Her phone rang, and they both inched backward, slightly startled.
She fumbled in her bag for her phone. “Jeesh. What? Hello?”
“This is Hunter. We need to talk.”
40
Farther north of downtown Burning Lake, beyond the patchwork of meadows, farmland, and forest, was a sprawling historic neighborhood of homes designed by such renowned architects as Stanford White and Frank Lloyd Wright, where the town’s upwardly mobile professionals lived. Surrounding these posh, high-end estates were nature preserves and bird sanctuaries. It was isolated and beautiful, the kind of place where the tree branches scattered the sunlight in just the right way, like a Peloton ad.
Natalie parked in Hunter’s driveway, then took the flagstone path to his front door. She rang the bell, and he greeted her warmly. Today he favored a Goth nerd look—skinny pants, black shirt, Harry Potter glasses, and black ankle boots. All that was missing was the black cat.
The drawing room had three bay windows with southwesterly views of the gardens. The paneling was tiger oak. The stained glass windows cast prisms of light on the Edwardian-style furniture. The restored mansion had retained all of its historic architectural features, and the place felt just as grand as the first time Natalie had set foot inside.
“Can I get you something?” Hunter asked. “Coffee? Tea? Fresh-squeezed orange juice?”
“No, thanks.” She sat on an elegant blue velvet sofa. “What did you want to talk about?” The sunlight was too bright in here. Her mind was filled with all the things she had to do today. Her body was dragging. She should have accepted his offer of coffee.
“Glass of wine? No?” He went over to the bar, opened a bottle of wine, poured himself a glass, then set the bottle gently down on the bar. “On the night Bella disappeared, I volunteered to join in the search. We looked for three or four days. I helped them put up missing persons posters all over town. Nesbitt and I attended the prayer vigil. I contributed money to the reward. The police cleared me a long time ago, Natalie. I had nothing to do with Bella’s fate, whatever that may be.” His mouth grew pinched. “But it alters your worldview—that a person like Bella could vanish into thin air.” He pinned her with his sincere gaze. “I’d like to show you something. Upstairs. I want you to see who my brother really was.”
She hesitated a moment before accompanying him to the second floor, where the nineteenth-century reproduction wallpaper contained idyllic scenes of bluebirds and roses. They walked past the master suite, where she remembered fucking Hunter in his parents’ ornate bed, and continued down the hallway to the very end, where a large door had a construction-paper sign taped to it that read BUSY—PLEASE KNOCK! in a child’s blocky script.
“Nesbitt always kept his door shut. You had to knock three times before he’d let you in,” Hunter explained as he opened the door.
The room was perfectly preserved. There was a single bed, a toy chest with jungle creatures painted on the lid, and a bookcase that held the collected works of Dr. Seuss and R. L. Stine. A wooden chair was positioned in the center of the room, with four black x’s marked on the hardwood floor where the chair legs fit perfectly.
“He liked to measure the distance from the four corners of his room and find the exact center. He called it the middle-middle,” Hunter explained. “He would mark the spot with a Magic Marker. It comforted him somehow.”
Natalie followed Hunter inside. On the bureau beside an old-fashioned record player was a large glass jar full of pennies.
“I used to bring him pennies,” Hunter explained. “I’d drop them in the jar because he liked the clinking sounds they made. If you handed him a penny, he wouldn’t take it. He’d throw it on the floor. He didn’t want to touch a coin, but once the pennies were inside the jar he adored them.”
She smiled. There were little piles of stuff on every surface—old bottle caps, loose buttons, movie ticket stubs.
“My father spent a fortune on medical bills, and yet none of the specialists could tell us what was wrong—if ‘wrong’ is the correct word. Because, frankly, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my little brother.” Hunter picked up a brown button from the bureau top and studied it for a moment. “One of the best pediatricians in the country diagnosed it as autism. Another specialist said my brother lacked ‘emotional intelligence,’ whatever that means. Another specialist said he had ADHD. My father wasn’t satisfied with any of the diagnoses, but Mom was scared. She dropped Nesbitt when he was a baby and thought she might’ve caused brain damage. But the doctors insisted he was born that way. I don’t care what people call it—autistic, mentally challenged, brain-damaged. I loved my brother. He was a character and a half.”
