CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

They could keep Evans in custody for forty-eight hours before they’d have to either formally charge him with murder or let him go home. It wasn’t long—two days was a small window, and they’d have to work fast. They’d requested his cell phone records and credit card statements, even the surveillance footage from the parking garage under his office. The map and the insurance agent’s statement were enough to get a search warrant, but they needed more. The wheels of the world turn achingly slowly at times, Spengler realized. Hurry up and wait.

“You thirsty?” Loren asked. They were keeping Evans in one of the interview rooms, which amounted to nothing more than a cell with a door instead of bars, a table and chairs instead of a cot and toilet. “Coffee? Coke? Water?”

“Water, please,” Evans said.

“Sparkling or tap?”

“Sparkling would be fine.”

Loren laughed nastily.

“I’ll make sure you get your top hat and pocket watch, too. What do think this is, the Four Seasons?” he said. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t serve you toilet water, fuck boy.”

They’d spent the last hour in the interview room with Evans, questioning him on everything they could think of, but he hadn’t said much of anything. He hadn’t even requested to see his lawyer yet, but only sat silently, his hands folded sedately on his lap, staring blankly. It had to be difficult with Loren breathing fire right into his face, taunting and teasing, shouting angrily. The only reaction Evans had was when the vein running up one side of his forehead began pulsing with the beat of his heart and the blood began creeping up his neck, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Let’s start again. You said Marie killed Riley,” Spengler said. “But if we believe your story, your wife is dead. How do you know she had anything to do with your girlfriend’s murder?”

Nothing but silence.

“Let me explain this to you, one more time, just so you understand where we’re coming from,” Spengler said slowly. “We know your first wife was killed under questionable circumstances. We’ve received the case file from Madison PD—you were ultimately cleared, but the whole thing sounds funny. A little over twenty years later your second wife falls off a cliff, you’re the only witness to her death, and now you’re saying the woman in the morgue is your girlfriend and you’re completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Do you really expect us to believe this?”

“I guess I’ll call it a night,” Loren said. “Jump on my unicorn and head home to the gingerbread house I live in. I mean, since we’re living in a land of legend and fairy tales.”

“Loren,” Spengler said warningly. “Mr. Evans, maybe it isn’t clear, but it’s in your best interest to be completely honest with us.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“We’re attempting to contact Ms. Tipton’s family to verify her whereabouts,” Loren said, ticking off his fingers. “The coroner is running dental and DNA records to nail down the woman’s identity. So we’ll know soon enough who that woman is, but what I still don’t understand is how you know Marie killed your girlfriend, especially since she took a dive headfirst from a hundred feet up. But maybe that’s not what happened? Maybe you know more than you’re letting on and can clear up these muddy waters for us?”

“Here’s my question: How do you know my wife’s dead?” Evans asked suddenly. “How can you be sure? What if she’s still alive?”

Spengler glanced at Loren. He’d sat back, was staring hard at Evans. The only thing that moved was the one hand he had resting on the table, the pointer finger and the thumb moving apart and then coming together again in a pinching motion.

“According to you, she fell off a cliff,” Spengler said, frowning. “Down into a river that’s been running hard. Even the best swimmers couldn’t swim across it in its current conditions, and it’s been over a week and her body hasn’t been found, so we’re going with the assumption that she’s dead. Unless there’s something you want to share with us.”

There was a moment of silence. Then two. Evans sighed and muttered something under his breath, passed his hand over his face so his features stretched like putty before snapping back into place.

“Pardon me?” Spengler asked.

Evans sat up.

“Marie’s not dead,” he said. “She faked the whole thing. I don’t know how she did it, but she’s trying to set me up for murder. For her murder, and Riley’s.”

There was another beat of silence. Then Loren laughed. Threw back his head and laughed so hard tears sprung out of his eyes. Spengler didn’t react at all.

“That’s the biggest load of horseshit anyone has ever tried to feed me, and I’ve been a cop a long time,” he said. “How about we’ll leave for thirty minutes, give you time to come up with something else? I could use another good laugh.”

Spengler held up her hand to silence Loren.

“What would make you come to that conclusion?” she asked. “And if what you’re saying is true, why didn’t you tell us this before? Right at the beginning?”

“I suspected what she’d done but I wasn’t sure. I was taking a leak when she fell, and she screamed for help—”

“So those campers did hear her?”

“Yeah, Marie screamed. Made it sound like she’d been pushed. And when I came out of the trees she was gone. It made me wonder if she was trying to set me up. But I wasn’t positive until I saw Riley’s body. And then I knew.”

Spengler made a small dissatisfied noise and sat back, glanced at Loren.

“I know how this looks,” Evans said. “But I didn’t kill Riley, and I didn’t kill my wife. She’s behind all of this.”

“What makes you even say that?”

“She’s been acting—funny the last few months.”

“I’m afraid acting funny isn’t a good enough explanation,” Spengler said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“It started about a year ago. She stopped sleeping through the night. I’d get up and she’d be downstairs, watching TV or reading. She was angry and anxious all the time. She started taking meds. Antidepressants. But none of it seemed to help. She kept accusing me of cheating on her. Of spending all our money. Of hiding things from her.”

“Was she right?”

“I … was seeing Riley,” Evans said. He looked down at his hands. “But that’s it.”

“What else?” Spengler asked. “That can’t be it.”

“I started noticing she was watching a lot of true crime on TV. And there was that book that came out a few years ago, when the wife fakes her death and sets her husband up for murder? You know the one? She read that thing over and over. Kept it on her nightstand. I finally went out and picked up my own copy and read it myself.”

“So your wife watches crime TV and reads some books, and that’s how we know she’s faking her death?” Loren looked incredulous. “Dude, I’ve been around the block more than a few times, and I’ve never heard anything quite as stupid as this.”

“Don’t you think I know how it sounds?” Matt said. “That’s why I didn’t say anything from the beginning. It’s all so unbelievable, I can’t expect you to buy it. But it’s all the little things. The jokes she’d make about disappearing, the things she’d say.”

“So let’s say Marie did fake her fall off that cliff,” Spengler said, leaning forward and cupping her chin in her palm. “How would she have done it? I’ve been up there. There’re only two ways to get down—either back down the trail or straight off the side and into the river. If she didn’t pass by you on the trail, she would’ve had to go over the side. How could she have survived it?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not good enough, Mr. Evans,” Spengler said. “If you’re expecting us to believe that your wife is alive out there, you’ve got to try a little harder than that. I’m going to ask again. How would Marie have gotten down off that cliff without you knowing?”

Evans hesitated. The briefest of pauses, nothing more. But Spengler caught it, and so did Loren.

“I don’t know. But I didn’t kill my wife.”

“Your wives, you mean?” Loren asked. He was smiling again. “You’ve had two of them, remember?”

“Yeah,” Evans said. “That’s exactly what I meant. You can’t kill Marie. She’s like a goddamn cockroach.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Evans’s mouth opened, then closed again.

“Have you seen Marie?” Spengler asked slowly. “Talked to her? How are we supposed to verify any of this?”

Evans thought. Then he closed his eyes and sighed.

“There’s something you should know about my first wife,” he said. “She—”

The room’s door opened and another officer stepped in, followed by a man in a suit, carrying a nice briefcase. He brought a cloud of heavy cologne in with him.

“As your legal counsel, I’m going to advise you to stop talking right now,” the man said. Evans fell into silence and the man spread his lips over perfectly capped teeth. “Detectives, I’m sure you don’t mind if I have some time alone with my client.”

“Fucking shyster lawyer,” Loren spat.

“Idiot meathead cop,” the man said pleasantly. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, I believe your time with Mr. Evans is up.”