‘Ted!’ she cries again and shows him what it says about Lara’s accusations. She watches his face lose its colour. ‘We didn’t get all the cameras!’ she hisses. ‘They know about Ben!’ Whoever it is doesn’t go away. The doorbell rings again and again, and then they hear knocking on the door. Frightened, Jill runs upstairs and sneaks a look out a front window. She sees news vans, but she also sees a patrol car and a pair of uniformed officers on her stoop. Her knees go weak. Ted had warned her that the police might question them, but there’s nothing they can do to them, as long as they say nothing.And then she remembers that the police must also know about Ben. She feels rising panic.
She runs back down the stairs and into the kitchen where Ted is still sitting at the table. ‘It’s the police!’ she hisses at him.
‘The police,’ he repeats stupidly. Then he stands up. ‘Let me handle this,’ he says. He walks toward the front door, his back straight. Jill hovers some distance down the hall behind him. Ted answers the door. ‘Yes?’ he says politely.
‘Ted Westcott?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’d like to ask you and your wife to come down to the station and answer a few questions.’
Jill can see past Ted and the officers to the street. People aregathering, drawn by the sight of the patrol car and the news vans. People who know them will have seen the news.It’s begun, she thinks.
‘Can you give us a minute?’ Ted says pleasantly and closes the door. He turns to face her, and she moves closer.
‘It’s okay, Jill,’ he says. ‘I’ll call Alan Siegle, and he will be there with us. He’s a top criminal attorney. And we’ll have an attorney for you too. We won’t answer any questions. We just say “no comment” to everything. There’snothingthey can do if we keep our mouths shut. Everything on those tapes is inadmissible. It will be over in five minutes. We just don’t sayanything.Can you do that?’
He’s looking at her as if he’s worried that she can’t. She swallows and says, ‘You’re sure? You’re sure they can’t get us?’
‘I’mpositive.Just don’t sayanything. Okay? Promise me!’
She nods shakily.
She grabs her purse, and he opens the door again, where the officers are waiting for them. They walk down their steps to the squad car, and as they do bulbs flash and reporters lob questions at them. They keep their eyes down and their mouths shut. Despite Ted’s assurances, Jill feels like they’re walking to their doom. She worries that there is something waiting for them that Ted has failed to anticipate.
They are separated immediately upon arrival at the station, and now Ted has no further opportunity to speak privately to Jill, to warn her again to say nothing. They’ve been put in different rooms while they wait for their attorneys to arrive. He feels a stab of fear.
He has to assume they’ve seen the recordings. They have separated them; they will try to set them against each other. They will see that she is the weaker of the two, and they will assume that he pushed his brother off the boat and perhaps try to trick her into a deal. Will she fall for it and tell them everything? She’s so terrified of prison. He finds himself sweating, even with his excellent, high-priced lawyer on his way. He’s cursing himself for not reminding her at home that if she turns on him, and he’s found guilty of murder, then all the money goes away, he can’t have the inheritance, and she will have nothing. She knows that, but will she remember it, in the stress of a police interview? He has to rely on her, and he’s not sure he can.
They interview him first, because her attorney has not yet arrived. Ted finds himself in an interview room that smells of sweat and unwashed clothes. He doesn’t belong here. He tries to breathe through his mouth. There is a computer monitor sitting conspicuously on the table. Introductions are made for the tape and the interview begins. Ted sits with his attorney, Alan Siegle, beside him, and across from them is a detective from the NYPD by the name of Charlie Cousins, and that bastard Ramirez from the Coast Guard. Ted realizes he hates Ramirez.
Now Ramirez is smiling at him, and Ted doesn’t like it. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Ted,’ he begins.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
TED WANTS TOsnap some sharp reply, but he remains silent.
‘Why are we here, exactly?’ Alan Siegle asks.
‘The NYPD received an anonymous package in the mail this morning,’ Ramirez begins. ‘It contained a thumb drive with some digital files– camera footage, with audio, taken from inside Ted and Jill Westcott’s home.’
Ted had assumed this, and it’s all over the news online, but hearing the words from Ramirez’s mouth makes the sweat break out anew under his arms and along his back. Fortunately, his attorney understands the situation perfectly. It’s no longer hypothetical.
‘I’m sorry,’ Siegle says. ‘Camera footage? Taken inside my client’s home? How did that happen?’
Ramirez flushes slightly. ‘We don’t know, exactly. Someone obtained it and sent it to the NYPD.’
‘Someone.’ The attorney turns to Ted and asks, ‘Were you aware that there was a camera inside your home taping private conversations between you and your wife?’
‘No, I was not,’ Ted answers.
‘Was your wife aware there was a camera inside your home taping your private conversations?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘That’s something for her to answer,’ Ramirez says.
Ted’s attorney faces Ramirez and the detective. ‘What you have here is clearly an illegal recording. As you’re fully aware, this is inadmissible in any court of law in New York, criminal or otherwise.’