Someone We Know: A Novel

Webb, knowing that he must either charge Paul Sharpe soon or release him, wonders if Larry Harris murdered Amanda. Olivia may have been mistaken when she said the Harrises had never been to her cabin. Robert Pierce might have murdered her; Raleigh saw Amanda’s burner phone in Robert’s desk long after she disappeared, but the police did not find it in their search, which is highly suspicious. Webb decides to release Paul and watch the three suspects closely.

Paul returns home but finds that both his wife and son have doubts about him. Raleigh decides to tell his parents the truth about his break-ins, since it may be important to his father’s defense. He says that he broke into nine or ten houses; one of them was the Newell house, his parents’ best friends. He did this the night they were having dinner at his house—the night before his mother found out that he was breaking into homes for computer hacking purposes. His parents are furious, but Raleigh retorts that their friends are not quite who they seem to be. Looking into their computer that night, Raleigh says he found emails from Keith to another woman. Keith had tried to hide them and delete his history, but Raleigh found them by hacking into the computer’s cookies. Angry that Keith was cheating on Glenda, he sent some rude emails to the woman from Keith’s account. The woman, he says, used a silly name that was obviously made up. Raleigh suggests that the mystery woman was Amanda, and notes that Keith knows their cabin. Paul bristles at the thought that his friend could be a murderer.

Larry comes home from his latest interview with the police and swears to Becky that he did not murder Amanda and has never been to the Sharpe cabin. She does not know whether to believe him. Summoned by Webb for another interview, Robert Pierce denies having called Larry on a burner phone owned by his wife. Webb informs him that a “local boy” found the phone in his desk during a break-in. Robert ignores his questions about the missing phone and whether or not Paul Sharpe was one of Amanda’s lovers. Instead, he asks to call his lawyer.

Olivia and Paul, puzzled by their son’s revelations about Keith Newell’s emails, wonder if Keith could have met Amanda Pierce without their knowledge and had an affair with her, perhaps meeting her at their cabin. Keith and Glenda are the only people they can think of who had free access to their cabin. Paul notes that Keith knew where they kept the spare key. He tells Olivia that they must tell the police what they know about Keith, even if Raleigh’s trespassing in his house and computer comes out in the end. Olivia feels a deep chill, knowing that if Keith did kill Amanda, he was willing to let Paul, his best friend, take the rap for his crime.

Late at night, Carmine answers a knock on her door, and invites her visitor into her house. As she turns her back to her guest to shut the door, she feels a cord tighten around her neck. Her unidentified visitor strangles her to death.

The next morning, Olivia visits Glenda and tells her that Raleigh’s fingerprints were found in the Pierce house, and he is being charged with breaking and entering. Glenda expresses sympathy, but quickly changes her tune when Olivia adds that Raleigh also broke into her and Keith’s house while they were visiting the Sharpe house for dinner. Glenda feels angry. Olivia then tells her about Keith’s emails to another woman, and Glenda denies it. But she quickly realizes that it must be true. Tentatively, Olivia asks her if Keith might have been seeing Amanda, and Glenda furiously accuses her of trying to shift the blame for Amanda’s murder away from her own husband and onto Keith. Olivia frantically apologizes for bringing it up, but Glenda orders her to get out. After Olivia leaves, Glenda tries without success to find the compromising emails on Keith’s computer. Nonetheless, she comes to believe that Raleigh was telling the truth.

Paul Sharpe calls on Detective Webb and tells him about the emails to another woman on Keith Newell’s computer, adding pointedly that Keith has frequently visited his cabin. He refuses to say how he knows about the emails. Meanwhile, Glenda calls Keith on the phone and tells him about Olivia’s allegations. She asks him if his secret emails were to Amanda Pierce. Keith’s “stunned silence” tells her “everything she needs to know” (258). She wants to “kill” him.

The police arrive at the Newell house to search their computer and other devices, and Keith Newell admits to Webb that he had an affair with Amanda. He also confesses to having met her at the Sharpe cabin the weekend she disappeared but denies knowing anything about her murder. He arrived around five o’clock on Friday, and she joined him about a half hour later. He left her there around eight o’clock Friday evening and went home, but when he returned the following day, she was gone. He tells Webb that the door to the cabin was unlocked and everything was “tidy.” There was no note, and no message from her on his phone. He was puzzled and annoyed, since he and Amanda had planned to spend Saturday there. He couldn’t call her because he knew Robert had found her burner phone. He thinks Robert, whom she called a “psychopath,” murdered her, but says he was afraid to go to the police with what he knew. Webb shocks him with the news that Amanda was also seeing Larry Harris. He tells Keith that he is a prime suspect for Amanda’s murder, and Keith requests a lawyer.

When Adam Newell comes home from school, his mother tries to discuss the latest developments with him, such as the police’s questioning of his father, but he runs upstairs. Adam texts Raleigh, who does not answer. Keith Newell, now with his lawyer beside him, continues his interview with the police. He describes how he returned to the Sharpe cabin on Saturday, finding Amanda’s car gone and the cabin locked. Webb leaps on this, noting that he previously said the cabin was unlocked and that the key was on the kitchen counter. He suggests to Keith that he was about to say that he got the key from its hiding place; but Keith denies this, and refuses to say anything more.

