Page 32 of She Didn’t See It Coming

Lizzie sits back in her chair. She’s certain that anyone involved in the investigation knows that it was the husband’s suitcase.

Things leak. Ditto about the open storage locker and the lax security.

She’d divulged nothing that reveals that she is a member of the family, or that she even knows them, or how she knows any of this.

People have been commenting, and as she reads the comments, she feels a thrill.

Mark Mammolotti

Fascinating! How do you know all this?

Chris Belliveau

Do you live in that building?

Farah Spence

Are you police?/paramedic?/journalist?/friend?/neighbor?

Jen McKague

Oh…this reminds me a bit of the Elisa Lam case! She went missing in a building and no one could find her! Until they did, in the water tank. Ew.

Karen Hennin

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the husband. It usually is the husband in real life.

Maya Vukovic

Intriguing case! Poor woman.

Brittany Clement

Do you know how she was killed? Murder weapon?

Jordan Ross

Any sexual assault? Police aren’t saying.

Brittany Clement

Police aren’t saying much, as usual.

On it goes, and Lizzie immerses herself in it.

Alone late at night with her online friends, Lizzie feels happy that her sister is getting so much attention.

Lizzie feels right at the very center of things for a change, and she likes it.

She thinks about what to write now for her update.

Her fingers hover over the keyboard. She makes a new post, reusing the picture of the front of the condo with its address showing. It’s her signature photo.

The husband was released last night after questioning.

Looks like he was down at the police station again late today for further questioning but was again released.

I think they’re barking up the wrong tree.

I think sometimes police are too single-minded, and don’t look at all the possibilities, they’re too focused on solving the crime quickly.

I mean, maybe he did it, but I don’t think we should leap to that conclusion.

Lizzie pauses, realizing that there’s so much she can’t say on here, for fear of giving herself away.

About how Bryden was killed with a plastic bag.

About the lack of sexual assault. About her lover, Derek Gardner.

But it would give her so much cred if she was the one to break the news about Derek Gardner, about all of this.

It will be in the news soon enough anyway won’t it?

They will have to investigate Gardner; they won’t be able to keep it quiet forever.

She has read all the online news coverage of the case that she can find and there has been no mention of him so far.

The detectives seem to be keeping her sister’s affair to themselves for now.

They’ve told Sam, and he told the family.

But she’s afraid of it being traced back to her.

She has sometimes wondered if the police monitor these groups.

Her parents would be horrified to know what she’s doing, that she spends most of her free time hanging out with these people.

That she’s using her sister’s murder as a way to belong.

They would think it tacky, tasteless, abhorrent.

She doesn’t need their judgment. She still hovers over the keyboard, undecided.

But she can’t quite bring herself to put what she knows out there.

She sees a new comment appear below her own post:

Susan Day

I heard one of them was having an affair.

She answers quickly.

Emma Porter

Susan Day Where did you hear that?

···

Jayne leans her head back against Michael’s shoulder on her sofa and cradles a glass of red wine in her hand.

She’s glad he’s here. The solidity, the goodness of him after such a long day is a balm.

It’s getting late, but she can’t quiet her mind, can’t stop thinking about the case.

She feels for the family, for the little girl.

She thinks about today’s interviews with the husband and the lover.

They’ve found little on Derek Gardner. He’s not on social media at all. There’s a website for his business, of course, which looks professional. His company appears to be quite successful.

She shifts a little to look up at Michael.

“You’re a psychologist. Hypothetically, what kind of person would hold a plastic bag over a woman’s head from behind until she was dead, then dispose of her body that way?

” He shrugs noncommittally. She presses.

“What does your gut tell you?” she asks.

His face becomes serious, as he considers her question.

Finally he says, “It strikes me as very cold. If the bag over the head was held from behind, then he’s not…

confronting her, as he would be if he was strangling her with his hands, face-to-face, for example.

It’s efficient, convenient, not messy. The suitcase and storage locker too.

Like she needs to be gotten rid of with a minimum of fuss and bother. ”

“That’s interesting,” she says. “Ginny—the pathologist—thought it might be a crime of passion, of rage. Fell thought the suitcase and the locker were dismissive, as if the message the killer was sending, unconsciously, is that she was to be discarded, thrown away, as if she were garbage. That seems like rage to me.”

“Maybe. But to me it seems more like whoever did it was solving a problem.”

···

Donna sleeps fitfully for a while but then wakes with a jolt. She was dreaming of a plastic bag being held over her face, and now finds herself sitting up in bed, gasping. Jim, beside her, wakes too and reaches for her with concern. “Are you all right?”

She takes a deep breath. “I had a nightmare.”

He gently pulls her back down into the bed and hugs her close.

He doesn’t ask her what the nightmare was, and she’s glad.

She clings to him. He and Lizzie are all she has left.

And there’s Clara too, of course. As her husband holds her tight, she thinks about Clara, about what the future might hold for her.

It’s so uncertain. Because it’s possible that her father might be the one who murdered her mother.

The more she thinks of it, the more Donna thinks it might be true.

The police seem to think so, and they probably know what they’re doing.

And now they know he might have had a motive.

Bryden was having an affair. It’s a hard thing to swallow.

It’s possible this other man, her lover, killed her.

She thought she knew her daughter, but truly, what did she know about her daughter’s private life?

Maybe she should talk to Paige. Apparently Paige—Bryden’s best friend—knows more about what was going on in her daughter’s life than anybody else.

Maybe she knew why Bryden was having the affair.

Maybe she knew details of their marriage.

If she knew something else that made Sam look guilty, would she tell the police?

Or would she protect him? Maybe she’s already told the detectives other things that they are keeping back, that the family doesn’t know about.

Maybe Sam hasn’t told them everything. She definitely picked up on some tension between Sam and Paige today, when they brought Clara back from the park.

And if Sam did kill Bryden? What then? If he’s convicted, she and Jim can try to get custody of Clara and bring her up as their own. But what if they can’t prove it? What if he did it, but they can’t convict him? Then he will never let them have her.

And Clara will grow up with a monster.