hesitate to kill my husband.”
“It seems logical that he’d say that.”
“Perhaps, but Parker believed him, and Salvatore moved out.”
“At which point Harrison reported all of this to you,” I said. “I’m supposed to believe you never chose to confront your husband about it?”
“I did confront him,” she said, “and we had a royal battle, a screaming raging fight, and it saved our marriage. It would have saved our marriage.”
Her voice faded, tears rose in her eyes, and she dabbed them away gently without shame. She looked hauntingly beautiful in that moment.
“That night was when the silence broke,” she said, “and everything that had been held secret was shared. He told me what he’d thought and what he’d done, and I told him how his silence had damaged us, and that night we made love like people
“For good?”
She shook her head. “No. For a few months, maybe a year. Joshua had been talking about it for a long time, urging for a trip overseas, and at the time I’d refused because I thought it would set us back in what we were doing here. That night, I agreed to it, because I thought that we had to get away to find a shared life again, so we could come back. Otherwise we were going to lose each other. Maybe we would have anyhow, but I like to think differently.”
She stopped talking then, and her mouth became a hard line. For a moment I thought she was angry, but then I realized the tears were gaining on her again and she was determined not to be overrun.
“Joshua also thought we had to leave for safety. After what Parker told us, he thought we could be in danger.”
“So you planned to leave,” I said, “but you never made it. Your husband never made it, at least.”
She nodded. “We made calls about arrangements for the house, for the mail, all those things you need to do before going abroad. The last time I saw him, I was heading out to talk to a travel agent and asked if he wanted to come, too. He said he had things to do around the house and I should go alone. I was gone for maybe three hours. When I came back here, I found my husband’s body.”
She was staring at the well house as if something were crawling out of it.
“He was outside. Just in front of the door. He’d been shot, and there was blood all over the stone, and when I saw his body I was sure that my brother had killed him.”
“How did you know?”
“Dominic gave Joshua a present when we got married. It was a ring, this horrible ring with an enormous stone that surely cost a fortune but could not have been less like my husband. He was not a man who wore rings. My brother, at that time, was. He was loud and flashy and wore expensive jewelry and to him the gift meant something. Joshua hated it, though, and the only time he ever wore it was when my brother was around.”
She folded her arms across her chest again, even though the wind wasn’t blowing and the sun was warm on us through the bare trees, and said, “The ring was lying on his chest. Right there in the blood. It had been dropped in the blood and I understood what it meant. The ring had been a symbol to my brother, a welcome into our family, and Joshua had betrayed that welcome. So my brother killed him, and even as he lied to me about it, he left that ring as a message.”
“He was murdered here,” I said, “and his body was left at the door.”
She nodded.
“Then could you explain how he ended up in the woods in Pennsylvania?”
She looked at me and then away, twisted her torso as if stretching her back, and spoke with her face turned from mine. “I took him there and I buried him.”
“I’m glad you lied about that,” I said. “Because it tells me how bad a liar you are, Alexandra, and that’s going to help me believe the rest of what you’ve said.”
She unfolded the stretch slowly, let her face come back around.
“Parker Harrison buried him,” I said. “Now tell me why.”
“To help me,” she said. “To save me. He’d been gone that afternoon, and when he drove back in, with the truck all loaded up with mulch, he found me sitting there beside Joshua.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“The police wouldn’t bring him back, but they would ask me to stay here and face the investigation and the trial, to prosecute my brother, to deal with the media. All of that would happen if I stayed, and so much more. There were people like Parker, and like Nimir Farah and Mark Ruzity, and I knew the publicity would find them, and I thought that would be a terrible thing. I saw no good coming from it at all, and so much harm.”
“What about justice for your husband?” I said. “That meant nothing?”
“Of course it did. My response was one of shock, I’ll admit that. The idea of having to bear what would come . . . I decided I couldn’t do it. That may seem like cowardice to you, and you may be right. I’ll let you make that judgment.”
“Mark Ruzity was seen with your brother after you disappeared, after Joshua was killed,” I said. “And Parker Harrison called him. Why?”
“I asked Parker to pass along a message to my brother, to tell him that I was leaving, would never speak to him again, and that he should never look for me.”
“What about Ruzity?”
She frowned. “Mark is such a good soul, but he struggles with his anger. He really does. He and Parker were close, and I told Parker that he could tell Mark only that I was leaving because of my brother’s actions. I didn’t trust his reaction to the details. Even so, I suspect Mark might have . . . given a more direct message to Dominic.”
“I’m sorry?”
She looked up. “I suspect he threatened to kill him if he pursued me.”
I thought of the chisel against my forehead, and then I thought of the photograph Dunbar had taken, the way Ruzity had clasped his hand around Sanabria’s neck, pulled him close, and whispered in his ear. There weren’t many people who would threaten to kill a mob boss, but Mark Ruzity seemed like he could be one of them easily enough.
“Harrison took the body,” I said, “and you took off.”
“Yes.”
I shook my head, wondering now more than ever why he had decided to darken my door. He knew what had happened. What in the hell had he really wanted?
“Did he know where you went?” I asked. “Did you have any contact with him?”
“No.”
So maybe he’d just wanted to find her. Maybe he’d been honest about that much.
“I had no contact with Parker,” she said, “until this May. Until the day before Ken was murdered. That day, I called Parker to tell him not to trust you.”
“What?”
“I told him that I was safe and well and that I knew he was looking for me but it would be dangerous for him to have any association with police and detectives. He’d buried my husband’s body. It was easy to imagine he could be blamed. I said if anything happened, all he needed to do was ask me, and I’d come forward.”
The day before Ken was murdered. That was the same day Harrison had told me to quit, but then he’d asked that final question, asked who Ken really was.
“Why didn’t you explain Ken to him?” I said.
“Ken was the only person who knew how to find me, and had known for years. Couldn’t the police have charged him with something for that? I wanted to keep him out of anything negative.”
“Out of anything negative,” I echoed. “He’s dead. Your decision to leave your husband’s murder unanswered is understandable, maybe even acceptable. This isn’t.”
“I agree.”
“Yet you haven’t contacted the police, haven’t taken any action.”
“I didn’t know what action to take. I’ve been gone for twelve years. I have a new life, in a new place. I don’t want to destroy that in the way my old life was destroyed.”
