The Perfect Wife(24)

     You only have to look at him to see what kind of man he is.



     I knew someone who worked for him once. People think he’s some kind of visionary but she said he was the most arrogant jerk she’d ever come across.



     That coast is so quiet at night, it would be easy to drive a body down to the water.





And then, out of the blue, the Chronicle came up with a different angle.





“I Met Missing Abbie on Cheating Site,”


     Claims Company Director


A married man claims to have responded to a profile created by the missing mother on Discreet Liaisons, an online forum for married people seeking affairs. “She was using a different name, but I’m 100% certain it was her. We chatted on several occasions, and she initially seemed keen. But when I pressed for an actual hookup, she said she’d chosen someone else.”



The article purported to be a serious investigation into the popularity of such websites, but it kept coming back to salacious speculation.

    Women who sign up for these sites may be taking risks with their personal safety, as sites rarely vet clients or run identity checks. Did Abbie meet someone online who was involved in her disappearance? And did her husband know about, or become aware of, her activities?

The site, which is based in Romania, failed to respond to requests for a comment yesterday.



You glance at Tim, but his expression is still unreadable. A little uncomfortable—you still haven’t told him about the hidden iPad—you turn back to the screen and click onto the next item. More social media posts.

         Why haven’t they charged him? CLEARLY he killed her when he found out what she was doing.



     Surely any jury would convict on the balance of probabilities.



     I disagree. A jury would likely give credit to a husband whose wife drove him to it with her infidelities.



     The police have made so many errors, they’re probably scared of being shown up in court.





As if in response, the headlines then broke a new development:





Tim Scott Accused of Murder


     Tech Titan Charged Despite Absence of Wife’s Body





19


You click again, but that’s the end of the document.

“The police thought they’d found a motive,” you say, understanding now. “They thought, if I’d had an affair, that could be your reason for killing me.”

Tim’s eyes hold yours, very still. “That seemed to be their thinking, yes.”

“Tim—” you begin, just as he continues, “It was crazy, of course. You would never do something like that, never. Integrity is very important to you.”

He sounds utterly certain. But then, Tim is confident in all his opinions.

Once again, you find yourself wondering what could be on that iPad.

“It’s clear to me what must have happened,” he adds. “You were—are—an exceptionally beautiful woman. Someone stole a picture of you for their online profile, that’s all.”

“But I’m also quite distinctive,” you object. “Isn’t the whole point of catfishing—that’s the word, isn’t it?—that you find someone who looks a bit like you? Otherwise, when the real person turns up, it’s obvious they’ve been lying.”

He shrugs. “They could say they’d changed their hairstyle. Or used an old photo. Women do that all the time, don’t they?”

“I guess,” you say doubtfully.

“I ran image-recognition software,” he adds. “The police said they would, but I had no faith in them by then. So I hired server space from Google and did it myself. There were thousands of pictures of you online—mostly on news sites, of course, because of your disappearance. But not a single photo on any dating site. Whoever used it must have taken it down. But there was so much media interest by then, the authorities were under pressure to justify all the money they’d wasted on the investigation. So rather than admit they’d been incompetent, they decided to charge me. After that, of course, they were even less interested in looking at alternative explanations.”

“Could I…” You hesitate. “One of those articles suggested I might have killed myself.”

“Again, I just don’t believe it—even if you could have done that to me, you would never have abandoned Danny.”

You feel the same. From what you recall, while mothers of autistic children did take their own lives sometimes, they almost always killed their disabled child, too, rather than abandon them to an uncertain world. You remember one heartbreaking story about a mother who jumped off a bridge along with her six-year-old autistic son. When they were found, she still had her arms wrapped tightly around him, the maternal urge to protect unshakable even as she took them both to their deaths.

Though Mike would probably say it was just her emotional brain and her reptilian brain wanting two different things, you reflect.