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‘Thank you for coming in,’ he says courteously.
She can’t even answer; her tongue is stuck in her mouth. He leads her to an interview room, where she finds Detective Moen waiting. She’s grateful that there’s another woman here. She doesn’t want to be alone with Webb. He frightens her.
‘Please, have a seat,’ Moen says, and offers her a chair.
Becky sits down and the two detectives sit across from her.
‘No need to be nervous,’ Detective Webb says. ‘Answering our questions is purely voluntary and you can leave at any time,’ he tells her.
But she has every reason to be nervous, and he knows it.
‘Would you like some water? A cup of coffee?’ Moen offers.
‘No, I’m fine,’ Becky says, clearing her throat. She sits with her hands in her lap, beneath the table, where they can’t see her picking at the skin around her cuticles, waiting for her life to collapse.
‘Were you having a sexual relationship with Robert Pierce?’ Webb asks bluntly.
She can’t help it; she starts crying. She’s sobbing so hard she can’t answer the question. Moen pushes the box of tissues on the table toward her. They let her cry it out. Finally she sniffs loudly, wipes her eyes, and looks up at them.
He repeats the question.
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t mention that when we talked to you yesterday,’ Webb says. ‘You denied that you were in his house on the night of September thirtieth.’
She glances at Moen, who looks at her with what might be sympathy.
‘I didn’t want anyone to know,’ she says miserably. ‘I have a husband, kids. This is going to destroy my family.’
Moen leans in toward her and says, ‘We don’t want to destroy your family, Becky. We just need to know the truth.’
She looks at the two detectives through swollen eyes. ‘I didn’t tell you because I know he didn’t hurt his wife. He wouldn’t have hurt her and he certainly wouldn’t have killed her. Robert wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ She fidgets with the tissue in her hands. ‘So I didn’t think you had to know. I didn’t think it was relevant that we slept together. It only happened twice. I can understand that he had to tell you. I just wish he hadn’t.’
‘It wasn’t Robert who told us,’ Detective Webb says.
Her head shoots up. ‘What?’
‘He denies having had sexual relations with anyone other than his wife during his marriage.’
Becky feels like she might faint. Who else knows? And then she realizes that because of her, Robert has been caught in a lie.
‘Someone saw you coming out of the Pierce house in the middle of the night, and put two and two together.’
‘Who?’ she demands.
‘I don’t think it matters who, at this point,’ Moen says.
She puts her head in her hands and whispers, ‘Oh, God.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Detective Webb says, ‘this is a murder investigation, and you’re collateral damage. The best thing you can do is cooperate with us fully.’
Becky nods wearily. She has no choice. But she feels like she is betraying Robert, when he had obviously tried to protect her. She feels warmly toward him for it, which makes what she has to do now all the more painful.
‘Tell us about your relationship with Robert Pierce,’ Moen says.
‘There’s not that much to tell, really,’ Becky begins wretchedly, looking down at the shredded tissue in her lap. ‘My husband is away on business a lot. My twins started college out of town last year and aren’t home much. I was lonely, at a loose end. I used to see Robert out in his yard. His wife was away sometimes. We struck up a few conversations, like I told you. But it grew from there. It was stupid, I know. He’s much younger than I am.’ She flushes. ‘I could tell he was attracted to me – he made it rather obvious – and I couldn’t resist. I thought – I thought no one would be hurt. I thought no one would ever know.’
Webb listens to her, his expression neutral, but Moen nods at her sympathetically.
She continues. ‘There was a weekend in August – he said his wife had gone away for the weekend with a friend. He invited me over. No one was home at my house – Larry was travelling for work and my kids were away at friends’ places. That was the first time.’ She hesitates – she doesn’t want to tell them the next part. ‘The second time was at the end of September, the weekend she went missing.’
‘Yes,’ Webb says, wanting her to continue.
Becky says unhappily, ‘You have no idea how hard this has been. And I couldn’t talk to anyone about it.’ She looks back at the two detectives. ‘I know he couldn’t have done it. He told me Amanda was away for the weekend with her friend Caroline, and that she wouldn’t be back till Sunday night. I stayed there till very late on Saturday night, and went home around two in the morning.’
‘How do you know he couldn’t have done it?’ Webb asks.
‘Trust me, there’s no way he killed his wife.’ She shifts uneasily in her chair. ‘We had this unspoken routine – we only talked over the back fence, where no one would see us. I didn’t see him again until the following Tuesday. He told me then that Amanda hadn’t come home. That he’d reported her missing to the police.’ She looks at them, anguished. ‘I was afraid that it might come out then, that we’d been together that weekend.’
‘And since then, have you spoken to him?’ Webb asks.
She shakes her head. ‘No. He’s avoided me. He never goes into the backyard any more. And I guess I wanted to avoid him, too, after everything. Put it behind me.’ She adds, ‘I’m sure he’s worried that it will make him look bad, that he slept with me, and his wife – being murdered. But I can tell you, he’s a good man. He wouldn’t hurt a woman. He’s just not the type.’
‘Maybe he was different with you than he was with his wife,’ Webb says.
‘I don’t think so,’ she says stubbornly.
‘We’d like to get your fingerprints, if you don’t mind,’ Detective Moen says.
‘Why?’ Becky asks, startled. She wonders again if she’s going to be charged with something.
‘We found some unidentified fingerprints in the Pierces’ bedroom and en suite bathroom. We think they might be yours. If not, we need to know who else was in that bedroom.’
She feels herself start to tremble. She’s never been fingerprinted before. ‘Are you going to charge me with anything?’ she manages to ask.
‘No,’ Detective Webb says, ‘not at this time.’
Becky returns directly home from the police station. She parks the car in the driveway and enters the house through the front door. Then she runs upstairs and throws herself down on her bed.
The kids will be home for Thanksgiving. What will she tell them? More immediately, what is she going to say to her husband when he gets home? Should she tell him everything, or say nothing and hope that it somehow never comes out?
She turns on her side and thinks anxiously about Robert. They can’t possibly think he killed his wife. It’s impossible. She thinks of his hands running up and down her body. He actually seemed to enjoy her – her company. She thinks of his lean, hard chest, his hair falling over his forehead, his smile that quirks up on one side.
