“No, but we do to read your text messages.”
“Yes, and then you’d see that my son was furious with his father for being with another woman, and suddenly you lock down on him as a suspect, when he was the furthest thing. My son could no sooner kill his own father than he could fly a rocket ship to the moon. And he was traumatized. So the last thing I wanted was for you to home in on him as a suspect and take your eye off the ball. I wanted you to follow the evidence in a proper investigation without that distraction.”
Louise flips a hand. “Thanks for giving us no credit as investigators.”
“It was my son. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s move on, then,” says Bruce Ghadiali. “Let’s talk about those pills in Trinity’s trunk.”
72
Allison
So far, so good. They’ve eaten up everything I told them about Marlow Luckett, some of which was true, much of which was not. You know why they bought it? Two reasons. One, it’s a pretty solid story. All but impossible to disprove, and verifiable in many ways. Marlow, if he ever waives his right to silence and talks, will surely deny most of this and even sayIwas the one who hit him with the car, not Finley—but they won’t believe him over me, especially with the corroboration I’ve given them.
But the bigger reason they believe me? It’s not because they trust me.
No, they believe me becauseit was their theory first. Good, old-fashioned confirmation bias. They did their homework, ran out the ground balls, gathered the evidence, and built a case against Marlow themselves. They checked the cell phone and license plate tracking data. They read the text messages. They looked up Marlow. They tracked him down as the complaining witness in the road-rage incident at Luke’s school parking lot. They obtained the bank records and saw the $25,000 withdrawal.
They came to their conclusions on their own juice. And now I’ve walked in and told them,You’re right.
Do I feel sorry for what I’m doing to Marlow Luckett?
I do not.
I could check with the various women who were the object of his brutality, all of whom were afraid to testify against him. I think I would have their vote.
I could recall my experience in the Mortimer parking lot, Marlow’s plans for me that night, which included calling his buddies to join in on the fun.
No, I’m good with what I’m doing.
Besides, he is dead-to-rights guilty of aggravated battery when he attacked me in the garage. With his criminal record, he’s probably looking at double digits in prison for that alone.
“The pills in the car? That’s pretty simple,” I say. “That was Finley. He wanted to hurt Luke, and he wanted to hurt me.”
Simple, like I said. Once Trinity destroyed the video of my planting the Oxy pills in her car, it didn’t take long to come up with a story that would spare Luke and me.
“Why Luke?” asks Bruce. “Why you?”
“Well.” I put my hands together in front of me. “Finley was quite insecure, as I say. Personally, I happen to think that he was smitten with Trinity Casto. But Trinity was closer to Luke, and she was literally doing a documentary on Luke. I think he wanted to knock Luke down a peg. It’s that simple.
“As for me, pretty much the same thing. He knew our marriage was over, even if we hadn’t formally separated yet. He considered himself a disappointment. He had no income. He’d gotten mixed up in that road-rage incident with Marlow Luckett, which he found quite embarrassing. Nothing was going his way. He resented me and my career. So he decided to throw me into Luke’s case, too. Who knows—maybe he thought it would help him in the divorce. Anything to dirty me up.”
That, more or less, is what Trinity told them, too. And Luke will behappy to say the same thing if and when he agrees to talk. With the three of us singing from the same hymnal, and nothing to rebut it, Bruce Ghadiali has no prayer of convicting Luke.
“But you were the confidential informant,” says Bruce. “You tipped off the state police. Or had Jennifer Harper do it, but it’s all the same.”
“Oh, yes, that’s true,” I say. “Because I truly suspected that Trinity might be involved in drug trafficking. Her brother had a record for it, and she drove down on Monday mornings to see him at Olivet Nazarene. And she operates her own business…and a fitness facility, at that—”
“Okay, okay, I got you.” Bruce reluctantly nods.
“Finley knew I was doing that,” I say. “Tipping off the police. But he also knew something Ididn’t—that Luke would be driving the Toyota that day. So he took his personal stash of oxycodone, from when he injured his knee, and planted it in Trinity’s car. And then he doubled down and used one ofmygrocery bags and threw in a tube ofmylipstick.”
I shake my head with grudging admiration.
“Say what you will about my husband, but he was no dummy. It was clever. Shitty but clever. At first, I didn’t know the half of it. All I knew was Luke got busted, and there was Oxy in the trunk. That was bad enough. It was only later that I realized the full extent of what Finley had done.Myshopping bag. Mylipstick? Bruce, you remember dropping that bombshell on me at your office. I think my jaw hit the floor.”
Bruce suppresses a smile. But he’s betraying little with his expression. “It’s very convenient to your story,” he says, “that all fingers are pointed at a dead person who can’t reply.”
