The Stranger (21 page)

G
abrielle Dunbar’s house
had probably been charming at one point, but over the years, the once-modest Cape Cod had been transformed into a bloated, characterless McMansion by additions and updates and purported “improvements.” The newer architectural touches, like bay windows and turrets, distracted rather than enhanced—they gave the house an overly artificial feel.

Adam approached the ornate front door and rang a bell that played an elaborate tune. Not wanting to wait for the police to drive him back home, he’d used his Uber app to summon a car and get him here. Andy Gribbel was on his way to pick him up and take him to the office. Adam didn’t expect this to take long.

Gabrielle answered the door. Adam recognized her from the
Facebook photos. She had raven-black hair so straight it had to be ironed. She had a welcoming smile on her face as she opened the door. The smile dissolved the moment she saw Adam.

“Can I help you?” she said.

Her voice had a quiver in it. She didn’t open the screen door.

Adam dove in. “I’m sorry for just intruding like this, but my name is Adam Price.” He tried to hand her his business card, but the screen door was still closed. He slid it through the doorjamb. “I’m an attorney in Paramus.”

Gabrielle stood there. The color was ebbing from her face.

“I’m working on an inheritance case and . . .” He held up his camera phone with the screen grab on it. He used his fingers to blow up the image, so she could see the stranger’s face clearer. “Do you know this man?”

Gabrielle Dunbar slipped her fingers into the doorjamb and plucked out his business card. She stared at it for a long time. Then, finally, she turned her attention to the image on his iPhone. After a few seconds, she shook her head and said, “No.”

“It was an office party, from the looks of it. Surely, you must—”

“I have to go now.”

The quiver had grown toward something closer to panic or fear. She started to close the door.

“Ms. Dunbar?”

She hesitated.

Adam wasn’t sure what to say exactly. He had spooked her. That was obvious to him. He had spooked her, and that meant that she had to know something.

“Please,” he said. “I need to find this man.”

“I told you. I don’t know him.”

“I think you do.”

“Get off my property.”

“My wife is missing.”

“What?”

“My wife. This man did something, and now she’s gone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave.”

“Who is he? That’s all I want to know. His name.”

“I told you. I don’t recognize him. Please, I have to go. I don’t know anything.”

The door started to close again.

“I won’t stop looking. Tell him that. I won’t stop until I find the truth.”

“Get off my property, or I’ll call the police.”

She slammed the door shut.

•   •   •

Gabrielle Dunbar
paced for ten minutes, chanting the words
So Hum
over and over. She had learned this particular Sanskrit mantra at yoga. At the end of the class, her teacher would have them all lie on their backs in Corpse pose. She would have them close their eyes and repeat “So Hum” for five straight minutes. The first time the teacher had suggested this, Gabrielle had practically rolled her closed eyes. But then, somewhere around minute two or three, she began to feel the toxins of stress drain from her body.

“So . . . hum . . .”

She opened her eyes. It wasn’t working. There were things she had to do first. Missy and Paul wouldn’t be home from school for hours. That was good. That would give her time to prepare and
pack. She grabbed her phone, scrolled through her favorites, hit the contact she called Douche Nozzle.

Two rings later, her ex answered. “Gabs?”

His nickname for her—the only one who called her that—still grated. When they first began dating, he started calling her “my Gabs” and she’d thought it was adorable in that way you do when you first fall in love and then, months later, the very sound of it makes you gag.

“Can the kids stay with you?” she asked.

He didn’t bother hiding his exasperation. “When?”

“I was thinking of dropping them off tonight.”

“You’re kidding, right? I’ve been asking you for extra visits—”

“And now I’m giving it to you. Can you take them tonight?”

“I’m in Chicago on business till the morning.”

Damn it. “How about Whatshername?”

“You know her name, Gabs. Tami is here with me.”

