Spitting Devil Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Yes.”
    “Do you have any other evidence to prove it?”
    “There’s a knife missing in our kitchen,” she went on. “I noticed it was gone around the time of the first murder. I haven’t seen it since then.”
    “Anything else?”
    “His car,” she said. “It was driven thirty miles the night before last. The night that the third girl died. I checked the mileage before I went to bed and again in the morning.”
    “So you already suspected him at that point?”
    She could hear the accusation in his voice. And yet you said nothing. A woman was killed because of your silence.
    “I didn’t know what to think,” she said.
    “Is it just you and your husband at home?” Stride asked.
    “Our son lives with us. He’s ten.”
    “Does anyone else have a key to your house?”
    “No.”
    “This is a hard question,” Stride told her, “but do you have any idea why. Why would your husband do something like this? Is there anything in his past to suggest a violent personality?”
    “Nothing,” Alison insisted, and it wasn’t a lie. Michael was no smooth pearl – he could swear, and he had a raw temper – but she’d never seen him as anything but a lover, father, and provider. They’d been happy.
    “Then why?” Stride repeated.
    It was the question she’d asked herself over and over for weeks. “I guess it’s me,” she said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I’ve pushed him away. I’ve been having problems.”
    “What kind of problems?”
    “Psychological problems.” Every night, I dream the ants are watching me from the ceiling.
    “You did the right thing by calling.”
    “That’s not how it feels,” she said.
    Life would never be the same. Going forward, everything would be different. Everything would be worse.
    Alison added, “I suppose you need my name.”
    “That actually isn’t necessary, Mrs. Malville.”
    “How do you know who I am?” Then in the silence that followed, she murmured: “Oh, my God, what did I do?”
    Alison slammed the phone down onto the hook. She spun around in panic, but she had no chance to run. She found the Asian hooker and the man with the unzipped pants waiting for her. They had police shields in their hands. The three boys – not boys, but young cops – guarded her car.
    There was nowhere to go.
    “My name is Sergeant Maggie Bei of the Duluth Police,” the hooker told her. “Please come with us, Mrs. Malville.”
*
     
    Michael Malville slapped his palms on the wooden table and cursed. “This is fucking insane. Do you hear me? It’s crazy. I want to talk to Alison.”
    Stride and Maggie sat opposite Malville in the interview room in City Hall. Fluorescent light bathed the hard lines on the man’s face, giving shadows to his cheekbones and making his sweat glisten. He was an athletic, good-looking man, tall and strong.
    Killers came in all shapes and sizes.
    “That’s not possible right now,” Stride told him.
    “There is no way Alison said I did this. No way.”
    Stride was silent. He wanted Malville’s brain focused on his wife’s betrayal. The man had listened to his rights in stunned silence and, so far, he hadn’t followed the traditional suspect path of shutting up and calling a lawyer. Stride wanted to keep him talking as long as possible.
    “If this is all a misunderstanding, we want to find that out as soon as possible,” Stride told him.
    “It is.”
    “Well, let’s go back to the dates of the three crimes. They all happened overnight. Can you tell us where you were on those nights?”
    Malville rocked back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. He shook his head in disbelief. “I was home,” he said quietly.
    “Was your wife home, too?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you sleep in the same bedroom?”
    Malville hesitated before answering. “Not lately.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Alison has been struggling. Something’s wrong with her.”
    “Something?”
    “She’s been having nightmares.”
    Stride nodded. “So she doesn’t know