Chapter 17 #2
Leroux can see it too. Wren lets her gaze flick over to him, and she can tell that he’s struggling with dueling emotions.
At his core, he’s a deeply caring man, and he knows Philip is potentially worse than they’ve imagined.
There is sympathy in his eyes, sympathy for this woman who has likely found herself crawling out of hell.
Leroux’s humanity is what makes him such a good investigator.
He is adept at human connection and understanding what makes people act or present as something else entirely.
The other part of his brain, though—the part that likely finds this emotional journey to be tedious and a strain on his investigation—well, that one is beginning to win out.
It’s all over his face: frustration mixed with pity.
Before he can speak, Wren leans in again.
She clasps her hands together and locks her gaze with Kathryn’s, sending a silent message of support.
“You’re a great mother, Kathryn,” she says, watching as Kathryn lets a sob escape. Tears pour from her eyes, and she blows her nose into a tissue. “We would never put your family in danger, but the information you give us could help save lives.”
Kathryn meets her gaze, sniffling and pulling a shaky breath in through her mouth.
For a moment, she says nothing. She just stares back at Wren, calculating the risk and the authenticity of the person sitting in front of her.
It’s clear to Wren that Kathryn desperately needs a woman, a friend, to support her.
This community took sides in her divorce, and it was a landslide victory in Philip’s favor—that much is clear from even a little internet research.
No one wanted to turn their backs on the man in charge of their salvation, and it was Kathryn who received the judgmental looks and disapproval from people they had known for years, people who claimed they loved and respected her.
“Poor Pastor Philip” was a typical comment to see on the church’s Facebook page, while “Praying you find your way” was more likely to be lobbed at Kathryn on her page, implying that the collective belief was that she was the one who had strayed from the path of righteousness.
No such indictment was ever thrust upon their pig of a pastor hiding in plain sight behind lingering touches and private meetings with young congregation members. It infuriated Wren, even from afar.
Kathryn steadies herself, breathing carefully until she is remarkably calm and composed.
She dabs at her eyes and cheeks with the tissue, absorbing every last visible trace of sadness that she can.
When she speaks, she is measured and poised.
“I thought he was a good man, aside from his occasional temper.” Her focus slides in and out, her eyes appearing as though they are flicking on and off by some switch.
“He is a bad man. How did I not get it?” A tear forms, but she blinks, and it disappears like it never existed.
Her tone has changed, her words slowly becoming less and less directed at them.
How do any of us know they are bad men? Wren thinks to herself, relating to Kathryn on a level that few can.
They both have to live with that question for the rest of their days: Why did I get fooled?
Lately she has tried to convince herself that it isn’t the right question to ask, and instead, maybe the real curiosity should revolve around why these men lose their souls along the way or perhaps why they never had a soul to begin with.
“So is it a shock to you that he may be violent?” Leroux asks, raising an eyebrow, a look of genuine interest on his face. “Was he ever violent or abusive to you in any way?”
Wren knows the answer. Her mind wanders to the domestic abuse allegations that Trudeau successfully buried.
Kathryn shakes her head slowly, looking down at the living room rug.
She runs her sock across it in small circles, disrupting the freshly vacuumed fabric.
“No. He was controlling and had a temper.” She stops, choosing her words carefully, very clearly still reflexively protecting him, or maybe protecting herself from the pain of her reality.
“He wasn’t what I would call abusive, though. ”
Wren nods, not wanting to question her on the topic much further. It already feels as if she has intruded into a room Kathryn wasn’t looking to show her today.
After a beat of silence, Kathryn looks up. “I was shocked when Andrea told me what he had done to her.”
As soon as the name leaves Kathryn’s lips, Wren’s nervous system lights up.
For a second, she doesn’t believe she heard it.
Andrea is the name of the murder victim found in Salem only a couple of months earlier.
She was horrifically tortured and dumped outside a New Orleans–themed bakery in town, leading investigators to believe it was possibly Jeremy at the time.
The brutality was familiar, but it didn’t take long for them to realize it was a copycat and not Jeremy.
