Laurie cleared her throat, unsure how to follow up on Roberta Hanson’s remark about her departure from the Harbor Bay Police Department.
She noticed Ryan open his mouth to speak, but then he looked to her for guidance instead.
“You don’t look back on your time there fondly?” Laurie asked.
Roberta shifted in her seat. “Harbor Bay’s a beautiful place. A rural feel but with fantastic beaches and dramatic sandy cliffs. It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone, and the community is tight-knit.”
“Sounds nice,” Ryan said.
“Well, it can be a blessing and a curse. When something as heinous as a double murder goes down, it can be hard to fathom that someone from the community could be responsible. The wagons circle quickly.”
Laurie’s gaze remained fixed on Roberta. “So the community goes looking for an outside explanation of the danger?”
Roberta nodded. “Chief Collins was adamant from the start. Initially, he assumed it would be connected to shady business dealings in Boston. But once he saw the video recording from the front gate, he was certain it was one of the sons—who, let’s face it, were also outsiders as far as Harbor Bay was concerned. Once Simon and Ethan started blaming each other, Collins became convinced it was all part of their plan. The brothers were in on it together.”
“But as we understand it,” Laurie said, “there was no blood found on either of the twins’ white outfits they wore that night.”
“Of course not,” Roberta said. “If there’d been blood, at least one of them would have been arrested and charged. There was also no blood in the Range Rover. The Chief was convinced they had a third matching outfit to change into after the shooting, dumping the bloodied clothes before returning to the party. We never found them, but they could have been thrown anywhere.”
“You keep saying the Chief was convinced. You weren’t?”
Roberta paused, pondering the question. “Do I think they did it? Yeah. But am I convinced, as in beyond a reasonable doubt? No. There’s a reason they were never charged. To have a convincing case, you’d have to have a thorough investigation.”
Laurie noticed that Ryan had slipped a legal pad from his briefcase and was taking notes. Maybe he really did want to help with the work.
“And it wasn’t thorough?” she asked Roberta.
“Not in my opinion. On the one hand, the Chief was sure the twins did it. On the other, he seemed more concerned about getting them out of town and assuring the locals they were safe than actually building a case against them.”
Everything she was saying was consistent with Simon and Ethan’s description of the investigation. “Did the department look into alternative explanations? Make a list of other suspects?”
Roberta shook her head. “Not once we saw that Range Rover tail the parents onto the property. And then the dad’s law partner saying he saw one of the boys near the Range Rover at the yacht club was the nail in the coffin. A lot of the evidence against them made it around town by word of mouth. I can tell you one thing that wasn’t public, but if you’re trying to prove those boys are innocent, you’re not going to like it.”
“Why not?” Laurie asked.
“It’s another piece of evidence against the twins. The camera at the front gate wasn’t the only camera at the house. There was a hidden one disguised to look like a wall clock hanging in the hallway outside the home office at the back of the house. We found it in the search. It was functional, but someone had removed the memory card.”
“And you think it was one of the sons?”
“It had to be. Who else? Even the caretaker didn’t know about it, and he seemed to run everything in that house. When the Chief asked Simon and Ethan about cameras on the property, they said there was only the one at the gate, and it was broken—which it turned out not to be. Our theory was that they planned the murders for that night thinking the gate camera was broken, and then tried to make it look like a robbery gone bad. Before leaving, whichever one was the shooter removed the memory card from the hidden camera. Then they told us there was only the one camera outside, hoping we wouldn’t notice the clock was actually a video recorder.”
Laurie could see that Ryan was furiously jotting down notes, leaving the questioning to her.
“Simon mentioned that someone had vandalized the Harringtons’ property about a month before the murders,” Laurie said. “Someone spray-painted something like This Family is a Lie onto the sidewalk outside their house in Harbor Bay. Did you ever look into that?”
“There wasn’t much to look into,” she said. “There was no police report or photographs to back up the incident.”
“You thought he was making it up?”
“Could be. Alternatively, the brothers might have done the spray-painting themselves so they could claim later that someone had a grudge against the family.”
“Or,” Laurie said, “someone actually did hold a grudge.”
“Like I said, we didn’t look into it. There’s a reason I left law enforcement. It got to the point where I realized I wasn’t proud of the work I was doing.”
Laurie thought she noticed Ryan wince slightly at the observation.
