Alison felt as if he had slapped her, but he was right. She also knew there could be no anonymity for her. She couldn’t hide from what she was doing or keep her identity secret. She had to tell him everything. “The blouses you found on the victims,” she said.
“Yes?”
“They’re mine.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I had those same tops. All of them. Now they’re missing from my closet.”
“Who could have taken them? Who has access to your closet?”
Alison put her hand over her mouth. She couldn’t say it.
“Are you there?” he went on. “Who could have taken them?”
“Only one man,” she said.
“Who is he?”
She closed her eyes. “My husband.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. It was as if, hearing those words, Stride understood what it meant for her to say them. He recognized the terrible line she had crossed.
“You think your husband is guilty of these murders?” he asked.
Alison realized she was silently crying. Her breath could barely form the word. “Yes.”
“Do you have any other evidence to prove it?”
“There’s a knife missing in our kitchen,” she went on. “I noticed it was gone around the time of the first murder. I haven’t seen it since then.”
“Anything else?”
“His car,” she said. “It was driven thirty miles the night before last. The night that the third girl died. I checked the mileage before I went to bed and again in the morning.”
“So you already suspected him at that point?”
She could hear the accusation in his voice. And yet you said nothing. A woman was killed because of your silence.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she said.
“Is it just you and your husband at home?” Stride asked.
“Our son lives with us. He’s ten.”
“Does anyone else have a key to your house?”
“No.”
“This is a hard question,” Stride told her, “but do you have any idea why. Why would your husband do something like this? Is there anything in his past to suggest a violent personality?”
“Nothing,” Alison insisted, and it wasn’t a lie. Michael was no smooth pearl — he could swear, and he had a raw temper — but she’d never seen him as anything but a lover, father, and provider. They’d been happy.
“Then why?” Stride repeated.
It was the question she’d asked herself over and over for weeks. “I guess it’s me,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve pushed him away. I’ve been having problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Psychological problems.” Every night, I dream the ants are watching me from the ceiling.
“You did the right thing by calling.”
“That’s not how it feels,” she said.
Life would never be the same. Going forward, everything would be different. Everything would be worse.
Alison added, “I suppose you need my name.”
“That actually isn’t necessary, Mrs. Malville.”
“How do you know who I am?” Then in the silence that followed, she murmured: “Oh, my God, what did I do?”
Alison slammed the phone down onto the hook. She spun around in panic, but she had no chance to run. She found the Asian hooker and the man with the unzipped pants waiting for her. They had police shields in their hands. The three boys — not boys, but young cops — guarded her car.
There was nowhere to go.
“My name is Sergeant Maggie Bei of the Duluth Police,” the hooker told her. “Please come with us, Mrs. Malville.”
Michael Malville slapped his palms on the wooden table and cursed. “This is fucking insane. Do you hear me? It’s crazy. I want to talk to Alison.”
Stride and Maggie sat opposite Malville in the interview room in City Hall. Fluorescent light bathed the hard lines on the man’s face, giving shadows to his cheekbones and making his sweat glisten. He was an athletic, good-looking man, tall and strong.
Killers came in all shapes and sizes.
“That’s not possible right now,” Stride told him.
“There is no way Alison said I did this. No way.”
Stride was silent. He wanted Malville’s brain focused on his wife’s betrayal. The man had listened to his rights in stunned silence and, so far, he hadn’t followed the traditional suspect path of shutting up and calling a lawyer. Stride wanted to keep him talking as long as possible.
“If this is all a misunderstanding, we want to find that out as soon as possible,” Stride told him.
“It is.”
“Well, let’s go back to the dates of the three crimes. They all happened overnight. Can you tell us where you were on those nights?”
Malville rocked back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. He shook his head in disbelief. “I was home,” he said quietly.
“Was your wife home, too?”
“Yes.”
“Do you sleep in the same bedroom?”
Malville hesitated before answering. “Not lately.”
“Why is that?”
“Alison has been struggling. Something’s wrong with her.”
“Something?”
“She’s been having nightmares.”
Stride nodded. “So she doesn’t know whether you left the house or not on those nights.”
“I didn’t leave the house,” he insisted. “I slept in my office.”
Following a glance from Stride, Maggie slipped three photographs out of a large manila envelope. She pushed them across the table to Malville, who winced as he saw them.
“You probably saw these photographs of the victims in the newspaper or on television,” she said. “The killer sent them to the media electronically.”
“Did you trace the e-mails?” Malville asked.
“We’re working on that,” Stride said.
“My people may be able to help you. My engineers deal with those kinds of issues all the time.”
“So I suppose people working at your company would know how to defeat those traces, too?” Stride asked.
Malville frowned. “I suppose.”
“Does that include you?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
Maggie leaned across the table. “Do you recognize the clothes that the women are wearing in these photographs, Mr. Malville?”
His head cocked in surprise. “The clothes? No, of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“How could I recognize the clothes? These women were strangers to me.”
“That’s not an answer,” Maggie said.
Malville sighed and pulled the photographs of the dead faces closer with his hand, touching only the edges of the paper. He studied the fringe of the blouses that were visible on their necks.
“No,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
He rubbed his hands over his face. “Look, I don’t know, Alison may have some tops that are similar. I’m a man. I don’t pay attention. Is that what this is about? These women are redheads with a similar taste in clothes to my wife? If that’s all it is, then I don’t appreciate your exploiting my wife’s fragile mental condition. She’s seeing things that aren’t there.”
Maggie looked at Stride, who nodded. “Your wife says these are her clothes,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Her blouses. Taken from her closet.”
“That’s ridiculous. She probably misplaced them. Or they’re at the dry cleaner. I can’t find my favorite pair of jeans, but that doesn’t mean a killer stole them.”
“Each of the victims was also dabbed with perfume. It’s your wife’s perfume. I recognized it when I met her.”
“I’m sure lots of women wear her fragrance.”
“Did you know that a knife is missing from your kitchen?” Stride asked. “A large carving knife?”
“No.”