Page 15 of Our Last Resort
I shrug.
“They fought. He pushed her. Or he attacked her with something.”
We sit in silence.
Even I almost drank the Brenners’ Kool-Aid, the first time I saw them together. That was before I recognized William, before I realized who they were. All I saw then was the image they were trying to project, like the opening sequence in a film: the roar of the car when William pulled up to the hotel, the kinetic energy that circulated through the crowd, drawing our eyes to the vehicle. It was an elegant model, a coupe, slightly sporty. How it glistened under the sun, red, a bold, bright quality that evoked the body of an electric guitar.
William in a white linen suit, handing the key to the valet.Sabrina extracting herself from the passenger seat, eyes hidden behind emerald-green sunglasses, the lenses as black and opaque as a dormant movie-theater screen.
It took only a few hours of observing them for me to become less optimistic about their prospects. But a violent death? Really?
There is, of course, another possibility. It could have been an accident. Technically, it’s possible.
But I know what I saw. Sabrina Brenner lying lifeless on her stomach, the back of her skull fractured open.
Gabriel massages his temples. Maybe he, too, is running through the list of possibilities, eliminating them one by one.
If what happened to Sabrina had been an accident—if she had fallen—then the injury would most likely be at the front of her head, or on whichever side she fell on. But either way, she would still have been resting on that side by the time someone found her.
Unless…there is yet another scenario. One where Sabrina falls, or bangs her head or something, and then moves. Could she have crawled a few feet to try to get help, and then lost consciousness?
No.
Why am I so sure?
There’s something about the scene, an element my mind hasn’t consciously processed yet.
The blood.
If Sabrina had moved after injuring herself, then there would have been blood all over. She would have brought her hands to the wound at some point. There would be handprints, or some sort of trail.
But there wasn’t.
That, I’m sure of. When a woman shows up dead hours after you spied on her in the night, you pay attention.
Which leaves me with only one theory: She was attacked. Struck with some kind of heavy object, or shoved against a hard surface.
A tingle travels down my spine. The police will have arrived by now. Detectives, officers, whatever.
I stand.
“You’re going right now?” Gabriel asks.
“I can’t wait.”
It’s true. I can’t.
Here’s one thing I learned when everything happened with Gabriel and Annie: Once people hear one version of a story, it’s almost impossible to rewrite it, even if that version turns out to be wrong. People knew Annie had had dinner and breakfast. They knew that when police found her body, her hyoid bone—a small bone found in the neck, at the base of the tongue—was broken, something that can happen as a result of strangulation. The story became: Gabriel woke up one morning, strangled his wife to death, and dumped her body in the water in a national park about eight miles from where they lived. By the time the police let Gabriel go—because they had nothing on him—it was too late. The narrative had taken root.
“I should change first,” I say.
Gabriel glances at my polyester shorts. He teased me when I wore them on our first night here.
“Going to Satriale’s?” he asked.
That was a reference to the mob show. I love the mob show.
We laughed. For a second, everything was light, easy.
