CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1995

Every time Detective Reid showed up at the hospital—and he’d come by every day for a week, stopping in for hours at a time to ask questions—the nurses brought him three containers of apple juice, the kind that come in the clear plastic cups with the peel-off foil lids. Matt wondered how anyone could stand to drink yellow liquid from a plastic cup in the hospital—it looked so much like a urine sample that his throat seized up tight every time he saw one—but Reid liked it. He worried off the foil lid with bent, arthritic fingers and then slurped noisily at the opening, his purple, livery lips flapping.

My throat’s so dry it’s burning, he said as he finished each juice, then burped wetly into the back of his hand. Not used to all this yapping anymore.

It had been a week since Matt was checked into the hospital, had the gunshot wound in his shoulder stitched up, and was treated for the minor burns and smoke inhalation he’d suffered from the fire. Anyone else would’ve already been released and sent home, but they thought Matt was a killer, that he’d put a bullet in his wife’s head and burned her body to nothing, and they were going to keep him in here until they proved it. Better to be shut up in a hospital than in jail, Matt thought. Better appreciate it while it lasted, because one day Reid would come in and read him his rights, officially place him under arrest.

“Don’t waste any of that juice on me today,” Reid said to the nurse as he dropped down into his chair with a sigh and pulled off his hat. “I won’t be here long enough to get thirsty.”

“You’ve got somewhere more important to be?” Matt asked jokingly. The old man was a cop and Matt was a suspected killer, but that hadn’t kept a sort of friendship from springing up between the two of them.

“Actually, I do,” Reid said. “And so do you.”

So it was happening, Matt thought. Reid had finally found something that tied Matt to the murder, or Matt had slipped up somewhere during the hours of questions and now it was over. Any minute now the cop who’d been stationed outside his door day and night would come in and slap handcuffs on his wrists, and Matt would spend the rest of his life in prison. A wife killer, that’s what he’d be called. He’d never survive. He wasn’t strong or tough enough. He’d be dead in a week.

“Where am I going?” Matt asked, his voice catching. Reid heard it and his head ticked slightly to one side. He was still watching, Matt realized. Waiting for something, like a cat sitting outside a mouse hole. You might think the cat was sleeping, but all you had to do was take a look at that tail, twitching and alive, and you’d know different. A cat was alert and patient. So was Reid. One of Matt’s hands was tucked under the blankets and he dug his nails into his thigh, trying to keep himself calm. Reid’s gaze flickered down—he’d caught the movement under the bedding—and then back up to Matt’s face.

“You’re going home,” Reid said. “Well, not home, since there’s nothing left of it. But to a motel nearby, at least until you find a more permanent situation.”

“I’m not under arrest?” Matt said before he could control himself.

Reid was amused.

“No, not today,” he said. “An arrest was made last night. Looks like we found the man who killed your wife.”

“A man?” Matt said blankly.

“Yes,” Reid said. “You said a man broke into your home and attacked the two of you, shot you as you escaped. Or is that not the way you remember it now?”

“Yeah, that’s what happened,” Matt said quickly. Too quickly, maybe—he saw a frown flicker across Reid’s face and then disappear. “Do you know who he is?”

Reid reached into his jacket and pulled out a notepad without looking away from Matt.

“Jesse O’Neil,” he said.

“Janice’s boss? Is that who you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” Reid said. “He’s been in this same hospital for the last week—east wing, though, other side of the place—recovering from what seems to be a self-inflicted bullet wound.”

“What?”

“Mr. O’Neil was found on the side of the road a mile north of your place, about six-thirty on the same morning you were attacked,” Reid said. “He would’ve died, but the woman who found him had medical training in the military and managed to help him. And he’s made it through, even though he’d shot himself in the head. The gun was found nearby. Our ballistics department took a look for me, said the bullet that went through your shoulder almost definitely came from that same gun.”

Matt’s fingers sunk deeper into his thigh. He’d never broken a bone as a kid, never fell out of tree or even had the wind knocked out of him, so when that bullet tore into his flesh it was like nothing he’d ever felt before. His shoulder burned now with the memory.

“O’Neil made it through surgery and is awake,” Reid said. He dug around in his pocket and brought out a cough drop. “Confused and groggy, but awake. And as soon as he was conscious he was placed under arrest for murder. But I’d like to hear it from you. Was it Mr. O’Neil who attacked you that night?”

“I—” Matt paused. His heart was pounding so fast and hard, it was all he could seem to hear, roaring through his head like a storm, and he was sure Reid must hear it, too, because the old man was staring at him strangely. “I don’t know. I never saw his face. It’s a blur.”

Reid nodded and sighed, bit down hard enough on the cough drop so it shattered in his mouth. A shard of it went flying from between his lips and skittered across the floor, landing somewhere beneath the bed.

“O’Neil was found covered in blood—his own, and what we’re assuming is your wife’s. And some of their coworkers have come forward and said O’Neil had a crush on Janice. You might even call it obsession. Nothing good ever comes from obsession. Look what came out of it this time.”

“Obsession,” Matt muttered.

“The evidence against O’Neil is damning,” Reid said, standing. His knees popped as he rose. “So you’re free to go, Mr. Evans. I’m very sorry about what you’ve been through, and the loss of your wife.”

“Thank you.”

Reid made it to the door before he hesitated and turned back.

“So by all accounts, Jesse O’Neil is obsessed with your wife,” he said. “And he gets it into his head that he has to have her. I’ve seen it plenty of times before. So O’Neil breaks in and attacks the two of you, and kills Janice. But you get away, so he sets the house on fire and runs. Finds himself alone in a field and puts the murder weapon up to his head and pulls the trigger. It’s a story we’ve all seen on the news before. Easy to follow, easy to swallow, like I say. Like something straight out of a storybook. Like it’d been written and then performed perfectly.”

“Performed,” Matt repeated softly.

“You’ve been to some shows, right? Your wife did some work with the university’s theater, didn’t she?” Reid asked.

“Yes.”

“I thought I saw that in the file.”

Reid went to the door, wrapped his fingers around the handle but didn’t turn it. Instead, he looked back at Matt.

“If someone wants to kill themselves with a gun, do you know how they typically do it?”

“No.”

“They’ll put it here,” Reid stuck out his pointer finger, miming a gun, and pushed it against his chest, right where his heart would be. “I’ve seen that. Or they’ll put the barrel against their temple, or stick the damn thing in their mouth. But O’Neil didn’t shoot himself in any of those places. He stuck the gun here.”

Reid pushed his finger against a spot just behind his left ear, pointing up toward the ceiling.

“It’s an awkward spot to shoot yourself,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s even more awkward because O’Neil is right-handed, so he most likely would shoot with that hand. But he was shot behind his left ear. It’s almost like someone came up behind him and was trying to catch him off guard, ended up getting in a sloppy shot but still tried to make it look like a suicide.”

“Oh.”

“My boss is up to his usual shit and wants this case closed,” Reid said. “Easy to follow, easy to swallow, that’s practically that fool’s motto. He’s convinced O’Neil did it, tried to kill himself, and botched it. But do you know what I think?”

“What’s that?” Matt asked weakly.

Reid sighed and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, mopped his nose with it, then tucked it away. Brought out another cough drop and took his sweet time unwrapping it. Maybe Reid didn’t know what to say and he needed the time to think. Or maybe he just wanted to let the sweat build up under Matt’s balls.

“I think you’re a goddamn liar,” Reid said.

Then he pulled open the door and left.