The Lies I Told(32)

“But you didn’t press Brit about being sick,” she said.

“What kind of trouble are you trying to stir up, Marisa?” Brit asked.

Marisa’s chin jutted, and her jaw pulsed as she gritted her teeth. Her eyes welled with tears. “I’m not. I just don’t see why he’s asking us these questions.”

“I’ll talk to everyone.” Maybe it wasn’t fair to push for answers now, but I was willing to take advantage of their shock. Harder to lie well when you’re rattled.

“But you started with me.”

Trouble had a stench and Marisa reeked of it. When I’d been in this house four years ago, she and Clare had been only twelve. I’d not spoken to them directly, leaving the questions to the female officer. Unfortunately, I had only vague memories of two girls standing in the backyard. They’d been facing away from the house. One was standing still, and the other was throwing rocks at the back fence.

I was a gambler. I was willing to bet I could fire off one or two more questions before the father shut me down. “You sure you were just sleeping off booze? Maybe you were out with a boy?”

“She’s sixteen,” Mr. Stockton said.

And fully capable of having sex. But arguing that wasn’t a hill I wanted to die on right now. I would circle back around and charge from a different direction later. “Did your sister have anyone who didn’t like her? Anyone that might want to hurt her?”

“No,” Marisa said.

Brit folded her arms over her chest. “I actually heard Marisa come in around six, if that helps.”

“You know for a fact you heard your sister then?” I asked.

“Yes,” Brit replied. “She was still a little drunk.”

Marisa glanced at her sister, and hints of surprise sparked behind veiled eyes.

Details from the mother’s death were coming back. Elizabeth Stockton had a reputation for lying, according to the neighbors. Nothing huge, but dozens of small lies that created her version of the world. Several neighbors insisted Elizabeth could be so convincing because she believed her stories. When she’d accidentally run over a neighbor’s flowerpot while backing up the car, she’d said her brakes had failed. When her daughters missed school, they were sick with the flu. The family dog had died of old age, though when one neighbor did the math, she realized the dog was only four years old.

The Stocktons’ marriage had not been good, and they’d separated several times, most recently three days before Elizabeth Stockton killed herself with a handful of pills. In the end, there was no evidence of foul play. Only Elizabeth Stockton’s prints were on the bottle, and there’d been a very damning suicide note. I’d have to pull the file to refresh my memory, but she had blamed all her unhappiness on her husband’s infidelities.

Maybe the girls had learned from their mother to tell the “truth” that suited them best.

“Can I see my daughter?” Mr. Stockton asked.

“The medical examiner is on the scene now.” I scrawled the ME’s number on the back of my business card. “Call this contact at the medical examiner’s office, and they’ll arrange for a meeting.”

The body would need to be formally identified. The task would have to fall to Mr. Stockton, but Brit was over eighteen and could see her as well. Marisa, at sixteen, wouldn’t be allowed. Maybe later, at the funeral home, her father would permit a viewing. The funeral home would find a way to make the girl’s blackened skin more natural with makeup. Maybe she’d even look peaceful, at rest, like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. But the body I’d see forever was frozen in terror.

I wondered what it was like to see yourself lying in a coffin.





18


MARISA

Monday, March 14, 2022

9:00 p.m.

Richards’s notes were not the kind of thing I should’ve read alone in the dark. And for all the resentment I’d harbored toward Richards thirteen years ago, I realized the guy’s observations had been spot-on. He’d seen a lot when he’d stepped into our house. A career of summing up people showed.

I hadn’t realized he’d worked on my mother’s case. In those days, I’d been so blurred by pain that I barely noticed the people coming and going from our house: the cops, a minister who was a friend of a friend, and the neighbors bearing casserole dishes, flowers, and offers to cut the grass.

Richards had not included any pictures with his notes. There was also no autopsy report. He had them but chose not to share. He either was being kind or still didn’t trust me. Either way, I gave him props.

He included his own hand-drawn sketches of the crime scene, a general description of the body, and how it had been found. It. I had already segregated Clare into two versions of herself: the living girl and the inanimate object. Easier to read, think about all this, if I thought of the body as a thing, not a person. Not Clare.

There were the witness statements from me, Brit, Dad, the jogger who had found Clare (Seth Morgan—I didn’t recognize his name), the kids at Jo-Jo’s party, including Kurt and even Jack. But he’d not been to the party.

Richards must have logged a hundred hours on the initial investigation. The extensive notes explained the dark circles under the detective’s eyes when he attended my sister’s funeral a week later. Richards had kept to himself, standing to the side of the packed memorial hall.