He had never taken Gabrielle on business trips, probably because he was meeting up with Tami or one of her predecessors. “Tami,” Gabrielle repeated. “Does she dot the
i
or put a heart over it? I forget.”

“Funny,” he said. But it hadn’t been, she knew. It had been stupid. There were much bigger fish to fry than a long-dead marriage. “We’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

“I’ll drop them off then,” she said.

“For how long?”

“A few days,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”

“All okay, Gabs?”

“Peachy. Love to Tami.”

Gabrielle hung up. She looked out the window. Part of her had
known this day would come from the first time Chris Taylor had approached her. It was just a question of when. The whole enterprise had been enormously appealing, a win-win, revealing truths and making money, but she’d never forgotten the obvious: They were playing with fire. People will do anything to keep their secrets.

Even kill.

“So . . . hum . . .”

It still wasn’t working. She headed up to her bedroom. Even though Gabrielle knew that she was alone in the house, she closed the door. She lay on her bed in a fetal position and started to suck her thumb. Embarrassing, but when the so-hums couldn’t do the trick, reverting to something so primitive and infantile often did. She pulled up her knees tighter to her chest and let herself have a little cry. When she was done, she took out her mobile phone. She used a VPN for privacy. It wasn’t foolproof, but for now, it would be enough. She read the business card again.

ADAM PRICE, ATTO
RNEY-AT-LAW

He had found her. And if he had found her, it made sense that he’d also been the one who found Ingrid.

To paraphrase that movie with Jack Nicholson, some people can’t handle the truth.

Gabrielle reached into her bottom drawer and took out a Glock 19 Gen4 and laid it on the bed. Merton had given it to her, claiming it was the perfect handgun for women. He’d taken her out to a firing range in Randolph and taught her how to use it. It was loaded and ready to go. She’d been worried at first about keeping a loaded gun in the house with young children, but the possible threats had trumped standard home safety.

So what now?

Simple. Follow procedure. She snapped a photo of Adam Price’s card with her iPhone. She attached the image to an e-mail and typed in two words before hitting
SEND
:

HE KNOWS

A
dam left work early
and drove to the new turf field at Cedarfield High School. The boys’ lacrosse team was practicing. He parked down the block, out of sight, and watched his son Thomas from behind the bleachers. He had never done this before—watched a practice—and he probably couldn’t articulate exactly what he was doing here. He just wanted to watch his son for a while. That’s all. Adam remembered what Tripp Evans had said at the American Legion Hall the night this all started, how he couldn’t believe how lucky those of them who lived in towns like this were:

“We’re living the dream, you know.”

Tripp was right, of course, but it was interesting how we described our personal paradise as a “dream.” Dreams are fragile.
Dreams don’t last. One day you wake up and poof, the dream is gone. You stir and feel it pull away from you as you helplessly grab at the smoky remnants. But it’s useless. The dream dissolves, gone forever. And standing there, watching his son play the game he loved, Adam couldn’t help but feel that since the stranger’s visit, they were all on the verge of waking up.

The coach blew the whistle and told everyone to take a knee. They did so. A few minutes later, the boys took off their helmets and trudged back toward the locker room. Adam stepped out from behind the bleachers. Thomas stopped short when he saw him.

“Dad?”

“It’s fine,” Adam said. Then realizing that might be misinterpreted to mean that Corinne was back, he added, “I mean, nothing new.”

“Why are you here?”

“I got out of work early. I thought I’d give you a ride home.”

“I need to shower first.”

“No problem. I’ll wait.”

Thomas nodded and started back toward the locker room. Adam checked in on Ryan. He’d gone to Max’s house straight from school. Adam texted him, asking whether he’d be ready to be picked up when Thomas was finished in order to save his old man another trip out. Ryan texted back “
np
,” and it still took Adam a few moments to realize that meant “no problem.”

In the car ten minutes later, Thomas asked him what the police wanted.

“It’s really hard to explain right now,” Adam said. “I’m not saying that to protect you, but for now, you’re going to have to let me handle it.”

