Page 65 of The Girl and the Lies

She clicks a few commands, and the screen fills with several images of Ander as well as a descriptive bio and the answers to several prying questions. If it wasn’t for the fact that this woman had met up with Ander in person on multiple occasions, I would be tempted to think that this was all crafted by someone else. It’s so completely against everything that Ander presented himself as being.

“I really appreciate you coming forward with this,” I tell Caroline.

We stand up, and she shakes my hand again.

She lets out a heavy sigh. “I guess it’s time to go home and talk to my husband,” she says. “I don’t want him to find out about this for the first time on the news.”

“I’m going to do my best to keep it discreet for as long as possible,” I tell her. “But it’s a good idea to tell him. Thank you again.”

She leaves, and Detective Fuller comes into the room. The look in his eyes tells me he was watching the entire interaction on the feed from the camera mounted in the corner of the room.

“Did she just tell you that she’s been sleeping with Ander Ward, the pious security guard wracked with grief over the loss of his pregnant wife?” he asks.

“That would be what she said,” I tell him. “And by the messages I just read between them, she’s not exaggerating. I think I need to go have a chat with him.”

“I wanted to let you know that I put in a request for Marshall Powell’s phone records. They said we should be getting them possibly tomorrow.”

“Great, thank you,” I say.

I call Ander from the car.

“I need to talk to you,” I tell him. “Are you still at the memorial?”

“No, I’m at my house. What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Ander’s eyebrows are knit together, his expression concerned, when he opens the door to me at his house. There’s still a lingering smell of industrial-strength cleaners in the air, and I can see the damage to the paint on the wall where the permanent marker was scrubbed away. We walk into the living room where I sat with him and Sabrina as I interviewed them about Gideon, and I feel a tightness in my chest.

“Do you want to sit down?” he asks.

“Not particularly,” I say. “When were you planning on starting to be honest with me?”

He looks confused as he lowers himself into his chair. “What do you mean? I have been honest with you.”

“No, you haven’t. Do the words ‘Secret Keepers’ mean anything to you?” I ask.

He looks stunned for a second, then his head drops into his hands. “Shit.”

“Strong word for someone so committed to the ministry and the way of the truth,” I say. “Of course, that’s nothing compared to what was going on through that website, is it? And before you try to twist and concoct anything, I have already seen it and know the details. So please don’t waste my time by pretending to not know what I’m talking about.”

Ander lifts his head. “I’m not going to. I’m just so embarrassed.”

“I’m sure you are. And you should be. But that’s really not what you should be worried about right now. Your wife, who was carrying your child, was murdered, and you’ve been maintaining a profile talking about how trapped you felt in your marriage to her and that you never wanted children. That you agreed to that before you got married and couldn’t even imagine ever wanting them. Do you understand how that looks?” I ask.

His face goes red, and he jumps to his feet.

“Agent Griffin, I admit I was doing something horrible. I went behind my wife’s back, and I sinned against her. I broke my marriage vows and violated the trust that she put in me from the day we met. I can’t deny that, and I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I didn’t know she was pregnant until I saw it on the news. She must have told Annette, but she never told me. I said things on that site that I am not proud of, and I can’t change them, but you can’t possibly think that I killed Sabrina. I would never be able to do something like that.

“I was on that site for entertainment. It was a wrong decision, and I own that. We got into a slump, and I just wanted to feel that rush again. But even if you don’t believe me about that, you have to remember that I was at my mother’s house when she was killed. There are probably a dozen police officers, firefighters, and neighbors who can tell you that. I was unfaithful to my wife, but I didn’t murder her. I would have no reason to.”

With nothing left to say to Ander, I go back to Bellamy and Eric’s house. I take out all my notes and spread them out on the coffee table in the living room so I can look over them.

“Wow,” Bellamy says, coming into the room with a cup of tea. “I wish I had a piece of butcher paper and a wall to offer you.”

“That would be great,” I tell her. “I’ve got to figure out a way to make those transportable.”

This process really would be easier if I was at home and could plaster the wall with a giant piece of paper like I usually do during investigations. There’s a lot to be said for being able to step back and look at all the notes and webs at the same time. Sometimes something doesn’t occur to me until I see it right up there in front of me. But since I can’t do that here, I’m resigned to having everything as spread out on the table as I can and rereading everything until it feels like I could recite them verbatim.

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