A Breath After Drowning

by Alice Blanchard

Kate chipped away at layers of denial with a delicate stubbornness. What if her father had followed Julia down to the river that night? What if he’d begged her to come home with him, but she refused? What if he’d lashed out in a rage, striking her with a tire iron and then staged her death to look like a suicide? What if this event had triggered something deeply sick inside him, something that had been festering for years but which he’d managed to suppress? What if it gave him free rein to finally be himself? To kill?

  Did he know about Savannah?

  She knelt down in front of the bookcase and traced her fingers over the spines of her father’s paperbacks and hardcovers, searching for Grandiose Times at Godwin Valley by Dr. Jonas Holley. And there it was. Bottom shelf.

  She slid out the dusty book, and it fell open at “Patient J.” Somebody had flagged passages in orange highlighter. “As we delved deeper into her background and it was revealed how her father’s abuse had shaped her life, Patient J finally trusted me enough to reveal that one of her children was the product of an affair.”

  So he knew.

  But was he capable of such brutality? Such ugliness? Such inhumanity? Was he truly a monster?

  Stunned and bewildered, Kate sat behind Bram’s desk and opened the wooden drawers, rifling through his bank statements, business licenses, insurance premiums, and tax returns. Proof, she needed proof. At the back of a drawer was a manila folder labeled FOUR OAKS, MAINE. The deed to her grandparents’ farm was inside.

  He’d need access to an isolated location where he can indulge his fantasies.

  The barnyard used to smell of silage, and the milking parlor housed the restless cows, who mooed and stomped their hooves and raised their tails, releasing arcing streams of urine, which made Savannah giggle.

  Kate went down to the basement to fetch the keys to her grandparents’ farm. This was crazy. This was dumb. But nothing was going to stand in her way.

  56

  KATE FOUND A LOCAL news station on her car radio. “Multiple law enforcement agencies have joined the search for Professor William Stigler, who is wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Dr. Bram Wolfe, also from Blunt River. Police have put out a BOLO for the missing vehicle, a black BMW X5 SUV. It is unknown at this time what exactly happened inside the professor’s house on Lakeview Drive, but our sources indicate foul play. Dr. Wolfe’s daughter, Savannah, was murdered sixteen years ago—the man convicted of the crime was executed last week…”

  Someone in a charcoal-gray Jeep Renegade was following her. It freaked her out a little, because the windshield was tinted and she couldn’t make out the driver’s face. He dogged her for a couple of miles before she lost him in heavy traffic outside Sanford. Maybe it was nothing. She told herself to calm down. Classic paranoia, believing someone was following you. Next she’d be hearing voices.

  In the distance, she could see the mountains with their snow-powdered peaks. She turned up the radio.

  “Authorities are scouring the nearby woods with cadaver dogs and a Forensics team is using ground-penetrating radar in the backyard of the property to identify any abnormalities in the soil that might point to a clandestine gravesite…”

  Kate shot forward in her seat. Gravesite?

  “Police officers have been seen taking dozens of evidence boxes out of Professor Stigler’s home… sources tell us… police have found photographs going back several decades… a pattern of missing and murdered girls in and around the area… we’ve just learned that some of these children and their families participated in research projects run by Professor Stigler…”

  Kate’s head spun. If they found human remains on Stigler’s property, that would mean Palmer had been right all along. And if Stigler was a serial killer, then Kate’s father was most likely dead.

  But why would he bury victims in his own backyard?

  What if Stigler had been set up to take the fall, just like Henry Blackwood? What if the real killer buried one or more bodies on Stigler’s property to implicate him? Whose blood was really inside the lake house? What if Stigler was dead and her father was alive? What if he’d only made it look like the opposite was true? What if Bram had staged his own death?

  By the time she’d reached the village of Four Oaks, Maine, an hour later, it was beginning to snow. The downtown area consisted of a post office, a grocery store, three churches, and a feed store. Her grandparents’ farm was way out in the boonies, nestled in a landscape of ice forests and frozen lakes. She recognized the battered mailbox and pulled over.

  Dead grape arbors lined the entranceway to Wolfe’s Dairy. The old sign was falling down. She let the engine idle. It was obvious nobody had been out here in quite some time. She couldn’t detect any tire tracks in the snow, just virginal drifts where a driveway should be. There was a back entrance, but you had to take a series of dirt roads to get there.

  She tried calling Chief Dunmeyer via the police station, but he wasn’t taking any phone calls. She left a message with the desk sergeant and hung up. There was very little traffic out this way. Snowflakes swirled down from the sky with gentle, sinuous movements. She got out of her car, zipped up her parka, and headed for the farm through the knee-deep drifts. By the time she’d reached the broken picket fence, she was drenched in sweat.

  The farmhouse sat on twenty abandoned acres, surrounded by dilapidated outbuildings. The snowy yard was etched with deer prints, like her grandmother’s pie crust poked with a fork. This used to be a working dairy. Now everything was buried under the merciless Maine winter.

  A sudden flurry of snow hit her, and Kate ran for cover up the old porch steps. A rusty cowbell hung by a length of rope from the doorknob. She crossed the sagging porch boards and fished the keys out of her pocket. The cowbell jangled as the front door popped open.