“Does it have something to do with Mom?”

“I don’t know.”

Thomas didn’t push it. They stopped and picked up Ryan. Ryan slipped into the backseat and said, “Oh, gross, what’s that smell?”

“My lacrosse equipment,” Thomas said.

“Nasty.”

“Agreed,” Adam said, lowering the windows. “How was school?”

“Good,” Ryan said. Then: “Anything new on Mom?”

“Not yet.” He debated saying more and then decided that some of the truth might offer comfort. “But the good news is, the police are involved now.”

“What?”

“They’re going to look for Mom too.”

“The police,” Ryan said. “Why?”

Adam gave a half shrug. “It’s like Thomas said to me last night. This isn’t like her. So they’ll help us find her.”

The boys, he was certain, would have follow-up questions, but as the car pulled onto their street, Ryan said, “Hey, who’s that?”

Johanna Griffin sat on their front stoop. She stood as Adam turned into the driveway, smoothing out the institutional-green pantsuit. She smiled and waved like a neighbor who’d stopped by to borrow sugar. Adam pulled the car to a stop as Johanna, still smiling, strolled casually and unthreateningly toward them.

“Hey, guys,” she called out.

They all got out of the car. The boys looked wary.

“I’m Johanna,” she said, shaking the boys’ hands. Thomas and Ryan looked toward their father for answers.

“She’s a police officer,” he told them.

“Well, not officially when I’m here,” Johanna said. “In Beachwood, Ohio, I’m known as Chief Griffin. But here, well, I’m out of my jurisdiction, so I’m just Johanna. Nice to meet you guys.” She kept the smile up, but Adam knew it was just for show. The boys probably knew that too.

“Mind if I come in?” she asked Adam.

“Okay.”

Thomas opened the back of the car and pulled out his lacrosse bag. Ryan strapped on a backpack ridiculously overstuffed with textbooks. As they headed toward the door, Johanna lingered behind. Adam stayed with her. When the boys were out of earshot, he simply said, “Why are you here?”

“We found your wife’s car.”

A
dam and Johanna sat
in the living room.

The boys were in the kitchen. Thomas had boiled up the water for pasta. Ryan microwaved a packet of frozen vegetables. It would hold them for now.

“So where did you find Corinne’s car?” Adam asked.

“First off, I have to come clean.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I meant what I said out there. I’m not a cop in New Jersey. Heck, I’m barely a cop back home. I don’t do homicides. The county does them. And even if I did, I’m way out of my jurisdiction here.”

“But they flew you out here to question me.”

“No, I came out on my own dime. I knew a guy from Bergen
who called a guy from Essex, and they extended me a courtesy by picking you up and bringing you in.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because the county guys back home heard about it and they got pissed. So I’ve been officially taken off the case.”

“I’m not following. If this wasn’t your case, why did you come out here at all?”

“Because one of the victims was a friend of mine.”

Adam understood now. “That Heidi woman?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“So where was Corinne’s car?”

“Nice change of subject,” she said.

“You came to tell me.”

“True.”

“So?”

“At an airport hotel in Newark.”

Adam made a face.

“What?”

“That makes no sense,” he said.

“Why not?”

Adam explained about the locator app on the iPhone showing Corinne in Pittsburgh.

“She could have flown somewhere and rented a car,” Johanna said.

“I’m not sure where you’d fly that you’d pick up a car and drive through Pittsburgh. And you said it was in a hotel parking lot?”

“Near the airport, right. We found it right before it got towed.
I asked the tow company to deliver it back here, by the way. You should have it in an hour.”

“I don’t get something.”

“What?”

“If she was taking a flight, Corinne would have just parked in the airport lot. That’s what we always do.”

“Not if she didn’t want anyone to know where she was going. She might have figured that you’d look there.”

He shook his head. “I’d look for her car in an airport parking lot? That makes no sense.”

