Page 146 of Nobody's Fool
Silence.
“How did it happen?”
Silence.
“I have a theory if you’re ready to hear it.”
They are not. I don’t care.
“It starts with your alibis. Thomas, you said your girlfriend, Lacy Monroe, called you to reconcile. According to the phone records, that would have been at 1:21 a.m. That sound right?”
He still looks down, but he nods.
“I found Lacy,” I tell him. “She lives in Portland now. She confirmed for me that she did call you then, just like you said, but that you didn’t get to her place until five a.m., some four hours later. But she only lived two miles from you. The FBI noticed this discrepancy too, by the way. Part of why people had doubts about you. But they figured maybe you were so drunk you passed out again, so they dismissed it.” I turn to his father. “Archie, you originally had no plans to go to Chicago. But suddenly you wanted an alibi, and what better one than surprising your wife on your private plane?”
“I don’t see your point,” Archie says. “This proves nothing.”
“True,” I say. “Not on its own. But it makes one wonder. All that commotion—all of those time gaps and the need to fill them with alibis—leads me to believe that Victoria died that night, sometime after she drove Thomas home on New Year’s Day. It begins to create a timeline. Shall I go on?”
Silence.
“New York started E-ZPass in 1993. Believe it or not, they still have electronic records going back that far. That night, Thomas, you and your sister drove your BMW E36 with a license plate KTR-478 into the city. Just as you said. E-ZPass has a record of it. In fact, during the months before, you used the car a lot—it shows up on a ton of E-ZPass records. But guess what?” I move closer to Thomas. “After that night, it was never used again. Not one toll crossing. My theory? You got rid of the car because it was evidence. Do you see how our timeline is starting to take shape?”
They still won’t look up, but I know that I’m close.
“So now I ask myself, what happened? You and Victoria arrivehome. I believe that. It fits. So how did she die? Well, we know it’s related to your BMW E36 because you got rid of it. Could Victoria have crashed the car herself? No. If she did, well, to parrot your father, there’s no law against that. You would just have called the police.” I turn now back to his father. “And it doesn’t make sense that you, Archie, would have been behind the wheel. Again same thing: If you were driving and she ended up dead, it would just be a terrible accident.”
I pace again. I pace back and forth and then I stop so that I’m looming over Thomas, so close to him that he is staring down at my shoes.
“So it had to be you, Thomas. That’s the only thing that makes sense. You told me you had four DUIs. I checked the records—it was actually six. You had seriously injured two people in a drunk driving incident just two months earlier, on November eighth. Your father’s money got you off. But it wouldn’t this time, not again. Not if you killed your own sister.”
Silence.
“You’ve kept this secret for too long,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”
From behind me, I hear Archie say, “It can’t leave this room.”
I spin toward him.
“What we are about to tell you is just a hypothetical,” Archie continues. “That’s all. We admit nothing.”
“Archie,” I say, “I don’t have any listening devices. I can’t prove any of this. You’ve made that abundantly clear. You want to control me, but you’re smart enough to know right now that the only way to do that is to tell me the truth. Because if you don’t, I’ll just keep coming at you.”
He knows I mean it. He looks over at his son. Thomas’s shoulders go slack. Now he too finally looks up at me. Thomas wants to tell me. I can see that now. He needs to do this, to unburden himself in some way.
I move away from him now. I give him space.
“We got home,” Thomas says in pure monotone. “Just like I told you. We pulled up to the front door. It was freezing out. Victoria turned off the car. She kissed my cheek and told me she was going inside to see Dad. I sat there. I was drunk. There were also drugs in the car. A lot of them. I opened the glove compartment. Some spilled out onto the floor. Coke. I took a few snorts. That woke me up. But I didn’t leave the car. I called Lacy on my phone again. She still didn’t answer. I’m sitting in the cold and I’m drunk and I’m jealous. I know Lacy is out with Jim DeLapp and I can’t stand the thought of them together. I’m losing my mind. So I take another snort. And another. I call Lacy again. And again. It’s so cold I can see my breath. In my head, it was like I became a giant fire-breathing dragon. I remember thinking that. And then finally my phone rings. And it’s Lacy.”
Thomas looks across the room. I sneak a glance at Archie Belmond. His face is covered in tears.
“So I answer it. And Lacy is hysterical. She’s telling me she loves me, that she was just using Jim DeLapp to make me jealous, that she needs to see me, that I’ve always been the one. I tell her I’ll be right there, don’t move, don’t worry, I’m coming. So I hang up and slide over to the driver’s side. I start up the car. Lacy needs me. I’m getting her back. I gotta get there fast. I hit the gas pedal and the car accelerates. I can’t slow down. I won’t slow down. I have to get to Lacy. So I press down on the gas again, pedal to the metal, and I’m flying down the driveway and it’s cold and maybe it’s slippery, I don’t know, but I’m going so fast now, out of control, but I don’t care and I take the turn too hard and the car goes off the pavement, onto the grass, and I can’t stop and suddenly, in the headlights, I see Victoria staring back at me.”
I close my eyes.
“She’s just standing there. Frozen. You know. Like they say about a deer in the headlights. And she’s right by that tree, the old one we used to have in the yard. See, after she kissed Dad, she decided totake Winslow for a walk. That’s the kind of person she was. She took Winslow for a walk and now it’s like she’s trapped in the car headlight beam and everything slows down and ramps up and so I slam on the brake except it’s not the brake, it’s the gas pedal again and I speed up and crash and wrap the car around that big oak tree. The airbag explodes in my face and I can hear the car hissing. I open the door and fall out and look at the hood of the car and the top half of Victoria is lying flat on it. Winslow is licking her face. Her eyes are open, staring, unblinking, just like when I saw her in the headlights. And I start to scream and scream…”
He stops. We all stop. I’m holding my breath. It feels like the entire room is. I can see it now. I can see it all in my mind’s eye. And part of me swears it can still hear his screams. Like they’re still echoing and if we stay still enough, they’ll get louder and louder.
