She Didn't See It Coming

After Lizzie’s interview, Bryden’s best friend, Paige Mason, arrives at the apartment, and Sam sobs in her arms. Paige comforts Sam, telling him that they will find Bryden. Paige is anxious about talking with the detectives.

The detectives interview Paige, who tells them that she is a communications director and has been friends with Bryden since college. During the interview, Paige’s cell phone rings, and she declines the call. She reports that Sam and Bryden had a good relationship and that “neither one of them would ever cheat” (70), but Jayne feels that Paige is not being truthful. Paige insists that Sam has nothing to do with Bryden’s disappearance.

As they leave the apartment, the detectives wonder aloud whether Sam or Bryden (or perhaps both) were having affairs.

After Paige and the detectives have left, Donna, Bryden’s mother, walks into the kitchen to begin preparing dinner and accidentally interrupts a private conversation between Lizzie and Sam. Donna demands to know what they were talking about, and Lizzie admits that the detectives asked her for an alibi, but she does not have one. Sam admits that he was out of the office for two hours around the time of the murder. Donna is shaken by this information.

At 5:35, the K-9 team arrives to search the condo with a dog that is trained to both track a scent and locate cadavers. They go to the Frosts’ apartment with the dog.

Donna, Sam, and Lizzie answer the door, and Lizzie is glad that the police have a search dog. Jayne finds Lizzie’s “avidity” over the case to be “almost distasteful” (77). Sam provides one of Bryden’s dirty shirts so that the dog can learn her scent. Sam and Bryden’s parents grow pale when they learn that the dog is also trained to search for cadavers.

The dog tracks Bryden’s scent to the parking garage and then into the storage area. The Frosts’ storage unit had already been searched the day before. The dog leads them to a large suitcase in a storage unit for one of the empty apartments.

Jayne tells her partner to call in the forensic team. When the team arrives, they begin collecting evidence. After a couple of hours, they tell her that they have likely not found anything connected to the perpetrator. Jayne directs them to open the suitcase that the dog pointed out, and they discover Bryden’s body inside.

The longer the search goes on, the more anxious Sam becomes, and suddenly, he has a panic attack. The detectives arrive at the apartment to break the bad news to the family. When the family hears that Bryden’s body was found in a suitcase in the storage locker, they are in shock.

The family agrees to cooperate with the homicide investigation. Jayne tells them to spend the night in a hotel while the police search the apartment for more evidence. Lizzie agrees to arrange the hotel room, as Sam has completely shut down. He insists that he cannot think of “anyone who would hurt Bryden” (87). The media gather outside the condo building, shouting questions at the departing family.

Sam goes to the police station and officially identifies Bryden’s body. Jayne then has a recorded interview with Sam, in which he insists that he and Bryden were happy, faithful, and did not have money problems. He reports that they both had life insurance policies. Jayne shows Sam a picture of the suitcase in which Bryden was found. Sam admits that it is his suitcase. He says everyone in the building has a key to access the storage locker and that his wife kept her key on a hook in the kitchen. Jayne tells Sam of her theory that the killer entered the building through the parking garage and that Bryden had buzzed them in. This suggests that Bryden knew her murderer.

Jayne probes Sam’s alibi. He says he was in the park for two hours between noon and two. Jayne suggests that it was a cold day in March to spend two hours in the park. He claims that he parked his car nearby, but Jayne doubts that they will find CCTV evidence to corroborate this. When Sam asks if he needs a lawyer, Jayne says it is his choice.

Lizzie takes her parents and Clara to her apartment. Her parents will be staying with her in the spare room. Once she has a moment to herself, Lizzie goes online. Lizzie is active in a Facebook group called True Crimes in Albany NY. She enjoys looking into crimes that she feels the police have not investigated properly, and she has become obsessed with “citizen detective” work ever since she watched the Netflix documentary Don’t F**k with Cats. Lizzie posts in the Facebook group about her sister’s murder, using the pseudonym Emma Porter.

The detectives’ search of the crime scene finds very little evidence, but Jayne is very suspicious of Sam. That evening, Derek Gardner returns home to his wife, Alice. He tells her that Jayne questioned him about his relationship with Bryden, who has gone missing. Meanwhile, Alice suspects that Henry was having an affair with Bryden, but Henry denies the accusation. Alice posits that Sam may have murdered Bryden.

Sam checks into the hotel suite, and Lizzie is there. He tells her that they will have to tell Clara about her mother’s death tomorrow. He goes to bed, worrying about what the police will find.

Jayne and Detective Kilgour discuss the case. Although Jayne suspects Sam, she admits that it would be odd for him to use his own suitcase to hide Bryden’s body and leave it in the storage unit instead of getting rid of it. They wonder if a key was even required to access the storage unit; the door could have been left unlocked. They also wonder why someone would even bother to move the body.

Jayne returns home to Michael, her boyfriend of one year. She loves him, and he is very understanding of the demands of her job. There is a news report on Bryden’s murder, and Jayne hopes it will encourage witnesses to come forward.

Lizzie sits with Sam in the hotel room. They have been drinking. Sam tells Lizzie that the police suspect him of murdering Bryden. He is worried that they will find out “things,” but when Lizzie presses him about what “things” he is hiding, he brushes her off and goes to bed.

Meanwhile, Donna lies awake, thinking about what happened to her daughter and wondering who could have killed her. She wonders if the stress of the situation will cause her to “go mad […] like her great-aunt” (106). She is disturbed that Sam does not have an alibi for the time of Bryden’s murder.

The next morning, the detectives go to Paige’s apartment to interview her again. Jayne notices that Paige seems drained and stressed. They accuse Paige of lying when she reported that neither Bryden nor Sam were having an affair.

Paige is startled by the detectives’ questions. Eventually, she admits that Bryden told her she had been having an affair with Derek Gardner for a few weeks.

The detectives go to the Gardner residence. Alice comes downstairs in her robe to see Derek speaking with the detectives. They tell her that Bryden’s body has been found and that they are conducting a homicide investigation. Jayne tells Derek of their discovery that he knew Bryden better than he had previously admitted. They want to interview him at the police station.

Paige is shaken by her interview with the detectives. Meanwhile, now that the police are done investigating the scene, Sam, Lizzie, and Clara return to the apartment. Sam feels uncomfortable around Lizzie and he wonders if he told her too much. Donna and Jim (Bryden and Lizzie’s parents) arrive at the condo, and Sam wonders if Bryden’s family also believes he murdered his wife.

As Derek and Alice drive to the police station, Derek insists that he was not having an affair with Bryden and did not murder her. Alice is angry and jealous when she sees a picture of how beautiful Bryden was.