My sister Noel arrived at the hospital that evening with her eyes swollen from crying and grabbed my hand and said she was sorry. Sorry for believing Leo. Sorry for that phone call asking if I was okay in my head. She had been manipulated as thoroughly as everyone else, and that was the point, that was the design, because when someone lies with sufficient skill and patience the people who believe them are not stupid. They are simply human, and human beings extend trust to the people they have been given reasons to trust.
Before Detective Fam left that night she paused in the doorway and said there was one more thing. The investigation had turned up something about Freya’s first husband, Leo’s father, a man named Raymond Gutierrez, who had died in March of 2011 at forty-nine years old. Cause of death: progressive neurological failure of undetermined origin. He had been sick for approximately six months before he died. Tingling, fatigue, loss of motor function. The case had been closed as natural causes. Freya had been the grieving widow.