“What about the family’s primary residence in Boston? The Harrington kids seems to think it was never searched for evidence.”
“It wasn’t,” Roberta said. “Because that would have required the Chief to work with the Boston PD, and he liked to be the big man in charge of a small department. He was convinced the answers he needed were in Harbor Bay and left it at that.”
“Can you think of concrete investigatory steps you would have taken if the Chief hadn’t been so focused on the twins?” Ryan asked.
Laurie nodded to Ryan in appreciation. It was a good question.
“Well, you pointed to two already. Search the Boston house. Figure out whether the vandalism incident actually occurred by talking to neighbors.” She looked up at the ceiling, searching for other items to add to the list. “Oh, I know. I had suggested going through the available footage from that camera at the gate. See if we could identify any other vehicles that came and went in the days before the murders. The Chief shot me down, saying it was a waste of time. We didn’t even ask the neighbors whether they might have surveillance camera footage that could be helpful. We also didn’t do a deep dive into the victims’ work lives.”
“Richard was a lawyer,” Laurie said, reminding her of the facts. “And Sarah was an artist but didn’t officially work outside the home.”
“I recall,” Roberta said. “It’s possible Richard could have had a disgruntled client or some other conflict related to his law firm, but we never even asked the right questions.”
Laurie thought again about Howard Carver, Richard’s second law partner. “What was your impression of Howard Carver?” she asked.
“It’s been so long—”
“The law partner who said he saw one of the twins near the Range Rover,” she prompted.
“That’s right. I remember that his affect was surprisingly flat. He must have realized he was implicating one of the sons of his murdered friend, but he seemed almost matter-of-fact about it. When I commented on his demeanor to the Chief, he said the guy was probably in shock.”
“Howard Carver retired from the law practice some time ago. Do you know anything about that?”
Roberta shook her head. It was another indication that no one had ever pressed Howard Carver about his identification of one of the twins. She could feel in her bones that this was a topic where her show might be able to change the narrative.
“What about alternative suspects?” Laurie asked.
“There honestly weren’t any. There was no evidence either of the parents was wrapped up in anything dangerous. They appeared to be the picture-perfect family. A few people told us Richard could be pretty hard on the kids—”
“Abusive?” Laurie asked.
“No,” she said. “Again, the Chief was sure Simon was lying about that one incident. Both the dogwalker and the caretaker told us that Richard could be demanding of the children. Controlling. But again, if anything, that gave the sons a motive for removing their father from the picture.”
“But why kill their mother?” Ryan asked.
“To get their inheritance. Or, in my opinion, if they did it—and I do think they did it—they didn’t expect their mother to be home. Shooting her may have been an accident, or the shooter panicked when she walked in on the murder of the father.”
It was the exact scenario Ethan had floated when he was implicating Simon.
“Part of what we do on our show,” Laurie said, “is cast a wide net and ask whether there might be someone out there the police never looked at.”
“Like I said, we had no alternative suspects.”
“With the benefit of hindsight, Roberta, if you absolutely had to name someone you’re curious about, who would it be?”
Her expression was blank, but then she closed her eyes tightly, trying to remember.
“Perhaps someone else with a motive other than Simon and Ethan?” Laurie prompted.
When Roberta opened her eyes again, she seemed to have found clarity. “The girlfriend’s father,” she said.
“Simon’s girlfriend, Michelle Ward? Her father, Walter, was Richard’s law partner. He and Betsy took Frankie in after the murders. They were practically family—so close they had keys to each other’s houses. That kind of thing.”
Roberta was shaking her head. “No, the other girlfriend. The local girl.”
“Annabeth? Her maiden name was Connolly.”
“That’s the one,” Roberta said, snapping her fingers. “Her father owned the hardware store in town. It was called Jimmy’s. Rumor was, he was going into foreclosure. A chain store down the road was too much competition. But a couple years after the murders, the store got a big makeover. A lot of high-end inventory. The new rumor was that Annabeth had moved to Boston and was engaged to Ethan. Everyone assumed he’d bailed her father out. I suppose it’s possible he saw Ethan as his daughter’s gravy train and didn’t want Richard Harrington standing in the way.”
“Did you raise that possibility with the Chief at the time?”
“I didn’t. It seemed too far-fetched.”
“You didn’t even mention it?” Laurie asked.
“No, because here’s the thing: Jimmy Connolly was one of Chief Collins’s closest friends.”