Page 76 of The Note

Boston police had learned that the night Luke was killed, Nate called in sick for the small role he had in an indie play in the East Village.

And May was pretty proud that she was the one who found a cashier at the Jersey City AutoZone who recognized Nate as a customer from the previous weekend. He couldn’t confirm what he purchased, but the store did sell the kind of LED lights a driver could mount on a dash. Unless Nate had gotten rid of them already, she was confident Decker would find the lights and a police uniform in his apartment once he could enter with a search warrant.

“I’m not lying,” May said. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, but you are definitely lying about the guns.”

“How can you possibly know that?” she pressed.

Kelsey was slumped on the sofa. She was no longer playing a role in this setup. When tears began to form, May could see that they were real. She was crying because she knew the truth now.

“Because it was two different guns,” Nate said. “I know I saw that somewhere on the internet.”

It had been public knowledge that Luke waskilled with a .38, but the police had not yet released the fact that David Smith was shot with a 9mm.

A new text from Decker.That’ll do it.The evidence they had, combined with Nate’s apparent certainty that two different guns were used in the murders, would suffice. Carter could get his search warrant. And from there, they could make an arrest. The plan had been May’s idea. Carter went along with it only after she promised that she would not push Nate any further once they had the bare minimum for a probable cause affidavit.

The room fell silent as Nate realized what he had let slip. “I mean, it couldn’t possibly be, right? Because you didn’t do this, Kelsey. And even if some hit man was hired to kill two different men five years apart, they wouldn’t use the same gun. It just doesn’t make sense. That cop’s messing with you, Hanover.”

May nodded as if she was taking in new information. “I guess it’s possible he sent me a ballistics match from a different case and told me it was from Luke and Dave?”

He pointed an index finger toward her. “Bingo. I bet that’s exactly what he did.”

Lauren moved behind May’s chair to give her a quick shoulder squeeze. “It’s been a stressful week. We have to stop hauling out accusations against each other, okay? We need to stick together.”

“I can’t believe I fell for it,” May said. “I’m sosorry, Kelsey. For him to make up something like that? It probably means they don’t have any evidence at all.”

It was exactly as they had planned it. Lower the temperature, continue with drinks, pretend everything was normal. Keep Nate occupied while Carter got a search warrant and went to Nate’s apartment.

But Kelsey was still crying. Nate rubbed her back. “It’s going to be okay. Did you hear her? There’s no evidence.”

When Kelsey looked up, she turned to face her brother. “When I called you earlier, I told you that if my father did this, he did it for me, and yet it only ruined my life.”

“But he didn’t. Nobody we know did this.”

“You did,” she said. “And you ruined my life. Can’t you see that?”

“Kelsey, no—” He reached as if to hug her, but she leapt from the sofa, upending the coffee table. A glass shattered. Wine began to spread its way across the rug. So much red.

“I’m a pariah now, Nate. I order food under fake names. I have to keep working for my father for the rest of my life, who pays me just enough to have a good life but not have actual freedom, because no other employer will touch me. Men—you certainly made sure I’d never have a relationship again, didn’t you? Luke and Dave didn’t deserve to die. And Marnie? Did you reallykill Marnie, just because she heard your crazy talk that night?”

“I didn’t kill anyone, Kelsey. May’s gotten all up in your head.”

May was trying to stem the flow of the wine, worried it might spread under the sofa, where the recording device was planted. “It’s like Lauren said. We need to stop accusing each other—”

“They know about the Hertz rental, Nate.”

May bit her lower lip. There was no way to walk that back. She had to hope Carter and Danny were still listening.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nate said defiantly. “They won’t be able to prove anything, because I didn’t do it.”

“They’ll try to prove it, though. The trial will be front-page news. I’ll have to testify about my surgery, my embryos, lying to Dave about my own name—everyone will find out everything. You may or may not go to prison for the rest of your life, but any hope I have at a normal life will be gone forever. This whole time I’ve been standing by you, you’ve been a murderer—since college.”

Nate was facing Kelsey, his hands on her knees, as if no one else was in the room. “With Marnie, I didn’t mean to. I was grabbing her arm to get her to understand why she couldn’t tell anyone. She pulled away and tripped. Her head was bleeding.”

“So you drowned her?”

“I thought she was dead and I freaked out.That’s not murder. And Luke? Fuck that guy. He dumped you and was going to keep you from having children.”

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