When it became clear that there would be no decision that night, Savannah and Jared left for his house. Neither of them said much during the drive, and when they arrived, they went upstairs to the living room and took possession of separate chairs.
Slipping out of her shoes, Savannah folded her legs in front of her and pressed her face to her knees. After several minutes, she looked up to find Jared’s watchful eyes on her. Her own were tormented.
“Have I made a mistake?” she whispered.
Jared didn’t answer at first. He was going through a torment of his own, wondering just how honest he should be. The seeds of doubt that had plagued him since the defense first aired its claims had grown until he was sure that Megan had been the one calling him for emotional support in the heart of the night. He hadn’t been positive until the start of her testimony, when he’d easily recognized the voice. He added to that the fact that she could have gotten his private number when Savannah had called him from Marco Island. And the fact that she’d been skittish when, at the end of that day in court, they’d finally been introduced. And the fact that he hadn’t received a call since the start of the trial.
It all fit together like a puzzle, and it gave him the uneasy feeling that Megan did have something to hide.
More than once, he’d opened his mouth to tell Savannah. But she’d been embroiled in the trying of her case, and, for what it was worth, the case was strong. Moreover, Megan staunchly proclaimed her innocence. Now that the work was done, though, and the immediate tension of performance had passed, Savannah looked as torn as he felt.
He had to know what she was thinking when she wondered whether she’d made a mistake. “In what sense, babe?” he returned softly.
“Is she innocent?”
“Do you have doubts?”
The look in her eyes said she was weighing her words on the knowledge that once spoken, they would be irretrievable. But the doubts were too strong. “There are some things about this case that have bothered me from the start. I couldn’t find an explanation for them, so I ignored them, because they were really small things. All the larger things made sense.” She paused, frowned, blurted out, “If I buy into the Cat’s defense, those small things fall right into place.”
“What things do you mean?”
“The alarm system, for starters. It was broken. Stavanovich is an expert at disengaging alarms, yet he made no attempt to do it at Megan’s. The alarm system hadn’t been touched. Like he already knew it was broken. But there was no way he could have known that for sure—unless Megan told him.”
She hugged her legs tighter. “Then there’s the way it was done so cleanly. Sammy and Hank went through that library with a fine-tooth comb and couldn’t find a thing. That doesn’t usually happen. Usually there’s a hair or a thread,somethingto link the perpetrator to the crime, especially if the victim puts up a fight. Megan did that, but was it a staged one? The Mercedes they used tested clean in the lab, too. There should have been microscopic pieces of the laundry bag she was supposedly stuffed in. But there weren’t.
“And the business of the ransom note,” she said with a new breath. “Megan could have made it. In a minute. She had all the materials right there at her fingertips, including supermarket bags. She hadplentyof those. The house was loaded with food. I mean, when I went there after the kidnapping, I found three bags of coffee beans. Three bags of coffee beans. Don’t ask me why she needed three bags of beans, or why she had so much other food in the refrigerator. Unless she was planning to be gone for a while.
“Same thing with neatness. Megan was always a slob. The office upstairs where she’d been working on the books had papers strewn around, typically Megan. Not the rest of the house. It was neat as a pin. Again, like she was planning to be away. She knew that Will liked things neat; she always felt guilty that she wasn’t a better housekeeper. Maybe she cleaned things up to make up to him for what she was doing.”
“Do you think she did it on her own?” Jared asked.
“I don’t want to think she did it at all!” Savannah cried, then lowered her voice. “But I doubt Will could have been involved. I saw him through a good part of the time Megan was gone. He couldn’t possibly have faked that anguish. Of course,” she said facetiously, “if I was wrong about Megan, I could be wrong about him.”
Her eyes grew beseechful. “Do you think I was wrong, Jared? Do you think I got so wrapped up in punishing the man who raped Megan that I overlooked things I should have seen?”
Lately Jared had spent a lot of time contemplating questions like that. “I think you acted on the facts as you saw them.”
“But were they wrong?”
He came forward in his seat and let his hands fall limply between his knees. “She was raped. Do you have any doubt about that?”
“None at all,” Savannah said. “Even if she did plan the kidnapping, she didn’t plan the rape, and I don’t give a flying shit about what Stavanovich says, she wouldn’t willingly let him touch her.” She dropped her voice and muttered, “Kinky sex, hah. The only way Megan would let that piece of scum near her would be if he tied her hand and foot, which we know he did. She would never,neverbe unfaithful to Will. She loves him too much.”
Her voice trailed off. After a minute’s silence, she said quietly, “That would have been her reason for doing it. She loved him. She wanted him to have enough money to get the business back on its feet. She wouldn’t have stolen the money for herself, but she might have stolen it for Will. If she stole it at all.” Releasing her legs, she sat back in the chair with a tired sigh. “There’s still no sign of the money. We’ve found the two hundred and fifty thousand that Matty told us about, but the rest? Nothing. We’ve checked every possible outlet, and we can’t find a cent. Now, does that make sense, if the woman staged her own kidnapping for the sake of recovering money to pour into her husband’s business?”
It didn’t make sense to Jared, but then, he feared some would think his judgment as warped as Savannah’s. After all, he wasn’t going to tell her about the phone calls. He wouldn’t add to her doubt. It wouldn’t serve any practical purpose. Megan Vandermeer had been cruelly raped. On that fact alone, Matty Stavanovich deserved to be convicted.
***
He was. Late Friday afternoon, the jury returned with verdicts of guilty for both kidnapping and rape. Sentencing was set for two weeks later.
At Anthony Alt’s urging, Paul faced the press with Savannah. Given the doubts she’d had, and those she continued to have, she relished the support. Somehow she could tell herself that if Paul DeBarr, the next governor of Rhode Island, was sticking up for her, she’d done something right.
***
Matty Stavanovich was sentenced to twenty years for each offense, to be served concurrently. While there was some talk around town that Savannah should have fought for an even tougher sentence, she ignored it. She was comfortable with the knowledge that Matty would serve the same amount of time he would have if he’d been convicted of rape alone.
***
