I asked Rountree to give me a moment, and she agreed. Although she also said, “Time is urgent now. So just a moment. A very short moment.”
I went down the hall to the half bathroom we’d renovated shortly after moving in. I turned on the water in the pedestal sink and splashed the coldness against my face over and over. The bracing coolness felt good.
As I toweled my face off, I looked in the mirror. None of it seemed real. Like I was staring at a picture of a TV character or someone on the news and wondering how their life had ended up so far down the wrong path. But the face belonged to me. And so did the life.
When I finished wiping the loose drops off my face and neck, I went back out to the living room, where Rountree was sitting, her thumbs working over her phone as she sent a text.
She looked up and waited patiently while I returned to my seat. She listened without showing any surprise while I told her about Steve the IT guy and how he could have been the person to help Amanda hack into Jennifer’s Facebook account.
“Do you know his last name?” Rountree asked.
“Detective, maybe I should talk to Amanda first.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re saying all kinds of things that are bigger and more dangerous than anything I could have imagined. What you’re saying is crazy.”
“Maybe it is. But the sooner I talk to Amanda, the sooner she can be cleared. That’s how it works. So, do you know this IT guy’s last name?”
“I never knew it. I didn’t want to know it. I was so disgusted by him coming on to Amanda in that way.”
“Did he harass her? Was it something she needed to report?”
“No. Not like that, I guess. He just asked her out. She didn’t feel like it crossed any lines of legality or ethics.”
“So it was the same as Jennifer writing to you, right? Basically.”
“I guess. Look, talk to that guy. You can find him at her company. It’s out on Old Lexington Road. I’m sure he still works there. You can get his name and contact information from them.”
“We’ll look,” Rountree said. “We’ll talk to him.”
“Hell, maybe Amanda’s with—” But I cut off my own thought. I couldn’t bear it. And it couldn’t really be possible, could it? I’d been the distant and absent one lately. I’d been the one working too much. Had I driven her away?
But why that morning? Where would she have had to go without telling me or her parents what she was doing?
The thought of calling her again crossed my mind, but did I really want to know the answers to all of these questions? What if what I learned was worse than anything I could have imagined?
Had I told her everything about my past only to have her keep something huge from me?
“I’ve taken up enough of your time, Ryan,” Rountree said. “And we certainly have some information to use going forward. I suggest you stay here, close to home, in case Amanda comes back. And if she does, you need to notify us right away. We do need to talk to her.”
“Sure. Of course.”
Rountree stood up, but she made no move for the front door. She held her phone in one hand, and she leaned down, studying my face. “Are you okay, Ryan? Would you like me to call someone for you? A friend? Another family member? Maybe your in-laws?”
“No.” My voice was distant and small. My mind raced through the events of the past couple of days, trying very hard to piece things together. And one piece of the puzzle stood out and refused to fit. “Detective? I told you that when I saw the data on Jennifer’s phone, there were Facebook messages that sounded threatening. I pointed those out to you when I turned everything over.”
“I remember. Are you going to ask me who we think those messages came from?”
“Do I want to know any of this?”
Rountree straightened up and glanced at her phone. Whatever she saw there failed to interest her. “We don’t know who they came from. Those have been hard to trace.”
“Can’t you find the IP address or whatever?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy when someone uses a personal computer. A computer in your home may not even have a fixed IP address. What we do know is that someone threatened Jennifer Bates via Facebook message on the day she died. We know that person said they were going over to her house to see her. And Amanda’s movements at the time of Jennifer’s death are unaccounted for.”
“She was . . . ,” I said. I almost said, She was home. Then I remembered.
“You told me she was out,” Rountree said. “You told me last night she called your mother-in-law to come and babysit Henry while she ran an errand. One we can’t trace.”
“She went to the store.”
“Did she? Will the bank records show she purchased something? What did she need to buy so urgently that she suddenly was calling her mother to come over and watch Henry?”
“I don’t know.”
“And we don’t know where she went.”
“This is completely absurd. What you’re saying is completely absurd.”
“Let me ask you another thing. Does your wife own a pair of gloves? Black winter gloves? Last night you told me there was a glove on the floor of Ms. Bates’s house. And you were right. We did find that glove there. A lady’s glove. We thought it might belong to Ms. Bates, but then why would it be out in the middle of the floor when it’s not that cold outside? So maybe we’re rethinking things. Maybe the glove was dropped by the killer. We’re checking it for DNA, of course.”
“Lots of people own black gloves.”
“But likely only one DNA profile will be on there. Maybe two if it touched the victim.”
“I don’t believe any of this.”
“Why don’t I just have a look at her devices? Laptop, iPad? It won’t take long.”
“Do you have a warrant?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“You’re wrong. You’re wrong to even think these thoughts. Just let it be.”
“Prove I’m wrong, then,” she said. “Find your wife and let her explain it all. Then everybody can move on.” She started walking to the door and didn’t look back, even as she said, “I’ll be back with a warrant, then. It won’t take long.”