Page 18

A nder is silent for the drive from the police station to the hospital. He stares out the window, watching the world go by. It’s totally changed for him now. He woke up this morning with a wife, and now, only a few hours later, he’s a widower, that wife brutally murdered right in their home. He’s going to have to learn to navigate this new reality. It’s a heartbreaking thought, but even as I watch him walk up to the entrance to the hospital, my mind is still focused on the investigation.

His mother lives in the next town over, and I go directly to the police department there. I show my shield to the officer at the reception desk.

“There was a fire at a home this morning. A shed burned down. I need to speak with the officers who responded to that,” I tell her.

“Give me just a second,” she says.

I wait in the lobby area until an officer comes through the doors and extends his hand to shake mine.

“Jody Ferris,” he introduces himself.

“Agent Emma Griffin,” I say.

“Come on back,” he says.

We walk into the back, and he leads me to a room similar to the one Ander was just in. Two more officers are already inside.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Officer Ferris asks.

“No, I’m fine,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

“This is Officer O’Connell and Officer Alridge. The three of us responded to the fire this morning.”

“Then you spoke with Ander Ward, the son of the homeowner?” I ask.

“Yes,” Officer Ferris says. “He arrived shortly after we did. The fire was already under control by the time he got there, but Mrs. Ward was frantic. She wouldn’t calm down until he got there. He was very calm, so it was a relief to be able to talk to him to let him know what was going on and have him settle her down.”

“I’m sure she was upset,” I point out. “It was early in the morning, and a building on her property was on fire. That’s not something that most people would take in stride.” He looks adequately chastised, and I move on. “Ander told me that there were other incidents like this recently.”

“Yes,” Officer O’Connell says. “There have been reports of several other fires to outbuildings in the surrounding areas over the last few months. No residential structures have been targeted during any of these incidents, but there has been a considerable amount of property damage. We’ve been hoping that someone would have camera footage that would show who is setting the fires, but so far nothing has come up. It looks like something bored teenagers would do to amuse themselves. They don’t realize how serious it actually is.”

“Once Ander Ward arrived at the house, was he there the entire time?” I ask.

The officers look at me slightly strangely.

“Yes,” Officer O’Connell says. “He went with the firefighters to see the remnants of the shed and then sat with us and his mother while she gave her statement as to what exactly happened. She said that she was up early, like she always is, and was making her coffee when she noticed flickering through the kitchen window. She looked outside, and the shed was on fire. The first thing she did was call 911, but then she called her son. He lives in the next town over, so like I said, things were already pretty well under control by the time he made it there. But she was still frantic and thought she might be having a heart attack because of the stress and shock.”

“I need to let you know that the reason I’m asking about all this and why it’s so important to get the full information about Ander being there and what he did is that his wife was murdered this morning,” I tell them.

“While he was at his mother’s house?” Officer Alridge asks, sounding shocked.

“He says that he called her several times while he was there, and that’s what made him worried,” I say.

“He was on the phone a few times while we were handling the situation,” O’Connell confirms. “He told his mother that his wife wasn’t answering the phone and that he was concerned. She was still worried about her heart, so he asked that paramedics bring her to the hospital and get her checked out while he went home. He seemed a little nervous, but he told his mother that he was going to meet her at the hospital soon, so I guess he figured everything was going to be all right.”

“Well, he went home and found his wife, Sabrina, bludgeoned to death. I need to know the timing of his arrival and when he left as precisely as possible so I can create a timeline,” I tell them.

We talk through every step of the morning investigation and start creating a cursory timeline for the events as they unfolded. I’ll need to see Ander’s phone to get the time that his mother called him compared to the time the emergency team was dispatched as well as when he called for help about Sabrina, but right now it seems like an extremely tight turnaround. He got to his mother’s house quickly after she called him, and then there was only a small window of time between when he left to go check on Sabrina and when he called 911 to report finding her body. There wasn’t enough time at either point for him to commit the murder, clean up, get rid of a weapon, and then go about what he needed to do.

I leave the police station and return to Ander’s neighborhood. Only a couple of police cars remain. By now the body will have been removed and transported to the medical examiner’s office. The crime scene investigation unit will be thoroughly processing and recording the scene to make sure every bit of existing evidence is found and can be used later. I notice that Detective Fuller’s vehicle is still there, which means he’s carefully supervising the entire process.

The neighbors that were lined up along the sidewalk have dissipated for the most part. They’ve seen the body being taken out of the house and know now for sure that something horrific has happened inside the quiet, serene-looking home. I have no doubts that many of them demanded answers from the police officers but were told they couldn’t give out any information. The neighbors will have to wait to watch the news to find out all the details that will be shared.

