recognized her right away. She hadn’t changed at all, pale and waifish, Pippi-Longstocking-color hair in the exact same cut, blank face. I told her I was sorry about what had happened with Eric Washburn, and she stared at me for a moment with a flat, unwavering stare. That was the extent of our interaction. I tried to remember if I’d introduced her to Ted, and I think I probably did but couldn’t be sure. I did remember her cold stare, her green, almost translucent eyes. Did she know about Eric and me that summer? And if she knew, then was it a possibility that Eric hadn’t accidentally died? I didn’t think so, but it unnerved me somehow that she was back in my mind. There were many reasons why Ted might have gone to Winslow on Friday; the chance that it had something to do with Lily was incredibly slim.
I got back to Boston at four in the afternoon. I parked on the street about three blocks from my house, and went to the bar of a boutique hotel, where I drank a vodka on the rocks and ordered a plate of lobster orecchiette. I was starving. When I’d finished the pasta, I returned to my car and called Detective Kimball. He picked up immediately.
“I’m in Boston,” I told him.
“Great,” he said. “Where are you? I can pick you up if you like, take you to the station.”
I told him I was just down the street from our house, parked on the street, not knowing what to do, or where to go. I put a little hitch in my voice as I said it.
“Understandable. If you just wait there I can come get you. Then, if you want, you can make some calls from the station. Maybe there’s a friend’s house you’d like to stay at, or a hotel . . .”
The detective arrived ten minutes later in a white Mercury Grand Marquis, and drove me to the station. The interior of his car smelled of hand-rolled cigarettes and peppermint. He was wearing jeans and a corduroy jacket. His tie looked vintage, and was frayed a little along one side.
“Thank you so much for coming back to Boston,” he said as he weaved through traffic, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on his knee, index finger tapping to nonexistent music. “We’re feeling very good about this lead. We think we have a detailed description of the man who killed your husband.”
“How?” I asked.
“There was a woman visiting one of your neighbors who was sitting in her car texting. She watched a man exit from the house that was burglarized—the Bennetts at 317, you know them?—and then walk to your house. She said she kept watching him because he seemed shifty and nervous. He passed right under a streetlamp and she got a good look at his facial features. She worked with our sketch artist and we have a pretty good likeness, I think.” The detective glanced toward me. He was smiling a little shyly, as though he wasn’t sure how he should act. I watched his eyes scan my face.
“Why do you want me to take a look at the sketch? Do you think I might know him?”
“We think it’s a possibility. Our witness said that the suspect rang the doorbell at your house. Your husband came to the door, and talked to the man for a while. In fact, the witness says she stopped watching because it seemed like they might have known each other. Next time she looked up he wasn’t there, and she assumed that he’d entered the house.”
“Oh, my God,” I said. “It was someone Ted knew?”
“It’s just a possibility, Mrs. Severson. It’s possible he was a random burglar who talked his way into your house. That’s why we want you to look at the sketch.”
“Are you sure that this man who came to the door was the same man who shot . . . who shot my husband?”
The detective casually spun the wheel of the car and looped his way into a parking space in front of the precinct.
“We think so,” he said, killing the engine. “The witness said she was sitting in the car sometime around six at night, and that’s approximately the time of death that the coroner came up with. She didn’t hear a gunshot, but her car was running and your house has thick walls, or so they tell me.”