Harlan Coben: Fool Me Once

When they met up, she gave Joe every chance.

“Why did you kill Claire?”

“I thought you said you have proof, Maya. You have nothing.”

“I will find proof. I won’t rest. I will make your life hell.”

It was then that Joe pulled out the loaded Smith and Wesson 686 he’d found in the safe’s hidden compartment. He was smiling at her. That was what she thought anyway. It was probably too dark to see that and her eyes were drawn to the gun. But right now, as she relived what had happened, she could swear Joe was smiling.

He aimed the gun at the center of her chest.

Whatever she had thought before — all that talk about what she knew — it fled out the window at the sight of the man she’d pledged to love forever pointing a loaded gun at her. She had known, and yet she hadn’t believed it, accepted it, not really, it was all a mistake, and somehow, forcing his hand like this would show her what she had missed, how she got it wrong.

Joe, the father of her child, wasn’t a murderer. She hadn’t shared her bed and her heart with a killer who tortured and murdered her sister. There was still a chance that somehow it could all be explained away.

Until he pulled the trigger.

Now, sitting in that foyer in the dark, Maya closed her eyes.

She could still remember the look on Joe’s face when the gun didn’t go off. He pulled the trigger again. Then again.

“I removed the firing pin.”

“What?”

“I took the pin off the hammer so it couldn’t fire.”

“It doesn’t matter, Maya. You’ll never prove I killed her.”

“You’re right.”

That was when Maya took out her other Smith and Wesson, the same one Joe had used to kill Claire, and shot him three times. She intentionally missed killing him with the first two. She was an expert markswoman. Most street-punk robbers were not. So death from a single shot would be too obvious.

Kierce: “The first bullet hit your husband’s left shoulder. The second hit landed in the right tangent of his clavicle.”

She’d worn a trench coat and gloves she’d bought for cash at a Salvation Army store. That was where any powder residue would end up. She ripped them off and threw them in a bin over the wall and onto Fifth Avenue. They wouldn’t be found, but if they were and someone decided to test them for powder residue, big deal — they couldn’t be traced to her. She bent down now and hugged Joe as he died, making sure to get plenty of his blood on her shirt. She put both guns in her handbag. Then she stumbled back toward Bethesda Fountain.

“Help... please... someone... my husband’s...”

No one searched her. Why would they? She was a victim. At first, everyone was concerned with her possible injuries and finding the killers. The confusion paid off. She had been prepared to dump the handbag somewhere — there was nothing in it but the weapons — but in the end, there had been no need. She just held on to them and eventually took them home. She dumped the murder weapon in a river. She put the firing pin back on the hammer of the registered Smith and Wesson and put it back in the safe. That was the one Kierce took and tested.

Maya knew that the ballistics test would confirm her “innocence” and confuse the police. The same gun had killed Joe and Claire. Maya had a rock-solid alibi for Claire’s death — she was serving overseas — ergo there was no way she could be the killer of either. She didn’t like the idea of putting two innocents — Emilio Rodrigo and Fred Katen — through the police rigmarole, but one of them had indeed been carrying. She also knew that, with her own testimony about them wearing ski masks, the charges would never stick. They would never go down for the crime.

Compared to what she had done in the past, the collateral damage to those two was negligible.

The case was all an unsolvable mess, which is what she wanted. Claire had been murdered, and her murderer had been punished. The end. It was justice of sorts. Maya didn’t know everything, but she knew enough. She and her daughter would be safe.

And then that nanny cam video changed everything yet again.

From her seat in the foyer, Maya heard the car pull up. She stayed in the chair. The front door opened. She could hear Judith talking about how boring the event had been. Neil was with her. So was Caroline. The three walked in together.

Judith flipped on the lights and gasped out loud.

Maya just sat there.

“My God,” Judith said, “you scared me half to death. What are you doing here, Maya?”

“Occam’s razor,” Maya said.

“Pardon me?”

“‘Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.’” Maya smiled. “In short, the simplest answer is usually the most likely. Joe didn’t survive the shooting. You just wanted me to believe that.”

Judith looked at her two children and then turned back to Maya.

“You set up that nanny cam stunt, Judith. You told Rosa’s family that I killed Joe, but there was no way to prove it. So you wanted to shake the tree a little.”

Judith didn’t bother denying it. “And what if I did?” Her voice was pure ice. “There’s no law against trying to capture a killer, is there?”

“None that I’m aware of,” Maya agreed. “I had an idea right from the start, of course. You’re manipulative. You spent your career doing mind tricks.”

“They were psychological experiments.”

“Semantics. But I saw Joe die. I knew that he couldn’t be alive.”

“Ah, but it was dark,” Judith said. “You could have been mistaken. You tricked Joe in some way. Got him to go to that spot in the park. He could have tricked you back. Replaced your bullets with blanks. Something like that.”

“But he didn’t.”

Neil cleared his throat. “What do you want, Maya?”

Maya ignored him, kept her eyes on Judith. “Even if I didn’t buy that he was alive, even if I didn’t crack under the pressure and confess, you knew I’d react.”

“Yes.”

“I’d figure that someone was screwing with me. I’d start looking into it. Maybe I’d misstep and you could nail me for the murder. I’d trip up somehow. Plus, you all needed to find out what I knew. And you all played your parts for Mommy’s little psychological experiment. Caroline fed me those lies about thinking her brothers were alive and that Kierce was on the family payroll. Complete fabrications. But it was a lot of things coming at me. The nanny cam, the missing clothes, the phone calls. Anyone would start to question their sanity. So I did. I would have to have been insane to not at least entertain the idea that I was losing my mind.”

Judith smiled at her. “Why are you here, Maya?”

“I have a question for you, Judith.”

She waited.

“How did you know I killed Joe?”

“So you admit it.”

“Sure. But how did you know it?” Maya looked over at Neil, then at Caroline. “Did she tell you how, Caroline?”

Caroline frowned and turned to her mother.

“I just knew,” Judith said. “A mother knows.”

“No, Judith. You knew I killed him because you knew I had a motive.”

Caroline said, “What is she talking about?”

“Joe murdered my sister.”

“That’s not true,” Caroline said, her voice that of a petulant child.

“Joe killed Claire,” Maya said. “And your mother knew.”

“Mom?”

Judith’s eyes were blazing. “Claire stole from us,” she said.

Caroline: “Mom...”

“More than that, Claire tried to destroy us all — the entire Burkett name and fortune. All Joe did was try to stop her. He tried to reason with her.”