There’s still one woman standing at the edge of the yard across the street, her arms wrapped around herself, watching the house. I jog across the street toward her and introduce myself.

“Did you see anything unusual this morning?” I ask.

“No,” the woman who introduced herself to me as Elsie Campano says. “I didn’t know anything was happening until I heard the sirens and saw the lights. I was really worried, so I came outside to see what was going on and saw Ander out in the front yard with the police. He looked distraught, so I figured something must have happened to Sabrina.”

“How well do you know them?” I ask.

“Ander and Sabrina?” she asks. “Just as neighbors. They are friendly, and we sometimes chat when we are both outside. They brought me some soup when I had a long illness over the winter.”

“But you wouldn’t say that you know then particularly well?” I say. “You aren’t close with them?”

“No,” Annette says.

“Have you ever noticed anything about their relationship that should be cause for concern? Heard yelling, seen them fighting, anything like that?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No, they always seemed perfectly happy when I saw them.”

“Do you know of anyone in the neighborhood who does know them better?” I ask.

“I don’t know about Ander as much, but I’ve seen Sabrina spending time with the neighbor next door, Annette Chambers. She might be someone to talk to,” she says.

“Thank you. I appreciate your time.”

“I just can’t believe something like this happened in this neighborhood. It’s always been such a quiet place,” she says.

“Unfortunately, things like this happen everywhere,” I say. “It’s just a good reminder to be aware of your surroundings, keep your doors and windows locked. Take care of yourself.”

I cross the street again and climb the steps to the front porch Elsie indicated. I ring the bell, and a woman who looks like she has been crying comes to the door.

“Yes?” she says.

“Hi, I’m Special Agent Emma Griffin with the FBI. I need to talk with you for a couple minutes,” I say.

She nods and opens the screen door she kept closed between us. “Come in.”

I follow her into the blissfully cool house, and she brings me to a sitting room off the main entrance.

“This is about Sabrina, isn’t it?” she asks.

“Yes,” I tell her. “I heard that the two of you spent time together. Did you know her well?”

“We were friends,” she says. “She was such a sweet woman. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“Tell me what happened this morning,” I say.

“I really don’t know,” she says. “Really early this morning, I thought I heard something like screaming. It woke me up from a really deep sleep, and I couldn’t really process where I thought it was coming from. I didn’t hear it again and decided it must have been in a dream, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then later I was outside drinking my coffee on the porch and saw Ander get home. He barely even waved at me. He just headed right inside the house. A couple minutes later, I heard him shout, and he came running out of the house on the phone shouting about his wife being dead. It happened that fast.

“I went over to him to find out what was wrong, but he was too worked up and pacing around the yard while he talked to the police. He was saying that he found his wife dead on the stairs and it looked like she’d been murdered. I just screamed. He came over to me and demanded I tell him what happened, but I hadn’t seen anything. I didn’t know. I thought about the sound that woke me up after the police got here and were questioning me.” She hangs her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t do anything. Maybe I could have helped her.”

“That’s very unlikely,” I tell her. “You didn’t do anything wrong, and you need to not let yourself think that you did. This is a tragedy, and what we need to focus on right now is finding the person responsible so they can be brought to justice.”

“I just wish there was something else I could do. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that she’s really gone. That I won’t see her while I’m gardening and we won’t have any more chats over coffee. Everything was looking so bright for her. Just as they were about to start a family,” she says.

“Start a family?” I ask.

Annette nods and wipes tears from her eyes. “Sabrina was pregnant. At least, she was very sure that she was. She hadn’t been to the doctor yet, but when she told me, she said she knew her body and had no question in her mind that the early test that she took was right. She was so excited. Being a mother has been something she’s wanted for years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person as happy as she was when she told me. She’d just taken the test and said she just had to say it to somebody or she was going to burst. She was trying to come up with some cute way to tell Ander. They would have been the sweetest family.”

“Did Sabrina ever talk to you about being afraid to be home alone or anything that was happening in her life that was scaring her?” I ask, not wanting to give too many leading details.

“You mean the threats Ander was getting from work?” she says. “Yeah, she talked to me about it some. It really unnerved her. For a little while, she was thinking she might ask Ander to quit even though he was the only one working. But then she found out about the baby. He put in cameras to make her feel better, and she said that she felt safe because of them.”

“Did you know that she called the police a couple of times because she thought someone was in the house?” I ask.

“I know. She said it made her feel so ridiculous that she panicked over nothing. She did a couple of online sessions with a therapist to help her deal with it, and they convinced her that she was just experiencing anxiety, and the police never found anything. That made her feel a lot calmer, I think. A lot of good that did,” she mutters.