An Unwanted Guest(67)
‘It was after lunch. He said that she had to stay where she was until the police came. That it might be a crime scene.’ Lauren looks up at her. ‘I don’t think anyone believed him at first – we thought it was an accident, that he was overreacting. Until Candice was killed.’
Sorensen has her go through the rest of the day, the discovery of Candice’s body, what happened that night. When Lauren is finished, Sorensen says, ‘Some of the others think that it might have been your boyfriend, Ian, who was committing the murders.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lauren says tightly, looking down at the table.
‘Do you think it’s possible?’
She hesitates before she answers. ‘It’s possible.’ Lauren looks up at her, clearly uncomfortable. ‘I spent some time in the afternoon in the sitting room on the second floor, reading. I wasn’t with him. I suppose – I suppose he could have done it.’ She looks back down at the table.
‘What about you, yourself?’ Sorensen asks.
‘Pardon?’
‘You could have killed Candice yourself. You don’t have an alibi either. You were alone in the sitting room. For that matter, you could have killed Dana, and later, you could have killed Bradley.’
‘Oh. Well. I can assure you that I didn’t. What possible reason could I have had?’
‘I don’t know. Had you ever met Dana Hart or Candice White before?’
Lauren answers firmly, ‘No, of course not.’ When Sorensen says nothing, Lauren leans forward earnestly. ‘You have no idea what it was like, being trapped here with all this going on. Last night, when everyone ran off into the dark – David running after Matthew, the rest of us running outside after Riley …’ She shakes her head, as if in disbelief that it ever happened. ‘It was so dark, you couldn’t tell where anybody was. But then I heard Gwen – she must have been nearby, I could hear her breathing, sliding on the ice. She sounded like she was panicking, as if she thought someone was after her.’ Lauren pauses, as if reliving the memory of those awful moments when everything was falling apart. She whispers, ‘I heard her calling my name. But I didn’t answer. I thought maybe, if the killer was there, he would follow her, instead of me. So I kept very quiet.’ A sob escapes from her throat. And then she is crying in earnest.
Sorensen gives her time to recover. She’s patient. She offers the box of tissues. Officer Lachlan waits, his pen poised above his notebook.
Finally, Lauren says, ‘I’m not proud of that.’ She looks up at her. ‘But I certainly didn’t kill anybody.’ She reaches for a drink of water.
Sorensen notes that Lauren’s hand is shaking as she brings the glass to her lips. ‘Take your time,’ she says.
Lauren continues. ‘I’ve been trying to think of signs that I might have missed, signs that Ian might be insane, but honestly – there weren’t any.’ She stares across the table at Sorensen with dark, disbelieving eyes. ‘He seemed completely normal to me. He charmed everyone. He was so … likeable. People warmed to him, just like I did. It’s so unnerving, to think that you might be so wrong about someone, so … taken in. I certainly never saw any cruelty in him. I thought – I thought that he was someone I could become serious about.’
‘True psychopaths can be very convincing,’ Sorensen says.
Lauren looks back at her, her face bleak. ‘I don’t think you have any idea how frightening it was, sitting in that room all night knowing there was a murderer somewhere nearby, waiting to see what was going to happen next.’
‘I can’t imagine,’ Sorensen says.
As Lauren is leaving, Officer Perez taps at the dining-room door. Sorensen turns and asks, ‘What is it?’
Perez enters the room and speaks to her in a low voice. ‘I’ve just remembered something. It might be important.’ She nods. ‘You wanted to know if I or Wilcox had ever heard of the author Candice White. I thought the name sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. I thought maybe it was someone my wife read. She reads a lot of books.’
Sorensen nods her head again impatiently. ‘Yes?’
‘But actually I’ve read one of her books. She wrote a true crime book a few years ago that I quite enjoyed. That’s pretty much all I read.’
‘Is that so?’ Sorensen says. ‘What was it called?’
‘I don’t remember exactly, but it was about that school principal who murdered one of his students.’
Perez leaves the dining room and Sorensen glances at Lachlan, who is pursing his lips at this new information.
She rubs her hands together and walks to the dining-room windows to look out at the forest. She thinks about what might be hiding in that dark wood – bears, wolves – things that kill. She thinks about the human killer she has in this very hotel.
She hears someone enter the dining room. She turns away from the window and sees James carrying a tray with coffee and sandwiches. The sight of James doing what Bradley would normally do almost breaks her heart. It must be lunchtime already. She wants to say thank you, but doesn’t trust her voice. He places the tray on the side buffet table, nods, and leaves the room.
She walks over and pours a cup of steaming coffee. Then she takes a sandwich and her cup, goes back to the window, and looks out thoughtfully at the forest.