He’d been lucky enough to meet a woman who had inherited a lot of money. If Erica hadn’t come back into the picture, things would be very different.
When he thinks about Erica his entire body tightens with rage. He realizes that he’d gladly kill Erica Voss. He should have done it when he still had the chance, before she went to the police. But he hadn’t acted decisively, he hadn’t had time to come up with a sufficiently good plan, one that he was sure he could get away with.
But now, the damage is done. There’s no point in killing her now, and besides, everyone would think he did it. They already think he killed his first wife. Even if he made it look like an accident the knives would still be out for him. Making it look like an accident is his modus operandi, they’d say.
And Stephanie would know what he’d done.
Stephanie is going to leave him. He’s sure of it. He can tell that she’s afraid of him. Her leaving him is the worst possible thing that can happen to him now.
Everyone will think she left him because he killed his first wife.
He needs to see a lawyer. He needs to know what his rights are. How quickly can she divorce him? If they’re separated, but not yet divorced, would he still get her inheritance if she were to die?
He broods into his coffee. But he can no more kill his wife than he can kill Erica. He’d never get away with it. Not now.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
LATER THAT DAY, Stephanie stands in front of the bedroom closet. She has to think, to plan. Her mind works feverishly all the time. She’s thinking about it when she feeds the twins. She’s thinking about it when she changes diapers, when she’s cooking. How will she get rid of the gloves?
She has decided that her husband should kill himself. It’s the only way out of this mess. And he’s not going to do it himself. She’s going to have to do it for him.
It’s come down to this, in the space of a few short months. They’ve gone from being a happy, well-off couple to being a pair of cold-blooded murderers. How quickly things change, she thinks. How crazy and unpredictable life is. It’s like a circus – high-wire acts and people hiding behind clown masks. How little control we have, she thinks; so much is out of our hands.
But not everything. She can do this. She can take control again. She can protect her daughters. She’s doing this for them.
We don’t always get to choose.
But sometimes you can, she thinks.
She doesn’t love him any more. She’s not willing to spend the rest of her life with him, and to share her inheritance with her cheating, lying husband who murdered his first wife. She’s not willing to live in fear, waiting for him to kill her and the twins someday. He already got away with it once.
If only she could just leave him. But she doesn’t see that as a viable option. Best case – in the eyes of the law, he’s an innocent man. He has rights. Rights to see his children. He would always be part of their lives. But she knows what he’s done. Worst case – he might be so angry if she leaves him that he comes after her and kills her and the twins. Like that man who smothered his children with pillows and stabbed his estranged wife to death. Like all those men who kill their families. There are so many of them. Angry, thwarted men who kill their wives and children.
So she has to figure out this glove business, how to get rid of them quickly. And also, it bothers her about the ammunition.
She stares at the open bedroom closet. Patrick has gone out, and she’s alone in the house. She spins the dial on the combination lock and opens the safe. She’s wearing the latex gloves she bought for just this purpose. She looks at the Glock 19 9mm handgun that she’d last seen in Patrick’s right hand. She knows the gun has his fingerprints on it, his finger was even on the trigger. It’s like a gift. But now, as she inspects the gun, she sees that it isn’t loaded. She will have to do that – that’s not a huge problem because she’s wearing gloves and she knows how. She’s fired a gun before. But she