A Breath After Drowning

by Alice Blanchard

  “I’m a little busy right now—”

  “I wouldn’t interrupt if it wasn’t important.”

  He paused. “All right. I have fifteen minutes before my next appointment.”

  “I was just wondering… what if Mom didn’t commit suicide? What if she was murdered, and it was made to look like a suicide?”

  “Kate, this is getting out of hand…”

  “I have her autopsy report right here. She had a head wound that could’ve been made by a tire iron, according to a detective. She had what could have been defensive wounds to her arms and hands; it’s possible she was hit on the head and then pushed into the river. Witnesses claim that she and Stigler were fighting a lot, enough to call the police, and he didn’t have a solid alibi for that night. There’s evidence to indicate—”

  “What are you saying? Are you suggesting that William Stigler killed Julia?”

  “Detective Dyson thinks so. He believes it was staged to look like suicide.”

  He hung up.

  “Dad? Dad?” Kate tried to get him back, but the line was busy.

  She sat, stunned. What had she done?

  53

  KATE TRIED REACHING HER father again, to no avail. She gathered up her belongings and left the hospital. Boston’s winding streets and left turns were difficult to navigate at the best of times, let alone the dead of winter when the roads were full of potholes and icy patches. She drove through the angular streets past office complexes, strip malls, and gleaming contemporary buildings, afraid Bram might’ve done something stupid, like gone off half-cocked to confront Professor Stigler at the university. She could almost picture him barging into the professor’s office and looming over his desk, hurling accusations, maybe threatening physical violence. What if he lost it completely—that hair-trigger temper of his? The campus police would haul him off in handcuffs.

  And it would be all her fault.

  At every stop light, she dialed her father’s office number and listened to the busy signal. Finally, his secretary picked up and told Kate that he’d cancelled all his appointments and stormed out of the office without a word of explanation, leaving the phone off the hook. Kate thanked her and hung up.

  By the time she reached her father’s house on Three Hills Road, Kate had worn herself out with worry. His car wasn’t in the driveway, so she headed back to town and parked a few blocks away from the university. She crossed the snowy campus to the Clarence Oberon Building, where she took an elevator to the fourth floor, only to find that Stigler’s office was dark and his door locked.

  She found the Sociology Department main office at the other end of the corridor and stood in front of the administrative assistant’s desk, tapping her nails anxiously on the wood. The middle-aged woman seemed mildly annoyed to be interrupted. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Professor Stigler.”

  “He had an early class then went home for the day. Would you like to leave him a message?”

  “Actually,” Kate confessed, “I was looking for my father, Bram Wolfe. I think he might have come to see the professor.”

  “Oh!” the woman exclaimed. “You must be Kate. I’ve heard so much about you. Dr. Wolfe has been our family physician for years. He’s taking care of my grandkids now, can you believe that?”

  Kate nodded. “So he was here?”

  “About an hour ago. I sent him over to the lake house.”

  “Lake house?”

  “He said it was urgent, so I gave him Professor Stigler’s home address.” She searched her computer database. “623 Lakeview Drive.”

  Kate thanked the woman and left. She drove north of town, where the million-dollar homes hugged the lake. She passed renovated neo-Gothic bungalows and stately mansions where some of the wealthiest residents of Blunt River lived: university faculty members, small businessmen, and local politicians.

  623 Lakeview Drive was located at the end of a private road, separated from its nearest neighbors by a tall cedar fence and thick pine woods. She parked next to her father’s Ford Ranger, then got out and stood for a nervous moment. There were no other vehicles parked in the driveway and no garage. She wondered where Stigler’s car was. Where was her father?

  The wind picked up, howling through the pines. Stigler lived in a lacy Victorian wedding cake of a house with Baroque-style turrets and a wraparound porch. Down by the lake, a wooden dock stretched out over the ice. The view was wild and desolate.

  She was heading toward the house, boots crunching over gravel, when something caught her eye: a set of drag marks in the gravel, two slender grooves made by a pair of heels, accompanied by a trail of blood drops.

