Page 41 of The Girl and the Lies

“We were friends,” she says. “She was such a sweet woman. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“Tell me what happened this morning,” I say.

“I really don’t know,” she says. “Really early this morning, I thought I heard something like screaming. It woke me up from a really deep sleep, and I couldn’t really process where I thought it was coming from. I didn’t hear it again and decided it must have been in a dream, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then later I was outside drinking my coffee on the porch and saw Ander get home. He barely even waved at me. He just headed right inside the house. A couple minutes later, I heard him shout, and he came running out of the house on the phone shouting about his wife being dead. It happened that fast.

“I went over to him to find out what was wrong, but he was too worked up and pacing around the yard while he talked to the police. He was saying that he found his wife dead on the stairs and it looked like she’d been murdered. I just screamed. He came over to me and demanded I tell him what happened, but I hadn’t seen anything. I didn’t know. I thought about the sound that woke me up after the police got here and were questioning me.” She hangs her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t do anything. Maybe I could have helped her.”

“That’s very unlikely,” I tell her. “You didn’t do anything wrong, and you need to not let yourself think that you did. This is a tragedy, and what we need to focus on right now is finding the person responsible so they can be brought to justice.”

“I just wish there was something else I could do. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that she’s really gone. That I won’t see her while I’m gardening and we won’t have any more chats over coffee. Everything was looking so bright for her. Just as they were about to start a family,” she says.

“Start a family?” I ask.

Annette nods and wipes tears from her eyes. “Sabrina was pregnant. At least, she was very sure that she was. She hadn’t been to the doctor yet, but when she told me, she said she knew her body and had no question in her mind that the early test that she took was right. She was so excited. Being a mother has been something she’s wanted for years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person as happy as she was when she told me. She’d just taken the test and said she just had to say it to somebody or she was going to burst. She was trying to come up with some cute way to tell Ander. They would have been the sweetest family.”

“Did Sabrina ever talk to you about being afraid to be home alone or anything that was happening in her life that was scaring her?” I ask, not wanting to give too many leading details.

“You mean the threats Ander was getting from work?” she says. “Yeah, she talked to me about it some. It really unnerved her. For a little while, she was thinking she might ask Ander to quit even though he was the only one working. But then she found out about the baby. He put in cameras to make her feel better, and she said that she felt safe because of them.”

“Did you know that she called the police a couple of times because she thought someone was in the house?” I ask.

“I know. She said it made her feel so ridiculous that she panicked over nothing. She did a couple of online sessions with a therapist to help her deal with it, and they convinced her that she was just experiencing anxiety, and the police never found anything. That made her feel a lot calmer, I think. A lot of good that did,” she mutters.

As I’m leaving Annette’s house, I notice a car pull up in front of the house, and Ander climbs out of the back seat. He stops a step up into the lawn and stares at the house, not moving past the crime scene tape. I call out to him, and he turns to watch me jog across the lawn toward him.

“How’s your mother?” I ask.

“She’s doing much better now. She wasn’t having a heart attack. They said it was a panic attack, and that can sometimes mimic the symptoms of a heart attack. They gave her some fluids and sedatives to help her calm down then sent her home,” he says.

“That’s good to hear,” I say.

“I was going to get that camera footage for you, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to go inside,” he says.

“Let me go talk to the detective,” I say. “The scene is still being processed, so they likely won’t want you to go inside, but I might be able to bring the computer out to you.”

“It’s in the office,” he says.

“I’ll be right back.”

I duck under the tape and nod at the officer, who lets me through into the house. Detective Fuller is in the living room on the phone when I walk in, but he quickly ends the call and steps up to me.

“Agent Griffin,” he says. “Have you found out anything new?”

“I confirmed with the police near Ander’s mother’s home that he was at the scene very soon after she called him, well within the amount of time they expected it to take for him to travel from here to there, and he was with her the entire time. The calls from him that are on Sabrina’s phone were made from his mother’s house. The officers saw him make them and then heard him mention to his mother that she wasn’t answering and needed to check on her.

“I also spoke with a couple of neighbors. One across the street said that she didn’t see anything and didn’t have much to say about them as a couple other than that they always seemed happy. The next-door neighbor was friends with Sabrina and told me that she thinks she heard a scream really early this morning, but she can’t be sure. She didn’t see anything either. She did tell me that Sabrina Ward thought she was pregnant.”

“That just adds another layer to the tragedy,” he says.

I nod. “Ander Ward just got back here from checking on his mother at the hospital. I know he can’t come inside right now, but I asked him to get me the footage from the camera at the front of the house. I’m going to get his laptop from his office and bring it out to him.”

“Hopefully, there will be something on it,” he says. “Right now all we have is the window that the perpetrator used to get inside, the messages written on the walls, and her body. No fingerprints, no weapon. Nothing.”

“We’ll find something,” I tell him.

I find the office and unplug the laptop, carrying it outside to Ander.

“Thanks,” he says. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back inside there.”

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