September 10, 2018
The press conference the police pulled together was set up outside the station, on the concrete steps that led up to the wide double doors. There was a lectern on the landing, a cheap wood thing kept in the utility closet for occasions like this, weighed down at the base with a sandbag to keep it from tumbling down the steps and blowing away. On the front was a cutout of the city’s emblem, and standing behind it was Detective Marion Spengler.
She looked terrified, the people on the steps said. Reporters and journalists and cameramen were gathered there, waiting for a snippet to publish about the woman pulled out of the river. And about Matt Evans, because the entire city knew he had been arrested, that he had been taken into custody for the murder of his wife. No one knew the entire story—most reports had come from a woman working at the coroner’s office, who dished to a reporter from the Post, who then quickly spread the word—but that’s how life is, isn’t it? You never know the whole story.
But the police were going to comment now, which meant that there’d been some new development, and the crowd waited anxiously. None of them had ever gotten a statement from Detective Spengler, who was new to Homicide. Ralph Loren was a familiar face, although Loren had been banned from speaking to the media after an unfortunate incident years before, when a sixteen-year-old girl had been found in a ditch, raped and strangled. The victim’s mother had agreed to speak to the media, which had been a mistake—the questions had somehow become about the girl’s sexual activities before her death, and what she’d been wearing on the night of her murder. And Detective Loren, who’d been standing beside the mother as she began weeping and the questions kept coming, finally intervened.
Are you saying this girl deserved this? he’d shouted into the crowd of reporters. Without waiting for an answer, he’d kicked over the lectern and dug a handful of change from his pockets, then started flinging the coins into the crowd. A single video of the incident existed, and in it Loren looks like a man trying to skip rocks over water, only he’s throwing coins with deadly accuracy. There were reports of broken cameras and eyeglasses, and one woman claimed to have gotten a black eye from a quarter. The Denver PD paid out on any claims, removed Loren from that particular case, and agreed to never let him speak at a press conference again.
But Spengler was fresh blood, and no one was quite sure what to expect.
“I hope she doesn’t throw up,” someone said. There was a smattering of laughter.
It had rained that morning but had let up just before lunch, leaving the sidewalks and streets dark with moisture. It was cool out, but Spengler was warm. She’d never liked crowds, didn’t like public speaking. She’d barely passed that class in college and now here she was, dozens of eyes—both real and digital—trained on her.
Keep it simple, stupid. That’s what Loren had told her. Just like we practiced. Easy for him to say from his spot standing behind her.
Afterward, she could never remember her walk up to the lectern that’d been set up on the steps, a slim wooden thing with a microphone on top, like a cherry balancing at the peak of an ice cream sundae, or even the long moments she spent standing in front of the reporters. She wasn’t thinking about Matt and Marie Evans in those moments, or even Riley Tipton. Instead, she was thinking about men. She’d seen men do terrible things, arrested and testified against them, but no one ever realized a woman could be just as terrible, and when they were everyone was surprised. But times were a-changing, weren’t they? After consulting with his lawyer, Evans had told them his wife was a killer, cold and calculating, she’d roped him into faking her death and then kept him hostage to it for twenty-plus years. She’d killed that first woman and made it look like it was her, and she’d plugged a bullet into his shoulder to make it look like they’d been attacked. She’d tried to kill her boss, she’d killed Riley, and now she was setting him up for murder.
I know she’s alive because she called, Evans said. When I was in the morgue with Riley. Called my cell just to gloat. She always has to get the last word.
Spengler had checked and it was true—Evans had received a call from an unknown number during the short time he’d been alone with Riley Tipton’s remains. The call lasted two minutes. Had it been Marie, watching her husband from somewhere nearby, wanting to poke him?
Women were called the fairer sex, sometimes the lesser sex. They were called delicate and weak and frail. If you wanted to insult someone, you’d tell them not to act like a girl. Don’t run like a girl, throw like a girl, cry like a girl. But when something awful happened it was easy to blame a woman. Women were seductresses, temptresses, witches. They lured men in and turned them into pigs, or their vaginas were lined with teeth and they’d chomp men alive. These women were drowned, they were burned at the stake, they were called hysterical and given lobotomies and shock treatment. A woman could be an easy scapegoat. Or they were ignored, and that might even be worse. Looked over, told to quiet down, to keep their mouths and their legs shut. It started young, and it never stopped, did it?