  Kate froze. Someone had been dragged out of the house, down the porch steps, and across the driveway. The blood drops stopped where Stigler usually parked his car—she could see tire impressions in the gravel, deep wells made by something rugged, perhaps an off-roader or an SUV.

  Kate took out her phone and dialed 911.

  “911, what’s your emergency?” the operator answered.

  Her mind went blank.

  “911, what’s your emergency?”

  “I think my father’s dead,” Kate blurted out.

  54

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, KATE stood shivering on the wraparound porch, where Chief Dunmeyer had told her to wait. It was freezing, maybe thirty degrees. My father must be dead. According to the police, no bodies had been found inside the house, but there was blood in the upstairs bathroom and the shower curtain had been torn off its rings.

  She could figure the rest out for herself: her father had come over to confront Stigler, and Stigler had killed him. Then Stigler had dragged the body out of the house, dumped it in the back of his car—a BMW X5 SUV, according to the police— and sped away. Her father was dead. Simple deduction.

  Her fingers and toes were growing numb. She moved around in aimless circles to keep the blood circulating. She peered through one of the windows, cupping her hands over the glass.

  She called Palmer, but he wasn’t picking up. He was probably in the middle of the operation, or maybe post-op by now. Heavily drugged in the recovery room. She left a voicemail. “Hi, it’s Kate. I hope the operation went well.” She paused. “I really need to talk to you. Something’s happened. When you’re feeling better… please give me a call.”

  Her eyes teared up. She tried to reach James, but it went directly to voicemail. She wanted to leave a message, but the words wouldn’t form. She hung up.

  A crowd of onlookers had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the house. Kate didn’t feel like waiting on the porch anymore. She walked around to the backyard, where she lit a cigarette and watched the police dogs—there were two of them now sniffing around the trees.

  A middle-aged man in a gray suit came out of the house and introduced himself as Detective Lucas. Kate told him everything she knew—about the flashdrive, and Julia’s autopsy report, and how she’d tried calling her father back but he’d already left his office.

  “Detective Dyson gave you a flashdrive?” Detective Lucas asked. “Can I see it?”

  Kate held it out. “He told me to give it to the chief.”

  “I’ll take it to him.”

  “No, he gave me explicit instructions.” She tucked it away in her bag.

  “Wait here.” Lucas left.

  She noticed a helicopter circling in the distance. A news chopper. Great, she thought angrily. The TV networks would dig into their archives and the Wolfe family tragedy would be splashed all over the media again. A police officer was leading a Labrador Retriever around by its leash, and the dog was sniffing around the base of a tree.

  Chief Dunmeyer came out of the back door and met her at the bottom of the steps. He was fit and trim with a silver mustache and goatee—he hadn’t aged much in sixteen years. He wore dark slacks, a pinstripe shirt, and a red silk tie beneath the de rigueur BRPD parka.

  “Do you have any idea what happened to my father?”

  “We
put out a statewide BOLO for Stigler’s SUV. We’ll find them. Detective Lucas said you had something for me?”

  She unzipped her bag and took out the flashdrive. “Palmer said you’d know what to do with it. I haven’t been able to reach him yet, but I’m sure he’d understand why I’m giving it to you now.”

  Dunmeyer frowned. “What’s on it?”

  “His research on nine missing and murdered girls, as well as my mother’s suicide. He believes that Stigler’s responsible for all of them. He said it connects all the dots.”

  Dunmeyer nodded. “Palmer and I were partners for a long time. I trust the guy with my life. But his theories never quite added up for me. I told him time and again—present me with some new evidence, something solid, and we’ll follow up.”

  Kate nodded. “But you’ll look into it now?”

  “We’ll look into everything now.” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “You’ve got to understand, Dr. Wolfe… half of these cases aren’t in our jurisdiction. Three occurred in other townships, two were suicides, and one was an accident. Kids go missing all the time. They run away. They do drugs and mess up their lives. Quade Pickler is highly respected, he’s been with us for thirty-five years, and I had to bow to his judgment on those autopsies.”