Natalie smiled sympathetically.
Hunter gazed at the colorful zoo animals printed on the dusty curtains. “He used to keep his bedroom windows open at night, and it was always freezing inside his room. Every evening, I’d go around closing the windows, but every morning, they’d be open again.” He rubbed his chin. “However, on the morning after Bella disappeared, all the windows were shut, and his bed hadn’t been slept in. He must’ve been out all night doing God knows what.” He rubbed his anguished forehead. “There was a time when I thought … what if he hurt her? What if everybody’s right about him? Maybe my brother’s a monster, like they say? Maybe I just don’t see it? So, a few days later, I asked him what he was doing that night. The night Bella disappeared. As soon as I mentioned her name, he got upset and threw a tantrum. Bottom line, Nesbitt loved her. He missed her terribly. She was one of the few people who treated him like a human being.” He held her eye. “You, too, Natalie. You were very decent to him.”
She felt sick to her stomach. “And then the letters proved him innocent.”
“Too late. Way too fucking late. He was gone by then.” He shook his head sadly. “But for a short while, even I suspected him. To this day, I feel guilty about it.”
“Funny,” she said. “Because I blame myself for not suspecting Grace enough. I didn’t have a clue what she and her friends were up to. I keep beating myself up, because if only I’d opened my eyes, maybe Daisy would still be alive.”
He looked at her. “So we share this in common? This guilt?”
She nodded.
He held her gaze. “Do other people understand the loss, I wonder?”
“I’m sure some people do.”
“Isn’t it odd, Natalie. We’ve known each other for such a long time, and yet I never really understood you until now.”
The silence stretched between them.
Natalie’s phone rang. “Sorry, have to take this.” She excused herself and took the call out in the hallway. “Yes?”
It was Luke. “Lenny pulled a print off the violin. It was Russ Swinton’s.”
Fear descended like a fog. “I’ll be right there.”
Hunter was standing in the doorway. “Before you go…” He took a USB drive out of his pocket and handed it to her. “The surveillance tapes for Sunday night. I hope this helps.”
41
Natalie’s stomach felt raw and unsettled as she headed down the hallway toward Luke’s office. His door was open. The radio was on low, tuned to a jazz station. His whiteboard was covered with names, dates, and locations. They were piecing together a time line of Morgan’s movements over the last three days of her life.
She stared at him. “So Russ is our prime suspect?”
He made direct eye contact, a concerned frown nestled in his lined, handsome face. “You need to go talk to him again, Natalie. Find out if he’s the one who dropped the violin off on Hunter’s property.”
“Okay,” she said. “We also need to pull surveillance tapes overlooking the parking lot behind Blondie’s. If Russ followed her there, he would’ve parked in that lot. And then there’s this.” She handed him the USB Hunter had given her, and the two of them hunched over Luke’s computer screen while he uploaded the surveillance footage.
The nighttime images were grainy
and pixelated, but the cameras showed Morgan arriving at the Halloween party with Russ Swinton at 9:07 P.M. She wasn’t carrying her violin case with her. At 9:50 P.M., Morgan exited the residence alone and waited down by the road. Still no violin. Ten minutes later, an Uber driver picked her up. Russ Swinton left the party at 10:10 P.M. He drove away in his black Lexus.
“He said he went straight home after the party,” Natalie said. “No witnesses.”
“That’s his alibi?” Luke asked skeptically.
She nodded. Her muscles felt sore as if she had the flu. She shook the hair out of her eyes. She didn’t want it to be true. Every fiber of her being rejected the possibility of Russ Swinton’s guilt. But it was her job to eliminate the innocent and identify the suspects.
“Go talk to him,” Luke said. “Find out if he dumped the violin on Rose’s property, and if so, why the fuck.”
