It was agonizing for Beverley to be a murderer’s wife, to experience such a loss of control over her identity. It was a catastrophic detour from what she assumed her adulthood would bring. Her husband’s crimes had forced on her social rules that she would forever have to obey. There was nothing she could do but keep her mouth shut, her eyes down and her business to herself.
“Who’s that over there?” Alice calls, her attention caught by movement across the street.
Beverley looks. The curtains are twitching upstairs at number forty-four. Mr. Appleton disappears as soon as he sees them looking.
“Has the man never heard of a garden hose?” Alice crosses her legs and tuts.
She has a point. The plants in front of number forty-four are all dead or parched. Beverley hasn’t seen her neighbor water the desert willow, deadhead the roses or mow the grass once since he moved in several weeks ago.
She glances back to the now-empty window, the now-still curtain, just as the sound of a breaking-news bulletin comes from the radio in the kitchen.
Beverley freezes. The newscaster’s voice is lilting, suave. He is saying something about a woman, a body. This must be it. She expects to hear Cheryl Herrera’s name publicly for the first time.
“…body of twenty-year-old Fillmore cheerleader Emily Roswell,”the newscaster is saying,“pulled from the lake at Meadow Vine Golf Course late last night.”
Beverley drops the shears and bolts inside. Her mother yells after her in protest.
“Further details about Miss Roswell’s death have not been revealed,”the newscaster concludes.
Beverley’s heart scuds. A strange buzzing sensation seizes her whole body.
A cheerleader.
Twenty years old.
Another murder.
She wipes her hands on her gardening apron and looks at the clock.
Nine
On first impression,Las Espadas is just like one of those small, scrappy neighborhoods Elsie has seen in cop shows on TV. A little tired, but clinging on. No white picket fences. No cookie-cutter houses with front doors in flawless pigeon gray. Instead, there’s traffic noise from the interstate. Potholed streets. Trash cans that are just a little too full.
There is already a crowd gathered outside the Herrera family’s home, a community that has turned out in force to wish one of its own a final goodbye. Most people are knotted in groups; others sip drinks, finger shirt cuffs, not knowing where to look. A hundred or so yards away, a mourner hangs back, an outsider, just like Elsie, not sure through which entry point, or at what moment, to approach such an intimate scene.
There’s a stall laid out in the Herreras’ front yard. A large photograph of Cheryl—calm, wide eyes; thick, dark hair—has been placed atop a bunched white tablecloth. On a folding chair next to it, a young girl, perhaps a sister, sits with her hands clasped neatly on her lap.Spread out across the tablecloth are candles for people to light and carry through the streets when the sun goes down.
It makes Elsie’s chest tighten, the dignity of it, the coming together of a community in their grief.
She had hoped that by visiting, by finding out more about Cheryl and her family, she might start to fit together the very first pieces of the puzzle. She hadn’t expected that being surrounded by so much loss, by people buried under the rubble of a dangerous man’s actions, would affect her quite so much.
She glances up and sees a small man in a white T-shirt and a vest step out of the Herreras’ front door. Elsie sucks in a breath. His is a face that has been weathered by grief. His polite smile—for neighbors who clasp his shoulder or take him in their arms as he passes—never quite reaches his eyes. Elsie knows this must be Cheryl’s father.
The family will have had many visitors since Cheryl was killed, ten days ago—relatives attempting to console the inconsolable, neighbors carrying food and flowers, detectives, rubberneckers, those desperate to brush up against tragedy. There will be something uniting them all. She knows because she has felt it: the hum of people electrified by the relief that the universe didn’t choose them, their sister, their daughter this time.
She makes her way through the crowd. Women are sobbing. Men are nodding, grave faced, their arms folded, their stomachs thrust forward, a posture that says,We will not let this happen again.Several of the younger mourners are in running gear. Elsie wonders if they might be from the same track team as Cheryl, makes a note of their kit.
Before she can hesitate further, she makes a beeline for Cheryl’s father, then waits for a well-wisher to depart before she steps into view.
“Mr. Herrera, hi. I’m so very sorry for your loss.” She holds out her hand and he takes it, but the grip is weak.
“My name is Elsie Parker. I’m a reporter with theTribune.”
She does not want to give her real name or reveal that she is actually from theSignal—not only because she does not want it getting back to Hunter that she broke rank, but because she is sure a grieving family would not let a lowly editor’s assistant ask them questions about their dead daughter.
“Did Roachford not get everything he needs?” Mr. Herrera asks, not unkindly.
She pauses, wrong-footed. “Did…?”
