Page 31 of She Didn’t See It Coming

Lizzie doesn’t like the look of Sam when he returns to the condo from the police station.

His eyes are wild as he collapses into an armchair.

Fortunately, Clara is at Angela’s and Paige left some time ago.

“What did they say?” Lizzie asks, concerned.

He gazes back at her vacantly and doesn’t answer.

His hands are shaking. She asks more sharply, “What happened, Sam?”

He swallows nervously. “They told me Bryden was having an affair,” he says.

“What?” Lizzie says, taken completely off guard. “Surely that can’t be true.”

Her parents look completely unprepared for this news. She can tell that they don’t want to believe it either.

Sam continues, his voice strained, “They said she was having an affair with Derek Gardner, that man she had the car accident with.”

The silence in the room is profound. “No way,” Lizzie protests after a long pause. Then, “How do they know?”

“She confided in Paige, and Paige told them,” Sam says. Then he breaks down into sobs and covers his face with his hands.

Lizzie freezes. Paige knew about this? And told the police about it?

Without a word to any of them? Lizzie considers going to Sam and putting a comforting hand on his shoulder, but something stops her.

Perhaps it is her mother, sitting in clear judgment of her son-in-law, her face an open book.

Her mother’s expression suddenly makes Lizzie wonder if Sam knew about the affair.

She catches her mother’s eye and knows she’s thinking the same thing.

Lizzie then glances at her father, sees the wheels inside his mind turning, the fresh dismay on his lined face.

And Lizzie finds she is angry that her sister didn’t confide in her but confided in Paige instead.

“Did you know about this?” Lizzie’s mother asks Sam, her voice accusing.

Sam uncovers his face and addresses his mother-in-law.

“No! I had no idea. Not a clue. I trusted her completely.” He adds, after a moment, “It must have been this Derek Gardner who killed her. It seems obvious. But the detectives think it gives me a motive.” His voice shaking. “I didn’t even know, I swear!”

It’s as if a bomb has gone off in the living room; everyone is waiting for the dust to settle, for their senses to return to normal, to take stock of this new reality.

Lizzie observes Sam in the silence. “Did they say anything else?” she asks finally.

He seems to be trying to gather his thoughts for a moment and says, “They have the autopsy results.” He chokes out, “Someone—someone held a plastic bag over her head.”

Lizzie sees her mother’s hand fly silently to her mouth in horror. Her father makes a guttural sound in his throat. She turns back to Sam. “What else?”

“She wasn’t sexually assaulted, and that makes them think it was someone she knew.” He says into the disturbed silence, “I got an attorney.”

Lizzie can read the room, and she can tell that her parents want to leave— their son-in-law has hired an attorney —and that Sam wants them gone. The atmosphere is intolerable. Lizzie stands up. “Mom and Dad are exhausted. I’m going to take them home now, make them a proper meal.”

She’s tired too, and she needs to be alone. She wants to be in her own room tonight.

“Of course,” Sam says wearily. “You go. We’ll be fine. I’ve got Angela if I need her.”

···

Hours later, after she’s tried to get her parents to eat, and cleaned up, and her mother and father have retired to the spare room for the night, possibly even more shattered than the night before, Lizzie retreats to her own bedroom and quietly closes the door.

She’s been itching to get online properly all day, but being stuck at her sister’s place, with no privacy, she’s had to be satisfied with sneaking hurried looks at her phone and making only brief posts.

She’s dying to immerse herself in what the Facebook group is saying about her sister’s murder.

Now her guilty secret, her addiction to online true crime groups, has an intensely personal dimension.

She logs in under her Emma Porter profile and quickly scans the new posts about her sister.

There are quite a lot of them, and she finds that gratifying.

She goes back and rereads what she posted from her apartment the night before, after Bryden’s body had been found, with the same picture of the front of Bryden’s condominium building.

Some of you have heard about what’s going on at the condo at 100 Constitution Drive.

Warning: Long post! The missing woman’s body has been found in a suitcase tonight in a storage locker in the basement of the building.

This is what I know so far. Her name was Bryden Frost. She was thirty-five years old, married with one child.

She’d been missing since yesterday, when she didn’t turn up to pick up her child from day care.

She’d been working from home and her laptop was open on the dining room table.

Her purse, phone, and keys were still in the apartment.

The police searched the building yesterday evening but didn’t find her.

But today they came back with a dog from the K-9 unit and the dog was able to locate her remains.

That’s all information that has already been in the news if you’ve been paying attention.

But I happen to know a few things that haven’t been in the news.

Fact one: The suitcase she was found in was taken from the closet of the apartment Bryden lived in.

Fact two: The storage locker she was found in was unlocked and open.

The storage area is usually kept locked, but it’s possible that sometimes it is left propped open by the tenants, so in my opinion, the killer didn’t necessarily have to have keys.

Fact three: There is no CCTV coverage in the elevators or on the individual floors, only on the front and back doors on the ground level, and the CCTV cameras on the parking garage were not working.

Fact four: The police—the investigation is being led by Detective Jayne Salter, of the Albany Police Department—took the husband in for questioning tonight after the body was discovered. Here are my thoughts:

The police are going to focus on the husband, just because he’s the husband. I think they lack imagination. We can do better.

She went missing from the apartment in the early afternoon on Tuesday, March 7.

She was working from home that day and it looked as if she’d just stepped out for a minute.

Think about it—anyone could have knocked on her door.

She might have opened it and been overpowered and killed.

It didn’t necessarily have to be someone she knew; it didn’t have to be her husband.

The killer might then have looked around the apartment for something to dispose of the body and found the suitcase.

He could have taken her down to the storage locker in it and left her there.

So many questions! Why not just leave her there, in the apartment?

Why put her in a suitcase and move her to the storage locker at all?

I figure it could have been anyone who lives in the building or works there or visits regularly.

Then, if they’re caught on video entering or exiting the building the police won’t have any reason to suspect them.

Once in the building, there were no cameras to catch the killer going from Bryden’s apartment to the storage lockers with the suitcase.

It could also have been someone who came in through the garage, but they’d need a key card to get in, unless the victim buzzed them in, which I suppose is possible.

The police seem to think it was the husband, but I think they’re not casting their net as widely as they should. Anyone else have any insights, thoughts, ideas, information? Let’s get the true crime hive working on this one!