Chapter 33
I was numb. Speechless. Ten o’clock at night and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I wasn’t hungry now but Eric insisted.
We sat at the drive-through window at the closest burger place to my house.
I stared at the menu for almost five minutes before Eric finally just doubled his own order.
He handed the soggy paper bag to me along with two chocolate milkshakes.
I popped a straw into one. It tasted better than it should have.
I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go back to the office. We ended up at the community boat launch, watching the full moon reflected in the black waves of Finn Lake.
Earlier, I’d filled both Eric and Jeanie in on what Emma had told me and my disastrous confrontation with Joe. It turned out after I left the office, Emma had broken down to Jeanie.
Of everything I was angry about, that might have been the worst of it. Emma shouldn’t have had to feel such guilt over what Joe did on her behalf.
“She never asked him,” I said to Eric. I popped a wilted French fry into my mouth. “She never bloody well asked him to do any of this and now she’s gotta carry the guilt of what could happen if he gets burned for it.”
Eric slurped his milkshake. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Regardless of the lunacy of what he did, I think Joe accomplished what he set out to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’s the point now? Sure, like we said before.
When Joe’s lie seemed suspicious, maybe it would have helped Katy to put him on the stand.
Now, all it would accomplish is blowing up Emma’s life.
Joe has a solid alibi. The idiot had one all along.
Nothing he can say will help Katy anymore.
Plus, he’s right about something. You forget how well I know Sharon.
She’s got blinders on when it comes to that son of hers.
He’s a good kid, don’t get me wrong. But Sharon puts the hell in helicopter mom.
Had she known about Emma’s pregnancy, she would have tried to interfere.
She might not like Emma or anyone named Leary, but if Emma had given birth to her grandchild, Sharon would have come after her. She would have waged a custody battle.”
“She could have tried,” I said. “I’d have slit her throat.”
My heart sank. It was an awful choice of words.
“Anyway,” Eric said. “There’s just nothing that could be accomplished by dragging either Joe or Emma into this now. They truly had nothing to do with Tom’s murder. Plus, Sharon DePaul is the last person who’s going to want this thing coming out in court.”
“Katy,” I sighed. “I don’t know, Eric. I just don’t know what to think anymore.
She’s out of time. Tomorrow, Quick’s going to put that jailhouse witness on the stand.
Katy’s admissions against her own interests aren’t hearsay.
Quick’s got a legitimate legal argument about not having knowledge of these statements beforehand.
It’s going to be the last thing the jury hears.
There’s no other viable suspect. The way Tom died was as brutal as it gets.
They’re going to convict her. And the thing is, maybe she deserves it. ”
He raised a brow. “You really believe that?”
I shook my head. “I honestly don’t know anymore. And the things Joe said …”
“He probably didn’t mean half of them. I know how you Learys get when your temper’s up. I think everybody needs to go to their neutral corners. Let the dust settle. You’ve had worse battles than this.”
I wasn’t sure he was right. “He threw the fact that we don’t have kids in my face.
The worst part is he’s probably right. My love for Emma can’t be the same as his.
I love her with all my heart. I’d kill and die for her.
But she’s not my daughter. I’ve never wanted one of my own. Lord, even less now.”
He fished for loose fries in his own crumpled paper bag. I gave him the rest of mine.
“I don’t think I could handle the worry that comes with it,” he said.
I nodded. “Joe, Matty, Vangie. Emma, Jessa, now Sean and Henry and whoever’s about to come along. It keeps me up at night worrying about all of them sometimes.”
He smiled. “Well, it’s not like they haven’t given you cause.”
“But she didn’t trust me enough to come to me,” I said. “Joe said I was making it about me. I guess he’s right about that too. But I could have tried.”
“How? By working things out with Sharon privately? Look, I’m not in any way defending what Joe did. Of all people, I’m never going to condone somebody lying to the cops in the middle of a murder investigation. Misguided as it was, I understand Joe’s logic. That’s all I’m saying.”
It killed me to admit it even to myself. But so did I. That said, I would never admit it to Joe.
“She’s going to prison,” I said. “Katy will live the rest of her life behind bars.”
