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“I’m Detective Cruz. This is Sergeant Gonzales. We wondered if we might have a few minutes of your time.”
“I’m, ah, working, but yeah, sure. Come in.”
They followed him into a tidy living room where toys were stacked in colorful bins against the wall. A huge computer monitor sat on a desk in the corner of the room.
“What do you do for work?”
“I sell bourbon to bars and restaurants. What’s this about?”
Freddie was surprised that he acted like he didn’t know. “We’re here about Liliana Blanchet.”
At the mention of her name, tears flooded his eyes. He sat on the sofa and dropped his head into his hands. “How did you find me? We were careful.”
“She told a friend your first name,” Freddie said. “From there, it wasn’t hard to find you.”
“I can’t believe she’s gone. And her kids… I begged her to leave him before he did something like this, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
“She was afraid of Marcel?”
“Do you know about the lawsuit?”
“We do.”
“She was afraid of what would become of them after the details went public. She was absolutely sick over what he’d done to those women. The stress was nearly unbearable.”
“Did she fear that he would harm her or the kids?” Freddie asked.
“Not specifically, but she worried about what would happen to all of them when word got out about the lawsuit, which was going to happen at any minute.”
“What was the nature of your relationship with her?”
“We… we met at the preschool our boys attended. We’d wait for them outside and got to talking one day. Over a few weeks, we talked every time we picked up and eventually exchanged numbers. I think she desperately needed a friend who was one hundred percent on her side, you know?” He looked up at them, seeming to seek understanding. “Even her closest friends were Marcel’s friends, too. The few people who knew about the suit found it hard to believe he could’ve done such a thing. They kept trying to find a way to make it not true. That wasn’t helpful to her.”
After a pause, he added, “Can you imagine how mortifying this was to her as his wife? That he would do such a disgusting thing to his patients when they were at their most vulnerable?”
“So you were just friends with Liliana?” Freddie asked.
“It was complicated.”
“How so?”
“We had feelings for each other and were hoping to make something of it as soon as she could leave her marriage.”
“What was her plan?” Freddie asked.
“She’d spoken to a divorce attorney and was planning to leave Marcel and take the kids within a month. It was all in the works.”
“Did Marcel know that?”
He shook his head. “She was walking a fine line of protecting herself and the kids and not throwing gasoline on a fire. When he cut back at work to spend more time with the kids while they were drowning in legal bills, I thought she would kill him. Not that she could ever do such a thing, but I think she wanted to.”
“I’m going to tell you something no one else knows, and I want it to stay between us, okay?” Freddie said.
“I don’t know anyone else in her life. There’s no one for me to tell.”
“Someone went to a great deal of trouble to make it look like Marcel killed them all and then himself. But we have proof that’s not what happened. Is there any chance Liliana could’ve been the one to snap?”
“Absolutely not. She loved those kids more than her own life. She would’ve walked through fire for them. There was nothing, and I do meannothing, she wouldn’t do for them.”
