The TV goes on, the single-serve coffee brews, the computer boots up. I spent the previous night making lists. What I know, what I don’t know, what I need to know. How to get the info I need. The last list is a little short, because I am neither a hacker nor a detective. What I do know is that there are two ways to go about this: prove she killed those women or prove I didn’t kill them. Ideally both.
On the night Naomi went missing, I went home and stayed with the kids, leaving Millicent alone with her. Same with Lindsay; I was with Jenna, because she was sick. The kids are my alibi, and they’re not a good one. Once they were asleep, they cannot verify anything.
But can I prove Millicent did it? Not any more than I can prove I didn’t.
Millicent’s tablet is a larger problem than I thought. Although there is software available to reset a PIN, it can be done only if I am signed into the e-mail address on the tablet. Another password I do not have and can’t even guess. In the middle of the night, I resorted to reading hacker message boards populated by teenagers looking for the same thing I was.
There could be another way. Maybe. But only if I can convince someone to help me.
I spend half the morning wondering if it is better to ask now, before my face is all over the news, or after I am a wanted man. I try to imagine someone coming to me for help, someone who may or may not be a psychopath. Would I help them, or slam the door and call the police?
The answer is the same. It depends.
And my options are limited. My friends are Millicent’s friends; we share them. I have many clients, but most are just that. Just one possibility comes to mind—the only person who might be both willing and able to help.
If Andy will agree.
Sixty-four
The Golden Wok is a Chinese buffet thirty minutes outside Hidden Oaks. I have been there once, on my way to somewhere else, and it is like every other Chinese buffet I’ve seen. I arrive early and fill up my plate with Mongolian beef, sweet-and-sour pork, chicken chow mein, and fried spring rolls. Halfway through the meal, Andy Preston walks in and joins me.
I stand up and offer my hand. He pushes it aside and gives me a hug.
Andy is not the same man I knew before Trista killed herself. He is not even the same man I saw at her funeral. The extra weight he carried is gone; now he is almost too thin. Not healthy. I tell him to grab a plate.
The Chinese buffet was his choice. He left Hidden Oaks after Trista died, and Kekona told me he quit his job and spends his days on the Internet, encouraging strangers not to kill themselves. I believe it.
Andy sits down at the table and gives me a smile. It looks hollow.
“So what’s going on?” I say. “How are you?”
“Not great, but it could be worse. It could always be worse.”
I nod, impressed he can say something like that after what has happened to him. “You’re right, it can.”
“What about you? How’s Millicent?”
I clear my throat.
“Uh-oh,” he says.
“I need help.”
He nods. Doesn’t ask a single question—because he is still my friend, even if I haven’t been much of one to him.
All morning, I have gone back and forth about how much to tell Andy about my situation. First, the tablet. I take it out of my gym bag and slide it across the laminate table. “Can you help me get into this? It has a PIN code, and I have no idea what it is.”
Andy looks at the tablet and then at me. His eyes look a bit more alert. “Any eight-year-old could get into this thing.”
“I can’t ask my kids to do it.”
“So this is Millicent’s.”
I nod. “But it’s not what you think.”
“No?”
“No.” I gesture to his plate. “Finish eating. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
I say “everything,” but I do not mean it.
After we are done, we go sit in his truck. It’s an old pickup and nothing like the sports car he used to drive.
“What did you do?” he says.
“What makes you think I’ve done something?”
He side-eyes me. “You look like hell, you have a new phone number, and you want to get into your wife’s computer.”
As much as I want to tell someone everything, I cannot. No matter how far we go back, there are limits to friendship. Murder is one of them. So is keeping secrets about a friend’s wife.
“I cheated on Millicent,” I say.
He does not look surprised. “Not a good move, I’m guessing.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“So she kicked you out and wants everything? The house, the 401(k), the kids’ college fund?”
I wish that was all she wanted. “Not exactly,” I say. “Millicent wants more than that.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised.” He pauses for a second, shaking his head. “Now that you’ve gone and screwed it all up, I can tell you the truth.”
“What truth?”
“I never liked Millicent. She’s always seemed a little cold.”
I feel the urge to laugh, but that seems inappropriate. “She’s setting me up me for things I didn’t do. Some very bad things.”
“Illegal things?” he says.
“Yes. Very much yes.”
He holds up a hand, as if to stop me from saying more. “So I was right. She is cold.”
“You were right.”
He doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. He runs his hand around the steering wheel, the type of thing someone does without thinking, because they’re too busy thinking. It’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut, to let him decide how insane I am.
“If all you needed was to into that tablet, why tell me the rest?” he says.
“Because you and I go way back. I owe you the truth.”
“And?”
“And because I’ll probably be in the news soon.”
“The news? What the hell is she doing to you?”
“You’re the first one who has seen me since yesterday,” I say. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
He stares out the window, at the neon Golden Wok sign. “I don’t want to know more, do I?”
I shake my head no.
“That’s the real favor then,” he says. “Keep my mouth shut.”
“Sort of. Yes. But I do need to get into that,” I say, pointing to Millicent’s tablet. It is sitting on Andy’s dashboard. “Will you help me?”
Again, he is quiet.
Andy is going to do it. He may not know it, but he has already decided to help. Otherwise, he would have been gone by now. And by the way he looks, he may need this as much as I do.
“You’ve always been a pain in the ass,” he says. “And for the record, your tennis lessons are way too expensive.”
I smile a little. “Noted. But you accused me of sleeping with your wife. You owe me.”
He nods. “Give it to me.”
I give him the tablet.
The waiting is the worst. Like knowing a bomb will go off but not when or where. Or who. I spend the next day in Kekona’s theater room. It has a screen as wide as the wall, and distressed leather recliners. I watch Josh talk about Tobias nonstop. He even speaks to experts about what it is like to be deaf.
I have to admit some of the information is interesting. It would have been useful to have back when I needed it.
The breaking-news music interrupts my musings. The picture on the screen makes my heart jump.
Annabelle.
Sweet Annabelle, the meter maid whose boyfriend was killed by a drunk driver.
She is alive.
And she is still cute as ever, with her short hair and delicate features, but she is not smiling. She does not look happy at all when Josh introduces her as a “woman who has encountered the deaf man named Tobias.”
It is not surprising that she is the first to come forward. She could not save her boyfriend, so she wants to save everyone else.
Annabelle tells our story, as she knows it, beginning with the moment she almost ticketed the car I claimed was mine. She explains how we bumped into each other on the street and I invited her to join me for a drink. She even names the bar. If Eric, the bartender, has not already come forward, he will.
Annabelle leaves out nothing, not even the text she sent me. The police will now have that phone number.
I wonder if Millicent will answer when they call.
Last but not least, Annabelle says she spent the morning with a sketch artist. The drawing is released right after the interview ends.
It looks exactly like me and, at the same time, nothing like me.