Would a teenager snap a picture of a dead girl-a pretty fourteen-year-old he knew?
And why keep such a picture?
Why leave it for her brother?
Mattie wasn’t in the shot. That suggested it was most likely his work.
Abigail paused in the shade of a massive spruce, its lower branches dead sticks poking out of its gnarled trunk. Despite the ravages of the harsh conditions of its exposed spot, the tree had survived.
The angle of the shot of Doe and her traumatized family and friends meant it must have been taken not from a boat or farther out on the dock, but from the parking lot above, perhaps from a car or truck.
She shut her eyes, seeing the horror on the faces of the Garrisons-Owen, his parents, his grandmother. And Jason Cooper, his arm around his young daughter.
Who would take such a picture?
Chris and his grandfather were there, on the sidelines, grim and sad, but not a part of the Garrison and Cooper circle.
Mattie wasn’t there. Definitely. She’d remember.
And Ellis.
Abigail opened her eyes and felt a warm breeze sweep in as if from the center of the island.
Ellis Cooper wasn’t in the picture.
Lou Beeler had never warmed up to Grace Cooper. People said she was nice enough. Smart. Well-connected. But she’d always struck him as a woman wrapped so tight, once she started to unravel, that’d be it. It’d be like unrolling a mummy and finding nothing inside but bits of bones and little piles of dust.
For all her success and riches, she was a woman with no center. Lou was convinced she didn’t really know who she was.
He was relieved not to see any FBI agents parked in the Cooper driveway.
Grace called to him from the front porch. “Lieutenant Beeler,” she said, her voice cool, collected. “I imagine you’re looking for me, aren’t you?”
He walked up the steps, noting that the hanging plants looked parched-missing Mattie Young, no doubt. “Mind if I have a word with you?” he asked.
“Of course not.” She sat on a wicker settee with a little puff-ball of a dog in her lap. But her face was pale, her eyes distant, even as she smiled with an emotionless grace. “Please, sit down.”
Lou shook his head. “I don’t have that much time. I wanted to ask you, Ms. Cooper-” He paused, watching her reaction. She knew why he was there. “When Chris Browning came up to your uncle’s house after Abigail was attacked and spoke to you, why did you tell him your brother was down at the old Garrison foundation?”
“I-I-” She made a choking sound, unable to go on, and fell back against the settee. Her knees went slack, and the little dog slipped down her legs, then jumped off her lap and scampered up onto a nearby rocker.
Lou didn’t relent. “Did you know your brother was on the grounds?”
“No.” She recovered her poise. “I didn’t know. I didn’t lie to Chris.”
“Ms. Cooper-Grace, why did you think your brother was down at the old Garrison place?”
But she couldn’t answer, and Lou realized that she didn’t have to.
He saw her answer in her eyes. The truth had hit her, and hit hard. Just as it did him.
Ellis.
Her uncle had told her.
For the first time in many years, Lou’s knees buckled under him.
Oh, my God.
The two FBI agents pulled over just as Owen started up the steep steps. Special Agent Steele, in the passenger seat, rolled down her window and shouted to him. “You can’t even see those steps from the road. They’re amazing. I guess this island’s full of hidden, amazing spots.” But nothing about her manner suggested she was playing the tourist. “We just saw Detective Browning. She said she’d be along soon.”
Ray Capozza leaned over from the wheel. “You shouldn’t be running around out here by yourself.”
“Probably good advice,” Owen said.
Steele tapped her fingers on the open window. “Advice you’ll ignore.”
He said nothing, and the two agents went on their way. He continued up the steps. He would be able to see Abigail once she started up. He knew every inch of the stone steps, similar to, but not as dramatic as, the more famous steps up to the Thuya Gardens in Northeast Harbor, now open to the public. No such destiny awaited his great-grandfather’s former property.
As he climbed a narrow section of steps, Owen imagined visiting Thuya Gardens with Abigail, hiking every trail on Mt. Desert, kayaking with her-then, with a pang of guilt, realized Chris must have had similar ideas. He shook them off and focused on the task at hand.
