Detective Hardy: Do you think that will help at all?
Isabeclass="underline" I doubt it.
Detective Hardy: Thanks for coming in again, Mr. Carville.
Andrew: No problem.
Detective Hardy: I spoke to Isabel earlier and thought I’d bring you in and get you up to speed on a couple of things. How’s Tyler doing?
Andrew: Glad to be home. It’s going to take him a while to get over the things that happened, but I think he’s going to be okay. He still has his job at Whistler’s, so he’s pretty happy about that.
Detective Hardy: And Jayne?
Andrew: This has been pretty hard on all of us, but she’s coming along. She’s expecting, you know.
Detective Hardy: I know. Please pass on my best wishes.
Andrew: I will.
Detective Hardy: I spoke to Isabel again about what went down in that abandoned mall.
Andrew: It wasn’t her fault, what happened to Greg.
Detective Hardy: I agree.
Andrew: That’s good.
Detective Hardy: I’d say if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours. You should never have confronted Mr. Raymus alone. He might still be around today to stand trial for what he did if you hadn’t done that.
Andrew: I... I’m not going to argue the point.
Detective Hardy: I wanted to get her take on the last few words you had with Mr. Raymus. I wanted to see how they matched up with what you told me in our earlier interview. That he as much as confessed to the murder of Candace DiCarlo.
Andrew: And?
Detective Hardy: They did.
Andrew: I had a lot more questions for him. But he died before I could get to them. Like how he got on to that woman. I’m guessing it was by chance, the way Tyler happened to see her when he was packing her groceries. In some ways, Milford’s not that big of a place. You’re always running into someone you know or recognize.
Detective Hardy: Albert says she thought she was being followed the night before. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. But if she was, maybe that was Mr. Raymus. Although his girlfriend, Julie, says she was with him that entire evening. But back to what happened at the mall. It’s a wonder the fall didn’t kill him instantly.
Andrew: It didn’t take long. I never really found out whether he killed Candace because he thought she was Brie, or what, but...
Detective Hardy: There’s some things we’ll never know. But we know enough to close the file on this. While there weren’t any witnesses to his arrival at Ms. DiCarlo’s house — pretty much everyone who lived on that street was at work, with the exception of Ms. DiCarlo’s retired neighbor — we’ve been able to tie him to the scene.
Andrew: You have?
Detective Hardy: I can’t really get into all that right now, but we’re satisfied. Let’s leave it at that.
Andrew: Okay.
Detective Hardy: So, I wish you all the best. I hope, should our paths ever cross again, it’s under very different circumstances.
Andrew: Agreed.
One Week Later
Sixty-Three
Andrew
We gave returning to a normal life our best shot.
Jayne went back to her job, Tyler still had his, and I went back to seeing those people who were hoping to hire me that I never got to that day Matt took me into the woods and made me dig up Brie.
Each of us had something to get over. Tyler’s wrongful arrest and the memory of discovering that poor dead woman didn’t appear to be having any long-term traumatic effects, but Jayne and I were both worried about what might be going on under the surface. In many ways, he seemed like a different kid. He wasn’t getting into any more trouble, and had ended his friendship with Cam. He’d also picked up a second part-time job. Well, not a paying gig. He went to the people who maintain the nearby cemetery and said he wanted to do some volunteer work. Cutting grass, weeding, that kind of thing. Didn’t want any money for it.
Jayne didn’t want to smother him with concern the way his aunt had done after their father’s death, but she suggested he might want to talk to a counselor about what he went through, and he seemed open to the idea.
And Jayne’s pregnancy was going well. She was ever so slightly starting to show. No bleeding, and no morning sickness, at least so far. She’d been to see the doctor, who was pleased with her progress. An ultrasound was conducted, and I was in the room as the doctor rubbed that gadget across Jayne’s jellied abdomen and we looked at the blurry image on the screen of the baby that would one day join our household. The doctor wasn’t quite sure about the sex, and that was okay with us. We were happy to be surprised when the big day came.
And I’m coming to terms with Brie’s death. After six years, I know what happened. I can now, officially, mourn her passing.
So that’s the good news.
Jayne hadn’t been sleeping well. At first I thought it was the pregnancy, but it was clearly more than that. It was stress, and trauma. She was, of course, relieved that Tyler’d been released, that no charges had been filed. We even had a little celebration one night. Ordered in pizza, got a cake. But her mood darkened as the days passed. She tossed and turned in the night. I’d try to engage her in conversation and she’d say nothing, as though she hadn’t even heard me.
The truth was, I knew what had to be on her mind, but I didn’t want to press her. But when she spent time standing at the front window, as though expecting someone to arrive, I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking.
She was waiting for Detective Hardy.
Tyler had noticed that something was off with her, too. He went up to her a couple of days ago, put his arms around her as she watched the street.
“It’s not going to happen,” he told her. “They’re not coming back to get me.”
One night, after we had both gone to bed and the lights were off, I could sense that she was awake. I rolled over, saw her lying on her back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. I had a feeling that she was finally ready to talk about it.
“I know you’re lying,” she said.
“Shh,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I know that everything you told Detective Hardy was bullshit.”
“Not everything,” I told her.
“I know Greg never confessed to you before he died.”
“Everything he told Isabel and me turned out to be true,” I said.
“Not that stuff. I’m talking about his so-called Candace DiCarlo confession.”
Of course she knew it was bullshit. She knew it was bullshit because she had killed Candace DiCarlo. Her rush to confess to Hardy, to spare her brother, had been genuine. Hardy, confident that Tyler was the killer, wouldn’t listen to a word she had to say.
But I knew, very soon, that Jayne’s admission was the real deal.
I knew, or at least strongly suspected, as much when I got to the police station and went to lock up her car before driving her home. When I opened the door I saw the blood on the brake pedal and the accelerator. There was even a little on the steering wheel. I found a rag tucked down between the seats and did my best to wipe it all away, and took the rag with me.