‘Let’s talk about Ben Donleavy’s death,’ the other detective says. Jill freezes. ‘Lara Donleavy is a friend of yours, correct?’
‘No comment,’ Jill says.
‘Did you and your husband send someone to the Donleavys’ house to try to get the files back? Is that how Ben Donleavy died? Because, according to the recordings, that’s what Lara Donleavy believes.’
‘No comment.’
When Jill finally rises from her chair, her legs feel like they might buckle beneath her.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
RAMIREZ FOLLOWS THEMout of the interview room. He watches Ted take his wife’s arm in the waiting room and they whisper to each other. Ted throws one last, cold look over his shoulder at Ramirez. Then Ramirez watches them exit into an explosion of camera flashes and shouting reporters jostling to get at them while their attorneys try to shelter them from the crush. Those damn lawyers earned their money today, Ramirez thinks bitterly.
It went the way he expected it to. They gave away nothing. They had their expensive attorneys beside them and had clearly been coached on what to do. They killed a man, and they’ve got away with it.
They can deny it all they want, but the media has got their teeth into it now and everyone will know what they’ve done. The public will feast on it for weeks. Still, the Westcotts have their blood money, their tens of millions.
Ramirez is glad to know the truth, but sickened that they’llget away with it. He’s not even surprised. That’s what happens, he thinks. The rich and powerful behave despicably, more despicably all the time, but nothing sticks to them. It rolls off them like they’re made of Teflon. Perhaps eventually Ted will go into politics and be a big success. That wouldn’t surprise him either.
But perhaps all is not lost. They need to talk to Lara Donleavy, as soon as possible. She’s already waiting in the next room.
When Ted and Jill return home from the police station, they are both badly rattled. Ted grills Jill about her police interview as soon as they’re inside, but she insists she told them nothing. It was ‘no comment’ to everything. But she doesn’t seem to want to meet his eyes. The fear of what Lara might do hangs heavily over them.
‘There must still be a camera in the front room that we missed,’ Jill whispers to him angrily, as if it’s his fault.
He knows. It’s alarming. Not just that there’s still a camera in their house, but Lara. If she talks, they’re screwed. She could give evidence that the man who killed her husband was looking for those tapes that everyone is now watching. He and Jill could go to prison.
He tackles the front room again while Jill watches, pulling things apart, using the device to search for the camera. But he can’t find it.
‘You said that thing worked!’ she says accusingly.
In frustration, he throws the useless device across the room.
After that, she seems to want to avoid him.
Ted goes out to the back garden. Impulsively, he calls Min’s number. She doesn’t pick up, so he leaves a terse message on her answering machine. ‘Are you happy now?’
He doesn’t expect her to reply. But it gives him some satisfaction that at least Min isn’t going to get any money from them.
She can go to hell, Ted thinks.
Lara sits in a stale-smelling interview room at an NYPD police station. She is heavily pregnant, due any day, and the smell bothers her more than it would otherwise. She is terrified. She has brought an attorney with her.
Soon two people enter the room. One of them she recognizes– Special Agent Ramirez. The other introduces himself as NYPD Detective Charlie Cousins.
‘We’d like to talk to you again about what happened at your home the night your husband was killed,’ the detective begins. Ramirez isn’t saying anything; he just watches.
She knows now that she was recorded too, at the Westcotts’ house the morning after Ben died. When she’d seen that on her phone, she’d thrown up in the kitchen sink. She runs her hand nervously over her taut, very pregnant, belly and glances anxiously at her attorney.
‘We’ve been made aware of some recordings taken from within the Westcotts’ home. I think you know what I’m referring to,’ Detective Cousins says, ‘since it’s all over the internet.’ He waits, looking at her.
She nods reluctantly. ‘Yes.’
‘You accused the Westcotts of causing your husband’s death, the morning after it happened. We can play that for you.’
She feels like she has turned to stone. The detective waits for her response. But she cannot find her voice.
He says, ‘Ted and Jill Westcott discussed their suspicion that it was you who planted the cameras in their house, shortly before the home invasion that cost your husband his life.’
