They sat in stunned silence in Laurie’s office as the video ended, the dark reality of the situation settling over them. Frankie was right. It obviously wasn’t the first time that Richard Harrington had abused his wife. You know how I get. You pushed my buttons. Everything will be better. You can’t leave. It had happened before, and yet he found ways to blame her and excuse himself.
“I’m sorry,” Laurie said. “That was hard even for me to watch. I can’t imagine how the two of you must feel.”
“I’m just so confused,” Frankie said. “I never saw him act that way.”
Once Laurie had asked whether it was okay to put the call on speaker phone at her end, she briefly introduced Jerry, Grace, and Ryan, then said, “Your mother seemed to know that the camera was there.”
Ethan spoke for the first time. “She definitely did. I only sent you that one clip. She introduced the video by stating where the camera was hidden and that it was the second memory card at the Boston house.”
Laurie nodded, taking in the information. So it had to also have been Sarah who installed the wall clock camera at the beach house. She was about to tell them about that camera too and then stopped, reminding herself they weren’t partners or clients. They were witnesses in her investigation.
“Your father says at the end that she can’t leave him. Did your parents ever talk about getting divorced?”
“Never,” Ethan replied. “You have to understand: Appearances were everything to my parents, especially my father. You can’t hold yourself out as the perfect family if you get divorced.”
She could hear the bitterness in his voice.
“Ethan, you told me before you didn’t believe Simon’s account of your father getting physical with him when he found out that he paid his friend Tom to write his term paper. Does this change anything?” she asked.
“Maybe? Or maybe Simon knew about the abuse and that was part of the reason he snapped. I’ve always thought that he didn’t expect Mom to be at the house that night.”
“Have you shown this to anyone else?” Laurie asked.
“We watched it first,” Frankie said. “Then I sent it to Simon and to the Wards to see if they knew anything about it. We’re all in complete shock. I gave it to you because it feels important, but we can’t figure out whether it’s even connected to our parents’ murders. Maybe we’re too close to it.”
Laurie couldn’t see an obvious nexus either, and so far no one else around the table had any suggestions.
“Is that the only memory card you found?” Laurie asked.
“So far, but I’ve barely made a dent in the storage unit. Mom said it was the second one, so that means there’s at least one more.”
“And to your knowledge, she didn’t have a hidden camera at the beach house?” Laurie asked, still not revealing the information she’d obtained from the former deputy chief.
Frankie and Ethan both said they knew nothing about hidden cameras at either property until today.
“Okay, keep looking,” Laurie said. “And thanks for keeping me in the loop. I know it must be hard.”
“Really hard,” Frankie said, her voice cracking. “I was actually thinking that maybe the Wards were right about leaving things be. This is so much, so fast. It’s a little overwhelming.”
A worried expression crossed Ryan’s face.
“Are you changing your mind?” she asked as Ryan began to shake his head frantically.
“No. In fact, it was Ethan who said this video convinced him even more that we need to stop avoiding whatever other secrets may have been hiding behind the image of our supposedly perfect family. Warts and all, maybe we’ll finally get the truth.”
“And I hope we can get that for you too.”
As she ended the call, Laurie noticed Brett lingering at the entrance to her office. “You asked the girl whether she was changing her mind? What were you thinking?”
Sometimes she wondered if he had the offices bugged so he could show up at the worst possible moment.
“I tried to stop her,” Ryan said.
Grace and Jerry both glared across the table at Ryan. So much for teamwork.
“She’s a kid, Brett. And a vulnerable one at that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said sarcastically. “I was under the impression she was about to be a very wealthy twenty-two-year-old. That’s an adult as far as I’m concerned. I stopped by to see if you had an ETA on production.”
She remembered Jerry’s earlier question during the locker room meeting. Am I crazy to think we’re actually ready to start filming?
She took another look at her whiteboard, where she would need to add Richard Harrington’s violent streak to the list of rabbit holes that might or might not be related to the murders. If it were up to her, she’d spend weeks nailing down every loose end before turning on cameras, but Brett had made it clear that very little remained up to her.
“We’re all set to go,” she announced. “Let’s start packing.”
Brett clasped his hands together in satisfaction. “Good to hear it. Start filming before the family gets cold feet. We need a blockbuster.”