  The news chopper swooped down low overhead.

  “They’re going to rip my life apart again, aren’t they?” Kate said.

  Dunmeyer looked at her sympathetically. “I’m afraid so. No way to avoid it.”

  “Do you think my father’s dead?”

  “I can’t say either way until Forensics gets here, but for my money, there isn’t enough blood in the house to infer that someone died there. But I don’t want to raise your hopes. Circumstantial evidence points to a homicidal attack, with your father as the likely victim, since it’s Stigler’s vehicle that’s missing. We’re going to run tests on the blood, fast-track the DNA. In the meantime, we’re doing everything we can to find them.”

  “Will you catch him?”

  Dunmeyer nodded. “They don’t usually get very far nowadays. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like one of our detectives to escort you back to the station for a more detailed statement. Also, we can help you with media contact or any other questions you may have.”

  “Thanks.”

  The barking dogs caught his attention. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” he said, tipping his hat and walking across the backyard.

  All of a sudden Kate couldn’t handle the thought of sitting in the police station. She quickly walked back to her car, started the engine and pulled out cautiously between two police cruisers. Her phone buzzed with a text message. It was from Palmer. I’ll be starting the treatment tomorrow, Kate. Wish me luck.

  She’d never felt so alone.

  55

  KATE TOOK THE PREDICTABLE cross-hatching of streets toward her father’s house, hardly aware of what she was doing. She spotted an old-fashioned clothesline in a front yard; it made her think about the rope Nikki had used to hang herself with. How had Nikki learned to tie a slipknot?

  Her heart was banging in her chest by the time she pulled into her father’s driveway. She let herself in and stood in the front hallway for a moment, chilled by the silence. She felt so ripped apart inside, she wanted to scream. Was her father really dead?

  She went upstairs to her parents’ bedroom and tore the place apart, searching for any links to the past. She dragged the storage boxes out of her mother’s closet and upended them on the floor. She felt like an archeologist digging through the wreckage of her family history, searching for evidence—still not sure what she was looking for.

  She found another batch of her mother’s letters, all of them addressed to Bram, and read them quickly. Julia swung between grandiosity and depression, happiness and misery. “You can barely rub two words together in my presence. And yet, when you finally talk to me, you always say the wrong thing. A word of advice: stop crowding me, Bram. People need space to fall in love, and they need space to remain in love.”

  There were wild accusations and crazy denunciations. Julia wanted her freedom and she wanted her family. She wanted to fling her life away, and she wanted Bram to forgive her. She wanted an abortion and she wanted more children. Kate overturned the sequined jewelry box, searching for the silver necklace with its crescent-shaped pendant, but only found her mother’s Zippo lighter—compact with a retro paisley pattern. Julia used to claim that her mentholated cigarettes helped to ease her headaches. Maybe Kate should give it a shot. She put the Zippo in her bag and dug through her mother’s old steamer trunk, sorting through piles of linens, tennis rackets, and knick-knacks.

  She found Julia’s high school yearbook and thumbed through the pages. Julia Knight was one of those girls you just knew was going places. She was gorgeous, athletic, and whip-smart. She was a member of the Honor Society, Girls’ Leadership, the chorus, the photo club, the pep squad, and captain of the swim team. She’d been voted Most Popular, and her yearbook quote was from Love Story: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

  Instead of bedtime stories, Julia used to regale her young daughters with tales of her wild, irresponsible youth. She drank and drove. She got stoned and played musical chairs. She jumped off the highest cliff into Moody Lake and had her pick of boys. It had taken Kate years to process how inappropriate her mother’s behavior was, to be sharing these stories with her impressionable children, but you couldn’t stay mad at Julia for very long. There was a tragic depth to her that made you want to protect her.

  At the bottom of the trunk, Kate found a battered shoebox stuffed with snapshots spanning decades of Julia’s life: birthday parties, high school graduation, college years, her wedding day. Bram and Julia on their honeymoon. The early years of their marriage. Dinner parties. Sunbathing in the backyard. Her first pregnancy. Her second pregnancy.

