Page 18 of Everyone Here Is Lying
“Go on,” Bledsoe nudges, when he stops.
“It’s just that I never get to be alone,” he says. “There’s always people around—I have such a busy practice, I’m run off my feet at the hospital, and everyone’s in the house when I’m home, and I just needed some space. I’m only ever alone when I’m in my car.” How stupid he sounds. Gully nods as if she understands, but Bledsoe doesn’t move at all, not even a twitch. “But when I went into the kitchen, Avery was there.” Gully seems sympathetic, so he talks to her. “I hung up her jacket, because she’d thrown it on the kitchen floor.” He can’t go on.
“Okay,” Bledsoe says, “what happened then?”
William swallows. “I asked her what she was doing at home by herself. And she told me she got into trouble and was kicked out of choir. I told her that she should have waited for her brother, but she got really mouthy with me. I lost it and—I slapped her.” He stops. It was much more than a slap, but he’s not going to tell them that. He’s not going to tell them everything.
“And then?” Bledsoe asks.
“I apologized! I told her I was sorry, that I should never have slapped her. That I loved her, and I should have behaved better. But she wouldn’t say anything or look at me.” He looks Bledsoe in the eye and says, “And then I left.”
He can tell Bledsoe doesn’t believe him. “That’s why I was so certain she must have run away, at least initially,” William rushes on. “You see? She was angry at me for slapping her, so she must have left the house again after I did, and someone took her, and you have to find her—”
Gully interjects. “Why didn’t you tell us before that you were in the house, that you were the one who hung up her jacket? It might have saved us a lot of time.”
“Because I knew how it would look—that you’d assume I’d done something with her, but obviously I didn’t.”
“It’s not obvious to me,” Bledsoe says heavily.
William looks back at the detective, afraid.
Bledsoe leans in closer to William over the table. “You were there. You had an argument and you slapped her. No one has seen her since. No one saw her leave the house. I think she left the house in the trunk of your car.”
William feels himself go pale. “No.” He shakes his head. “No, that’s ridiculous. That’s not what happened.”
Bledsoe leans back in his chair again and says, “You’d think a father who wanted his daughter back more than anything would have told us that he’d been there, that he’d hung up her jacket. An innocent father who wanted to see his daughter alive again wouldn’t have lied to the police.” He adds, “To his wife.”
The detective’s face swims before William’s eyes. He feels a tightness in his chest.
“We’re having your car processed in the lab—every square inch. We’ll soon know if your daughter was in the trunk of your car.” Bledsoe leans in even closer. “We’ve already found something else in your car.”
William slumps in his chair. He feels like he’s had all the stuffing kicked out of him. Finally, he says, “That has nothing to do with my daughter.”
Bledsoe says, “An untraceable phone, so carefully hidden. You have a lot of secrets, Dr. Wooler.”
“I was having an affair,” he says bluntly.
“With who?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
The detectives wait, staring him down. At length, Bledsoe says, “That car of yours—the Infiniti G37 sedan—it’s new, isn’t it?” William nods. “The burner phone was unexpected. I can understand how it was missed in the initial search of the car in your garage. There’s a secret compartment in the rear-seat armrest, something put there by the carmaker, but not widely known. It’s there if you google it. You obviously knew about it. Is that why you boughtthatcar, Dr. Wooler?”
William denies it. “I didn’t know, I discovered it by accident.” It’s a lie. He did know. Itwasone of the reasons he bought thatparticular car. He was just beginning his affair with Nora. He remembers how excited he was the day he drove it off the lot.
“What we’re seeing here, Dr. Wooler,” Bledsoe says, “is a pattern of deceit.”
“I didn’t hurt my daughter,” William protests. “I was having an affair. That’s why I had the phone. That’s where I was yesterday afternoon, before I went home. I was in a motel, with another woman. I wasn’t driving around, like I said. That’s why I lied—I didn’t want my wife to know.”
“What motel?” Bledsoe asks.
“The Breezes Motel, on Route Nine.”
“What time did you leave the motel?”
“About three forty-five. I came home, saw my daughter briefly, and left again. She was fine when I left her.”
“What time was it when you left your house?”
