My 8-year-old Daughter Sent Me A Terrifying Text While I Was Driving Home. Now I’m Hiding In A Motel And Found Out My ‘brother-in-law’ Is Actually My Wife’s Secret Husband. How Do I Get Out Alive?
The Trap
Here’s what we did. I called Sarah’s number from an unknown phone Rachel provided. She answered on the fourth ring, her voice breathy with fake concern.
“Hello?”
“Sarah, it’s me.”
Silence. Then,
“Thomas? Oh my god. Where are you? I’ve been so worried. I got off the plane and you weren’t answering your phone.”
She was good. If I hadn’t known the truth, I would have believed her.
“I’m at Mercy Hospital,”
I lied.
“I got sick. Really sick. I think it’s food poisoning, but the doctors want to run tests. Can you come?”
Another pause. I could almost hear her mind working.
“Of course. I’m coming right now. Which Mercy?”
“There are two in the city. The one on Wilshire. Room 412. I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
She hung up. I looked at Rachel.
“Will the police do it?”
“Already arranged it. Detective Morrison owes me a favor. He’ll have the room wired. You lie in the bed, play sick, and get her to talk. And if she doesn’t confess, then we go with the evidence we have. But Thomas…”
Rachel’s expression was serious.
“You need to be prepared. This woman you married, the mother of your child, she’s not who you thought she was. Maybe she never was.”
I knew she was right, but part of me, the part that had loved Sarah for three decades, still hoped there was an explanation. Still hoped this was all some terrible misunderstanding.
The Confrontation
Mercy Hospital, as it turned out, was very accommodating when a private investigator with police connections explained the situation. Detective Morrison met us in the parking garage, a tired-looking man in his 50s with gray hair and sharp eyes.
“You sure about this?”
He asked me.
“I’m sure.”
They set me up in an actual hospital room, put me in a gown, hooked me up to monitors that weren’t actually turned on. Rachel stayed in an adjacent room with Emma, watching through a camera feed. Detective Morrison was down the hall with two other officers.
I lay in the bed and waited. Sarah arrived 30 minutes later. I heard her heels clicking down the corridor, heard her asking a nurse which room was Thomas Rutherford’s. Then she was there in the doorway, and I saw her face cycle through surprise, confusion, and something else—something cold.
“Thomas?”
She rushed to my side, grabbed my hand.
“Oh my god, what happened? You look terrible.”
“Kidney failure,”
I said weakly.
“The doctors don’t know why. It came on so suddenly.”
Her hand tightened on mine.
“But you’re going to be okay, right? They can treat it?”
“They’re not sure. Sarah, I need to tell you something. In case I…”
I let my voice trail off.
“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. I love you. I’ve always loved you. You and Emma, you’re everything to me.”
For just a moment, I saw something flicker in her eyes. Guilt? Regret? But it vanished as quickly as it appeared.
“I love you too,”
She said.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand though.”
I shifted in the bed, watching her face.
“The doctors found something in my blood work. Ethylene glycol. That’s antifreeze, Sarah. How did antifreeze get in my system?”
Her face went pale.
“I… I don’t know. That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
I sat up, pulling the monitors off.
“Because Emma heard you, Sarah. She heard you and Richard planning this. And we found the emails. We found everything.”
She jerked back, her hand flying to her mouth.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re confused. The poisoning must be affecting your brain.”
“Stop lying.”
The words came out harsher than I intended.
“I know Richard isn’t your brother. I know you were married to him. I know you’ve been planning to kill me for 2 years. $3 million, Sarah. Was that the going rate for 30 years of marriage?”
She stared at me, and I watched her face transform. The mask of the concerned wife slipped away, replaced by something hard and calculating.
“You can’t prove anything,”
She said quietly.
“Actually, we can.”
I gestured to the camera in the corner of the room.
“Detective?”
The door opened. Detective Morrison walked in, followed by two uniformed officers. Sarah’s eyes went wide.
“Sarah Rutherford, you’re under arrest for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.”
She didn’t run, didn’t scream. She just stood there as they cuffed her hands behind her back, staring at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“You’re making a mistake,”
She said.
“I’m his wife. I would never…”
“Save it for your lawyer,”
Morrison said.
“We’ve got the emails, the antifreeze, your search history, and now this conversation on tape. It’s over.”
As they led her out, she turned back to look at me one last time.
“You know what the funny thing is?”
She said.
“I did love you, at first. When we met, you were kind and stable and everything Richard wasn’t. But love doesn’t pay the bills, Thomas. Love doesn’t erase 30 years of scraping by, of watching you climb higher while I stayed home with a kid I never even wanted. Richard and I, we were meant to be together. We were the same. You were just a means to an end.”
Then she was gone. And I was alone in the hospital room that wasn’t really treating me for anything, feeling like I’d aged 30 years and 3 days.
Rachel came in with Emma a few minutes later. My daughter climbed onto the bed beside me and I held her close.
“Is it over?”
She asked.
“It’s over.”