But it wasn’t that Spengler thought Janice Marie Evans was an innocent. No, quite the opposite. There was a ring of truth around Evans’s story, but there were areas that seemed gray and blurred. Spots where the puzzle pieces didn’t quite line up to make a clear picture.
Was Marie Evans innocent?
Nope.
But Spengler didn’t think she was the only guilty one.
Matt Evans declined to have his lawyer present in the interview room while he told them everything. The whole truth, nothing but the truth. His own words. It was, perhaps, the biggest sales pitch of his life, and he had to give it his all. But it’s one thing to say you’ll do something and another to actually go through with it, and Spengler thought he might’ve been struck with a few flights of fancy as he recounted the last twenty or so years he’d spent with his wife. He made himself out to be a saint and Marie the villain—good me, bad her—but one side of the story wouldn’t cut it. Every cop knows there’s three sides of every story. His side, her side.
And then there’s the truth.
Spengler didn’t remember later how the crowd shifted uncomfortably as they waited for her to speak, wondering if there was something wrong. She snaked her hands around the top of the lectern and dug her nails into the wood. There was her own husband and there was Matt Evans and there was her father and there was every other man on the planet, and some of them were bad and some were good but most were just okay. Nothing special. Be a man, that’s what people said when they wanted you to be tough and get control of your life, but that was bullshit. She was tougher than most men she knew, and she had a feeling Marie Evans was, too.
You squeeze all their balls now.
She cleared her throat.
“It was widely reported that Matthew Evans had been placed under arrest for suspicion of murdering his wife,” Spengler said suddenly, the words bursting out of her like water through a broken dam. “We did take Mr. Evans into custody several days ago, but we’ll be releasing him today.”
A murmur swept through the crowd, then stilled. Spengler had read about cases where press conferences were used to a certain advantage—most killers were ego whores and loved to follow the news about themselves—and the media had been used to communicate a message. Send a message, or draw the killer out.
“We don’t believe Mr. Evans has committed any sort of crime,” Spengler said. “We apologize to Mr. Evans for any inconvenience. Our investigation will continue in a different direction.”
Send a message, that’s how some cops used press conferences. Appeal to a person’s humanity. But Spengler didn’t give a damn about anyone’s humanity. She wanted to catch a killer. Draw them out into the open.
Both of them.
I told you I didn’t do anything wrong, Evans had said that morning when they’d gone in to tell him he’d be released soon. But Spengler had seen the flash of surprise in his eyes. He hadn’t been sure they’d believe him. This is all Marie’s doing.
She’d been there when Riley Tipton was pulled from the water. Floater, that’s what they called those victims. The body had been swollen up like an inner tube. More cushion for the pushin’, she’d heard a tech on the scene say, but his laughter dried up when he saw her staring at him. She’d been watching, so he’d behaved himself. But that was people for you. They acted right when they knew they were being watched. The only guy she’d ever met who acted the same under any circumstance was Loren, and that was because he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.
There was nothing worse than a man laughing behind his hand at a woman, she thought. A man thinking he’s getting away with whatever he wants, that he’s so smart, that he’s pulling the wool right over everyone’s eyes.
That’s what Evans was doing. Laughing.
“Mr. Evans will be immediately returned to his home and has said he will cooperate fully with our investigation,” she said.
This whole thing was less about sending a message and more about setting out the bait.
“What about the woman found in the Three Forks River?” one of the reporters shouted. “Has she been identified as Marie Evans?”
Spengler paused and smiled. She’d been practicing it in the mirror. She’d practiced that same smile before telling Evans they believed him and he’d be released. Kept her lips relaxed, lots of teeth. Practice makes perfect, after all, and if things were going to play out the way they wanted, Evans had to think they’d swallowed his story.
Swallowed it and licked the bowl clean.
“We will release more information as it comes to light,” she said. “Thank you.”
Marie’s not going to just turn herself in, if that’s what you think, Evans had said. He was different once he thought they were on the same side. Confident and opinionated. She liked him better when he was quiet and scared. She’s not stupid. She’s out there, watching. Probably laughing at me. And what are you fucking cops doing about it?
That was what Spengler was counting on—that Marie was watching all this unfold, that she’d see her husband had been seemingly cleared of wrongdoing in her death. She’d think they were all laughing at her, that her husband had gotten away scot-free, and she’d be infuriated. Female black widows eat their mates once they’re done with them, and that was what Spengler was hoping for—that the spider would learn her mate was still alive and well and come out of her hidey-hole, that she’d show up in her web again, hunting for her man.