Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(61)

“Not my plan,” I say. “Detective, you can ask me a million questions a million ways, but I’m going to tell you everything I know, straight up. I heard the scream. It woke me right out of bed. I came out of my room the same time as my kids; they can vouch for that. I came out here to find out what was going on, and I saw the two people in the boat and the body in the water. That is absolutely everything I know about this situation. I know even less about that first body.”

“Gwen.” There’s so much reproach in Prester’s voice that he sounds like a disappointed father. I appreciate his tactics, intellectually. Many detectives would go at me hard, but he instinctively knows that what disarms me, what I don’t know how to parry, is kindness. “We both know that isn’t going to be the end of it, don’t we? Now, let’s go back to the beginning.”

“That was the beginning.”

“Not this morning. I want to go back to the first time you saw a body mutilated like this. I read the trial transcripts, watched all the video I could get. I know what you saw that day in the garage of your house. How’d that feel?”

Cognitive technique. He’s trying to lead me back to a traumatic moment, put me back in that feeling of helpless horror. I take a moment, then say, “Like my entire life collapsed under my feet. Like I’d been living in hell and not even knowing it. I was horrified. I’d never seen anything like that. I’d never even imagined it.”

“And when you realized that your husband was guilty, not just of that murder but of others?”

I put an edge in my voice. “How do you think I felt? And still feel?”

“No idea, Ms. Proctor. Bad enough to change your name, I guess. Or maybe that was just so you could get people to stop harassing you.”

I glare at him, but of course he’s right, even though he minimizes it. For most people who exist in the normal world, the regular world, the idea of taking some Internet mob’s threats seriously is a sign of weakness; Prester is probably no different. I’m suddenly very glad that Sam is with the kids. If the phone starts ringing, he can handle the torrent of abuse. He’ll be shocked at the intensity and volume of it. Most men are.

I feel weirdly empty and too tired to care. I think of all the effort, all the money, and I think maybe I should have just stayed put back in Kansas, let the assholes take their best shot. If it all ends the same way, why put all the time and energy into trying to build a new, safe life?

Prester is asking me something, and I’ve missed it, and I have to ask him to repeat it. He looks patient. Good detectives always look patient, at least at first. “Walk me through your days the last week.”

“Starting when?”

“Let’s start with last Sunday.”

It’s an arbitrary place to begin, but I comply. It isn’t tough. My life isn’t normally a whirlwind of activity. I assume that the second victim disappeared on or around Sunday, given the state of her body. I give a thorough accounting, but as I’m moving forward, I realize that I have a decision to make. The flight I took to visit Melvin in El Dorado falls inside this timeline. Am I going to tell Prester I paid my serial killer ex a call? Am I going to lie about it and hope I don’t get caught out? That’s really not an option, I realize; he’s a good detective. He’ll check visitor logs in Kansas, and he’ll realize I’ve been to see Mel. Worse, he’ll see I visited him right before the body came up.

No good choices. I get the sense that whatever unseen force is pushing me has designed this moment, too. I look down at my hands, then up, staring out the front window of the sedan. It’s warm in here and smells of old, stale coffee. As interrogation rooms go, it could be worse.

I turn and look at Prester and tell him about the visit to El Dorado, about the copies of letters he’ll find in my house from Melvin Royal, about the torrent of abuse and threats that keep coming at me. I don’t make it dramatic. I don’t weep or shake or show him any sign of weakness; I don’t think it will matter if I do.

Prester nods as if he already knew all that. Maybe he did. Or maybe he’s just a great poker player. “Ms. Proctor, I’m going to have to take you in to the station now. You understand that?”

I nod. He takes handcuffs out from behind him; they’re in a worn old case on the back of his belt, and I turn without complaint and let him lock them on. As he does, he tells me I’m under arrest for suspicion of murder.

I can’t say I’m surprised.

I can’t say I’m even angry.



The questioning is a blur. It goes on for hours; I drink bad coffee, water, eat a cold sandwich of turkey and cheese sometime in there. I nearly fall asleep, because I’m so tired and—finally—the numbness is gone, and I can be afraid, so afraid it feels like a constant, cold storm inside. I know that if the news hasn’t gotten out yet, it will in a matter of hours, and in less than a day it’ll be around the world. The twenty-four-hour news cycle feeding an endless appetite for violence and spawning thousands of new, eager recruits to punish me.

My children are exposed, fragile, and it’s my fault.

I stick to my story, which is all the truth at this point. I’m told there are witnesses to swear that I was seen in town the day the first girl disappeared; turns out she was also eating at the bakery where Lanny and I stopped to gorge ourselves after her suspension from school. I barely remember her—the girl in the corner, with the iPad and tattoo. I wasn’t focused on anyone but my daughter, and all my petty problems.