He had no idea how personal the idea of strangulation wasto Faith. It seemed the only fitting way for her to die in light of what she had done to Charity.
“Ugly way to go but it also makes sense if someone got you in your car,” the ME said flippantly.
Hope suggested Faith also tell the ME to fake that Faith was pregnant. It would make her all the more the fallen hero in everyone’s eyes. So they did so, but after they learned that Channel 9 had unexpectedly held back the pregnancy part, Hope had to call Perry and say that as Faith’s next of kin she wanted the information out. That pushed Perry to release it.
Yes, it had been expensive to pay the medical examiner for this whole ruse—$100,000, plus another $50,000 split between two police officers to write a false report that they had come upon the scene. They promised to pay off any ambulance drivers needed to complete the fictitious tale. But they were the only ones who knew. Except for Tom, of course. And that was another $50,000.
Faith remembered the night she told Tom she couldn’t take it anymore: the fans who recognized her everywhere she went, the pressure of being perfect on TV; the stalker, Steve, who not only sent letters but had started following her home and beeping his horn when she turned in to the parking garage. He was even showing up at events now.
Then there were the coworkers who hated her, thinking she faked calling in sick all the time when the truth was she needed a lot of mental health days and was scared to admit it. She had a doctor’s note that only Perry and HR knew about for the FMLA accommodation.
Faith couldn’t stomach parades, because the anxiety of such large crowds of people all staring at her nearly crippled her. In her mind someone in the crowd would know the truth aboutCharity and would be glaring at her. It was ridiculous, of course, but she couldn’t get it out of her head.
Perfect Faith Richards should not require mental health help. Perfect Faith Richards should not be so tense at in-person events that she could barely function at times, saying “Thanks for watching Channel 9” to everyone as she counted the moments until she could leave. Perfect Faith Richards was confident, filled with grace and poise. But the real Faith Richards was a mess, and Faith Richards knew it. She often had pounding headaches, even as she smiled on air.
Sure the money was great, but she started to feel so stressed coming to work that her hand would shake as she reached for her key card to let herself into the newsroom. Having such a huge following on social media was what she thought she wanted, but when she got it, the reality was crushing. The station pushed her for more and more. More appearances in front of the public, more videos, more earring ideas. She had become a brand instead of herself. And she couldn’t think of an escape valve that would keep her reputation intact, give her even more money, and allow her to find her true self again away from TV.
She didn’t like anything at that point: not her job, her coworkers, or really any aspect of her life. Matthew hated her and had played multiple tricks, starting with the missing lipstick. Faith knew that from that same nanny-cam teddy bear Hope had taken to the vigil. Back when Faith first bought it she put it on her desk, suspecting that Matthew might be up to no good. When the lipstick disappeared she rewound the video the nanny cam recorded and saw Matthew going into her makeup bag and pulling out her favorite red lipstick, hiding it among her shoeboxes. She wasn’t shocked. She had a feeling he would pull some crap like that at some point. She had watched and heardhim through the nanny cam for years, as he talked to Tara, his fiancée, on the phone in the weather office when he was alone. She had winced at the names he called Faith and the many ways he made fun of her.
When she saw him take the lipstick, she decided not to say anything. Let him think he got away with it. Although she hated the pink shade she had to wear on air that night, it also was a “win” for him. Ha. She knew she’d have the last laugh, stealing his precious signed baseball and throwing it in the dumpster behind her apartment building. It might have been worth something, she didn’t know, but there was an incredible satisfaction to seeing it in the garbage. She took his water bottle too. At first just to piss him off, but then she realized it could come in handy if she ever wanted to frame him for anything. His DNA was on it.
Next, the nanny-cam teddy bear showed him swiping publicity photos of her and going into the Psychos and Crazies drawer, taking letters from a stalker out. At first it wasn’t clear to Faith what he was doing, but when some weirdo named Steve came up to her at a festival and said he was her boyfriend and that they traded photos, she began to theorize. She noticed the same guy in her rearview mirror following her home and honking, and showing up randomly at obscure events they hadn’t even advertised on TV. Only the meteorologists would have access to that full calendar of events, not the public. So Matthew had to be behind it. She knew it couldn’t be Abby or Chuck.
It was Tom who came up with the idea to bribe the medical examiner. Tom had listened quietly to her concerns about being on television and the pressure that came with it from all sides. He nodded and said sympathetic things and gave her a hug, but it wasn’t until that weekend that he asked her to take a drive out to the country with him. He had an idea, he said, but it requiredcomplete privacy and discretion. Given how famous they both were, they needed to be away from any prying eyes or ears.
On a quiet dead-end country road, Tom parked and turned to look at Faith.
“Hear me out,” he said. “I’m friends with the medical examiner and I know he’s going through a very messy divorce right now and could use some extra money. I also know quite a few police officers who would jump at the chance to get cash. If you truly want to disappear, and I mean truly, as in forever, I have a way for you to do so…”
He laid out his plan. It all seemed so complex and yet so simple. They would pick a night where Faith would act totally normal all day but then go on her dinner break and not return. Everyone in the world would believe the medical examiner when he said she was strangled. The medical examiner was the coroner, the official arbiter for any death. The medical examiner would have to inspect the body and write a report. He could claim he released the body to family—Hope—right away and Hope could claim she had it cremated.
