“You already have.” She whirled on me, her fiery green eyes narrowing on mine. “I don’t like this arrangement any more than you do, Finlay. Who do you think is going to end up mothering your children when you’re not able to do it anymore? If you loved your kids as much as you say you do, maybe you’d be nicer to me.”
My mouth fell open. Delia squealed as she managed to untangle the bow from the box and tear her gift from the paper. She gasped, the puppy on her wish list all but forgotten. The Barbie Dreamhouse was three stories high, just like Theresa’s town house. “We’ll take it to your room at Theresa’s,” Steven told her, hefting the box. “You can play with it tonight when you get home.”
Delia chased him to the door, clambering for one last look at it. The small plush dog I’d bought and gift wrapped for her suddenly seemed pathetic, a token of something she wanted that I couldn’t afford. Theresa was right. I had made this easy for them. And if I went to prison, Steven and Theresa were the only parents my children would have left.
I jumped as a car door slammed in the garage. Delia raced to the kitchen to meet Vero, who’d be walking in any moment with the pizzas. Steven hurried out the front door, ushering Theresa in front of him, anxious to be gone. “Make sure the kids are packed andready by five. I’ll be back for them after the party,” he called over his shoulder. The front door closed just as Vero came in through the kitchen, a mountain of pizza boxes stacked in her arms.
That night, after Steven had picked up the kids, I sat on my front stoop, the cold from the concrete seeping through my socks as I stared after the shrinking taillights of his truck. The kids would only be gone one night. They’d be home again tomorrow, and they were only a few blocks away, but I hated how easily he swooped in, took what he wanted, and left. I hated how unfair it was, and how nobody else seemed to notice or care.
That had always been Steven’s MO. He’d always been smooth, quick to cover his tracks. Like today, when he’d slipped into Delia’s birthday party an hour late, accomplished exactly what he wanted, and slipped right out again before Vero ever laid eyes on him, without Delia even noticing he’d left. His sense of timing was impeccable, his shell game unerring. He’d been screwing Theresa for weeks behind my back. If Mrs. Haggerty hadn’t seen him and spilled the beans, I might never have known what they had been—
I lifted my chin from my hands. Across the street, Mrs. Haggerty’s curtain flashed closed. I got up and crossed the road, heading straight for her door. If anyone had seen two strangers sneaking around in my garage the night Harris Mickler died—if anyone could stand up for me as a witness and prove I was telling the truth—it would be the neighborhood busybody. I banged on theNEIGHBORHOOD WATCHsticker on the glass.
“Mrs. Haggerty?” I called through it. “I need to speak with you!” I pressed my ear to the door, certain she was listening on the other side. I banged again, harder this time. “Mrs. Haggerty! Will you please open the door? It’s important.” Her TV was on. A mutedlaugh track of some evening sitcom played in the background. “Fine,” I muttered, finally giving up.
This was all Steven’s fault. After she’d blown the whistle on his affair with Theresa, he’d called her an old hag and told her to mind her own damn business. I hadn’t been much kinder once I’d heard how far and wide the rumors of his affair had spread. She’d refused to speak to either of us since.
I shuffled back across the street in my socks, my feet numb by the time I reached my front door. I closed myself inside, leaning back against it, waiting for the feeling to return to my toes as I thought about Mrs. Haggerty.
Between the time I had arrived home with Harris and the time Vero had let herself in through the front door, someone had snuck into my garage without Vero or me noticing. Mrs. Haggerty was the president of the neighborhood watch. If she had seen anything suspicious, she would have called the police to report it before we’d even stuffed Harris in the trunk. But the police never came, so I could safely assume she hadn’t seen much.
So how did the killers get past Mrs. Haggerty without her noticing?
Vero and I had surprised each other that night because she’d come in through a different door. And Steven had missed Vero entirely at the party for the same reason. What if the killers had parked down the street and snuck through the neighbors’ backyards, approaching my garage from the back?
The more I thought about it, the less it all made sense. Andrei and Feliks didn’t seem like the types who’d sneak around. Andrei Borovkov had slashed up three men and left them bleeding out on a warehouse floor. He hadn’t gone to the effort to clean up and didn’t seem concerned about concealing his crime. Why bother? Georgiasaid nothing would stick to them anyway. Clearly, they’d had no problem bribing their way to a mistrial. So why frame a suburban mother of two for a bloodless, quiet crime? If they’d wanted Harris dead, why not slash his throat and leave him on the floor of my garage?
No, this MO felt cowardly. The killers never had to touch the body. Never had to shed blood. They didn’t even have to be present at the moment when Harris’s life left him. This didn’t feel like the work of two shameless violent criminals. I was willing to bet the killers had never done anything like this before. The timing of the whole thing felt opportunistic. Or impulsive.
But clearly,somethinghad been planned. They’d staked him out at the bar, then stalked us to my house. They’d waited until he was unconscious and vulnerable to strike, just like…
Just like Harris had with each of his victims.
My back stiffened against the door. Maybe the MO wasn’t impulsive.
What if it was deeply personal?
I ran upstairs to my office, past Vero’s closed door, where she was cramming for her midterm finals. I opened my desk drawer and unfolded Harris’s bank statement.
There had been twelve deposits on the first of the month.
And there had been thirteen numbered files on Harris’s cell phone—twelve containing photos of his previous victims, plus the one I’d doused with tomato juice in the bathroom.
Do exactly as I said, and be discreet, or I’ll show these photos to your husband and tell him what you’ve done.
Twelve deposits, two thousand dollars each, on the first of every month.
What if the deposits hadn’t been embezzled from Feliks Zhirov? What if they’d been hush payments? What if he’d been extorting them for money?
I skimmed the payments again, certain I was right. Two thousand dollars was a small sum for a high earner in these close-in suburbs of DC, an amount that might easily go unnoticed if a man’s wife quietly wired it from her personal spending account. Harris had been making a small fortune off of his victims—an amount that was probably growing every month, with every new woman he exploited—threatening them with photos, convincing them he would tell their spouses they’d been unfaithful if they didn’t comply with his demands. And why wouldn’t they? The photos painted a very different picture than the reality of what had been done to them. And they probably had no memory of their night with Harris to support their own account of what happened after the drugs had knocked them out.
Every single one of those women had a deeply personal motive for wanting Harris dead. And the MO felt like a perfect fit. But which one had actually done it?
Harris’s phone was probably already in the hands of a police detective by now. Without it, there’d be no easy way for me to trace the deposits back to individual accounts, but there might be a way to figure out who these women were and narrow down the list.
I grabbed a piece of paper from the printer, jotting down as many of those twelve first names as I could remember. Then I opened my browser and searched for Harris’s social networking group. Clicking on the membership page, I pulled up a roster. More than seven hundred thumbnail images filled the screen.
It was going to be a very long night.
