As much as I wanted to look away, I made myself study Stephen. His hair was dry. He wasn’t wearing pajamas, nor was he wearing the clothes he’d had on the day before. The khaki pants looked clean, except for the blood on them, and the light-colored button-down shirt still had fresh ironing creases on the cuffs. Was he just getting ready for his day or had he been expecting someone?
Naomi tried to coax Rebecca out of the room, but Rebecca reached for Stephen again, flinging herself on him and his blood. Naomi and Kenneth worked together to bundle Rebecca into a chair in the corner. I noticed that Sarah hadn’t come into the room at the sound of Rebecca’s cry, nor had any curious children poked their heads in. It confirmed what I had thought yesterday about the children being used to ignoring adult arguments.
Conscious that the police might frown on this behavior, I nonetheless looked around for Stephen’s phone and spotted it on the night table. There was no password locking it, so I easily scrolled through the record of his calls from the last few days.
Mostly they were from the wives, Rebecca from yesterday afternoon asking when he’d be home, Carolyn asking for someone to come lift a box for her, Jennifer reminding him to deposit $300 into his retirement account and something about an appointment Saturday night with an old friend, Joanna telling him she’d be home late last Friday. Sarah hadn’t sent him a text in the last week or so, and the only text that had come this morning was from Naomi, telling him she’d be arriving soon, just as she’d told me.
Just before I closed the phone, I saw there was a missed call from “Hector Perez,” and it took me a moment to place the name. The neighbors in whose garden Joanna used to work. I would have to follow up on that later.
Rebecca had quieted down at last, no longer sobbing, and her eyes seemed to have glazed over, not really seeing Stephen anymore.
“You should take your mother out of here,” I said to Naomi. “You help,” I directed Kenneth, because it looked as if Rebecca wasn’t going to be able to walk and I didn’t think Naomi could carry her alone.
Kenneth hesitated and I said, “Go on.”
He seemed surprised that I was taking charge, but it was only until Rebecca was ready to take her rightful place back.
Kenneth hoisted Rebecca out of the chair and in one swift motion got her into his arms, holding her like a baby. Naomi held her mother’s hand and whispered calming things to her, making sure her nightgown didn’t trip Kenneth up.
And then I was alone in the room, with quiet to think. This was a murder. Someone had planned it out and committed it in cold blood. Which of the other four wives did I think had done it?
Sarah had clearly hated Stephen; for now, she seemed the most likely suspect. I had seen her act angry, cold, unloving, and bitter to different members of her family. But could those difficult emotions blossom into murder?
Jennifer had no motive that I could see. She could have left Stephen any time she wanted without losing children or money. I tried to imagine her involved in a violent crime of passion or premeditation, and could only picture the affectless, almost bored expression behind her cat-eye glasses.
Carolyn was pregnant and dependent both financially and emotionally on Stephen and her place here with the other wives. She had seemed so weak and ineffectual to me. Could I imagine her wielding a kitchen knife, or overpowering the physically intimidating Stephen?
Joanna was barely older than a teenager. Last night, she had come to the house to deliver a second message of danger to Stephen, and I couldn’t tell what that meant. That she had some advance knowledge of something? Or was this proof that her gift for seeing the future was real?
I tried to consider if any of the children might be suspects. The grown children I hadn’t met, Joseph, Aaron, and Ruth, were the most likely to be physically strong enough to overwhelm their father with a kitchen knife, but they weren’t at home. Maybe they could have snuck back onto the compound without being noticed. The only boys living here were surely too young, however. And Talitha, who had been furious at her father about her dead cat, wasn’t tall enough to even reach his chest, I didn’t think.
Trying to be methodical, I took another careful survey of the room, looking for anything unusual or out of place. Of course, I had never seen the room before, so I had no idea if this was what it usually looked like. The bedcovers were rumpled, unmade, and there were a few items on the carpet by what seemed to be Stephen’s side of the bed: a newspaper, books, a copy of the Ensign, the official church magazine, though it didn’t look like the most recent one. I saw nothing broken and no sign of anything missing, no notable crushed carpet marks.
I turned the lock on the doorknob behind me as I left, thinking that at least I’d leave the scene as undisturbed as possible for when the police eventually arrived. It wouldn’t get me out of a stern lecture, I was sure, about tampering with evidence and getting involved in an investigation that should have been left to law enforcement. But if I figured out who was the most likely suspect by then, well, the proof would be in the pudding.