Page 57 of Stay Away from Him

“The stalker theory was bullshit from the beginning,” Derek growled. He was hunching over his coffee, barely talking to her anymore—more like he was indulging in an angry internal monologue, nursing a grudge he’d held for a long, long time. “Thomas and his lawyer cooked it up just to create another suspect. But they couldn’t even come up with a name.”

“Rosedidreport a stalker though, didn’t she?”

“Rose had problems,” Derek says. “She had a long history of struggling with her mental health, and she’d just recently pulled out of therapy. She was in a bad place when she made the report. I honestly couldn’t figure out if someone was really following her, or if it was all in her head. Honestly, if anyone was tormenting Rose, it wasThomas. You know there was an allegation that he was physically abusive with her, right?”

Melissa let out a breath almost involuntarily, as though she’d been punched in the stomach. “Rose reported it?”

“No,” Derek said. “But you know that’s no proof of anything. Plenty of women don’t report their abusers. A couple weeks after Rose went missing, it was actuallyKelliwho went public with the allegation that Thomas was violent.”

Kelli. Another person Melissa still wasn’t sure if she could trust. In her experience, Kelli had been more violent than Thomas had. She was the one who’d hurt Bradley—even if accidentally—while Thomas was the one who mended the wound.

“They were friends,” Derek continued. “Kelli was actuallytherewhen Rose had to go to the ER. Rose was too scared to report what really happened. But Kelli knew.”

“Was that what made you start looking at Thomas?” Melissa asked. “It started as a missing persons case, didn’t it?”

“It did,” Derek said. “And it landed on my desk. We treated it like any other missing persons report, for about a week. We had search parties walking local fields, wooded areas. Calling her name. Beating the brush for bodies. We got her photo on the local news, asked the public for information that could lead to her safe return.” He took a sip of coffee, grimaced as he swallowed it down, then kept talking. “With her mental health history, the depression and whatnot, we started off figuring there was a pretty good chance she just had a breakdown and ran off. Or worse, killed herself. But we had a late start because Thomas had waited a while to report hermissing. He had an excuse, said he’d had an idea about where she might have been and went to find her before reporting anything.”

“The cabin,” Melissa said. “Up north.”

“Right. It sounded plausible enough, at first.” Derek absently moved his coffee cup in small circles on the table, twisting it like a combination lock with his thumb and forefinger on the rim. “But then we got a tip. From a neighbor. Said they’d seen Thomas sneak into his neighbor’s house through the back door, past few days. Amelia Harkness. We dig into it, turns out they dated years ago, before Thomas and Rose got married, and then stayed close ever since. Amelia was even watching the girls that weekend, when Thomas was gone and Rose went missing. So I immediately think, affair? That’s motive.”

Melissa’s jaw tightened. Derek was speaking her fears aloud—her fears about the relationship between Amelia and Thomas. She closed her eyes and shook her head, half rejecting what Derek was saying, half trying to push the thoughts out of her own mind, to tamp them back down.

“No,” she said. “Amelia is a therapist. He was going to her for support. During a difficult time.”

“That’s what he said,” Derek said. “But it’s a perfect cover, isn’t it? He makes up an excuse for stepping out on his wife while she’s a missing person—pretty shitty behavior, if it becomes public.Andhe and Amelia get to claim doctor-patient confidentiality, so none of what gets said between them is admissible in court.”

Melissa leaned forward. “Did you ever look at Amelia as an accomplice?” she asked. “Or—could she have killed Rose without Thomas’s knowledge?” She realized as she said it that she almost hoped it was true. If Amelia killed Rose, if Melissa could prove it, then she could clear Thomas’s nameandget rid of Amelia in a single stroke.

“We looked at a lot of theories,” Derek said. “That’s one. Itisstrange. I mean, if it was just therapy Thomas was going to her for—well, the neighbor said he was sneaking over there practically every day. Who goes to therapy once a day?”

“Someone who’s really going through a terrible time,” she said. “Someone whose beloved wife is missing. Someone who’s close to a breakdown himself but needs to keep it together for his kids.”

“I suppose,” Derek said. “But there were other strange things about it. Like the fact that Amelia seeing Thomas as a patient was technically a major breach of ethics. A lot of counselors wouldn’t see someone they’d had a prior romantic relationship with. It’s a conflict of interest. Oh, they both had their explanations: Thomas was so stressed out by Rose’s disappearance that he couldn’t handle the stress of finding someone to talk to, Amelia was right there, she was a family friend, their prior relationship was ancient history…”

“It makes sense,” Melissa said. “Doesn’t it? You could argue it wasn’t a good idea. But I understand why Thomas would’ve pushed for it. And why Amelia would’ve agreed.”

“You could look at it like that,” Derek said. “But to me, it looked like two people who had a mutual reason to want Rose Danver gone had figured out a way to be together but not answer questions about it—by calling ittherapy.”

Melissa winced. Derek was right. There were two ways to look at this—one looked good for Thomas, and the other very much didn’t.

“And then the tip from Kelli came?”

“Yeah. Though it didn’t come as a tip. Kelli made the allegation on social media. Tagged a few local news stations, said it on air.”

Melissa frowned. “Isn’t that odd? Sounds to me like she wanted the spotlight more than anything.”

Derek made a pained face, drew air through clenched teeth. “Yeah. She can be like that. It doesn’t mean what she said wasn’t true. She had pictures and everything. Rose’s face, all bruised up. Cuts on her cheek, on her eyebrow.”

Melissa sat back as if pushed, held to the back of the booth by the shoulders. But then her mind kept moving, thinking about all the reasons Kelli Walker might have had photos of a beaten Rose Danver on her phone. Kelli and Melissa had gone through a reconciliation, of sorts, but Melissa still thought Kelli was a little unhinged. And she had no idea what the friendship between Kelli and Rose was really like. Thomas swore that theyweren’tfriends, that Kelli was obsessed with Rose, but Rose only tolerated Kelli. Who was to say it wasn’tKelliwho attacked Rose, maybe after Rose told her what she really thought of her? Then took her to the ER, tried to gaslight her that it wasThomaswho’d attacked her. And Kelli was, by her own admission, the last to see Rose alive. Couldshehave killed Rose, disposed of the body, then made a public stink about Thomas being abusive, smearing him on the local news, to throw the police off her trail?

“After Kelli’s accusation, we started looking at Thomas more seriously,” Derek said. “Found out about his purchases, the shovel and the tarp. His long absence up north—enough time to dispose of a body. Him turning off his phone so his movements couldn’t be tracked. It was after we found some traces of Rose’s blood in their kitchen that we declared Rose presumed dead, then brought charges against Thomas. It was so long after Rose’s presumed murder that a lot of the physical evidence was gone or contaminated. Thomas had had the house deep cleaned, the car detailed. We still thought we had enough to get a conviction, though. Until it all went to shit.”

“Because Thomas and his lawyer went public with the stalker theory,” Melissa said. “And you got fired.”

Derek looked down, stared into the mouth of the coffee cup. “I know both of those investigations were as rigorous as they could be—I know because I led them. But it didn’t matter. To the public, it looked like incompetence.”

“Incompetence that had led to an innocent man being charged with murder.”

---