Olivia knocks on Glenda’s door and is let in by Adam, who is intoxicated. The once-resilient Glenda is sitting alone in the darkened living room, her face haggard and despairing. She tells Olivia that Keith has confessed his affair with Amanda to her, but has denied killing her; but she doesn’t know whether to believe him. Olivia’s heart aches for her.

Robert Pierce and Keith Newell, the two main suspects, are in police custody. Both Webb and Moen believe that Keith slipped up when he said that the cabin was locked when he returned, which means that he must be protecting someone else. Amanda Pierce’s killer must have known where the spare key was always hidden, since this person presumably returned it to its hiding place in the shed after removing her body and cleaning up the crime scene. They deduce that Keith has been protecting Paul Sharpe. They decide to release Robert Pierce, who could not have known where the key was hidden. They question Keith again, accusing him of protecting Paul or someone else, but he refuses to talk.

The detectives detain Paul again for questioning, and ask Olivia and Glenda to come along. Webb asks Olivia about the spare key, and she says that, besides her family, only Keith Newell knew about it. Webb tells her that the key was returned to its hiding place by Amanda’s killer, and Olivia is horrified.

Glenda Newell denies to Webb that she knew Keith was having an affair with Amanda, or that there was a spare key to the Sharpe cabin. Webb says that Keith told him that she knew where the key was kept. He adds that her husband said that the cabin was locked when he returned on Saturday, and the key was in its usual hiding place. Glenda thinks to herself that she and Keith should have spoken before being interviewed: She should have told him what happened. She knows now that returning the key to the shed was a mistake, but she was exhausted from scrubbing Amanda’s blood from the floor and walls and wasn’t thinking clearly. Keith had returned home looking distressed, and she knew that he had guessed, from the location of the key, part of what had happened. He never said a word to her about it. She hoped that no one would find Amanda’s car and body. But maybe, she thinks, she can still wriggle out of this, and pin the blame on Keith, who deserves it for his adultery. She again denies knowing about the spare key.

Meanwhile, the police are investigating the strangulation of Carmine Torres, whose murderer was undoubtedly someone she knew and trusted, since she let them in late at night. Her neighbor Zoe, who discovered the body, tells Detective Webb that she saw someone she knew at Carmine’s door late that night. In the interview room, Webb reads Glenda Newell her rights, then tells her about Carmine’s murder, and that a witness saw her at Carmine’s front door that night. Glenda thinks bitterly to herself that she shouldn’t have killed her. She immediately confesses to Carmine’s murder, and then to the murder of Amanda Pierce, for having an affair with her husband. However, Webb and Moen, leaving the room, express doubts that she killed Amanda. They think she is protecting someone other than her husband.

The point of view returns to the first-person voice of the prologue, as Amanda’s killer describes his interview with the detectives. The speaker is 16-year-old Adam Newell, who is deeply shaken as he confesses to her murder; at the same time, he feels relieved. He tells the detectives that he found out about his father’s affair months ago by logging into his secret email account. He learned that the other woman was pregnant and began to worry that she would break up his family. He overheard his father arranging to meet her at the Sharpe cabin, so he took his mother’s car, just to see what she looked like and to warn her away. He was careful to arrive after his father had gone; once there, he snuck in and confronted Amanda in the kitchen. There was a hammer on the counter, and, flying into an uncontrollable rage, he picked it up and bludgeoned her repeatedly. Afterward, he called his mother in a panic. When she arrived, he assumed she would call 911, but instead she ordered him to help her clean up the crime scene and dispose of Amanda’s body. She brought him a change of clothes and directed him to sink everything—his bloody clothes, the hammer, Amanda’s car and body—in the lake. After thoroughly cleaning the cabin, they returned home with stories of being at friends’ houses, but Adam thinks his father suspected the truth. Adam says his parents were happy before Amanda came along. Webb tells him that his mother will be charged as an accessory to murder. Adam’s punishment will probably be mild as a minor.

The point of view returns to the third-person, and Webb tells Adam that, in addition to the cover-up, his mother killed Carmine Torres to protect him. Webb and Moen then go to Glenda and inform her that her son has confessed, that he may only serve a couple of years for the murder he committed, but that she will be going away for longer. She cries, and thinks back to the day of Amanda’s murder, when she first realized that Adam had started drinking because of his knowledge of his father’s infidelity. For weeks, she was afraid that he would blurt everything out while drunk.

Olivia has been told about the Newells’ confessions, and her husband has been fully exonerated, but she is still shaken. Particularly haunting and “surreal” is the thought of Glenda’s murder of Carmine, who Glenda thought might have seen Adam and herself returning in separate cars on the night of the murder. But, Olivia thinks, “a mother will do almost anything to protect her son” (291). Her own son, Raleigh, will probably get off lightly, with only community service, for his three counts of breaking and entering and unauthorized use of a computer. He swears he will never do it again.

Robert Pierce, hearing the news of the arrests, is happy. He had considered killing Amanda himself, so it worked out perfectly for him. Now, with the police investigation at an end, he can retrieve Amanda’s burner phone from the garden. Amanda had put evidence against him on that phone. However, he digs up the whole garden but cannot find the phone. He immediately suspects Becky, who often spies on him. Trying to contain his anger, he stares at her house and begins planning.