“Adam?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you have no reason to trust me. But let’s go off the record here for a second.”

“You’re a cop, not a reporter. You don’t go off the record.”

“Just listen to me, okay? Two women are dead. I won’t go into how special Heidi was but . . . look, you need to come clean now. You need to tell me everything you know.” She met his gaze and held it. “I promise you. I promise you on the soul of my dead friend that I won’t use anything you say against you or your wife. I want justice for Heidi. That’s all. Do you understand?”

Adam could feel himself squirming in his seat. “They can compel you to testify.”

“They can try.” She leaned forward. “Please help me.”

He thought about it but not for long. There was no choice now. She was right. Two women were dead, and Corinne could be in serious trouble. He had no solid leads anymore, just an uneasy feeling about Gabrielle Dunbar.

“First,” he said, “tell me what you know.”

“I told you most of it.”

“Tell me about how Ingrid Prisby is connected to your friend.”

“Simple,” Johanna said. “Ingrid and that guy showed up at a Red Lobster. They talked. The next day, Heidi was dead. A day after that, Ingrid was dead.”

“Do you suspect the guy Ingrid was with?”

“I certainly think he can help us figure this out,” Johanna said. “I assume they talked to you too, right? At that American Legion Hall.”

“The guy did, yes.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

Adam shook his head. “He just said he was the stranger.”

“And after they left, you tried to find him. Or them. You got that parking lot attendant to give you their license plate. You tracked her down.”

“I got her name,” Adam said. “That was all.”

“So what did the guy say to you at the American Legion Hall? This stranger?”

“He told me that my wife faked a pregnancy.”

Johanna blinked twice. “Come again?”

Adam told her the story. Once he opened his mouth, it all just spilled out of him. When he was finished, Johanna asked him a question that seemed both obvious and surprising.

“Do you think it’s true? Do you think she faked the pregnancy?”

“Yes.”

Just like that. No hesitation. Not anymore. He had probably known the truth from the start—right from the moment the stranger first told him—but he’d needed the pieces to come together before he could voice it.

“Why?” Johanna asked.

“Why do I think it’s true?”

“No, why do you think she’d do something like that?”

“Because I made her feel insecure.”

She nodded. “That Sally Perryman woman?”

“Mostly, I guess. Corinne and I had grown distant. She feared losing me, feared losing all this. It doesn’t matter.”

“Actually, it might.”

“How?”

“Humor me,” Johanna said. “What was going on in your life when she went to that pregnancy-faking website?”

Adam couldn’t see the point, but he also saw no reason not to tell her. “Like I said, we were growing apart. It’s an old story, isn’t it? We became all about the boys and the family logistics—who was going to do the food shopping, who was going to do the dishes, who was going to pay the bills. I mean, this is all such normal shit. Really. I was also going through a midlife crisis, I guess.”

“You felt unappreciated?”

“I felt, I don’t know, I felt like I wasn’t a real man anymore. I know how that sounds. I was a provider and a father. . . .”

Johanna Griffin nodded. “And suddenly there’s this Sally Perryman paying you all kinds of attention.”

“Not suddenly, but yeah, I start working on this great case with Sally, and she’s beautiful and passionate and she looks at me the way Corinne used to look at me. I get how stupid it all sounds.”

“Normal,” Johanna said. “Not stupid.”

Adam wondered whether she meant that or whether she was humoring him. “Anyway, I think Corinne was worried I’d leave. I didn’t see it at the time, I guess, or maybe I didn’t care, I don’t know. But she had this tracker on my iPhone.”

“The one that showed you she was in Pittsburgh?”

“Right.”

“And you didn’t know about it?”

He shook his head. “Not until Thomas showed me.”

“Wow.” Johanna shook her head. “So your wife was spying on you?”

“I don’t know, maybe. That’s what I think happened. I told her I was working late a bunch of times. Maybe she checked that tracker app and saw I was at Sally’s more than I should have been.”