When he reached the top of the steps, he saw that Jason Cooper’s car was in the driveway.
Owen looked down the vertical hillside, through the trees toward the road, but Abigail still hadn’t turned up. He walked out to the driveway, feeling the humidity in the air.
He remembered himself charging out the front door and down the steps after his sister.
Twenty-five years ago, if anyone had said one of the Garrison kids would fall off the cliffs and drown, one-hundred percent of the people told would have guessed it would be him.
The front door of the graceful house stood open. He headed up the shaded stone walk. A hummingbird fluttered to a pot of some kind of red flowers, almost as if Doe’s ghost had sent it as a reminder of her.
Owen peered through the screen door. “Hello-anyone home?”
When there was no answer, he pulled open the door and stepped onto the cool tile floor. Since his family had sold the place, he’d seldom been inside, and not just to avoid memories. Ellis was a private man who preferred small get-togethers with family and close friends. The garden party seven years ago had been an aberration, atypical of his nature.
When no one answered, Owen walked back to the kitchen.
Jason stood at the sink, staring out the window at his brother’s gardens.
“Jason? What’s going on?”
The older man didn’t look back from the sink. He said, “Chris suspected there was something weird about Ellis-something beyond eccentric. I never wanted to listen.” He lowered his head, as if in shame. “I accused him once of trailer-trash envy.”
“Jason-”
“I wish I knew what was going on. I wish I’d known all along and had asked the right questions. I thought…” He gulped back a sob. “I thought selling this place made sense. I hoped it would help Ellis-help all of us.”
“Where is he?”
Jason shook his head. “I don’t know.” He placed both his hands on the sink edge and dropped his head down between his arms. “I’m afraid he’s lost in his own obsessions. I’m afraid there’s no way back for him.”
Owen left Jason in the kitchen and quickly checked the living room, the library, and the dining room, but saw no one. He headed down the hall toward the back bedrooms. Not since he was a child had he gone this far into the house. He pushed back memories.
He arrived at Doe’s old room.
Jason came up behind him. “Ellis keeps it locked.”
“Not anymore.”
Owen reared back and kicked the door, splintering it away from the lock on the first try. It bounced open, and he went inside.
The room was as Doe had left it twenty-five years earlier.
The same white throw rugs, the same pink chenille bedspread, the same simple pine furniture.
And there were differences.
Birds, Owen saw. Dozens of stuffed birds stuck up on shelves, hanging from the ceiling. Hawks, eagles, robins, bluebirds, hummingbirds, chickadees.
And guns. They were on display behind a glass cabinet. A rifle, a shotgun, two revolvers and two pistols. Ammunition. A stack of paper targets.
Jason staggered, falling against the doorjamb. “Dear God.”
“Don’t go any farther. We don’t want to touch anything.” Owen put a hand on the older man’s shoulder and steadied him. “We need to get the police in here.”
“What’s he done?” Jason blinked rapidly,
his face as pale as death. “My God in heaven. All these years…”
“Ellis was the one in the woods. He could have saved Doe.”
“Believe me, Owen. I had no idea. I knew he was attached to her. But-you know him. He’s always been quiet, introverted. Sensitive. He’s not a predator. He keeps to himself.”
“I wasn’t wrong. There was someone in the woods that day. Doe was upset because of Ellis. He didn’t save her because he knew he could never have her-or because he was afraid she’d expose him.” Owen heard the steeliness in his own voice. “He must have come on to her. God knows what he tried to do to her-did do. And she rejected him. She wasn’t upset because of Grace.”
“Dear God.”
“It all makes sense now. Look at this room, Jason. Your brother was twenty-five, and he was abusing the trust of a fourteen-year-old girl.”
Jason looked as if he’d vomit. “I had no idea it’d gone this far. Owen, my God, what’s Ellis done?” He gripped Owen’s arm. “What-has-Ellis-done?”
