plutarch, and the admission from Alison when I was on my way back.
By the time I finish, Logan’s jaw has dropped in shock—though not, it seems, in total disbelief.
“My God,” he says, roughly massaging the back of his neck. “You’re saying Morgan Kroll killed Riley—and Mel, too? That Ruck told the truth after all?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“That fucking bitch.”
“You don’t think I’ve lost my mind?” I ask.
“No . . . I mean, we need more information, but it sounds like she had a motive, and this would explain the inconsistencies Halligan originally insisted we shouldn’t ignore, like Mel not having a bite mark.
All Morgan would have had to work with was what Riley said she’d experienced before she escaped. ”
“It also explains why half of Mel’s clothes were torn off but there was no sexual assault.”
I hate how matter-of-fact I’m being about the brutal death of my child, but it’s the only way to sort through this without my head exploding.
“So, it was all about jealousy, then?” Logan says as the crease deepens between his eyes. “Kroll killed Melanie to eliminate a rival?”
“Yes, that’s what my gut is telling me. Alison said Morgan was furious, and she might have already thought about killing Mel. Then when Riley confided in her about the attack, she suddenly had a way to do it and make it look like a sexual predator was on the loose.”
Logan shakes his head in disgust.
“Christ, Bree, she might have killed you, too—if the cab hadn’t come along.”
Had I really been in danger? Even in the safety of this room, I shudder at the memory of Morgan’s hand gripping my arm and the sound of her footsteps after I fled her car.
“Maybe. It would have been a risk for her to try something in a public setting . . . and yet she’d done it before. And she obviously thought nothing of killing Riley.”
“But why, for God’s sake? That’s one part I don’t get.”
“Because—and I’m just wrapping my head around all this—she found out Riley was going to change her story and tell the real date.”
Thanks to me, of course, and my stomach clenches at the thought. I’d vowed not to fawn this time and instead kept digging and prodding, with Riley as collateral damage.
“But wouldn’t Morgan have wanted Riley’s attack to seem like the first of two in the area?” Logan says.
“Initially, yes. And that must be the real reason she called Riley a week or so after the assault and pressed her again to go to the cops. That way they’d know there’d been a similar crime before Mel was killed. Then Ruck was arrested, and everything fell into place for her without Riley’s help.
“But now, eight years later, the landscape had shifted, and she probably felt a lie would actually protect her. She might have even talked Riley into it when they first spoke this week, telling her that if she said she’d said she was assaulted before Mel, she’d be excoriated for not going to the authorities. ”
“But how was the lie any protection?”
“First, think about how Morgan was probably feeling this week. For years she’d thought she gotten away with murder, and then out of the blue, Riley surfaces.
Morgan probably felt freaked about it and maybe even paranoid, worried that since so much time had passed, the cops might be more curious about her than they would have been before and wonder why she’d held on to the secret all this time.
They might have started looking into her time at Carter. ”
Logan nods. “So now it seemed better for the cops to think Riley was attacked after Mel died,” he says. “That way they’d never wonder about her being privy to the MO.”
“That’s what it seems like to me. She must have told herself that she’d be perfectly fine if she just kept her cool and did her best to back up a lie about the date.
“But then,” I continue, “she finds out that the truth was in danger of coming to light. And if she had pressured Riley to lie, and Riley told Halligan about it, that would have seemed highly suspicious. It might not have taken forever to find a link between Morgan and Alison and Mel . . . And this must be why Morgan was willing to talk to me and stay in touch. She was keeping tabs on things.”
“How do you think she heard Riley was about to change her story?”
I shake my head, uncertain. “I’m not sure how it played out.
Riley might have called Morgan and told her that she’d decided to tell me the truth, or maybe after Morgan talked to me this morning, she just assumed things were about to come to a head.
One way or the other, she went to see Riley, probably all nice and friendly, and then she must have slipped something into her coffee to make it easier to set up the hanging.
And then ran the mugs through the dishwasher so there’d be no trace of her DNA. ”
“Christ,” Logan says. “We just have to hope she left some other trace of herself.”
But what if she didn’t? This is still only my crazy theory, based on not much more than a quote from Plutarch. There might not be any real evidence connecting Morgan to Riley’s death.
I exhale, spent from sharing everything. But there’s still something else I need to say.
“You realize, don’t you, that I’m partly responsible for Riley’s death? I called her and questioned the date and pretty much forced her into telling the truth. I triggered everything. How can I possibly live with that?”
“You can’t beat yourself up over it, Bree,” Logan tells me. “You had every right to look for the truth and challenge her story once you saw the holes in it, and I’m sure Halligan will feel the same—if he ever fucking calls.”
Nothing Logan said makes me feel any better.
