Things We Do in the Dark

Paris is booked into the county jail. As she relinquishes her $250,000 wedding ring and is directed to a holding cell, she realizes how this will play out in the media. She was Jimmy’s fifth wife and half his age, and she was standing there holding the murder weapon. She reaches out to Elsie Dixon, an old friend of Jimmy’s and a prominent lawyer.

Elsie arrives. The two maintain an uneasy friendship. Elsie warned Jimmy that Paris might be a “gold digger” and drew up a non-negotiable, airtight prenup that would leave Paris only $1 million—a pittance compared to Jimmy’s estimated worth of more than $80 million. Jimmy’s sagging career had recently begun to find new life with a younger audience through comedy specials streamed online.

Paris tells Elsie that she did not kill Jimmy; she had come home and found him dead, “one arm dangling over the tub, which was half-full of red water. Except it’s not water” (20). Elsie suspects that the death might be from suicide but cautions Paris that it looks bad for her.

In a police interrogation, Paris tries to hold up without crying. Jimmy had been the love of her life—at least her new life. She explains that she drove to Vancouver for the convention and returned and found her husband dead. The police cannot verify her whereabouts because she admits that she forgot her phone. The police question Paris’s calm composure. “How I grieve is one of your business” (27), Paris snaps.

Back in the holding cell, Paris overhears other cellmates whispering about her, calling her “a gold-digging ho” (34). When Elsie returns, she tells Paris that the coroner’s toxicology report found cocaine in Jimmy’s system. He had struggled with addiction years ago, but Paris believed that he was better now. The pressure of his comeback might have caused a relapse. Paris tells Elsie that Jimmy had begun to show signs of early Alzheimer’s dementia, misplacing things and forgetting names.

Elsie departs. Paris, unable to sleep, chides herself. “You can run away from Toronto, away from dead bodies and into a whole new life and a whole new name […] but everywhere you go, there you are” (38).

In the morning, Paris is transferred to the courthouse for her arraignment. Elsie brings her a change of clothes and cautions her to say nothing: “Do not react” (42). The DA tells a stunned courtroom that just five weeks earlier Jimmy Peralta had altered his will and left his new wife half his estate, $46 million. Offering that as a compelling motive, the DA requests a first- degree murder charge. Shocked by the revelation, Paris pleads not guilty. She will be allowed to return home until trial, but she must wear a monitoring ankle bracelet.

Because Paris’s home is now a crime scene, Elsie arranges for her to stay at a swanky hotel near her home. Paris settles into the suite. She showers and watches as late-night talk-show comedians make Paris the butt of jokes. She remembers begging Jimmy to stop using the fancy straight razors that he loved—he was starting to have tremors and he needed to switch to an electric razor. She remembers offering to shave Jimmy once and how she ran the razor along his neck and how easily she could have sliced his jugular then.

The next morning, Zoe brings Jimmy’s fan mail to the hotel. Reading his fan mail was always a source of fun for the two of them. Jimmy worried after rehab that he might not be funny anymore, but he found an entirely new, younger audience through streaming networks. At 68, he was “ready for a comeback” (59). They had married with much publicity.

It was then, amid all the PR for Jimmy’s comeback and his marriage to Paris, that Paris received the first blackmail letter. Ruby Reyes, a convicted murderer about to be paroled in Toronto, had seen the wedding photos in People. She demanded $1 million to keep quiet that Paris Peralta had killed Ruby’s daughter 19 years earlier. Paris never paid it.

In the box of mail that Zoe brings, Paris finds a new blackmail card from Ruby, who now, because she has been granted parole, is asking for $3 million. She reminds Paris cryptically how she became Paris and whose ashes were in the urn with her daughter’s name on it. She also encloses an old photo of her daughter, Joey. Paris recalls how Joey and her mother, a Filipina immigrant, had struggled to make ends meet in Toronto and how she had never intended to kill Joey. As she stares at the old photo, Paris thinks about how “she’d left this picture behind on the night of the fire, the night she stepped out of one life and into another” (64).