“We need to find him. There are cops crawling all over this island looking for Mattie Young. I’ll call-”
“No.” Jason straightened, steadier on his feet. “I’ll call.”
Owen thought of Abigail out there with the man who’d killed her husband. “Do it,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find Abigail.”
Doyle cleaned up Mattie’s makeshift campsite in his garage. The lab guys had carted off what they needed and dusted for prints and scraped up anything that looked as if it might have an eyelash or some other kind of DNA in it. He figured Mattie hadn’t cared about covering his tracks. He’d cared about getting through the night without freezing to death, starving, dying of thirst or getting shot.
Sean and Ian had promised to stay within earshot. Doyle could hear them bickering in the backyard. He’d kept them home and pulled himself off the investigation. He was a police chief in a small town and accustomed to knowing the people he dealt with, but this was different. This was Mattie Young sleeping in his damn garage. This was a guy he’d known since kindergarten messing up under his nose.
And it was Chris.
Doyle stuffed a half-filled trash bag into a plastic garbage can, replaced the lid and bit back something between a sob and a growl. He’d been mixed-up and out of sorts ever since Mattie-and it was Mattie-had come after Abigail with a drywall saw.
“Mattie-hell. What were you thinking?”
He wasn’t thinking, just as he wasn’t thinking when he’d broken into Chris’s house seven years ago and hit his friend’s wife on the head then, stolen her necklace, ran.
But he hadn’t killed Chris.
Doyle just couldn’t see that one. Mattie was a chronic screw-up and a whiner, but even when he was drunk, he wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t someone who’d lay in wait for his target and take him out with a single shot the way Chris’s killer had done.
Not his problem now. He’d promised to take the boys into Ellsworth for pizza and a movie.
Lou Beeler’s car careened into his driveway.
Doyle called for his sons. They came running and stood at his side as the state detective got out of his car.
“It’s Ellis Cooper,” Lou said.
“Ellis?”
“We’re going after him. You have a place to leave your sons?”
Sean slipped his hand into his father’s and tugged on it. “We can stay next door with Mrs. Casey. Me and Ian will be fine.”
Doyle looked down at his son. “Ian and I.”
The boy grinned at their old refrain. “That’s what I said.”
They’d be okay, his boys. Doyle nodded to the state detective. “Give me a minute to get these guys settled and I’ll ride out there with you.”
CHAPTER 31
Ellis Cooper held a gun to his nephew’s head. Linc was pale but very still, his blue eyes wide with fear but focused on Abigail as she stood three yards from the two men on the edge of the cliffs, her Glock drawn.
If she’d realized what was happening sooner, she’d have shot Ellis before he ever saw her. But she hadn’t.
“Drop your weapon, Abigail.” Ellis’s voice was calm, just as it had been earlier that morning on the phone to her. “If you don’t, Linc is dead. I’m an expert marksman.”
She had no doubt he was telling the truth. “One of your many secrets.”
He inhaled sharply through his nose. He liked being in charge. “Do it now.”
“Okay, I’m putting the gun down-”
“Toss it in the water.”
Hell. She nodded, opening her fingers from her grip on the weapon. “I’m tossing it now.” She reached her arm out and pitched her Glock over the cliff. “Done. Now let your nephew go. You have me. That’s enough for you to get away.”
“So noble.”
Linc sputtered in a mix of anger and terror. “Ellis…Jesus…”
“Focus on saving your own skin.” Abigail kept her voice calm. Reasonable. Any vulnerability on her part would only increase Ellis’s sense of control over her. He needed to see he had one option and one option only, and that was not to fire his weapon. “Go, Ellis. Disappear. Don’t waste your time on these games.”
“You won’t stop. You won’t ever stop.”
“Neither will the FBI, Doyle Alden, Owen Garrison or Lou Beeler, even after he retires. The Maine State Police will keep the Browning file open. I know a couple of Boston detectives who’ll hunt you.”
“This is you. All you.”
“It’s not just me. It’s never been just me. And that’s not why you’re out here now. If you wanted me dead, you could have shot me while I was sitting out on the rocks reading a book.”
