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‘Where did you park your car?’ Webb already knows Larry didn’t park in the indoor parking lot at the resort; he’s had people watch all the tapes.
‘In the outdoor lot, to the right of the hotel.’
‘Right. We’ve checked, and there are no cameras there, apparently. Only in the indoor parking area.’ He adds, ‘As I’m sure you know.’
Larry looks frightened now. ‘I didn’t,’ he protests. ‘How would I know that?’
Webb says quickly, ‘Did you know that Amanda was pregnant?’
He shakes his head, frowning, off balance. ‘No, I didn’t know, honest. I always used a condom. She insisted on it. She didn’t want to get pregnant.’ He says angrily, ‘Why don’t you arrest her husband? If anyone killed her, it was him. She told me once that if he ever found out that she was cheating on him, he would kill her.’ He adds, regretfully, ‘I didn’t believe her at the time. I should have.’
Webb looks carefully at Larry and tries to tell if he’s lying. Webb thinks Robert Pierce is capable of murder, but he wonders if Larry is making this up.
‘Robert Pierce is a cold son of a bitch,’ Larry says. ‘Amanda told me about him, how he treated her. She told me that she would leave him someday, so when she disappeared, I thought that’s what she’d done. If anyone killed her, it was her husband.’
Webb stares him down. ‘There’s something else,’ Larry says finally. ‘Robert Pierce – he knew about me and Amanda. And he knew she had a burner phone.’
‘How do you know that?’ Webb asks, alert.
‘Because I got a call from her burner phone, and it was Robert on the other end. He said, “Hi, Larry, it’s her husband, Robert.” I hung up.’
‘When was that?’ Webb asks.
‘It was the day she disappeared. Friday, September twenty-ninth. Around ten in the morning.’
Webb meets Moen’s eyes.
Chapter Twenty-seven
BECKY HARRIS STARES out the glass doors to the backyard. She’d wanted to accompany Larry to the police station when the detectives came to bring him in for questioning, but he insisted that she stay here. She could tell he was worried.
They’re both plenty worried.
When she’d returned from the police station and told Larry about the video surveillance of him at the Paradise Hotel, he’d looked so panicked that she didn’t even bother to say, What did I tell you, you idiot? Instead she said, ‘They’re going to bring you in for questioning.’ She’d had to steel herself to stop her body trembling. ‘Larry,’ she said, ‘tell me the truth. Did you kill her?’
He looked back at her, an expression of shock on his exhausted face. ‘How can you even think—’
‘How can I think it?’ she stormed at him. ‘The evidence, Larry! It’s piling up against you. You were having an affair with her – it’s on tape. You were in the area near the lake where her body was found and can’t account for your whereabouts. God help you if they find out you argued with her the day before she went missing. And then you go and throw your phone off the Skyway early Sunday evening on the way back from the resort, before anyone even knew she was missing. I don’t know, Larry, but you look guilty as hell!’
‘I didn’t know she was dead when I tossed the phone,’ he protested. He grabbed her arms and said, ‘Becky, I had nothing to do with this. You have to believe me. I know how bad it looks. But I didn’t hurt her. It must have been Robert. He knew she was cheating on him. He found her burner phone. He called me from it, and I answered. He already knew about me and Amanda. He said “Hi, Larry” before I even opened my mouth. He must have killed her.’
So Robert did know. She nodded slowly. ‘He must have,’ she agreed. She forced herself to take deep breaths. When she looked at her husband, she couldn’t believe, even in the face of all the circumstantial evidence, that he could actually have killed someone. That he could have beaten a woman to death.
‘When you talk to the police, you have to tell them all that,’ she said at last. ‘But tell them you threw the phone into the river someplace from the shore, in case there are cameras on the bridge. They could check them and see when you did it. Tell them it was a few days after she disappeared, not the same weekend.’
He nodded back at her, obviously terrified, relying on her now to help him. She was thinking more clearly than he was.
‘And whatever you do, don’t tell them you had an argument with Amanda the day before she went missing,’ she said, ‘and that she’d broken it off with you.’
Then the detectives had come to take him down to the station for questioning and she’d worked herself into this frenzy of doubt and fear.
She doesn’t think Larry is capable of planning a cold-blooded murder. If he was, he wouldn’t be in this mess. But a moment of uncontrolled anger? Could he have struck Amanda in a rage, not meaning to kill her?
She’s afraid that might be exactly what happened and that Larry is lying to her still and frightened for his life.
Her mind strays uneasily to an incident that happened a couple of years ago. Their daughter Kristie was being harassed by a teenage boy whom she refused to date. He kept bothering her at school, and then he made the mistake of coming around the house, calling her names. Larry had charged out of the house and rammed the boy up against the wall so fast it had made Becky’s head spin. She still remembers the fear and shock on the boy’s face. And how Larry looked, his left hand grasping the boy’s shirt by the collar, his right hand drawn back as if he were about to punch the kid hard in the face. Kristie was crying behind her inside the house. But something stopped him. He shoved the boy down the driveway and told him to leave his daughter alone. Becky had worried that the kid might press charges, but they never heard from him again. Now, she forces herself to thrust the incident from her mind, returning to the present.
Robert is the cold-blooded type. She thinks now that he might be quite capable – smart enough, calculating enough – to plan a murder and carry it out. And if he did, she’s pretty sure he would know how to do it so that he never got caught.
She has to know who killed Amanda – was it Robert or her husband?
Impulsively, she leaves her own house, crosses the lawn, and knocks on Robert’s front door. As she waits, she looks nervously over her shoulder, wondering if any of the neighbours are watching her. She knows he’s home. She’d seen him passing in front of the windows earlier, and his car is in the driveway.
She’s about to turn away, defeated, but then the door opens. He stands there looking at her. His mouth doesn’t quirk up in that charming smile of his. They’re done with all that.
‘Can I come in?’ she asks.
‘What for?’
‘I need to talk to you.’
He seems to consider it for a moment – what’s in it for him? – but she sees curiosity get the better of him. He steps back and pulls the door open. It’s only when he closes it behind her that she realizes that maybe she’s been stupid. She’s a little afraid of him. She doesn’t really think he’s going to harm her – he wouldn’t dare, under the circumstances. But what does she expect to learn? It’s not like he’s going to tell her the truth. All at once she’s tongue-tied; she doesn’t know how to start.
