Fool Me Once(67)

Mawkish to think of it so plainly, but was there any sound as joyful as the undiluted laughter of a child? The irony between the sounds—this one that rang far too rarely in Maya’s ears versus the ones that haunted her nights without mercy—did not escape her, but then again, there was no point in dwelling. She put the car back in drive, forced a smile onto her face, and cruised to the front of Claire and Eddie’s house.

Maya gave the horn a little honk and waved. Eddie turned, his face flushed from happy exertion, and raised his hand in return. Maya got out of the car. Alexa stood upright too. Lily didn’t like that—Eddie and Alexa ending the game—so she kept tapping them on the leg, daring them to start the chase anew.

Alexa came over and gave her aunt a hug. Eddie kissed her on the cheek. Lily crossed her arms and pouted.

“I stay!” Lily demanded.

“We can play tag when we get home,” Maya told her.

Not surprisingly, this did nothing to appease Lily.

Eddie put his hand on Maya’s arm. “Do you have a second? I wanted to show you something.” He turned to his daughter. “Alexa, do you mind watching Lily for a few more minutes?”

“Sure.”

That made Lily smile. Maya could hear the laughter start up again as she headed inside with Eddie.

“I checked Claire’s E-Z Pass records,” he said. “From what I could see, she visited that Douglass guy twice within a week.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Maya said.

“I didn’t think it would. But where she went after the second time might.” He had printed out the records. He handed her a sheet and pointed to the first highlighted section.

“So a week before the murder,” Eddie continued, “Claire travels down to Livingston. See the time stamp?”

Maya nodded: 8:46 A.M.

“Now if you follow it, she got on the Parkway at nine thirty-three instead of the Turnpike. See the next few lines?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t head back home,” Eddie said. “She traveled south instead. At Exit 129 she moved from the Parkway back to the New Jersey Turnpike and got off at Exit 6.”

It was on the bottom of the page. Exit 6, Maya knew, was the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

“Anything after that?” Maya asked.

“Right over here. She took Interstate 476 south.”

“Toward Philadelphia,” Maya said.

“Or the Philadelphia area at least,” Eddie said.

Maya handed him back the sheets. “Any reason Claire would be down there that day?”

“None.”

Maya didn’t bother asking him about friends Claire could have visited or shopping she might have done or even if she might have suddenly fancied a trip to Independence Hall. Claire hadn’t gone there for any of that. Claire had spoken to Tom Douglass. She had learned something from him. And that something had taken her to Philadelphia.

Maya closed her eyes.

“Not to make a stupid Liberty Bell joke,” Eddie said, “but is any of this ringing any bells?”

Maya had no choice, so she told Eddie yet another lie. “No,” she said. “No bells at all.”


*

It rang bells, albeit distant ones.

As Caroline had reminded her, when Andrew died, he and Joe had both still been in high school. A boarding school, to be more exact. An upper-crust, old-money prep school called Franklin Biddle Academy.

Located right outside Philadelphia.

Eileen called her on the drive home. “Remember how we used to do Chinese takeout on Wednesday nights?”

“Of course.”

“I’m starting up the tradition again. You home?”

“Just about.”

“Great,” Eileen said with too much enthusiasm. “I’ll get our favorites.”

“Something wrong?”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

There were too many possibilities spinning through Maya’s head. For the first time she tried to let it go. For just a few moments. Get back to the basics. Know what you know. Most people oversimplify Occam’s razor to mean the simplest answer is usually correct. But the real meaning, what the Franciscan friar William of Ockham really wanted to emphasize, is that you shouldn’t complicate, that you shouldn’t “stack” a theory if a simpler explanation was at the ready. Pare it down. Prune the excess.

Andrew was dead. Claire was dead. Joe was dead.

But at the same time, she couldn’t just dismiss everything else she had learned, could she? Could she just dismiss what her own eyes had seen, or again should she accept the simplest answer? And what was the simplest answer?

Well, it wasn’t pleasant.

But for the sake of exercise, strip it down. Be as objective as you can. Then ask yourself: Was the person who had seen the video on that nanny cam reliable—or had she undergone enough stress, strain, and outright trauma to be someone of questionable judgment?

Be objective, Maya.

It was easy to trust your own eyes, wasn’t it? We all did. We weren’t crazy. The other guy was. That was part of the human condition. We understand our own perspective too well.

So step outside it.

The war. No one understood. No one could see her truth. They all thought that Maya was weighed down and guilt-ridden over the death of those civilians. That would make sense. They see it from their perspective. You feel guilty, the theory went, and that manifests itself in the painful flashbacks. You try therapy. You take drugs. Death surrounds you. No, check that. Death does more than that.