Monday, August 22, 1994, 10:00 p.m.
Rosa came to my room with a bottle of wine, poured me a glass, and basical y forced me to drink it. She held my hand and told me that she was sorry. I told her that the police didn’t care. That they were pretending it was an accident. She shrugged, like that made sense. I said I couldn’t understand why they believed everything Mike said.
Why they weren’t even investigating, and she said that that was probably because of the Spencer family.
“You can’t be surprised, Laura. People like the Spencers, if they don’t want an investigation, that is how it wil be.”
I started to get worked up. “You’re saying they bribed the police?”
“I’m not saying that. It doesn’t have to be so blatant. There would just be . . . pressure. This is America. Money talks.”
“But his parents . . . why wouldn’t they want the truth?”
“If they believe Tom kil ed himself, they wil not want it confirmed.
They wil not want people speculating about his reasons. It’s better for it to be an accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident. That’s what I’ve been saying. Why would Tom go home and start drinking, so late at night? Why would he go to the boat by himself?”
“You might never know the answers to your questions. You knew him, but . . . forgive me . . . you did not know him.”
I pul ed my hand away. She didn’t get it. She looked at me with that flat expression that gave nothing away. For a moment, I hated her.
“You think his friend kil ed him?” That was what she said. Just blandly, as if she were asking if Mike had taken out the trash. My mind flashed through everything that had happened, right from the beginning. The phone cal I’d overheard—an argument about money.
Mike’s obsession with Tom’s father’s boat. His mysterious sailing trip north. Why would a rich Virginia col ege kid have friends in a fishing port in Canada? His bul shit story about his “friend” Dom. And his obsession, his complete insistence that they sail the boat back to Virginia. His fury when he realized that Tom was serious about flying home instead. Last of al I thought about Daniel Fawkes’s face as he looked at me and spewed out Mike’s story. Why would Mike go to the police and tel them a bunch of lies about me? There could only be one reason. I told Rosa I thought he kil ed Tom. She told me it didn’t matter. So I explained again.
“Rosa, what I’m saying is that I think maybe Mike was running drugs. I know it seems crazy, but . . .”
“I’m not tel ing you you’re wrong. I’m tel ing you it doesn’t matter.”
I stood up and knocked back the rest of the glass of wine she’d given me while she kept talking.
“Listen to me, Laura. You are a young girl, with no money, and very few friends. You have no proof of anything. These are rich people. You went to the police. You tried to talk to them, and you saw what happened. Perhaps this Michael kil ed your friend, but if you pursue this you wil be the one who is hurt.”
It went on like that for a while. Me, shaking my head again and again and Rosa, trying patiently to explain to me her theory of rich people. Which was basical y that they’re dangerous. That getting mixed up with them always ends up in disaster for people like us.
(The like us almost . . . almost . . . made me laugh. I’d bet what little I have that Rosa has a fortune salted away. But if I pointed that out to her, I’m fairly sure she’d say back that there’s rich and then there’s rich, and I guess she’d be right about that.) I listened to her, or at least I made sure I looked like I was listening to her, but al the time I was planning. I need proof. If I had proof I could go to the cops, or maybe to Tom’s parents and tel them everything. So I listened to Rosa and I drank with her and I agreed with everything she said. I’m not sure that she believed me. Rosa is shrewd. But she left after an hour or so, which is good. I need to be alone now. I have things to do.
Hannah
EIGHT
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019
“We’l have to be careful,” Rob Parekh said. “It seems clear that Prosper doesn’t want to be found.”
They were sitting in the Project offices—Parekh, Camila, Hannah, and Sean. The day hadn’t started that wel . Hannah stil hadn’t succeeded in getting Laura on the phone. She’d reached Jan an hour before, and Jan had said she’d cal as soon as she’d been to the house. Waiting on that update was incredibly distracting and Hannah had to force her attention back to what was happening in the room. Which wasn’t much. Camila had been intent on delivering their update to Robert Parekh first thing Thursday morning, in person, but Parekh was less excited than they’d expected. He seemed distracted too, under pressure.
“I think we should fol ow up quickly,” Camila said. “I think there’s a risk that Beth, the girl who gave us the address, wil have second thoughts. If she comes clean to her mother that she told us, Sophia might cal her brother and he might go into hiding.”
“I’ve looked up the house,” Hannah said quietly. “Online. It’s in the suburbs in a very exclusive area. Expensive.”
“It’s been eleven years,” Parekh said. “That’s a lot of time.
Enough time for Prosper to build a new life. If he’s done wel for himself, that could work for us or against us.” Parekh was sitting on the edge of his desk, hands lightly clasped in front of him. “If he’s married, with kids, then he’s less likely to leave town as soon as he sees us coming. On the other hand he’s real y not going to want a nice quiet life to be pul ed apart by a murder trial, which makes him less likely to be cooperative. It’s odd that the sister lied. But maybe they’re afraid of publicity. They don’t want the Prosper name associated with Dandridge.”
“I think he’s probably changed his name,” Hannah said.
“Oh?” Parekh’s eyes were on her, measuring and assessing.
Hannah shifted in her seat.
“Wel . You’ve been looking for Neil Prosper for a while,” she said.
“And Dandridge’s previous attorney searched for him at length.”
“I’m not sure we can take him at his word about that,” Parekh said. “There are a hel of a lot of gaps in his work.”
“Okay,” Hannah said. “But we know that Prosper essential y disappeared after the murders. There’s no record of him online, on social media. That might have made sense if he was stil a drug user or an addict, living at the edges of the system. But if he is living in an expensive house, with a family, going to work every day—Wel , I think it’s very hard for people to have absolutely no internet presence at al in those circumstances.”
“Did you check the property records for the address? Find out whose name it’s registered under?” Parekh asked.
“I tried,” Hannah said. “The property is registered to a corporation and I didn’t have any luck in tracing the ultimate owners.”