He swallowed. “I heard a noise outside the apartment and stepped out, and that’s when I saw Emma standing there over Bev’s body, holding the statue. I think she was in shock. There was blood splattered on her clothes. She told me that she’d woken up in her apartment to find the door open and that Ryan Hooks and Bev came back a moment later. They told her that they were helping the artist, the drunk lady, into a car to get her home. Hooks left, and Emma said she followed Bev upstairs, just to get her to talk. Said she asked my wife why she wasn’t pushing for a divorce, especially since she was seeing Hooks.”

“Why did you help her?”

“I was panicking,” he said. “I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. I told her to run all the way downstairs to the first floor and leave a trail of blood so it would look like the intruder left. Then she came back upstairs and took her clothes off. Right there at the top of the steps. I gave her a garbage bag to put them in. I wanted her to track the blood through the building but not into her apartment. After she went back home, I carried all her things through my apartment and took them out the back. I ditched them down the block. I left the gate propped open and went back up that way to get into my apartment. Emma and I both had a couple more drinks until we crashed.”

“Did you break the glass on the way in?”

He hung his head. “Yes,” he said, and he broke down and began to sob. “Like I said, I was panicking. I just wanted to help Emma. I don’t love my wife anymore, but I didn’t kill her. Do you believe me?”

Claire sighed. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

Chapter 35

Paula

Five days after

I walked out of the station around 2:00 p.m.

It was jarring to leave such a dark, depressing place and instantly be surrounded by so much…normality. All around me, people buzzed by carrying Starbucks cups and shopping bags as they enjoyed the warm August day without any thought of the darkness that lay just behind the glass doors of the 18th District Police Station.

Why should they know?

Why should they care?

A woman walked by me with her hands full of Macy’s bags, her head angled to one side as she cradled her phone between her ear and her shoulder.

“I told you I left my headset at home, babe! No, I’m not going to just hold it. I’ll talk to you later…”

Behind her, a family of four, presumably tourists, ambled by, their phones lifted in the air as they took photos of everything around them.

It was all so normal, so nice.

And so painfully oblivious.