Everything You Want Me to Be(85)

“In the fire pit behind the garage. I used lighter fluid and made sure all the ashes had scattered.”

“Did your wife or your mother-in-law see you come home?”

“No.” He paused and swallowed. “I didn’t see anyone. I went straight to my room—the office, I mean—and stayed there for the rest of the night. I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about . . . the future.”

I rubbed my chin and leaned back in the chair. Lund’s head hung from his body like some useless, dead weight and he sat absolutely still; I could barely tell he was breathing.

“Why her purse?”

He glanced up at that, for the first time in the interview, but his eyes skittered immediately away.

“Why’d you take her purse, Peter?” I asked again.

“I needed to get the key.”

Jake’s eyes flashed and I leaned back in.

“What key?”

“She had a key to a locker at the Rochester bus station. She’d said everything we needed to leave town was in there. She had a suitcase ready to go and two one-way tickets, in both of our names, to New York City.

“She held it up when I asked about the money and explained what it was. Then she put it back in her purse and started threatening me. Later—afterwards—I realized I needed to take the key; otherwise the whole affair would be discovered. I didn’t know then about the condom, that my DNA would be identified. So I took her purse and took the key out of it, then threw it in the lake, too.”

“Where’s the key now?”

He lined up his knuckles on the edge of the table and took his time before replying in a low, offhand tone. “In my desk at work.”

“You didn’t go to the locker?”

“No. I was going to wait until the case was closed and then destroy the . . . evidence.”

I stared at him: his bent head, his carefully placed hands, the sag of his shoulders under the fancy suit. It fit. It all fit, and everything I knew about being a lawman told me I was sitting across from Hattie’s killer, but something still nagged at me.

“You went to a lot of trouble, didn’t you, Lund? Thought this all through.”

He shrugged. “I thought I did.”

“So tell me this: How’d you go from swearing up and down that you had nothing to do with Hattie’s death not three hours ago to signing your life away now?”

“Mary.” He answered immediately.

“Protecting Mary?”

“That’s what I was trying to do—protect my family. I didn’t know until Mary came today that she’d seen me and Hattie together. She . . . said she’d testify against me, about what she saw. At that point I knew there wasn’t any hope in lying further. I wasn’t going to get away with it.”

Lund looked up again and met my stare. “To be honest, I’m kind of relieved. I’d just like to get all this over with and start serving my time. Can I do that?”

He glanced at the lawyer, who seemed to remember he was there as more than just a rapt audience member, and the two of them asked to have a minute alone to discuss sentencing options.

We tossed him back in the cell with his lawyer for company and drove to the school, found the key, and took it to the Greyhound station in Rochester. Inside the locker we found Hattie’s missing suitcase, still gleaming and smelling like new, and an envelope holding three hundred-dollar bills, a note from Lund breaking off the affair, and two one-way tickets to New York, exactly as he’d described.

After we photographed and bagged everything, I turned to Jake and nodded.

“Book him. Murder two.”



I left the terminal and drove straight to Bud and Mona’s. It was heading toward evening, and even though the burial and lunch were long over, it looked like half the funeral procession had followed them home. Over a dozen vehicles were parked in the driveway, on the lawn, and along the road.

One of Mona’s sisters let me in and showed me to the living room. Photo albums were scattered everywhere and tagboard posters with pictures of Hattie were propped up against the walls. People crowded on chairs and the floor, surrounding Mona and Bud on the couch. Some were laughing and looking at pictures, some were crying, some were doing a bit of both, but they all stopped and fell silent when I walked into the room.

When Bud saw me in uniform, he took Mona by the hand and they stood up together.

“Let’s get some air,” he said.

We walked out toward the silo with Bear the retriever shadowing our steps. The sky roiled with fat spring clouds that kept the sun at bay, making our path muddy and precarious.

Once we got out of view of the house, Bud and Mona turned toward me. I didn’t beat around the bush.

“The DNA came back.”

Although neither said anything, a fire lit in both their eyes, a terrible anticipation.

“It was Peter Lund, Hattie’s English teacher.”

“What?” Mona staggered backward.

It took Bud a moment to find his voice, but when he did it was at a full bellow. “Her goddamn teacher? He forced himself on her?”

“No.” I looked him square in the eye. They deserved better than the truth, but the truth was all I had to give them. “They’d been having an affair since January.”

I registered the fist coming at my face and let it happen. Mona’s scream followed me to the ground, drifting in and out of my ears as the blow rang through my head and Bear barked and jumped around everyone. Bud stood over me, fists up, ignoring Mona’s attempts to haul him back.