Since She Went Away(65)

“He didn’t have my number. I guess he was worried about the impact the news would have on me. He knew Reena was going to be targeting me and he wanted to offer support.”

“Did you talk about the case?”

“Not really. No.”

“It’s good you two are supporting each other that way.”

“Can I ask you something, Detective?”

“Sure.”

“Ian has a solid alibi for the night Celia disappeared, right?”

Naomi shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She winced a little as if something pained her, and she rubbed her back with her right hand. “Why do you ask?”

“No particular reason. People online have always said things about Ian needing to be investigated more closely. And I know the statistics. Usually it’s someone very close to the victim who commits the crime. Parents kill children. Husbands kill wives. . . .” Her voice trailed off. Just giving voice to the thought felt like a betrayal of Ian, even though she wasn’t sure what loyalty she owed him. Wasn’t her greater loyalty to Celia?

“This has all been made public, you know,” Naomi said. “Two people can place Ian at home at the time Celia disappeared. His mother, to whom he was speaking on the phone, and his daughter. Now, usually we want more than a family member’s account of things, but the phone records back it up. He was thoroughly questioned. More than once. Do you have reason to think he was involved?”

“No, of course not. And you asked me all this when Celia disappeared. I never saw any abuse or violence between them. Celia never mentioned being afraid of him. There was nothing.”

“But you didn’t know about the affair, so . . .”

“It’s not that. With Ian talking to me again I started thinking about it.”

Naomi studied Jenna for a long time. “The media have been a little rough on you lately,” she said. “A Reena Huffman type doesn’t like it when someone doesn’t keep jumping through her hoop. The media giveth and the media taketh away.”

“What does that mean?” Jenna asked.

“It means they’ll have a field day if you keep getting closer to Ian. They’re distracted by Holly Crenshaw now, but they may get back to you if they get bored.”

Jenna wanted to be offended, to protest her innocence, but she knew the detective had seen through her. It was her job, and Jenna had opened herself up enough to be read like an X-ray.

“Talk soon,” Naomi said as she walked away into the cold morning.





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


Jared felt like a prisoner in his own house.

News of the discovery of the body broke quickly and spread through town like a rushing tide of water. The phone started ringing off the hook again, and local reporters in their makeup and perfectly tailored clothes showed up at their house. They parked their news vans at the edge of the property and crept up to the door, smiling ever so brightly and trying hard to convince Jenna to let Jared just say a few words on the air.

It was a frenzy like nothing Hawks Mill had ever seen: a missing woman, a dead woman, and a dead man . . . all within the space of a few months.

Jared felt as if he’d been transported to the set of a TV show or movie. So much craziness. So many rumors and ideas and theories.

So much fear.

His mom turned all the reporters away, begging them to give her son his space.

“He’s only fifteen,” she said over and over as he listened from his bedroom.

Then the reporters tried her, asking for her comments on the, as they put it, bizarre turn of events. His mom refused to comment, except to remind the reporters that a family in town had suffered a terrible loss and everyone should be thinking about them.

She also called the police, asking Detective Poole to send someone around to shoo the reporters away. A patrol car arrived, and two beefy cops in dark jackets, their badges and shiny zippers visible from the house, stepped out. They smiled as they talked to the reporters, but Jared could tell they were trying to get them to leave. The reporters kept pointing at the house, and he could imagine the case they were making. The public’s right to know. The first amendment.

The reporters moved back to the property line, but they didn’t leave. Jared considered it a small victory.

He tried to concentrate on school. He worked ahead in his classes, tackling the readings and assignments for the next day and the day after that. But he had a hard time getting anything accomplished. His mom buzzed around the house, cleaning the kitchen floor and then the bathrooms, her usual routine when something was bothering her that she couldn’t do anything about.

Around noon, Detective Poole called and suggested Jared and his mom put out a statement, something asking for privacy and referring all future questions to the police. So they did, hoping everything would calm down.

Jared’s phone pinged all day. His closest friends called and texted, and then kids he barely knew wrote to him through e-mail and social media. The friends wanted to know how he was doing. The acquaintances said all kinds of things. They wanted to know how bad the body smelled or why weird shit kept happening to his family.

He heard his mom talking to his grandma. He knew what Grandma was saying. The old lady was like clockwork with her complaints.

How do you expect to raise a child with the police there all the time?