Linc licked his lips. “Ellis, you’re sick. Let your family help you-”
“Shut up!” He pressed the barrel of his gun against his nephew’s temple. “I don’t want your help. I’ve lived in my brother’s shadow my whole life. I’ve kept to myself. I’ve done so much for you and Grace. For him. And what’s my thanks? He decides to sell my house. My sanctuary.”
“You made it your sanctuary because you loved Doe,” Abigail said.
“Because I love her. Present tense. I’m not a pervert who likes young girls-who goes from one girl to the next to the next. I keep Doe’s memory alive every single day. I honor her.”
“What if her ghost is here now, where she died, watching you?” Keep him talking, Abigail thought. If he’s talking, he’s not shooting. She went on, brisk but choosing her words carefully. “Everything I know about her tells me she was a kind, gentle soul. I saw the picture of her you left. The one you took. You knew that even in death, she was beautiful. Did you leave it for Owen to remind him?”
“He never appreciated her. It’s his fault she died. Not mine.”
An eleven-year-old boy, a little brother. Ellis’s twisted expectations had poisoned him. But Abigail wanted to keep him talking. Owen would be missing her soon. All she needed was a distraction, a break.
“No one appreciated Doe as much as you did,” Abigail said. “I see that now.”
“She didn’t understand. She was so young…so innocent…I was only eleven years older. What I felt for her wasn’t unnatural.”
“She was fourteen.”
“I promised her I’d wait for her.”
“That’s not why she ran crying. That’s not why she was so upset she slipped and fell to her death.” Abigail paused, making sure his attention was on her and what she was saying. She saw his spark of anger, the resentment in him. “And it’s not why you let her drown.”
“I didn’t let her drown!”
“Sure, you did. She was upset because of you. You didn’t just express your love and tell her you’d wait. Your interest in her wasn’t so innocent, was it?”
“The love we had was pure-”
“Did you rape her?”
His face reddened. “She died unspoiled.”
“But you came on to her,” Ab
igail persisted. “That porcelain skin, that silken hair-you wanted her, Ellis. You wanted her all to yourself. You had no intention of waiting until she was older. If you didn’t rape her, what did you do? Expose yourself to her? Make her expose herself-”
“You slut! You bitch.”
It was her opening. In his fury, he lowered his gun.
Abigail yelled to Linc. “Jump!”
But he needed no prodding. Knew it was his one chance. The tide was up, the water was deep-and he wasn’t a frightened distraught thirteen-year-old. Linc propelled himself over the cliffs, even as Abigail dove for his uncle, grabbing his gun hand and, using a hold she’d practiced countless times, snapped his ulna in his right forearm. She heard the break. He screamed in pain, dropping his gun. It slid off the edge of the rock wall into the water. She sliced a low kick to the inside of his leg, bringing him down onto exposed rock.
“You bitch!” he yelled.
“Where’s Mattie? He was here. I found a poncho-”
Ellis grinned, smug, as she held him on the ground. “Mattie’s in the water, too. He’s been there for a while. You needed a killer. I needed an end to your scrutiny. I needed to give my brother a reason to take my house off the market. The murderous yardman, the publicity-no way would Jason find a buyer. And Grace. It wasn’t easy, Abigail, to sacrifice my own niece, but I had to. For all our sakes, we needed a killer.”
And in Ellis’s twisted logic, Mattie was there. Again. “How long has Mattie been in the water?”
“Too long. If he’s still alive, he won’t last. Linc won’t be able to save him. He’s not a strong swimmer. The water’s cold. The waves are brutal.”
“You could have saved Doe.”
“I did save her. That’s what you’ll never understand.”
“Chris didn’t go down to the water to find Mattie or Linc. He went down there to find you. He knew about your obsession.”
“He’d seen Doe’s room.”
Her room. Abigail looked into the eyes of the man who’d let a fourteen-year-old girl drown. The man who’d murdered her husband.
“You make me sick.”
The Widow Page 25