Page 37 of The Girl and the Lies

“He’s in the kitchen,” he says.

I nod and move deeper into the house to get to the kitchen. I see the detective as soon as I get into the room.

“Agent Griffin,” he says, coming toward me.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Her husband was called away with a family emergency this morning, and when he came back, he found her.”

“Is the body still here?” I ask.

“Right over here.”

He leads me around a partial wall at the back of the room to a set of back steps leading up to the second floor. Sabrina Ward’s body is sprawled on the steps, blood soaking her head and the top of the bathrobe she’s wearing. One arm is stretched out above her, and I notice a gold bracelet with a capsule-shaped cage on it around her wrist.

“Looks like she was bludgeoned,” I say. “Was any weapon found?”

“No,” Detective Fuller says. “The scene is exactly the way he found it. We’re waiting for the crime scene photographer to arrive.”

I look around the room and see the stark black permanent marker on the walls just like in Gideon’s apartment. The words are written in the same careful block lettering:

May you be haunted by your choice forever

Was it worth it?

To the wicked give their due

“What about the rest of the house?” I ask.

“There are similar messages written on the walls in the living room and the bedroom. Her phone was found in the master bedroom. She missed a couple of calls from her husband. It looks like he was calling while the attack was happening,” Detective Fuller says.

“Where was he when this happened? You said there was some kind of family emergency?” I ask.

“His mother had a fire at her house,” the detective tells me. “A building on her property caught on fire early this morning, and she called him to help her handle it.”

“Where is he now?” I ask.

“He was transferred to the station,” he says.

“I’m going to go talk to him. Let me know if anything shows up when the scene is processed,” I say.

I take a final look at the body and feel a sick twinge in my belly. I sat with this woman just a couple of days ago right in her own living room. She talked to me about how she felt about the threats and the fear she went through when she thought someone was following her. I listened to her talk and watched her husband wrap his arm around her like he was trying to defend her from some unseen force she felt around her. Now she’s lying dead on the stairs, stretched across them like she was trying to escape her assailant but was taken down before she had the chance.

The officers have Ander in a room furnished with a couch and a table rather than in one of the interrogation rooms. He’s hunched in one corner of the couch, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee like what he’s just been through has taken away all his warmth and now he’s trying to draw it out of the mug. His head lifts when I walk into the room, and I see a flicker of something go across his eyes. The emotion is etched deeply into his face, making him look gray and sunken.

“Agent Griffin,” he says.

“Hi, Ander. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“I know this is really difficult for you, but I need to talk to you about what happened,” I say.

He nods. “Go ahead.”

I pull a chair up closer to the couch and sit down, taking out my notepad and pen so I can jot down anything significant.

“First, is there anything I can get you? Are you hungry?” I ask.

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