“That’s not your fault,” he said. “Everyone was right that you were her best shot at beating this. And you landed some punches, Cass. Sharon should have been more thorough. She zoned in on Katy and that was it. You shouldn’t have had to track down Maisy Carmichael or even Tallon Shipley.”
“Except it didn’t matter anyway.”
Eric smacked his palm against the edge of his steering wheel.
“She missed something. She had to have. There’s no way she didn’t.
You’ve been right about that and you know I’m the last person who’d want to admit that, too.
I’m always going to give the benefit of the doubt to the detective. It’s just …”
“Something,” I finished for him. “I know. It just doesn’t make sense. I still don’t understand where that knife came from. Or the timeline. How Katy could just stand there frozen like Jenna Rodney said. But she’s clean too. Of everyone, her alibi is on tape.”
Eric backed out of his parking spot. Without telling me where he was going, he started to drive.
I went through what I knew would be Addison Quick’s closing argument.
“No forced entry. Nothing was taken from the house. No burglary. Katy admits that she didn’t love Tom as much as she loves Joe.
That if she could have, she would have loaned Joe the money to save his business and lived happily ever after with him.
He’s got proof Tom was thinking about divorcing her and cutting her off from his money.
I can practically write his closing for him.
It’s just … there were liars everywhere.
Tallon about her relationship with Tom. Joe about his whereabouts.
But none of that exonerates Katy. And two things can’t be true.
She can’t have both slept through that murder and be a sleepwalking killer. ”
“She’s covered in blood,” Eric picked up. “But not spray.”
“That’s a weak straw to grasp though,” I said. “Dr. Trainor couldn’t conclusively say where Katy had to be standing in order to get hit by an arterial bleed like that.”
“Time did pass,” Eric said. “She could have tried to clean herself up.”
“But there were no bloody footprints leading into the bathroom or out of the bedroom. Katy’s feet were clean. So she could have been sleeping next to him when Tom was killed.”
“Or she got out of bed and cut him. In which case, she might not have stepped in any blood. Cass, I want to see it. I want to get it all in my head. The space. The sounds. All of it.”
He made a sharp turn. I didn’t have to ask what he meant.
Five minutes later, Eric pulled into Tom Loomis’s driveway.
The house had been turned back to Tom’s estate, which was in limbo right now pending the outcome of this trial.
Katy had given me the garage code just like Tom had given it to Jenna Rodney.
Eric left his headlights on as he got out and punched in the code. I waited for the door to rise, then leaned over and pulled the key out of the ignition.
We went in through the service door, just like Jenna would have. Eric pushed the button, closing the garage door behind us.
“Nobody’s cleaned anything up yet?” he asked. Bits of tape and powder dusted the kitchen counters where the crime scene unit had done its work.
“I never thought of it,” I said. “Tom didn’t have a mortgage. The estate’s been paying his homeowner’s insurance. Jeanie had Miranda work on the logistics with the probate court and the bank. Packing up the house just wasn’t a priority.”
The house had a dank, dismal smell, not having been opened for months. The air conditioner had been running, but no windows had been opened to let in the breeze.
Eric reached for a hallway light switch. For a moment, I feared it wouldn’t turn on. I wasn’t sure whether Miranda had also arranged for the utilities to be paid. But the lights worked.
Tom and Katy’s bedroom was at the end of the hallway. The door was closed and the remnants of crime scene tape hung off the doorknob. Eric batted it away and opened the door.
I could still detect just the hint of a metallic smell. I studied crime scene photos for months. But until now, I’d never actually been inside the house. Eric hit the bedroom light switch. Even after all these months, the sight took the air from my lungs.
Though dried now, there had been so much blood.
The sheet on Tom’s side of the bed had looked dark pink in the photos, though I knew the fabric was ivory.
Those sheets now sat in an evidence box downtown.
You could still see faint staining on the bare mattresses though.
Katy and Tom had a split king, each with their own twin XL mattresses. Katy’s side was mostly clean.
“He didn’t have a drop left in him,” Eric said. I recognized the spray pattern Dr. Trainor had testified about. Yes, I’d seen it in photos, but this was so much worse. Dried blood arced all the way up to the ceiling.
Just as Dr. Trainor testified, there were no bloody footprints. Eric went to the en suite bathroom. Katy had remodeled it after they got married. All white tiles and marble. Not so much as a water stain anywhere, much less blood.