Page 63 of The Silent Patient

“Alicia wasno waytough enough to kill anyone. She wasn’t a killer. Take it from me. She’s innocent. I’m a hundred percent sure.”

“I’m curious how you can be so positive, given the evidence—”

“I don’t give a shit about that. I’ve got my own evidence.”

“You do?”

“You bet. But first… I need to know if I can trust you.” Barbie’s eyes searched mine hungrily.

I met her gaze steadily.

Then she came out with it, just like that: “You see, there was aman.”

“A man?”

“Yes. Watching.”

I was a little taken aback and immediately alert. “What do you mean, watching?”

“Just what I said. Watching. I told the police, but they didn’t seem interested. They made up their minds the moment they found Alicia with Gabriel’s body and the gun. They didn’t want to listen to any other story.”

“What story—exactly?”

“I’ll tell you. And you’ll see why I wanted you to come over tonight. It’s worth hearing.”

Just get on with it, I thought. But I said nothing and smiled encouragingly.

She refilled her glass. “It started a couple of weeks before the murder. I went over to see Alicia, and we had a drink, and I noticed she was quieter than usual—I said, ‘Are you okay?’ And she started crying. I’d never seen her like that before. She was crying her eyes out. She was normally so reserved, you know… but that day she just let go. She was a mess, honey, a real mess.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked me if I’d noticed anyone hanging around in the neighborhood. She’d seen a man on the street, watching her.” Barbie hesitated. “I’ll show you. She texted this to me.”

Barbie’s manicured hands stretched for her phone, and she searched through her photos on it. She thrust the phone at my face.

I stared at it. It took me a second to make sense of what I was seeing. A blurred photograph of a tree.

“What is it?”

“What does it look like?”

“A tree?”

“Behind the tree.”

Behind the tree was a gray blob—it could have been anything from a lamppost to a large dog.

“It’s aman. You can see his outline quite distinctly.”

I wasn’t convinced but didn’t argue. I didn’t want Barbie to get distracted. “Keep going.”

“That’s it.”

“But what happened?”

Barbie shrugged. “Nothing. I told Alicia to tell the cops—and that was when I found out she hadn’t even told her husband about it.”

“She hadn’t told Gabriel? Why not?”

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