Loves Me Not

SEVENTY FIVE

AFTER
DETECTIVE BRETT PORTER

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind, to say the least.

Will's arraignment was held forty-eight hours after we booked him. He and his lawyer showed up in expensive suits and impeccable hair that really wouldn't do much at this point. He had just confessed to murder and was planning on pleading guilty. What did he expect – empathy?

The case had been a long and complicated one, but I felt relieved and proud that we actually solved this thing. Half the time these women go missing and turn up dead and we never find out who was responsible. It helped me sleep at night knowing that this case had been a success and that Will Sterling would be behind bars.

I sat in the courtroom with Zoey, biding the time until it was Will's opportunity to go up and speak. The judge asked him how he would like to plead. There was an agonizing moment of silence where Will didn't speak. He just stared out across the room into the seats of people watching. I turned around and looked back to follow his gaze. He was staring directly at his wife, who was seated in the back in an immaculate dress-suit. She was staring back at him, tears in her eyes, shaking her head. I watched as she opened her mouth and formed the word, don't.

That's when everything changed. Will opened his mouth and began to speak, and then all of a sudden, the wife was standing up, interrupting him.

"It was me," she said loudly for the entire room to hear. "I'm the guilty one. I killed her, not Will. Please, Will, don't do this. Don't take the fall for me."

The rest after that is a bit of a blur.

After a stunned moment of silence from everyone, the room began buzzing with conversation. The judge intervened and began talking to Will, asking him if this was true. Will denied it at first and tried to continue on with his confession, but the wife – Juliette, I later remembered was her name – wouldn't let him. She pushed out of her seat and made her way to the front of the room.

Upheaval ensued after that. Everyone was standing up, moving around the room. The press was surrounding the two of them, trying to photograph and record everything. Cameras were flashing, people were shouting. Security ushered everyone out of the courtroom and Will and Juliette were taken to the judge's chambers.

It wasn't until a few hours later that news finally broke. It was true – Juliette was responsible for Catalaina's death after all.

I spoke with her myself later that evening at the station while we held her in an interrogation room. I went over the story with her a dozen times and she didn't falter once. She recited the entire thing from beginning to end, never missing a detail. She explained how she woke up to the sound of Will's phone buzzing. He was asleep. She read through the messages and knew immediately that it was Catalaina. She told me how the two of them – Will and Catalaina – had had an affair a few years prior, when Juliette and Will were engaged. She made the decision to stay with Will, despite everything. But she always knew deep down that they were in love with each other. She went to the pier that night to intimidate Catalaina and tell her to leave her husband alone once and for all. However, according to Juliette, unforeseen circumstances arose.

During her confession, Juliette took full responsibility. She didn't sugar coat anything and didn't attempt to make herself look like the good guy or an innocent victim. She explained the irrational, manic thoughts she had while talking to her husband's mistress. She told me that when she pushed her foot down on the gas and accelerated, she felt a moment of insanity.

All of the pieces finally clicked together when she finished her story. It was the car – of course it was the car. She hit Catalaina from behind and that explained the blunt-force trauma to the back and ribs, as well as the fact that she was unconscious when she hit the water.

I repeated the whole process over again – confession, booking, arrest, arraignment. Another forty-eight hours later and Juliette Sterling officially plead guilty to the murder of Catalaina Kittridge.

Ben was awestruck, Will was heartbroken, and everyone at the station was still trying to process everything that had just happened. Man confesses to a murder he didn't commit to protect his wife, but then wife ends up confessing anyways to protect husband from going to jail. Sounds like a true love story if I ever did hear one. Minus the part about the affair and the almost leaving your wife for the girl you've secretly been in love with all these years.

Now it's the end of July and this whole media storm has finally died down. Juliette's case will go to trial in a few months and then, if the jury finds her guilty (which they most likely will), she will spend the next twenty-five years of her life in a women's maximum-security prison where she, because of her gender, will likely get early parole.

The date on the calendar says July twenty-third. Catalaina and Ben's wedding was set for the eighteenth. I wonder how he spent that day. I, on the other hand, brought flowers to her grave. I stood there for a few minutes, silently talking to the dead woman, asking her if she had finally found peace.

I look back at this case as one of the most perplexing investigations I've ever been assigned. From the beginning there was nothing but deception and lies and secrets. As I've come to learn, everybody has something to hide. It's my job as a detective to keep an eye out for this and unearth every secret that one possesses. Looks like I still have a bit to work on.

Catalaina was a good woman. A complex, misunderstood woman who only wanted one thing: to be loved. She had everything she could have possibly wanted, and it somehow wasn't enough. Most people would give anything to find the kind of love that people had for her, yet still, she went out searching for more.

She had Ben: someone who would love her and be there for her through anything. A life with him wasn't enough, so she went out and sought affection and solace through Dominic. She had some fun and made some new experiences, but still, it wasn't enough. Nothing in her life would ever compare to the love of the one and only person she ever truly wanted this: Will Sterling. Unfortunately for her, it was her great need for love that got her killed.

I wish somebody would have told her. I wish somebody would have sat her down, grabbed her by the shoulders, and told her point-blank that she didn't need anybody else. She didn't need to cross oceans or climb mountains to find some great fairy-tale love to complete her. She was already complete on her own.

At least I finally solved the mystery at the end of her journal. "If it is I who needs to be solved, then it is he who holds the key." It was Will. It had always been Will.

Some lessons we have to learn thehard way. Fortunately for me, the day I ever have a daughter of my own, thatwill be the first thing I instill into her brain.