“You didn’t tell her where you were?”

He shook his head. “It was just work.”

“So why not tell her?”

“Because, ironically enough, I didn’t want her to worry. I knew how she’d react. Or maybe I knew on some level that it was wrong. We could have stayed in the office, but I liked being at her house.”

“And Corinne found out.”

“Yes.”

“But nothing happened between you and Sally Perryman?”

“Right.” Then thinking about it: “But maybe something was close to happening.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you get physical? Second base? Third base?”

“What? No.”

“You didn’t kiss her?”

“No.”

“So why the guilt?”

“Because I wanted to.”

“Hell, I want to give Hugh Jackman a sponge bath. So what? You can’t help what you want. You’re human. Let it go.”

He said nothing.

“So then your wife confronted Sally Perryman.”

“She called her. I don’t know if she confronted her.”

“And Corinne never told you?”

“Right.”

“She asked Sally what was going on, but she never did you that courtesy. That about right?”

“I guess.”

“So then what?”

“Then, well, then Corinne got pregnant,” Adam said.

“You mean, faked being pregnant.”

“Right, whatever.”

Johanna just shook her head and said, “Wow,” again.

“It’s not what you think.”

“No, it’s exactly what I think.”

“The pregnancy startled me, you know? But in a good way. It brought me back. It reminded me of what was important. That’s the other irony here. It worked. Corinne was right to do it.”

“No, Adam, she wasn’t right.”

“It brought me back to reality.”

“No, it didn’t. She manipulated you. You’d probably have gotten back to reality anyway. And if you didn’t, then maybe you weren’t meant to. Sorry, but what Corinne did was bad. Really bad.”

“I think maybe she felt desperate.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“This is her world. Her family. Her entire life. She fought so hard to build it, and it was being threatened.”

Johanna shook her head. “You didn’t do what she did, Adam. You know that.”

“I’m guilty too.”

“It isn’t about guilt. You had a doubt. You had your head turned. You wondered about the what-if. You’re not the first person to feel these things. You either find your way through it or you don’t. But in the end, Corinne didn’t give you that chance. She chose to trick you and live a lie. I’m not defending or condemning you. Every marriage is its own story. But you didn’t see the light. You had someone shine a flashlight in your eyes.”

“Maybe I needed that.”

Johanna shook her head again. “Not like this. It was wrong. You have to see that.”

He thought about it. “I love Corinne. I don’t think the fake pregnancy really changed anything.”

“But you’ll never know.”

“Not true,” Adam said. “I’ve thought about this a lot.”

“And you’re certain you would have stayed?”

“Yes.”

“For the kids?”

“In part.”

“What else?”

Adam leaned forward and stared at the floor for a moment. It was a blue-and-yellow Oriental carpet he and Corinne had picked in an antiques store in Warwick. They’d gone up on an October day to pick apples, but they ended up just drinking some apple cider and buying McIntoshes and then they headed to an antiques store.

“Because whatever crap Corinne and I put each other through,”
he began, “whatever dissatisfaction or disappointments or resentments surface, at the end of the day, I can’t imagine my life without her. I can’t imagine growing old without her. I can’t imagine not being part of her world.”

Johanna rubbed her chin, nodding. “I get that. I do. My husband, Ricky, snores so bad it’s like sleeping with a helicopter. But I feel the same.”

They sat there for a moment, letting the feelings settle.

Then Johanna asked, “Why do you think the stranger told you about the fake pregnancy?”

“No clue.”

“He didn’t extort money?”

“No. He said he was doing it for me. He acted as though he was on a holy crusade. How about your friend Heidi? Did she fake a pregnancy too?”

“No.”

“So I don’t get it. What did the stranger tell her?”

“I don’t know,” Johanna said. “But whatever it was, it got her killed.”

“You have any thoughts?”

“No,” Johanna said, “but now I think I might know someone who does.”