Page 138 of State of Alert

“Always?”

“Yes. I told you. I loved her.”

“Even when she was spying on you all the time?”

“She did that because she was concerned about my safety. Not because she didn’t trust me. I never gave her any reason not to trust me.”

“I think you gave her a very good reason not to trust you—she just didn’t know that you betrayed her by providing her children with secret phones so they could defy her.”

“You don’t understand how it was.”

“To me, it seems like life with Elaine was torturous for you and your daughters.”

“It could be. At times. Other times, it was wonderful. She went all out for birthdays, holidays, anniversaries. She was an amazing cook who loved nothing more than having all four of us at the table for dinner after a long day. She loved gardening and reading and binge-watching her favorite shows. There wasa lot more to her than the traumatized sister of a murder victim.”

“That murder was never solved. Do you think Elaine feared the murderer might come for someone else she loved?”

“I don’t think she was lying awake at night, worrying about that particular scenario, but of course it was a possibility as long as the person who killed her sister remained at large.”

“Try calling your daughters again.”

He tried both numbers and got voice mail for both. “They’re supposed to answer those phones. That’s the deal we made when I agreed to get them.”

“What else did you negotiate with them on the side?”

“Sometimes I would put their phones where they were supposed to be so that when Elaine tracked them, she wouldn’t panic about where they were.”

“That’s diabolical.”

“We did what we had to, Lieutenant. It was a very difficult situation, and we were full of empathy for the cause of it, but that didn’t make it easy to live with.”

“What was your plan if Elaine found out about the second phones and the planting of the ones she knew about?”

“How was she going to find out? Only the three of us knew, and we weren’t going to tell her.”

“What if, say, Jada was supposed to be at Ali’s and Elaine went there, but Jada wasn’t there?”

“Thankfully, that never happened, but we were careful. We made sure to mostly tell her the truth. Like, for example, if Zoe was going somewhere in a friend’s car, we would tell Elaine that she was at the friend’s house and would be home at whatever time. The plan worked well, and it gave us all some breathing room. The fighting was less intense than it had been before.”

“How long ago did you get the second phones?”

“Two months or so. Zoe came to me with the idea and begged me for help. I agreed to it only if they both promised toalways tell me where they really were—and always answer those phones if I called. Today is the first time they haven’t done that.”

“Tell me the truth. Do you think it’s possible they harmed your wife?”

“No way. They couldn’t have.”

“Look at it from my point of view for a second. Remember all the things I’ve mentioned about no forced entry and no sign that Elaine let someone in and then went to take a shower. Why would she do that? Recall how Zoe’s main cell phone was at Zeke’s house all afternoon, but if we dig deeper, will we find that they weren’t there at all? If we seize his car, will we see movement during the hours in question on Sunday? If it was them, we’ll prove it eventually.”

His eyes filled with tears. “These last few years… It’s been a lot. There were times when I wanted to kill all of them. I remember thinking this is the kind of shit that causes people to snap and kill their whole family and then themselves. But it never once occurred to me to actually do that, and I can’t imagine for the life of me those two girls planning something like this. I just can’t.”

“What about Zeke?”

“What about him?”

“Could he have planned it for them?”

“I… I don’t know him well enough to say that.”

---