“But wh—?”
“Why kill her? Our affair had been a dreadful mistake. She was a patient of mine, and after a while, I came to my senses. I met a man after that, married him, moved away. Got divorced. But she tracked me down. I teach a class on Tuesday mornings, and she was waiting outside the house whenI returned around eleven. I knew right away that this was going to be about me paying the piper. She wanted money, lots of it, or she was going to expose me—and she had the paper trail to prove things. I would have lost my license. My teaching job.
“As I hope you’ve seen, Ally, I love what I do and I’m good at it. I couldn’t let her destroy it so I stepped out of the room to get us coffee and returned with a gun I keep. And then I shot her.”
I’m speechless, words stuck in my head, but I sense the muscles of my face contorting.
“I can see you’re horrified,” Erling says. “But there’s no reason to be. She was a dreadful human being—narcissistic, borderline personality. In lay terms, she’d be called a grifter.”
“Did Iseeit?” I manage. My voice is barely a whisper.
“The murder? No, no. Unbeknownst to me, you must have arrived when I’d gone off to make certain arrangements. I’m sure it was as you guessed a moment ago. When I called Tuesday to ask if you’d mind coming the next day to Larchmont, you sounded very unsettled from the fight with Hugh; perhaps you’d already started to dissociate. You obviously took the train here that day rather than Wednesday. In my haste, I left the side door unlocked, and when I didn’t answer the buzzer, you obviously let yourself in, wondering where I was.
“And even if you hadn’t started to dissociate, Ally, that experience—finding a dead body for the second time in your life—must have triggered it.”
“How did you figure it out—that I’d been here?”
“There were a couple of red flags that gave me pause. Your mention of the call you made trying to figure when our appointment was. The unknown person’s blood on the tissues, of course. And then this.”
She reaches into the deep pocket of her cardigan and extracts an iPhone. As my gaze settles on the blue rubber case, I realize it’s mine.
“I found it peeking out from under the couch the day after Diane was here, the battery dead, and assumed it was an extra of hers that had fallen out of her pocket when she tried to get away.” She curls her lips in a terrifying smile. “It made sense at the moment. A grifter carrying two phones. But as soon as you said you’d lost yours, I realized what had happened.”
I’m frozen in place still, gripped by fear, but my gaze flicks to the outside door and back. Inside my shoes, I curl my toes, forcing a small part of me to move.
“So you killed Mulroney, too?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. He called me. You must have mentioned my name to him, and he’d followed a trail of bread crumbs indicating that you’d taken the train from Grand Central on Tuesday. He hadn’t pieced it all together yet, but he was getting closer, and I was concerned the information hedidhave might jog your memory. I told him I had something about you I felt obligated to share, something that might help him crack the case, and arranged to meet him in the parking lot. I knew what that spot was known for, of course. I’ve had patients who’ve cruised there.”
My brain summons an image of Mulroney against mywill. So street-smart, but clearly with his guard down, a bullet going through his head.
“What aboutme?” I ask.
“Aboutyou, Ally? Are you wondering if I was the one who pushed you that night? Yes, that was me. I’m not much of a street fighter, am I?”
“But what about now? What are you going to do?”
It’s such a stupid question. Because I can already see the answer, an abyss that’s as deep and dense as a black hole.
“You must know that I don’twantto hurt you. I’ve liked working with you. And I’ve liked helping you. But I’m not going to let you or anyone else take my life and my freedom from me.”
“I wouldn’t, though,” I say, feebly. I lower my head a little, and let my eyes dart toward the door again, measuring the distance to it. To escape, I would need to rush past her, race to the door, unlock it, attempt to fight her off with my hands. It seems impossible, but I have to try.
“Of course you would,” she says with a wry smile.
I take as deep a breath as possible, hoping she can’t see my chest rise and fall. There’s another door, I realize, one closer to me that leads to the rest of the house. I press my hands hard into the sofa, preparing to spring forward.
Another smile from her. I sense she’s noticed my preparation. She sets my phone on the side table next to her and reaches into the space between the chair and the cushion. When she slides her hand out, I see she’s holding a small black gun.
My stomach roils. “But they’ll catch you,” I say. “They’ll trace the gun.”
“It’s from the black market, actually. Some of my patients are seriously troubled, and I felt I needed protection—but it’s nearly impossible to obtain a firearm legally in New York State.”
“The Uber,” I say desperately. “It’s evidence that I came here.”
She chuckles. “When the Uber arrives to pick you up, I’ll put on your coat and a hat of mine and be driven into the city. Later, I’ll take the train back here to tidy up. That’s basically how it worked with Diane, though she’d come by car. I wore her coat and her very fancy sunglasses and I stopped for gas and later abandoned the vehicle. Then I had all the time in the world to clean up. I took her body upstate, to a landfill near where I used to live. I haven’t seen a word about her being missing. I assume no one cares she’s gone.”
As hard as it is, I force a smile.
