October 2019
Minneapolis
Sofia had just turned onto Gretchen and Dan’s street when her phone vibrated in her lap. She’d forgotten that she’d turned it to silent. She looked down. It was Detective Marley.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?”
“Driving.”
“Pull over.”
She veered onto the shoulder, hands shaking.
“You stopped?”
“Yes.” Sofia closed her eyes for a second. Was Jason hurt?
“We’re charging Ronald Derry with Kate’s murder.”
“The neighbor?” Her head began to hurt. A sharp pain above her left eyebrow.
“I wanted to tell you before you saw it on the news. We’re holding a press conference here in ten minutes. At the station.” He sounded out of breath.
“I don’t understand.” She opened her eyes but everything was blurry.
“I’m sorry. It must seem sudden. I tried to reach you earlier. We’ve already delayed it once so I could try you again. I didn’t want you to see it on the TV news.”
Sofia held her phone away for a second and saw she had missed several calls while the phone was muted in the exam room at the doctor’s office.
“You have enough evidence?” She looked over at the bottles of pills spilling out of her handbag.
“He has an old case, an arrest. Sexual assault. Not a teen. A woman his age at the time—thirty-two. We didn’t see it at first because it was in another state. Wisconsin. He was staying at the cabin or something. We took another look at him and what we found at his house. During the initial search, we’d found some shoes with mud that matched prints found at the scene. The mud is consistent, as well. That alone wasn’t really enough at the time.”
“Consistent?”
“With the mud they found at your daughter’s … at the scene. In addition, the SUV might be a good match. The one in the CCTV footage following your daughter.”
“Might be?”
“We still haven’t been able to pull up a clear picture of the plates. But we just picked him up and searched the cabin. Our initial search showed some child porn in an old shoe box. He’s in custody on suspicion of murder.”
Sofia started to see white.
“Are you there, Mrs. Kennedy?”
Her heart was pressing against her ribcage and she felt as if she were going to vomit.
“But what if it’s not him? I think I know someone else who … I need to come in and talk to you about it.” She was so confused. Was her murderous desire for revenge so strong it was skewing her reality?
There were a few seconds of silence. The detective clearly hadn’t expected that reaction.
“We’re pretty confident in our arrest. We have ample evidence to charge him with murder.”
“Pretty confident? That’s enough? Pretty confident?”
“Let me rephrase that. We are certain we have our suspect.”
“Please, please listen to me. I need you to hear what I have to say first. Before you charge him.”
“Mrs. Kennedy, the press conference is starting. I need to hang up now. Rest assured, the man who killed your daughter is off the streets.”
He hung up. Sofia stared at the phone.
He was wrong.