“Good morning,” he says, standing up to greet me. “Going somewhere?”
I look down at my duffel bag, then back up to the detective, who has already halved the distance between us.
“Just a little trip.”
“Where to?”
I chew on the side of my cheek, very aware of Melissa’s presence behind me.
“New Orleans,” I say. “I’m running some last minute wedding errands. They have some boutiques there, different vendors I wanted to check out.”
When I find myself caught up in a lie, I’ve found it’s always best to simplify it. To stick to the same version as often as possible. If Daniel thinks I’m in New Orleans, then Melissa and Detective Thomas might as well think the same thing. I catch Detective Thomas’s eyes glancing down at the ring on my finger before looking back up, nodding gently.
“This will just take a few minutes.”
I extend my arm to my office, turning around and smiling at Melissa as I lead him across the waiting room, attempting to convey a sense of calm and control despite the panic rising in my chest. The detective follows me inside and shuts the door.
“So, what can I do for you, Detective?”
I walk behind my desk and set my bag on the ground, pulling out my chair and taking a seat. I hope he’ll follow my lead and do the same, but he remains standing.
“I wanted to let you know that I spent the week following up on your lead. Bert Rhodes.”
I raise my eyebrows; I forgot about Bert Rhodes. So many things have happened over the past week that have shifted my focus—the necklace in our closet and the revelation about Aubrey Gravino, the perfume on Daniel’s shirt and the lying about the conference and the scratch across his side. The visit with my mother, the things I had found in Daniel’s briefcase, now tucked into my own duffel bag. The evidence I had been looking for, and the evidence I’m traveling this weekend to find. The memory of Bert Rhodes in my home, holding that drill, his eyes boring into mine, feels so distant to me now. But I still remember that feeling of paralysis, of fear. Of my feet firmly planted on the ground despite the mounting sense of danger. But now danger has taken on a whole new meaning. At least I wasn’t living under the same roof as Bert Rhodes; at least he didn’t have a key to access the doors that I had locked behind me. I’m feeling almost nostalgic for last week, yearning for that moment—standing in my hallway, back against the door—when the line between good and bad was so clearly defined.
Detective Thomas shifts on his feet and suddenly, I feel guilt, too. Guilt for sending him down this rabbit hole. Yes, Bert Rhodes is a bad man. Yes, I felt unsafe in his presence. But the evidence I’ve uncovered in the past week doesn’t point in his direction—and I feel like I should say so. But still, I’m curious.
“Oh, really. What did you find?”
“Well, for starters, he wants to take out a restraining order. Against you.”
“What?” The shock of his statement sends me shooting up from my desk, the screech of my chair against the hardwood floor like jagged nails on a chalkboard. “What do you mean, a restraining order?”
“Please take a seat, Doctor Davis. He told me he felt threatened during his little visit to your house.”
“He felt threatened?” I’m raising my voice now; I’m sure Melissa can hear, but at this point, I don’t care. “How in the world did he feel threatened? I felt threatened. I was unarmed.”
“Doctor Davis, take a seat.”
I stare at him for a moment, blinking back my disbelief, before slowly lowering myself into my chair again.
“He claims that you lured him into your home under false pretenses,” he continues, taking a step closer to my desk. “That he arrived under the impression that he was completing a job, but once he stepped inside, he realized you had other intentions. That you were interrogating him, pushing his buttons. Trying to get him to admit to something incriminating.”
“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t call him to my house, my fiancé did.”
I feel a lurch in my chest at that word—fiancé—but force myself to push it down.
“And how did your fiancé get his number?”
“I imagine from the website.”
“And why were you looking at the website? It seems like a pretty big coincidence, considering your history.”
“Look,” I say, pushing my hands through my hair. I can already see where this is going. “I had his website pulled up, okay? I had just realized that Bert Rhodes lives in town and I was thinking about how coincidental it is, to your point. I was thinking about those girls and how desperately I wanted to figure out what was happening to them. My fiancé saw it pulled up on my laptop and called him without me knowing. It was just a stupid misunderstanding.”