as soon as I got them. I wish I hadn’t.”
“How did your mom and Matt first start fighting?”
“I think the first time it happened was when we were having some people over for dinner. Matt was at the house and wouldn’t leave. I remember Mom doing one of those things where she said, the guests will be here in two hours, your friend needs to go home now. You know, saying it to me while he’s sitting right there. Only Matt didn’t leave, she came by again and then told him to leave directly. He wouldn’t. It turned into this fight between them where she told him she would call the police if he didn’t leave immediately.”
“And he left?”
“Yeah, after she threatened him. Then Mom told me she didn’t want him around anymore.”
“But he kept coming by.”
“Yeah, I never told him outright that she said he couldn’t come over anymore. I mean I was fifteen, I didn’t want to have to say, ‘my mom says I can’t be your friend anymore,’ y’know what I’m saying?”
“Sure.”
“So he kept coming by when my folks weren’t there. Oh, another reason my mom didn’t like him was because he used to scare Shawn. He would chase him around, make him cry. Matt thought that was pretty funny.”
“When did he do this?”
“All the time.”
I realized I was out of questions again. I sat there for a second, my brain racing to think about what I hadn’t covered yet.
“Hello?”
“Um, yes, I’m sorry, I was just making some notes. I, uh, wanted to ask you about why your father immediately suspected it was Matt.” It seemed like a stupid question.
“Well, for all those reasons, I guess. Dad said that Matt called the house a bunch of times that day and Mom had gotten into a fight with him over the phone. I suppose that was probably why. Also, they never found the murder weapon. I mean, that alone is pretty strong evidence it was someone else. Not necessarily Matt, but someone.”
I thought about the prosecutor’s argument. Claiming Steele had sat in the bathroom while his wife lay dead on the floor and washed the solid steel kitchen knife under the tub faucet. Then going calmly downstairs and putting it away. All before he called the police. The image of Steele rinsing the blood off the knife while his wife was dying on the floor made me shiver.
It also made me say, “But people generally don’t kill people because of an argument over the phone.”
“Most people aren’t Matt.”
“Well, there must have been a little more to it than that.”
“There were other things, but Dad didn’t know about them at the time. For one, Matt used to tell me about how he broke into houses in the neighborhood. He thought that was real cool.”
“You mean he was a burglar?”
“The impression I got was that he got a thrill out of going into houses when people weren’t there, that’s all.”
“So you’re saying he may have broken into your house?”
“I’m saying, well, maybe that’s what I’m suggesting, but there’s more to it. I lost my house keys about two months before. I always suspected that Matt might have taken them. I kept them in a zipper compartment in my school bag, so they wouldn’t have fallen out.”
“Are you sure he took them?”
“No. It was just a feeling I had. I know it sounds like bullshit, but the police found the side door to the garage ajar that night. They didn’t see tracks in the grass or anything, and no forced entry, so they didn’t say anything. It was only vaguely mentioned in the police report. But they did say they locked it back up to secure the crime scene. Anyway, two days later my grandpa went to the house with us to get clothes and personal stuff and he found the same door open again.”
“I see. Did anyone ever check that door for fingerprints?”
“I have no idea.” Her voice spoke in a series of descending tones. I got the impression she was exhausted by the whole subject. “The upsetting thing was that there were things missing from the house when we went back to get stuff. Personal things, you know, stuff of my mom’s.”
“Like what?”
“Well, she had some old boxes of family pictures that I wanted, and I couldn’t find them anywhere. She also kept an old cedar hope chest way in the back of her closet, and that was gone too.”
“Did you ever find them?”
“No. I even asked dad about