An Unwanted Guest(48)
What happened to him will never go away. He will always be defending himself. And there will always be people who don’t believe him. He’s learned that people will believe what they want to believe. And it’s truly frightening how easily they’ll believe it.
He’d come home late from work, like most nights when he was in the middle of a trial. He can hardly remember the details of that trial now – he didn’t finish it in any case; someone else from the firm took it over. His wife’s violent murder had resulted in an investigation, and his arrest; he hadn’t worked for months afterwards.
He remembers coming home that night. The house was mostly dark; there was one light left on over the porch, but inside, the only light was coming from the kitchen, the stove light. They usually left it on all night, as a sort of night-light for the ground floor.
He came in the door quietly, like he always did those days. He didn’t call out, ‘Barbara, I’m home,’ like he used to. The way he did back when she was still happy to see him. He took off his coat and hung it in the hall cupboard. His first thought was that she’d already gone to bed without him. It was perfectly true that they hadn’t been doing too well together at the time. He couldn’t deny that they’d been having marital problems.
Just like he couldn’t deny that her life was insured. It didn’t seem to matter that he was financially well off already; they seemed to think that even the financially secure could never be too greedy. It had been a strike against him. He’d been astonished. He was insured for the same amount, but that hadn’t mattered either. They thought a million-dollar life insurance policy was excessive.
He’d sat down in the living room, exhausted. Trials wore him out. He’d sat there for some time, thinking about how things had gone in court that day, how they might go tomorrow, and then about his life, how hard things were with Barbara. He was too depleted even to get up and go into the kitchen to pour himself a drink. Which, as things turned out, was very bad for him. But eventually he got up and made his way through the dark living room and dining room to the kitchen. It was only when he was almost there that the little hairs on the back of his neck began to stir. He still doesn’t know why. He suspects that he could smell the blood – on some level, even though he was not consciously aware of it. Then he made it to the kitchen door and saw her—
She was crumpled on the kitchen floor in her nightgown. It looked as if she’d been struck down while making herself a cup of herbal tea. There was a cup on the counter, an opened packet of tea beside it. But she was on the floor, soaked in her own blood. She’d been bludgeoned to death. Her head smashed in, her face beaten to a pulp. One arm was splayed beneath her, obviously broken.
Through his paralysing horror, one of his first thoughts was to wonder if she’d suffered. Whether the first blow had caught her by surprise, and whether it had killed her. But he knew Barbara, and he suspected she fought back tooth and nail. There was blood everywhere. Of course she’d fought back. Barbara had never been meek. Her arm had indeed been broken. And it turns out – they told him later – that her back had been broken as well. She had been kicked viciously after death. That’s another thing that made them suspect him – it looked like a crime of passion. But perhaps it was just made to look that way. That’s what David thought at the time. Someone had tried to set him up.
He finally speaks. ‘Most of what you say is true. I was working late that night. When I got home, the house was dark. I assumed Barbara, my wife, had already gone to bed.’ He takes a deep breath, exhales. ‘We hadn’t been getting along; we’d talked about separating. It wasn’t a secret. She’d told some of her friends, I’d told a friend or two at work. It’s also true,’ he says, looking directly at Riley, ‘that she had a life insurance policy for a million dollars. As did I. We’d both had those policies for many years, from early in our marriage.’
He looks around the group, his eyes resting finally on Gwen. He tries to read her expression, but he can’t; it’s too dark. She is leaning back against the sofa across from him, in shadow. ‘I didn’t kill her. She was already dead when I got there. I found her lying on the kitchen floor, covered in blood.’ He hesitates. ‘I switched on the overhead light. It was the most horrible moment of my life.’ He pauses for a moment, to recover himself. ‘I thought she’d been stabbed repeatedly, there was so much blood. But there was no knife there. She was so badly beaten …’ He covers his face with his hands.
Slowly, he brings his hands down again and continues speaking. ‘I called 911 immediately. I said that I’d come home from work and found her. My mistake was that in that 911 call, I didn’t mention that I’d been sitting alone in the living room for almost an hour before I found her. I didn’t think to mention it. I was very distressed – I wasn’t thinking clearly. And then my next-door neighbour told the police that he had noted the time that I drove in the driveway and parked the car. He’d seen the lights, and knew the exact time. Then, when they asked me about the discrepancy between the time I got home and the time of the 911 call, I immediately told them the truth, but they were suspicious. They arrested me. After all,’ – he gives Riley a bitter look – ‘I was the husband. People knew our marriage was in trouble. Then somebody made a big deal about the insurance policy.’