  There were quite a few pictures of drunken cocktail parties from the late eighties and early nineties. The women wore bold-colored dresses with shoulder pads and big hair. The men sported rock-star haircuts and Miami Vice tans. Her mother looked radiant in slinky dresses and stiletto heels, the belle of the ball. Men flocked around her, while Bram was always lurking somewhere on the sideline. He didn’t dance, but Julia couldn’t stop dancing. She seemed much too excitable to be married to a man like Kate’s dad.

  Kate recognized some of the men in the pictures: a younger Quade Pickler sporting a mullet; handsome Cody Dunmeyer; Mr. Mason, father of Emera, the girl who had gone missing on the way to a concert. Wait. Her heart began to race. She scrabbled through the pictures. There was Tabitha Davidowitz’s father dancing with Julia. Julia’s head was thrown back, exposing her pale throat—you could almost hear her laughing.

  Kate couldn’t believe it. She began searching frantically through the box of photographs, looking for more of the victims’ fathers, but most faces she couldn’t make out. The snapshots were overexposed or underexposed, or the picture-taker had been too drunk to hold the camera steady and the image was blurry.

  In one picture, Bram and Julia were arguing in a dark corner of a dance club, surrounded by distracted friends. Julia’s lipstick was smeared, and her eyes were blurred with tears. Bram’s fists were balled tightly in anger. Whoever had killed Julia was left-handed. Kate’s father was left-handed.

  Kate’s heart ached dully as she scooped up the last picture from the bottom of the box, taken at the asylum. Julia’s face was pale and drawn. She’d lost a lot of weight. Yet there was an ethereal beauty about her, a tender grace untouched by the situation. “The monster’s wife” was scrawled across the photograph in Julia’s handwriting.

  Kate tried to shake off her suspicions. Yes, her father could be socially awkward, jealous, and possessive. But so were a lot of people. He was an admitted obsessive-compulsive. He sometimes disappeared for hours at a time. He was uncommunicative and narcissistic, but he’d never hurt Julia, no matter what she did to him. Not in a million years. He was no monster.
/>
  He’s lonely. He’s isolated. He doesn’t have a clue how to bond with other human beings.

  She went downstairs, where she opened all the curtains and let the afternoon sunshine into the stuffy house. She stood in the middle of the living room trying to locate the exact spot on the floor where her mother had carved those forbidden words into the varnished wood. She inched the heavy armchair to one side, moved the coffee table over about a foot, peeled back the braided rug, and there it was. “Fucking cunt.” So raw and ugly. It chilled her to the bone. A rolling wave of fear crested and broke. Psychopaths were very good liars. They were highly intelligent and deceptive. They could fool the people closest to them. They were known to fool their own psychiatrists— Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler, Ted Bundy.

  Kate had to know. She walked into her father’s study and started rifling through the old steel file cabinets. She became aware of her crazy heartbeat as she tore through his archived patient files, looking for Makayla Brayden, Tabitha Davidowitz, Susie Gafford, Lizbeth Howell, Vicky Koffman, Hannah Lloyd, Emera Mason, Maggie Witt.

  Nothing. Maybe he’d hidden them away?

  Terrible, unwanted thoughts crowded into her feverish brain. What if the police were wrong? What if Stigler was dead? What if her father had attacked him with a knife, then dragged the body outside and driven away in Stigler’s SUV? What if he’d staged the entire scene to throw the police off his trail and staged his own death? Perhaps he’d staged Savannah’s death to frame Blackwood, staged Susie Gafford’s accident and her mother’s suicide?

  All the signs were there. Bram organized his days with precision. He was a person of habit. He was methodical, detail-oriented, deliberate, cautious—you could set your watch by him. He was always disappearing; he was secretive and brooding. He was a physician, and therefore spent a lot of time around children and their families. He could’ve used his position in the community to lure his victims. He was well-respected, having held the same job for decades.