Chapter 43
Susan
Monday
As soon as Jon closes the living-room door I sit up straight and click into the app.
The front door shuts, I hear him lock it from outside, and, moments later, the AirTag shows that he turns left at the end of our driveway, walking past Juliette Sullivan’s house and up through Oakpark toward the main road.
So, whoever she is, he can get there on foot, he hasn’t taken the car.
After a few minutes, it gets boring watching him and I go online to see if there’s anything more on the Cherrywood murders or Savannah Holmes.
The newspapers have nothing new, but on a whim, I go to MessageBoards.ie, to the subforum where my Google Alert led me last Wednesday.
There, opinions and speculation are rife.
Poor Savannah, RIP. She was an inspiration. HannahBan95
Lock ur doors guys, I heard it’s a serial killer. She shd never have answered the door MaryAnnOBrienGargan82
She was a bit of a show-off. The pix of the shoes and stuff. And a lot of photos of drinks, glasses of champagne. A bit of a lush? Probably fell over and hit her head when she’d had too much to drink Ellengr8Santana
I feel really sorry for Savannah Holmes.
But it’s a lesson to us all. If you put stuff about yourself online, you’re asking for trouble.
Anyone following her Instagram would have known what kind of car she drives and where she lives—she was always putting up selfies at her front door and at her hallway mirror.
You could see the front driveway in the reflection and her car reg. LarOToole
Kinda showing yourself there, Lar, aren’t you?
With enough victim-blaming to keep me going for a lifetime, I scroll to the comments on the Cherrywood murders.
There’s a bit of chatter about Rory Quinlan in particular—popular guy, it seems, with lots of friends and contacts through a gym he owned.
Aimee seems to have been less well known.
There are a few posts about the night of the murders—someone knows the neighbor, the woman who raised the alarm, and apparently she’d heard a door slam on Tuesday night.
There’d been a car outside, but nobody knew what color.
And there’d been a car outside Savannah’s house on Wednesday morning.
So…some caller who’d killed her, they speculated, and maybe the same car had been outside Aimee and Rory’s?
Did anyone know what kind of car? Blue, black, dark gray came the answers.
I scroll back up to the Savannah comments.
“Imagine opening your door, not knowing the person is going to kill you,” someone had typed in the last few minutes.
My throat tightens with guilt and sadness.
I look around. It’s quiet and growing dark and, suddenly, I don’t want to be alone.
The app shows me Jon is almost here. I’ve discovered nothing about who he’s seeing, but then again, he hasn’t been gone long enough to meet with anyone.
So maybe it really was just a walk. I watch on the app as he comes up the driveway and into the house.
Except there’s no sound of the front door.
No attempt to open it, no turn of the key.
Online, he’s in the house; in real life, he’s not.
Is the app glitching? I zoom in, confused.
Then I realize what’s going on. He’s not here.
But I do know exactly whose house he’s in.