“The picture shows the bodies in the upstairs bedroom in the same positions the local police found them, but she had taken it days before the discovery, based on . . .”
Linda crossed her arms. “Based on?”
“The state of decomposition.” He hesitated, then pushed the folder forward.
Before DS Khan could warn her again, Linda opened the folder. At first glance, nothing seemed wrong. It was a normal Polaroid picture of a group of old friends gathered on a sofa. But then she noticed that the man on the end had no face. It had been crushed in. The others’ eyes stared not at the camera but vacantly at blank space. Their skin varied in shades of gray, their mouths agape as if they forgot how to say “cheese.” Blood in various patterns streaked their clothes.
Linda forced herself to look at her father. Dried blood covered most of the wound to his head, but she could see a concave shape to his skull where it should have been round. She closed the folder and slid it back to DS Khan.
“Do they have any idea where she is?”
He shook his head. “They’re not even sure what she looks like. The fake Facebook page she created has been deactivated. They’re working on getting a warrant to release the data. All the Caskie and remaining McAllister families had were some childhood pictures, nothing of her older than eight or nine years of age. It seems she managed to take any recent pictures they had of her out of the house weeks before the murders. She purposely left us that diary, but we have no idea how much of what she wrote is even accurate and how much was fabricated for the police’s benefit. She could be anywhere. And, based on what she was able to pull off, she could be anyone.”
Linda grabbed her old messenger bag off the floor and paused as she looked at the badges her dad had once helped her sew on. Then she threw the bag strap over her shoulder.
“I know who she is. She’s the woman who murdered my father.”
She left the interview room without saying goodbye and navigated the familiar halls of the Greater Manchester Police Headquarters alone, unsure where to go next even as she got on a bus to the city center. She thought this visit would help in some way. Assuage more of her guilt for not raising the alarm sooner when her father hadn’t responded to her calls or texts. Make her feel like less of a fool for falling for that woman’s stupid tricks in the first place. She felt none of this, though. Only a confused knot of guilt that she had done something she didn’t know how to fix.
She hopped off the bus a half hour later, no less confused than before. As she waited to cross the street, a dog on a lead barked and snarled at her, the woman on the other end doing nothing to quiet it. When the light changed, the woman yanked on the dog’s lead, dragging it across street and kicking its belly when it refused to walk. Linda watched the woman and reluctant dog until they were out of sight.
Linda changed direction.
Using the National Rail app on her phone, she bought a one-way ticket to Edinburgh. Then she scrolled through her contacts, found the number the police said they couldn’t trace. The number of the woman who said she’d been a friend of her father’s. Linda had read the diary cover to cover, had read her stupid ghost story, and asked herself the very question Jennifer McAllister had posed at the end of the obituary. Which one are you?
Linda sent a series of texts she wasn’t sure would be read.
I’m not the laird. Or the guest. Or the pack.
I’m Hollis Drummond’s daughter. And I’m going to find you.
An hour later, as she sat on a train at Manchester Piccadilly watching travelers race across the platform with their coffee, their luggage, their children, her phone dinged. There were no words, only a picture. A twin image of the one she had seen at the police station. The same people, decades younger, gathered on the couch and smiling up at the camera, arms around one another. Except in the foreground, at her father’s feet, sat a tall young man with ginger-brown hair. And there, in the background, walking into the frame as if by accident, face blank as it recognized the camera, a young woman with long, ginger hair and pale eyes, unnoticed by everyone except this girl sitting on this train. A young woman waiting for her chance to do something very good, or something very bad.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Jannicke Bevan de Lange for reading the early chapters and helping me realize what wasn’t working and fix it before it was too late. Also, thank you to Sandra Sawicka for helping me fix what I didn’t even realize was wrong (but seems so obvious now!). Thank you to Cal Barksdale and the team at Arcade CrimeWise for turning this from a manuscript into a book.
As always, a big thank you to my family, especially Mom, Cherie, and Lindsey, for not always knowing what I’m doing when I’m locked away in my office but supporting me anyway, and to Harry and Gizmo, who don’t mind hanging out with me in my locked office.
Finally, thank you to terrible house parties everywhere for reminding why I prefer to be locked in my office.
They Did Bad Things Page 29