Someone We Know: A Novel

Raleigh goes to the coffee shop to meet Carmine Torres about her computer, hoping to make some quick money and impress his parents. Carmine abruptly accuses him of breaking into her house. Scared and confused, Raleigh angrily denies it, though he knows he is behaving guiltily. Carmine tells him about the letter of apology, which she says his mother wrote, and Raleigh realizes that his fingerprints in her house can now be matched to those he has just left on her laptop. Frantically, he denies it again, and warns her to “back off,” but as he leaves, she calls after him, “This isn’t over!” (190).

That same day, Olivia drives into the Catskills to visit Paul’s aunt, who, despite having dementia, recognizes her. However, she does not remember Paul visiting her recently. She mentions that the police visited her, but she does not remember why.

Larry Harris, confronted by Webb and Moen about his affair with Amanda, admits that he saw her for weeks. Webb tells him that they have camera footage of them visiting a hotel the Tuesday before she was murdered. Larry claims that that was the last time he saw her or spoke to her. He admits that he and Amanda used burner phones, but he says he threw his into the river from a path about a week after she went missing; he actually threw it off a bridge the Sunday after her disappearance. Larry repeats his claim that he stayed in his room and that the resort’s security cameras must show that his car did not leave. Webb tells him that the parking lot has no cameras; hence, he has no alibi. Larry looks scared and tries to cast blame on Robert Pierce, who he says was cold and abusive to Amanda, allegedly threatening to kill her if she cheated. He tells the detectives about the call he received from Robert on Amanda’s burner phone the very day she disappeared, with Robert recognizing his voice and calling him by name.

In a flashback to the minutes just after Becky’s last interview with the police, Becky asks Larry if he killed Amanda. He insists that he had nothing to do with it. Becky believes him and tells him to say that he threw his phone away several days after the disappearance, into the river from a path, not a bridge, which may have cameras. She tells him to conceal the fact that on the day before Amanda’s disappearance, he and Amanda had had an argument in which she broke up with him.

Alone with her thoughts, Becky remembers an incident from years earlier in which Larry angrily assaulted a teenage boy who had been harassing their daughter. This makes her wonder if he might have killed Amanda in a fit of uncontrollable rage. Uncertain whether the killer is her husband or Robert Pierce, she goes next door and tells Robert that her husband is being questioned by police. Robert tells her that he knew Larry was having an affair with Amanda and only slept with Becky for revenge. However, he adds that the police have no proof that he knew about Amanda’s affair with Larry. Becky accuses him point-blank of murdering his wife. He says that the murderer is likely himself of Larry, vaguely threatening her.

Paul tells Olivia that the police want to search their cabin in the Catskills. She reassures him that they have nothing to hide. Raleigh overhears their argument and resolves not to tell them about his meeting with Carmine. Detectives Webb and Moen drive into the Catskills to search the Sharpe cabin. Paul and Olivia are already there to let them in. She remembers that, when she and Paul were closing it up two weeks before, there was nothing out of place.

The detectives discover that a hammer is missing from the toolbox in the shed. Webb says that they’ll need a crime team, and Paul tells him to get a warrant. He does so, and when the technicians arrive, Webb points out some bloodlike stains on the kitchen curtains, a possible source of DNA evidence. The team sprays luminol around the kitchen area, and the floor lights up, showing an apparent path of blood from the kitchen sink to the back windows that face the lake. The biggest pooling of blood is by the windows, but the walls and ceiling also light up from the luminol. Someone has scrubbed away all visible traces of the blood. Paul and Olivia appear deeply shocked. Webb places Paul under arrest for the murder of Amanda, and Olivia faints.

At the police station, where Paul is being questioned, Olivia thinks back over the previous weeks and her last visit to the cabin. Paul maintains his innocence, but she doesn’t know if she believes him. Detective Webb suspects that he may have murdered Amanda out of jealousy over her affair with Larry.

Glenda visits Olivia at the police station. She says she will stand by Olivia, no matter what, because that is “what friends are for” (219). She drives Olivia home, and Olivia breaks the news to Raleigh that their cabin has been identified as the murder scene and his father has been arrested. Raleigh tearfully insists that his father must be innocent. Olivia tells him that the police want to fingerprint their family—and Keith and Adam, since they’ve all been at the cabin—to eliminate their prints from the murder scene.

Unable to sleep that night, Olivia struggles with doubts about Paul’s innocence, and recalls again how enthralled the men were with Amanda, and how none of the women liked her, especially not Glenda, whose husband Keith she flirted with, or Becky, who seemed equally angry. She thinks that Becky may have been right about Paul having an affair with Amanda, and that he might easily have killed her in their cabin. Watching her son Raleigh sleep, she reflects sadly that both he and his father have secrets that they keep from her. Only she, Olivia feels, has no secrets to keep.

In shock and disbelief, Becky Harris reads in the paper about Paul Sharpe’s arrest and all the evidence against him. She feels sorry for herself, knowing that the upcoming trial will reveal her and Larry’s affairs to the world, but she feels especially bad for her friend Olivia. However, she also feels relief that Larry has been cleared as a murder suspect.

Paul Sharpe has retained the expensive services of Emilio Gallo. As Webb tries to question Paul, Gallo runs interference, claiming the evidence against his client is circumstantial and that the police have not even identified the blood in the cabin. Even if it is her blood, there is no solid evidence that Paul was having an affair with her; anyone, he says, could have been in that cabin and murdered her. Webb realizes that, with Gallo defending him, Paul Sharpe will never confess. They will have to build a solid case.

Olivia, visiting Paul at the station, wavers between supporting her husband and giving up on him. He swears his innocence to her, and says reasonable doubt is on his side, but she still hopes for absolute proof, for her own peace of mind, that he didn’t kill Amanda. When she points out that they always kept the cabin locked, he suggests she tell the police that their cabin has had a history of break-ins, but she refuses. Paul asks her only how Raleigh is.

The news of Paul’s arrest has put Robert Pierce in a wonderful mood. He thinks that now, maybe, he can put Amanda behind him. In his mirror, he carefully grooms himself before going out to face the news cameras, to play the role of a bereaved husband.