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“It’s a theory says the simplest explanation is likely true. Now, that’s absolutely right, in my experience doing this job. Simplest thing is generally on target.”
You told the sergeant that there’s simple explanations for most things. But a conclusion can’t be verified solely by its simplicity.
“Let’s talk this out. You miss your husband,” the sergeant continued. “Then a man appears on the stairs your husband fell down. Plays your husband’s guitar. Wears things that are in your husband’s closet.”
They must have looked for things they thought could discredit you.
She started to respond, and the sergeant put up a hand in a “stop” gesture. “Then there’s the lying, ma’am. And yes, youarelying. Those blood alcohol levels are simple fact. I have to ask myself, ‘Maybe she’s so troubled by her husband’s death, not eating, not sleeping, that she forgot she drank?’ ” He tapped a finger to his temple to indicate how her brain might have unraveled.
He’s trying to make you doubt yourself. Just because you can’t think of anexplanation doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Just because the whole night felt unreal doesn’t mean it was. Your pain is real. Your flat tire is real. Things are missing. It all happened.
“No, that’s not—”
“Even aside from the drinking, ma’am, aside from the fact no man has ever worked at that café, you told us he stole your phone, which we found on your bedside table. You say you always leave the baby monitor on. It was off. Not the kind of thing an intruder would guess at, that you had a baby monitor for a kid so big. You weren’t even sure if he followed you when you ran out of the house. You say you were terrified, but that you fell asleep when he was sitting on the stairs. Your kids are small, scared, but you want us to believe they did just what you said, didn’t make a sound to give you away. Want us to believe that you got them, their toys, water, a pillow and blanket—everything but the kitchen sink, pretty much—into that hiding place in what you tell us was probably five minutes. That sound plausible to you?”
“Yes, I—”
“Then every time we talk to you, you’re solid ice. No feeling at all, even after something that traumatic. That kind of experience would make most people havesomekind of reaction.”
But you’ve been crying so much. Crying all along.
“I have—”
“On top of that, ma’am, your kids tell us a different story than you do. That you’re the one who told them there was a monster. That you’re the one who was scary. The one who hurt them.”
The shame soaked her as if she were reliving it.
How could you? How could you do that?
“Then thisweapon.” The sergeant said the word with such skepticism it was as though weapons didn’t exist at all, were impossible to conceive of. “Flexible, small? Not a knife, a gun, not even a rope? Alittle floppy thing?” He clutched this imaginary ridiculousness, waved its invisibility with a limp wrist.
“It made a sound, a heavy—”
“But most of all, ma’am,” he interrupted her, “what confuses us is that we tried it out. I went in that hidden room. My guys walked all around and I couldn’t hear jack shit, frankly. But you? ‘Oh, I heard him go into this room and yell. Heard him go down these stairs. Heard him kick some toys. Heard him open this wardrobe a full floor above me.’ You’ve got somesupernaturalhearing there, ma’am.”
That word again, “supernatural.” He is holding a grudge, he is! Because he must have heard something. You heard so much.
“Not to say this was on purpose,” came the calm voice of the boyish officer from the chair by the fireplace.
The sergeant took a deep breath. Rubbed his legs and cracked the joints of his fingers again as if to let out pent-up energy, to remind himself to be kinder, to give her the easy out of declaring herself mentally damaged instead of criminally deranged.
“Right. Right! I’m not saying any of this was onpurpose. I mean, you’ve gone through the ringer. Clear enough there’s lapses in your memory. Your shrink confirmed that. Couldn’t remember giving permission for us to record your first interview, for example. Maybe you forgot about drinking. Drink enough, that’s easy to do. And your kids, they tell us you’ve been real out of it. Most folks I know, sure, they’ve been scared of getting sick. But you? Lost your husband, so of course you haven’t been acting normal, thinking clearly. Maybe a little stir crazy. Drinking too much. Lonely. Hallucinating those shadow figures at night like you told me about, worrying for your kids.” He held his palms out in front of him as if to preemptively defuse her protests, said, “Understandably, now, understandably.”
She stared down at her hurt hand to avoid looking at the officers. She felt simultaneously heavy and drained.
How is it possible? How is any of it possible? The sergeant unable to hear anything from the hidden place, your blood alcohol, the unlocked door, no tracks, no manager at the restaurant, no—
“Then this intruder. Real chatty, yeah?” The sergeant’s voice bristled with scorn. “Blabbing about how scary your house is, how scary he is. A fairy-tale Big Bad Wolf right on your doorstep. And looky here, you’re the only one who can keep your kids away from all that badness. But even you admitted, even you said, calling himself this Corner, that it was”—he flipped to a page of his notebook, pointed at a word he’d written in caps and underlined—“silly. See that, ma’am? You said it was silly, that he’d call himself that. That he’d be talking aloud.”
She recognized that despite his efforts to stay calm, the sergeant was sliding deeper into agitation. She scraped her memories, but couldn’t recall ever calling the Corner “silly.” Her shoulders hunched around the growing fear in her chest, her inability to make herself heard, understood, believed.
It happened, it happened, don’t listen to him. It was real. Things missing, the toilet seat, the smell of cigarette smoke, the flat tire—
The sergeant’s voice slipped into a lower, growling register. “You set yourself up to be the hero, didn’t you? You’ve got a fur coat stashed in that front closet. Probably didn’t count on how bad it would be, though, going through the snow. Didn’t really think things out about footprints, forced entry. But now, you’ve got attention, right? Me, my guys, doctors, nurses. Big hero to the kiddos. Little lady fighting the Big Bad Wolf. A pretty simple thing, don’t you think?”
“It’s easy, given what you’ve been through, to get confused,” the boyish officer said soothingly.
The sergeant cleared his throat.