If I’d thought it through, talked to Halligan first, there might have been a way to get at the truth without costing Riley her life.
Noticing there’s a half-empty bottle of wine on the console, I get up and pour myself a small amount.
Maybe it will stop my pulse from racing so fast.
“Not that I gave you much of a chance earlier,” I say once I’m seated again, “but you haven’t commented about Mel and Alison Handler.”
Logan shrugs. “It took me by surprise, but it doesn’t shock me. Mel was a free spirit, an adventurer . . . open to all sorts of things. We always knew that about her.”
“I just wish I felt better about the person she chose. On the surface, Alison is enchanting, but she’s one of those people who move through life doing exactly as they please and not minding who they hurt in the process.”
Logan’s face goes taut with anguish.
“I’ll tell you what really bothers me,” he says, “and what could leave me undone if I thought about it too long. The fact that our daughter made a seemingly harmless choice that might have cost her life.”
I nod, because that could leave me undone as well. There’s a part of me that just wants to unspool right now, to let grief and despair have their way, but I need to keep my head clear for what’s ahead.
And then finally my phone rings with Halligan’s name on the screen.
I answer on speaker, laying the phone on the coffee table and explaining that I’m with Logan.
“I’ve just gotten off the line with Detective Pendergrass,” he says, sounding not at all happy. “You should never have gone to see Riley Reynolds today. You need to stay out of this and let us do our jobs.”
“Can you wait and chew me out later?” I ask. “There’s something critical I need to tell you.”
I relate the entire story just as I did with Logan. Halligan lobs a few questions at me but mostly listens.
“I want you to come in tomorrow and make a full statement,” he says finally, his voice still stern. “Ten o’clock. Until then, you’re to do nothing. Is that understood?”
“Yes, understood,” I say, chastened. “Good night.”
I reach down and tap the red button with my finger.
“He clearly listened,” Logan says. “And it sounds like he took you seriously.”
“And now what?”
“Let’s wait and see. It’s probably going to be a day or two before we know anything.”
My flight, I think suddenly.
“Even if I’m done with Halligan before noon tomorrow, I’ll be worried about making it to JFK on time. I’ll have to change my ticket—I guess to Sunday night.”
Of course, that will delay being with Bas, but it’s critical to follow through with things here.
“That makes sense,” Logan says. “And I’ll go with you to headquarters tomorrow.”
I glance at my watch and see that it’s almost midnight. This is all the talk I can handle tonight. When I look over, Logan’s staring intently at me.
“Bree, please stay tonight, okay?” he says.
I’m not going to have sex with Logan tonight.
Even if I tell myself it’s just one last time, it will dig me even deeper into wrongdoing.
And yet for the second night in a row, I can’t bear being alone.
Logan won’t be able to ease the guilt I’m feeling or distract me from my fear over losing Bas—I’m on my own with both of those—but his presence is helping with the other part of the nightmare: Mel’s senseless death and how close we came to not knowing the truth.
He’s the only one who’s traveled the same dark roads of hell that I have, so nothing about that journey has to be decoded for him.
“We can just hold each other if that’s what you want,” Logan adds, picking up on my hesitation.
“Yes, that’s all I can handle tonight.”
Logan gives me an extra toothbrush from his dopp kit, and after washing up, I swap my clothes for a T-shirt he offers from his suitcase. When he comes out of the bathroom himself, I notice he leaves the door ajar so that the glow from the night-light reaches the bedroom.
“You remembered,” I say, touched by the gesture. Is he hoping that somehow we can be friends from here on? But there’s no way that can happen. If I do manage to salvage my relationship with Bas, I can never have Logan as an active presence in my life.
“Yeah. I figured that even if you were over your fear of the dark, it surely came back this week.”
As soon as we’re in bed, he pulls me to him, and as I lie in the crook of his arm, I hear his breathing slow until it’s coming from a place deep within his chest. But I’m not so lucky.
My brain is flooded with more troubling thoughts than it seems able to handle—the awful truth about Mel’s death, my role in Riley’s murder, the likelihood that I’ve wrecked things with the man I’ve recharted my life with.
It’s raining out, I realize, not pouring exactly, just a repetitive, rhythmic drip on the windowsill and car hoods below.
I try to use the sound as a distraction, but after a while it’s like an earworm I can’t expel.
I drag a pillow over my head and finally, mercifully, sleep overtakes me.
When I wake, Logan is sitting on the edge of the bed beside me. His hand is on my shoulder, and I realize he’s jostled me from my sleep.
“What time is it?” I ask groggily. There’s light from the living area, through a partially open door.
“Just past six thirty.”
“Is—is everything all right?”
“Yeah, more than all right. Morgan Kroll was arrested early this morning for Riley’s murder.”