Fifteen minutes later, Natalie found Dr. Swinton working in the emergency room of Langston Memorial. She asked to speak to him alone, and he escorted her into his office. “What is it, Natalie?” he said, closing the door.
“I have a few more questions about Morgan Chambers.”
He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a few minutes.” There was a restlessness to his muscles, a defensive look behind those guarded eyes.
“We found her violin last night. Somebody drove over to Hunter Rose’s property and dumped it by the side of the road, but it was too foggy out to identify the vehicle. But this morning, we found one of your prints on the violin case.”
An oppressive silence filled the room. Russ leaned back and folded his arms. “I have to confess … that was me. Morgan must’ve forgotten it in my car on Sunday night. I thought the police might suspect me of something, so I…”
“So you dropped it off by the side of the road in the middle of the night?”
“Should I call a lawyer?” he asked, and she remembered how reassuring he could be, writing prescriptions and declaring that everything would be fine. He had a good bedside manner. Now he seemed ravaged with worry.
“We lucked out finding your print,” she told him, “because the rest of the violin and case were wiped clean. Did you do that?”
He gave a reluctant nod. “I know how bad this looks.”
“Do you really?” she asked earnestly.
“But listen, I have my reasons. First, I had no idea that Morgan had left her violin in the trunk of my car until you and I spoke about it yesterday. So I went to check, and there it was. Then I realized the police might become suspicious of me, since I neglected to bring it up in the first place. But it was an oversight.”
“I understand how tangled our thoughts become when we’re under stress, believe me. How did your print get on the violin case?”
“Morgan showed it to me. She played Vivaldi for me.”
“When?”
“This was Sunday night, before the party. At my place. Since I collect violins, she asked me to take a look and tell her what it was worth. In all the excitement, she must’ve forgotten her violin in my car. I didn’t think about it until you brought it up yesterday. Then I panicked. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You didn’t think of calling me? Of calling the police?”
He shook his head. “I just wanted to get rid of it. Stupid, I know.”
There was pressure at the backs of her eyes. “Did you ever treat Lily Kingsley for an injury at the clinic?”
“Who?”
“Lily Kingsley. She was a student at the conservatory up until six months ago.”
“I must’ve treated thousands of students. I’ve been volunteering for years.”
“And was Lily among them?”
He shifted uneasily in his chair. “Am I a suspect? Because I should probably talk to a lawyer before we continue.”
“That’s up to you,” she said.
Russ glanced at his watch, and Natalie noticed the ink stamp smudges on the backs of his hands. “Did you go out to a bar or a club at any point last weekend?”
He stared at her with bloodshot eyes. “I didn’t kill Morgan.”
“You told me you went straight home after the party.”
He sighed heavily.
She let the silence build between them. Listening to a suspect—asking a tough question and waiting for the answer—you let your silence do the heavy lifting. Most people wanted to unburden themselves.
“It was just a nightcap,” he confessed, “and then I went home.”
All sorts of alarm bells rang inside her head. She couldn’t believe she’d caught him in another lie. “Which bar?”
“The Village Idiot. You can ask the bartender there.”
“And then you went straight home? Are you sure?”
“Directly from the bar.” He had a tight, guarded look around his eyes.
“Why did you not tell me this before? Why did you lie to me?”
He settled his shoulders against the broad leather chair and said, “I think I’ve cooperated enough. I think my next step should be to call an attorney. You’ll have to excuse me, Natalie, but this is exactly what I was afraid of.”
42
Getting a search warrant wasn’t complicated, but it took time. In order to get a warrant, you had to fill out an affidavit listing all the credible evidence. You had to state your case plainly and clearly, then go to the town courthouse and visit the judge in his chambers. The judge would read the affidavit, ask questions, and then—if you’d done your job—sign the approval page. While Luke was busy getting a search warrant for Russ Swinton’s property, Augie talked to the bartender of the Village Idiot, and Natalie drove up to Chaste Falls to find out if the good doctor had ever treated Lily Kingsley for a music-related injury.
Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking on the wheel. She felt a roiling sense of shame in her stomach. How could she have missed the signs, the clues, the hints? First Grace, now Swinton. Was he guilty of something terrible? This man who’d been privy to her innermost thoughts for decades? This man who had counted her heartbeats?
She parked in the visitors’ lot of the sprawling, landscaped campus and got out of her car. The waiting room of the conservatory clinic was just like any other doctor’s waiting room—sterile and bland, with dated magazines on the coffee table, jackets and scarves smothering the coatrack, and a handful of students waiting for their names to be called. A medicinal smell filled the recycled air.
The perky-faced receptionist greeted Natalie with an overworked smile, her frazzled hair curling back from her damp cheeks. “Hi there, can I help you?”
“My name is Detective Lockhart. I’m here about Lily Kingsley … did Sheriff Dressler call you?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes. Hold on, please.” The receptionist picked up the phone, dialed a number, and said, “Dr. Phelps? That detective I was telling you about is here … Detective Lockhart from Burning Lake. All right, I’ll let her know.” She hung up. “Dr. Phelps will be right out. Have a seat.”
A few minutes later, Dr. Gary Phelps came out and introduced himself, then escorted Natalie into his cramped clinic office. He had bristly red hair and rosy cheeks and looked too young to be a doctor. “Sheriff Dressler said I should give you any information you need. So how can I help?”
“Did a student named Lily Kingsley ever have an appointment with Russ Swinton in the past, say, two years?”
He typed a few commands into his computer. “Hmm, let’s see. Here we go. She came into the clinic over a year ago. She was scheduled to see Dr. Swinton.”
“What was she being treated for?”
“Strain of the right wrist. Numbness and pain. It’s pretty common among violinists.” He shrugged. “An occupational hazard. We see a lot of tendinitis, carpal tunnel, pinched nerves in the neck. It happens when high achievers practice too many hours without taking a break. Sometimes it’s due to faulty technique, but mostly it’s from overuse. Tenos riotous, nerve entrapment, rotator cuff. We get them all. In Ms. Kingsley’s case,” he said, sq
uinting at the screen, “treatment involved cold-heat, tissue massage, physical therapy, and the like.” He smiled. “I usually advise our students never to take a summer job scooping ice cream.”
Natalie smiled back. “How many follow-up appointments did she have with Dr. Swinton?”
“Let’s see.” He scrolled through the electronic file. “She came in twice a week for two months to see the PT. Treatment appears to have worked. Her final appointment with Swinton was in February.”
“About eight months ago?”
“Correct.”
“Did she have any previous clinic appointments with him? Before the injury?”
He took a moment to check. “No, it doesn’t appear so.”
Her shoulders sagged. Things were looking worse for Russ. She didn’t want to ask the next question, but the words popped out of her mouth. “Have any other students besides Lily gone missing from the conservatory?”
“I don’t think so. Not since I’ve been here, anyway.”
“How long is that?”
“Six years.”
“And how many patients has Dr. Swinton treated at the clinic?”
“Oh gee,” Phelps said, his face scrunched with worry. “Hundreds, if not thousands.”
“I’d like a list of names.”
“Of our patients? Sorry, I can’t extend that courtesy to you, Detective. We’re bound by patient confidentiality. I’d need a subpoena.”
“Okay, I’ll work on that. I have one more question for you,” she said. “Dr. Swinton was treating Morgan Chambers for an ongoing stress injury. I need to know the dates and times of each visit.”
He hesitated. “Sheriff Dressler didn’t mention Morgan Chambers in our phone conversation…”
“Our two jurisdictions are working together on the case,” she explained. “We’re cooperating fully, sharing information. If you’d like, you can call him. I’ll wait.”
“No, that won’t be necessary … hold on.” He typed in a command, then scrolled through the file. “I’m calling it up now. Okay. Her last appointment was four weeks ago on a Wednesday.”
The Wicked Hour Page 23