Chapter 52
TWO YEARS LATER
Roy was tried for three murders simultaneously. First for killing Deb, and then for killing Veronica and Marie in an attempt to cover up Deb’s murder.
I was one of the first witnesses to speak. I was interrogated at length by both the prosecution and the defense, as you’d expect.
I answered questions through tears, some genuine, some not so much. I held a tissue in my hands and kept tearing bits off it, the way you see women do in the movies.
Meanwhile, Roy sat there with a look of sheer puzzlement on his face. He looked a hundred years old, gaunt and empty, like a husk. He had a buzz cut, and let’s just say that if I’d walked past him in the street, I would never have recognized him.
I told my story in a voice that alternated between querulous and clear. Clear in a brave way, I mean. Clear in the way that you might speak when you’re frightened, but you know it’s the right thing to do.
I felt none of those things. Just disgust at the sight of Roy and a deep desire to see him punished.
I told them all the things Marie had supposedly told me.
I told the court that we were going to the police with the thumb drive, but that Marie wanted him to own up to it, to say it out loud so she could record him on her phone.
That was why she had put on Deborah’s dress, to set up some kind of entrapment for Roy by posing as his dead wife and scaring him into some kind of confession.
I told them I thought it was a ridiculous idea, but she did it anyway.
I told them how Roy came home, and that Marie’s trick didn’t work after all.
I told them how he then grabbed Marie by the hair and dragged her to the kitchen, screaming at her for wearing Deborah’s wedding dress.
I told them how I tried to claw him off her, but he was stronger than me.
I told them how he tied her up on the chair while I went to get the shotgun, smashing the glass door to pieces.
I told them how he wrestled it off me and shot her in the face, and how I used the moment to run away and call for help.
The defense’s case was that I had tied up and shot Marie, but why would I? She was my ally. We were going to the police together to ask them to reopen the case. She loved Deborah.
Veronica’s murder was going to be trickier because it wasn’t clear she’d been murdered in the first place.
There was no forced entry, and no defensive wounds.
It could have been an accidental fall. In fact, all evidence pointed that way.
Sure, Roy had driven his car in the vicinity and lied about the texts, but none of that proved he killed her.
Deb’s murder could go either way. Again, I told my story as Marie supposedly told it to me.
Roy destroying Deb’s face because he wanted to be with Veronica, and he wanted her to kill herself so he didn’t have to pay out on a divorce.
The letters from Veronica—there were more than one, all in the same vein—the fact that he used her as his alibi on the day, and the video were all solid evidence against him.
And then my part was over. I sat in the gallery next to Dolores who had kept a seat for me.
She held my hand as witnesses came and went, none with much good to say about Roy after all.
People like Meredith, who now claimed that they knew all along something wasn’t right in that house, and they never liked him.
And then the prosecution called Mikey to the stand, and my heart sank into my stomach.
An interpreter was signing for him. I couldn’t watch so I dropped my head in my hands.
This was the moment when the world was going to know that somebody lied, and that somebody was probably me.
The entire case rested on the idea Marie was away that day, but Roy was there.
Now, they were going to learn that it was Marie who came back to the house just before the murder.
I was folded over. Through the interpreter, Mikey told his story.
How he developed a friendship with Deb, how they would sit in her kitchen in the middle of the night and talk, how she gave him the code so he could let himself in if he wanted.
Then they asked him, Were you there that day? The day she died?
I still couldn’t watch. And it was only when the defense asked, “Is the person who you saw that day in this room?” that it occurred to me that it was the prosecution who called Mikey as a witness, not the defense.
Why would the prosecution call a witness who is about to throw their case out the window?
I sat up.
“Let the court show that the witness is pointing at the defendant.”
I clasped my hand over my mouth. Mikey was pointing at Roy. Roy was on his feet, yelling, “That’s not true. That’s a lie.” His lawyer was trying to pull him back down. The judge was pounding the bench with his gavel. “Control your client!”
And Mikey was unflappable, his hand steady as his gaze.
“Thank you,” the prosecutor said. “And what time was that?”
More signing.
“I had soccer that day, so a bit before one thirty.”
When Mikey walked off the stand, he didn’t even look at me, only at his mother. His face was still, but there was something in his eyes.
He looked content. I got the sense that Mikey did what he had to do not for me, but for himself, and for his friend, Deb.