“Oh my, this is… extreme,” Faith had said as a mix of excitement and trepidation started to fill her. But as she pondered it over the coming weeks it seemed to make more and more sense. Tom laid out the price for her freedom: what the ME would want, the police officers, and himself for coordinating.
It was a lot of money but Hope was already the life insurance beneficiary for Faith. Faith had taken out a large policy many years ago in case some crazy stalker ever got her. So they knew money would come flowing back pretty quickly and no one would suspect Faith in the way they might have if she had just taken out the policy recently.
Hope was always up for anything that helped her pay thebills. She had drifted around to various jobs but always got mad at her boss and wound up quitting and asking Faith for money. So when Faith hesitantly approached Hope with the idea, Hope was giddy.
“Let the insurance company pay for our retirements!” She squealed and she came up with even more plans, from the Airbnb in Wisconsin to bringing the teddy bear to the funeral and any meetings of the FWFFC, to the idea that Faith could take a big jab at some of her enemies on her way out.
“What if you wrote a note with a list of names on it? Something cryptic the police are sure to look into. One final F-you on your way out the door, a mic drop, so to speak. Give the note to Tom to give to the police. That will cement your and his innocence even more too.”
So they picked a date: a Friday night. Faith thought she would feel nostalgic as she did her final forecast ever with her sun earrings on, but instead she was almost giddy.
Before leaving on break she straightened up her desk a bit, wrote the note with names that included that weirdo Steve, Matthew the asshole and his fiancée, Laura for being a bitch to her, and Kelly her college roommate, plus their significant others. She felt bad about the Kelly one. After all, Faith and Hope had already colluded to steal Kelly’s jewelry, Faith getting the intel at lunch, and Hope casing the house trying to figure out what excuse she would have to get inside. When she saw the electrician’s truck and spied the electrician himself through an upstairs window, the idea of the assistant came to Hope and she showed up at their house less than a week later wearing a curly wig and glasses.
They needed the money from pawning it all to help pay off the people involved and to reserve the Airbnb. In Faith’s eyes,Kelly had not truly been a good friend to Faith, so Faith didn’t feel that bad about the jewels. In college Faith always had the sense that Kelly thought Faith was overdramatic. Faith took a few things—true, yes, some credit cards—but she took nothing of consequence from Kelly, and she expected Kelly to stand up and defend her against the charges others were bringing against Faith at the dorm. Kelly didn’t do that. Instead, Kelly watched Faith pack her things and said nothing when she was suspended. Years later, Faith thought Kelly would help her when she needed money for more overshopping, and while Kelly did loan her the money, she also went to Faith’s mom and squealed, which caused a mess between Faith and her mom. It never got better between the two of them and when Faith’s mom died, Faith was despondent to realize she would never be able to make amends, all thanks to Kelly. The cause of death for Faith and Hope’s mom was listed as heart disease but the sisters truly believed it was the culmination of years of a broken heart over Charity. Their dad passed a few years later of cancer.
Hope had been worried about a lack of money to get to the incoming life insurance, and Faith had an idea. She decided to ask Kelly to lunch and try to see if Kelly still had her mom’s and grandma’s rare jewelry. Plus, Faith wanted to pump Kelly for innocent details to see if there was a time or a way to break into Kelly’s house. Hope suggested Faith bring Kelly a jewelry box as a sign of goodwill, but really as an opening into asking about her jewelry. Hope and Faith found one on Etsy, and Hope had liked the earrings this kid named Emilio made so much she bought a pair of those too.
Faith and Kelly’s lunch went better than Faith could ever have imagined. Not only did Kelly divulge that yes, she had the jewelry, but she also said that her boyfriend worked at home andthat she had a new job at a high school. Faith even got Kelly to tell her the days and general times her boyfriend was on conference calls, and Faith and Hope planned Hope’s arrival as the electrician’s assistant as perfectly as they could, so that the boyfriend would let her in but then be distracted by his call.
The night of her disappearance, Faith wrote the note with names on it and folded it up into a tiny square. She looked for an envelope but couldn’t find one in the weather office and didn’t want to risk asking anyone in the newsroom. So she decided she’d give it to an intern to give to Tom. No intern was going to open the note.
Grabbing a few favorite curling irons, her makeup mirror, and the nanny-cam teddy bear, she was going to put them all in her car and go back inside to try to find an intern when one happened to be right there in the parking lot. It was the girl who had asked Faith to autograph a photo for her aunt. Faith recalled the aunt’s name for some reason but couldn’t remember the intern’s, so she asked her and then asked her to take the note to Tom.
The note was preplanned by Faith and Tom. It meant that the operation was a go, and it was a way for Faith to send suspects down the river with police. At the very least they’d be questioned and made to feel uncomfortable. Tom hadn’t known who would be on the list, only that one was coming.
Faith got into her car and started to steer away from Channel 9 for the final time. At the main road she saw that nutjob, Steve, again in his car, leering at her. Of course he turned to follow her, as he always did. Could she have called the police on Steve and asked for a restraining order? She probably could have if she was choosing to stay in her old life, but she was shedding it like lizard skin.
