Page 10 of The Accomplice
‘We have some questions before we take the case, Mrs. Miller,’ said Kate. ‘We need to know before we jump into this that you have a solid defense.’
‘I didn’t hurt anyone. And I didn’t know I was married to the devil, if that’s what you mean, Miss Brooks,’ she said. Her voice sounded strained, low and broken, as if she had been crying for hours. From the way she appeared now, I guessed that might just be the case.
‘We understand that you discussed your suspicions concerning your husband with Mr. Peltier. Can you tell me what made you suspect your husband ?’ asked Kate.
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said Carrie. ‘When I think about it, there were strange occurrences, but Danny always had an explanation. It all seemed innocent once I’d talked to him about it. It was more of a feeling. I’m not paranoid, maybe I should’ve been, but I just had to talk to someone and tell them what had happened and what was on my mind.’
‘So, you never truly believed your husband was the Sandman,’ said Kate.
‘I’m not sure. For a time, I thought he was. Even now, in some ways I still can’t believe it.’
Kate looked at me. I could feel her eyes. Carrie was speaking from the heart. But there was something else behind that voice, and it wasn’t the sound of shale in her raw throat, it was different. Like she was hiding something. It was only a sense. A gut instinct.
‘Mrs. Miller,’ I said, ‘did you hurt or kill anyone with your husband ?’
At first, she said nothing. Her eyes closed, softly, her brows clinched as if she were suddenly in pain. Like the question was poison in a wound that had to be expelled.
‘No, I did not,’ she said, in one long breath.
‘Did you know that your husband was a murderer ?’
A glaze of tears spread over her eyes. She blinked once, and a single tear broke from each eye and chased one another across her cheeks, and along her jaw to her chin where they met, became one, and fell to the floor.
‘I didn’t know for sure. I suspected him. I also suspected I might’ve been crazy for thinking that way.’
‘During the times when you suspected him, did you ever do anything that might have helped him stay out of the police investigation ?’
She answered straight away. ‘Not knowingly. Not deliberately. If I had known for sure he was a killer, even for one second, I would have called the police.’
‘The jewelry they found in your drawer, which belonged to some of the Sandman’s victims, where did you get it ?’
‘Danny gave it to me.’
‘The bloodstain on your shirt sleeve, do you know how it got there ?’
‘I didn’t know it was there until the police told me. I have no idea how it got there. I can only assume it came from Danny.’
‘Did the fact that you might lose eight million dollars by calling the police have anything to do with the decision not to involve them ?’
She leaned forward, wiped away a tear with delicate, trembling fingers and let her heart out.
‘Not even one bit,’ she said. ‘Otto told me it would be unwise to make an allegation I couldn’t prove, but I didn’t care. If I had known for sure I would have called the cops. Believe me, I’ve been over this and over this in my mind. I was stupid. I listened to Danny. Have you ever been betrayed, Mr. Flynn ?’
I nodded.
‘It hurts. But nothing hurts like this. I’m not talking about what has been said about me in the newspapers or on TV, or those people out there with banners, or the thousands of rape and murder threats I got on social media. All of that is a nightmare beyond anything I could imagine, but part of me thinks I deserve it.’
I shook my head, said, ‘You don’t deserve that, Carrie.’
‘Maybe I do. I trusted Danny and I doubted my own mind. Because of that, because ofme, people died. And I blame myself for that, every day. Because if I had been smarter, braver, I could’ve saved some of those people. They are dead because I didn’t speak out. And that’s something that will eat me alive for the rest of my life.’
I saw then, in her eyes, what she was hiding.
Pain and guilt.
Carrie Miller had been lied to and manipulated by an evil man. A man whom she had trusted and loved. I couldn’t imagine the emotional toll that would take on a young woman. And on top of all of that, her husband’s filth had somehow stained her. She was in the middle of a storm of hate, guilt and pain. Even sitting on her couch, I could feel those winds swirling around her, threatening to tear her apart. There was no rest from this. Her mind was in perfect torment for every single second of every conscious moment. This woman was in a psychological torture chamber. The world’s media, her friends, her neighbors, and even Carrie herself, were slowly tightening the screws that sent hot pins into her brain.
I knew pain and loss. I had known people who had been crushed in a vice of grief. It destroyed them, and when grief sat heavy with me, as it often did, I battled through. Because I knew if I didn’t it would drown me.
