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Webb and Moen sit down. The tape is turned on. ‘Please state your name for the tape,’ Webb directs.
‘Paul Sharpe,’ he says, his voice shaky.
‘Also present are Emilio Gallo, attorney for Paul Sharpe, Detective Webb and Detective Moen of Aylesford Police,’ Webb begins. He doesn’t mince words. ‘Your client is going to be facing a murder charge,’ he says, looking directly at Gallo.
‘Good luck with that,’ Gallo says mildly. ‘My client didn’t do it.’
Webb turns his gaze on Paul Sharpe. He waits until Sharpe finally looks up at him. ‘I want to hear it from him.’
Sharpe says, ‘I didn’t do it.’
‘The evidence against you is pretty compelling,’ Webb says.
‘It’s all circumstantial,’ the attorney counters. ‘A missing hammer? Blood on the floor? You haven’t even confirmed that it’s the dead woman’s blood.’
‘When we do, perhaps you’ll see things differently,’ Webb says.
‘I don’t think so,’ Gallo replies. ‘Anyone could have been in that cabin, anyone could have found the hammer in the shed and used it. You have nothing against my client except that he wasn’t home that night. And he has a perfectly reasonable explanation for where he was.’
‘That he can’t prove,’ Webb says. ‘He was seen arguing with the victim before she disappeared.’
‘And he has a perfectly good explanation for that, too,’ the attorney says smoothly.
‘Maybe we don’t believe him.’
‘It doesn’t matter what you believe,’ Gallo says. ‘What matters is what will hold up in court.’ Now the attorney leans a little closer and says, ‘I think we both know you’ll have a tough time getting a conviction. There are other rather obvious suspects in this case – the husband, who may have known about his wife’s infidelity, and her lover. I understand there was a lover? My client denies having any kind of relationship with the victim. Lots of reasonable doubt, if you ask me. You’ll never get this to stick.’
Webb sits back in his chair, lifts his chin at Paul Sharpe, and says, ‘She was murdered in his cabin.’
‘And anyone could have killed her there.’ The attorney stands up, indicating that the interview is over. ‘You either have to charge my client or let him go.’ Webb turns the tape off.
‘We can hold him a bit longer,’ Webb says.
After Sharpe has been taken back to his cell and his attorney has left, Moen says to Webb, ‘With Gallo representing him, he’s never going to break down and confess.’
‘So we have to build a case,’ Webb says. ‘We have work to do.’
Olivia looks back at her husband. He’s sitting across from her in a small room at the police station. There is a guard nearby. She stares at him in his messy, slept-in clothes. He is barely recognizable as her husband. Is he, or is he someone else altogether? She doesn’t trust her own judgement, her own senses any more.
‘Gallo thinks he might be able to get me out of here,’ Paul says.
She can’t speak.
‘Olivia – say something,’ Paul demands. He is distraught. His eyes are bloodshot, and he already smells – of the cells, of fear, and desperation. She can’t stop staring at him. He looks so different. He already looks more like a prisoner than he looks like her husband of a week ago, going off to work in an ironed shirt, a good suit. The world has gone all tilted, and she can’t find her balance.
‘What did he say?’ she asks finally.
‘He said that they’ll have trouble getting a conviction.’
He looks both desperate and hopeful at the same time. A drowning man reaching for a life raft. Does she extend her arm and help him, or does she push him away? ‘Why did he say that?’ she asks. She feels and sounds like an automaton. Surely he’s wrong, she’s thinking. Why would he tell his client such an obvious lie? Somewhere in the back of her mind she’s also thinking that this is going to cost them a fortune. Probably everything they have. If he did it, maybe it would be better for everyone if he just admitted it and pleaded guilty, she thinks.
‘We know I didn’t kill her,’ Paul says. ‘Which means somebody else must have.’
She looks at him, wanting to believe him. She would rather he be wrongly accused, to know in her heart that he is innocent, and stand by him and fight tooth and nail to get this sorted out. But she’s not sure. She needs convincing. She wants to be convinced. She wants to believe him.
‘What did Gallo say, exactly?’ she asks, daring to hope he has some good news.
‘He said there are other, better suspects – her husband. Larry, who probably was having an affair with her. They need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, and there’s plenty of room for reasonable doubt.’
She was hoping for something more conclusive. Something that would exonerate her husband, clear him once and for all. She doesn’t want him to simply get away with it. If he did it – if he was sleeping with this woman, and killed her in a rage, and covered it up – she wants him to go to prison for the rest of his life. She will never forgive him. If he did it, she doesn’t ever want to see him again.
‘Gallo said anybody could have used our cabin,’ Paul says. ‘Taken our hammer, and killed her and cleaned it all up, and we would never even know.’
‘But the cabin was locked,’ she says.
‘Someone could have broken in. Or found the hidden key.’ He lowers his voice now to a whisper and another look comes over his face, a pleading look. ‘We could say we’d had break-ins before, but since nothing was ever taken we didn’t bother to report it.’
She whispers back, ‘That would be a lie.’
‘Just a small one,’ he says very quietly. ‘I didn’t do it, Olivia. And my life is on the line.’
She looks back at him, her dread growing, and starts shaking her head. ‘No, we can’t do that. Raleigh would know it was a lie.’
He slumps in his chair and looks down at the table, suddenly defeated. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Forget it.’ Finally he looks up, completely exhausted, and says bleakly, ‘How is Raleigh doing?’
‘Not good. Not good at all.’
He hasn’t asked about her.
Robert Pierce is biding his time in his kitchen. When he picked his newspaper up off his front step that morning, there was already a crowd of reporters on the street in front of his house. They saw him and started to surge toward him, but he quickly stepped inside the house and slammed the door. He looked down at the front page of the Aylesford Record.
As he read, a slow smile came over his face. They’d made an arrest. And it wasn’t him.
The news has put him in a very good mood. Maybe he will be able to relax now. Maybe he will be able to return to work. It’s been wearing, the police always at his door, always looking at him as if it’s just a matter of time until he screws up. But now they have arrested Paul Sharpe. All attention will be on him. Robert can start living his life again, put all this behind him.
He looks out the window and sees that the reporters are still out there. He knows they will wait all day until they get a statement from him. He’s something of a celebrity. He goes up to his bedroom and dresses carefully. A nice pair of trousers and a dress shirt. He combs his hair, admires himself in the mirror. And then he goes downstairs and opens the front door and steps out.
