Page 11 of Go First

“Can you describe them?”

“Stocky build, very short brown hair, I think, no idea about the eyes.Wearing a black shirt and black pants, like all the others.”

“Male or female?”

“You’d think I would remember, but I don’t.I’m sorry.But there’s just one detail.It stood out because it was so unexpected.”

“What was it?”

“Everyone else was clean and tidy.My husband insisted on it.But this person had mud on their shoe.”

Kate made a few notes.It was one of those clues that could go either way.It could bust open the case.Or it could mean nothing at all, except wasted man-hours.

“Do you think it’s possible that it was one of the regular staff, but your senses might have been distorted by the onset of the migraine?”

“No,” Anne replied, after some thought.“Because I remember thinking that I didn’t recognise them, and resolving that I would ask them who they were when they returned with my water.”

“And did you?”

“No.For the simple reason that they never returned with my water.I asked Miguel for one instead, but I began to feel so unwell that I retreated to my bedroom before he could bring it to me.”

“So this would have been shortly before 9pm?”Kate checked, whilst scribbling notes.

“It would.”

They sat in silence for a moment.Anne’s hands were folded neatly now, the handkerchief tucked flat across her lap.Suddenly, she drew breath, almost startling Kate.

“Does that I mean I might have spoken to my husband’s killer?”

Kate closed her notebook quietly.“It might.But there are a lot of other, possible explanations.Don’t lose sleep over it.”

“I don’t sleep anyway,” said Mrs Whitfield.

Kate didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing, and stood up, saying, “Thank you for your time today, Mrs Whitfield.I’ll be in touch.”

Anne rose immediately, a little too quickly, as though she was relieved the exchange was ending.“I wish I could help more,” she said, escorting Kate to the door.“But Jonathan truly was a good man.He wanted nothing but to serve.”

Kate gave her a small nod.“Sometimes the truth takes time to reveal itself.”

Anne’s smile faltered, just slightly, before she recovered.“Then I pray you find it.”

Outside, the sunlight was blinding.Kate slipped on her sunglasses and walked back to her car via the path that ran around the lake, detouring for a quick conversation with Pearl Gibney, Whitfield’s secretary.

Then she sat for a while behind the wheel of Marcus’s FBI-issue black sedan, staring at the gleaming façade of the Whitfield estate.The house seemed to shimmer, unreal in its perfection, like a stage set that might collapse if you leant against it.

Anne Whitfield had played her part well.Arguably too well.The grief was real—Kate had seen it in the tightening of her hands, the tremor in her voice—but the devotion she had spoken of?The insistence that her husband was flawless, generous, beloved?The blind refusal to admit that anyone might have nursed a grudge, however small?Those things felt less like testimony, more like instruction.

As though someone—perhaps Pastor Jonathan himself, or the machinery of the church around him—had drilled the lines into her until she could recite them even now, after his death.

Kate started the engine, pulling slowly down the long drive.

She hadn’t wasted any time today; she was coming away with a lead, of sorts, to explore.She’d requested all the interior and exterior CCTV footage from the day before, and Pearl was going to send it over once it had all been collected.It was possible, just possible, that they might have the killer on video, even in the company of the woman who’d soon be his victim’s widow. It was a start.

But one thought—more of a doubt—clung to her as she passed through the gates and watched them close silently behind her.

Did Jonathan and Anne Whitfield truly believe the package they were selling to the people who had so much less than them?Or had a genuine faith blurred long ago into performance, the kind of show you couldn’t stop once it had begun?

That question stayed with her all the way back to Portland.