Andrea’s family was devastated, but they were also almost expecting this kind of horrific end.
A few of them had mentioned Andrea’s history with bad men, specifically her most recent boyfriend, whom they’d described as an older man named Phil.
They had never met him, and he had left countless visible injuries on Andrea that concerned them all to some degree.
Now it’s clicking together, and Wren can tell it’s clicking for John as well. His eyes widen and move rapidly, like they do when he’s going over something complex in his mind.
“Andrea?” Wren asks. She’s feigning complete ignorance, but her heart knows what she heard.
Kathryn blinks a few times as if being pulled from a deep sleep.
She looks up at Wren, seeming to read her innermost feelings with her big, sad brown eyes.
“Andrea,” she says again, the name hitting even harder the second time.
“She was his mistress. I’m sure you know that Philip was having affairs.
” The pain is there, dripping from every inch of her.
She says the words like they don’t burn, but Wren can hear her silent scream, begging deaf ears for relief.
Hart clears his throat, directing Kathryn’s sad gaze to his side of the room.
He sits in an impossibly white chair, and his leg constantly bounces.
Wren wonders if it’s nervous energy or something he always does.
She finds herself observing his face, which is full of complex emotions.
He doesn’t hide any of them, allowing a mix of intrigue and sympathy to cross over each of his features.
When he speaks, he sounds like he’s talking to a friend.
“Kathryn, did you meet with Andrea, or do you know her last name?” he asks, keeping his tone controlled.
She shakes her head, still drawing circles on the rug with her sock.
“No, I only spoke with her on the phone. She told me he had done awful things to her. She said he was a monster, and then she sent me photos of her injuries.” Her voice shakes a bit at the end.
“I wonder if Andrea is even her real name.” She chuckles to herself, almost convincingly.
It was her real name, Wren thinks to herself, trying to keep her thoughts from showing on her face.
The abusive “Phil” was worse than Andrea’s family could have ever imagined, the worst that Andrea could have gone up against. His ability to become a chameleon makes Philip Trudeau almost untouchable, as he’s now surrounded himself with a layer of loyal believers.
Hart nods, his leg moving faster. “Do you remember, or do you have any way of knowing, where your ex-husband was on the twenty-fifth of August?”
The night Andrea was killed.
Kathryn’s brows knit together as she seems to go over every possibility in her mind.
“The twenty-fifth?” Her eyes move back and forth as she scans her memory.
Most people can’t tell you what they had for breakfast, so there’s a significantly low possibility of Kathryn remembering a random date on her calendar.
“Sorry, do you mind if I look at my phone? As things got worse, I started documenting a lot of days and arguments we had in my phone, but right now my brain is just really foggy.”
“Of course.” Hart nods, glancing at Wren and Leroux. Despite having just met, there is already a silent communication passing among them. They watch as Kathryn takes out her phone and scrolls with shaky hands.
“Philip was home late that night.” Her voice trembles. She’s obviously recalling a painful moment.
“How late?” Hart asks.
“Around nine.”
“You remember that?” Leroux asks, leaning forward, fingers steepled.
Kathryn looks at him, turning her phone to face him. “I noted it because that’s the night I kicked him out of the house for good.”
Wren instinctually reaches over to comfort her but stops her hand before it touches Kathryn’s arm. “So he came home at nine, and you immediately told him to leave?”
She shakes her head. “When he got home, we argued.” She pauses, as if reliving the night.
She closes her eyes tightly, attempting to blink away the reality of it all.
“Andrea had called me that day. She told me about their affair and about what he did to her.” She stops, trying hard to keep it together.
“After about a half an hour, I told him to leave. He left.”
“So he left between nine thirty and ten that night?” Hart asks, writing something down in a small black notebook. His pen is jittery, mirroring the tension in the room.
Wren looks around again, noticing how everyone seems to be holding their breath. The information is being let out almost too slowly for her to handle. The pieces trickle out like water from a broken faucet, and she finds herself struggling to decipher what Kathryn knows and what she doesn’t.
Does she really not know what happened to Andrea?