Page 30 of She Didn’t See It Coming

Sam is scared out of his wits. He sweats in his chair, the smell rank, alone in the interview room, waiting.

The videotape had been turned off when the interview was suspended, but he doesn’t know if there are other cameras on the room, watching him.

Other people in this room—people like him, suspected of murder—have probably been at risk for suicide.

He’d called the largest law firm in Albany and asked them to send their best criminal attorney.

He waits for the attorney to arrive, trying to order his chaotic thoughts.

They’re all over the place. He tries to remember what Paige said.

The immediate problem is what he knew about his wife.

He told Paige he didn’t know anything. He was afraid it would come to this.

Afraid they would find out about the phone call.

He didn’t know about the guy with the Tesla. But he had checked up on her.

The attorney finally arrives, and they are granted some time alone to consult. The attorney, Laura Szabo, a woman of about fifty, listens attentively to what Sam tells her. And then she advises him to answer all further questions with “No comment.”

The detectives return to the room and resume the interview.

Sam can feel his heart beating too fast. His attorney doesn’t seem too sympathetic.

Why did they send him a female attorney, Sam frets, when he’s probably going to be charged with murdering his wife?

He begins to feel dizzy and lightheaded; there’s a pounding in his ears.

Detective Salter says, looking closely at him, “Are you all right, Sam?”

Her voice seems distant, fading in and out. But he nods. He wonders if he’s going to have a heart attack.

The detective says, “Did you call your wife’s employer to try to confirm that she had upcoming business meetings in Buffalo on January eighteenth and February twenty-second of this year?”

“No comment.” His chest is feeling increasingly tight. It’s the vise again, like before, in the apartment. He’s having another panic attack. He tries to remember what Lizzie told him to do. But he can’t think, and his breath is coming in ragged pants, and he instinctively clutches at his chest.

Detective Salter asks, “Are you all right? Do you need us to call 911?”

He shakes his head, manages to say, “No. I’m fine.”

He hears the detective say, Interview suspended at 6:46 p.m.

Slowly, the panic subsides. He’s able to breathe again, as the vise that holds him gradually loosens its grip. He sits in a pool of sweat and fear. He doesn’t want to tell them it was a panic attack, but they seem to know.

Laura Szabo addresses the detectives. “Are you holding my client, or can he go home?”

“He can go,” Detective Salter says, “for now.”

Sam is relieved to hear that they’re letting him go but he knows what they think. They think he’s guilty as hell.

···

Derek Gardner hears his wife come in the front door, recognizes the familiar rustling of shopping bags. It sounds like she’s had a productive day. He leaves his office and goes out to join her. “A good day, I see,” he says, eyeing her purchases.

“Yes. I decided to treat myself,” she says, “because you have been causing me stress.”

“You know I don’t mean to,” he says, approaching her.

“But you do anyway.”

His voice becomes a little sharp. “I had nothing to do with that woman, Alice.”

“So you say.”

He knows she doesn’t trust him. He doesn’t trust her either.

They are both completely self-interested, and they both know it, but they do better together than apart, and they both know that too.

Sometimes their relationship becomes tiresome.

But mostly it’s exciting. He knows she worries about him straying, because of that time she caught him.

She doesn’t know about the times she hadn’t caught him, before that.

Still, that one time, there had been hysterics, and flying shoes that narrowly missed his head, and threats.

He thinks of this now as she shows off her new purchases in the living room, while he sinks into the sofa, pretending to pay attention.

He’d made a promise to her after that, to stay away from other women.

He thinks she cheated on him after, just once, to even the score, because that’s what he would do if he was her, but he’s willing to let that go.

He’s never been as jealous, as possessive, as she is.

And he owes her. She’s right about that.

His cybersecurity firm is making them good money, but it took money to get it off the ground.

Money he didn’t have. She’d gotten it for him.

She hadn’t told him what she was planning, only presented it to him afterward, a fait accompli , a gift.

He wonders now, if she had told him what she was going to do, would he have stopped her?

Probably not. He’s as cold-blooded as she is.

He supposes most other husbands would have been horrified.

But she didn’t choose another husband; she chose him.

And he was grateful, and actually rather impressed.

Neither one of them had liked her mother anyway.

She was a trivial woman. Always nervous around them, looking at them as if she were afraid of what they might do next.

Her timidity always annoyed Alice, provoked her.

He looks at Alice now in the sexy red patent-leather stilettos, and his thoughts about her mother disappear. Derek likes to think of the two of them as special, as people unhampered by the same restraints that hamper other people.

“What do you think?” she purrs, posing with a hand on one hip, one heel coyly raised. She arches her back a little.

“They’re perfect,” he says, his voice growing husky. “You’re perfect.”

She walks slowly up to him, swaying her hips, crawls into his lap, straddling him, and fastens her mouth on his. He can feel himself become instantly aroused. She must feel it too.

“I am, aren’t I?” she whispers after the kiss. “You don’t deserve me.”

“No, I don’t,” he whispers back, unbuttoning her blouse.