  An eerie chill surrounded her as she stood in the front hall, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. A bad odor filled her nostrils, and she spotted a dead squirrel in the hallway. She turned a corner into the living room, where the moth-eaten furniture, once upholstered in soft blues and ginghams, was covered with mold and dust. The kitchen smelled of decay. Various creatures had left their fetid aroma behind. She tested the faucets, but no water came out. She opened the cupboards and found her grandmother’s pie plates and Mother Goose cookie cutters blooming with rust.

  The dining room was separated from the rest of the house by an arthritic pocket door Kate could barely shove open. She stood clapping the dust off her hands and listening to it echo off the walls. She remembered dinners with Gran and Gramps, their stories about farting cows and charismatic men who could make it rain for a price. She went upstairs, recalling the thrill of staying up late at night with Savannah, playing word games in the dark and listening to the newborn calves mewling in the barn. Now every corner contained dead insects stuck in cobwebs. The floors were slanted and the doorways were crooked. She could hear the blustery wind outside. The weather was becoming increasingly rough.

  There were no signs of foul play. No serial-killer souvenirs, clothing or jewelry lying around. No scalps. No chainsaws. Her father wasn’t a serial killer. She’d been wrong. Palmer was right. Case closed.

  She went downstairs and wandered through the back of the house—the mud room, rodent-infested pantry, her grandfather’s study. She poked through the dusty books and papers on Gramps’ desk and found an old class photo of her father and his schoolmates. Bram Wolfe had to have been the tallest ten-year-old in Four Oaks Elementary. He stood in the back row, hunching his shoulders like a fairytale goose trying to fit in with the ducklings. He’d grown up in a village full of rowdy farm boys who wanted to be hockey stars. No doubt they had wanted to knock him down a few pegs.

  Kate felt an excruciating sadness. Her father had lived a life of self-imposed isolation. He was a difficult person to love—but that didn’t make him a monster. He’d loved Julia with all his heart. He loved his daughters, too. His only sin was marrying a woman who couldn’t be faithful.

  Gray
shafts of light filtered in through the dusty windows. She put the picture down and turned to leave. Then she saw it. A jar of Planters Roasted Peanuts perched on top of her grandfather’s bookcase, covered in a light sheen of dust. Her heart began to race.

  The cowbell jangled on the front door.

  Kate spun around.

  Someone was inside the house.

  57

  A SHADOW TREMBLED ON the wall, moving swiftly toward her. A tall figure, the shape of the head unnatural. A ski-mask?

  Dad?

  She tried to run, but he tackled her and they went tumbling to the carpet, kicking up huge plumes of dust. She screamed, but he clamped his hand over her mouth. She bit down hard on a leather glove, and he jerked away, allowing her to scramble free. Kate took off running for the front door. She bolted down the porch steps into the knee-deep snow. He was fast on her heels, and soon overtook her. Now they were facing each other, breathing hard, the snow obscuring her vision. He stood between her and the driveway. Between her and freedom.

  Dad?

  She reacted with pure animal terror, waves of fear galvanizing her. She took out the pepper spray, aimed it at his expressionless eyes, and pressed the nozzle, but nothing happened. She shook the canister and tried again. Nothing.

  Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

  She dropped the can in the snow and tried to run past him, but he barred her way, as if they were playing a game of cat and mouse. She took off in the opposite direction, heading for the barn. The barn had pitchforks, tools she could use as a weapon. She plowed through the snow and looked back over her shoulder. He was bounding after her.

  The world became a blur.

  Fear pounded into her.

  She reached the barn door, grasped the rusty handle and jerked it open. She ducked inside, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. The weathered interior was like an enormous shipwreck, full of rotten beams held together by rusty nails. The wind was howling eerily through the rafters. She streaked past tractor parts and old tires stacked on top of milk crates, heading for the back. She found a rusty machete hanging on the wall, right where her grandfather had left it, and grabbed it. She spun around.

  He was barreling toward her.

  “Dad! Don’t!” she screamed.

  He tackled her around the middle and they landed on the rotten boards. She ate a mouthful of dust as she shrieked, “Dad, it’s me! Kate!”

  He knocked the machete out of her hand.

  “Stop!”

  The dry winter air crackled with static. His full weight was on her. Fear took over completely. She screamed until there was nothing left but raw rags of breath. With her last ounce of strength, she reached for the ski mask and yanked it off his head.

  Palmer Dyson was staring down at her.

  He wrapped a muscular arm around her neck, and Kate’s world guttered out.

  58

  KATE CRACKED AN EYE open. Her body felt battered and sore all over, as if she’d been lying on top of a shattered mirror. Her vision was blurry. She had a pounding headache. How long had she been out? A minute? A day?

  She struggled to sit forward, but her body refused to cooperate. It felt as if she weighed a ton. There was duct tape wrapped around her wrists, legs, and ankles. She was buckled into the back seat of a Jeep—the Jeep Renegade that had followed her, she realized—and Palmer Dyson was behind the wheel.

  “Hello, Kate.”

  She stared at him in disbelief.

  “How are you feeling?”

  She struggled to free herself, but the tape dug into her flesh and brought tears to her eyes. “I thought you were in Mexico?” she gasped with stunned incomprehension.

  “Relax. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Her adrenaline spiked as she tried to figure out what was happening. They were driving through the wilderness. Where were they? All she could see were woods. She panicked. “Where are you taking me? What’s going on?”

  “You’re in shock. You need to calm down.”

  Everything outside of her window grew misty around the edges as the Renegade rumbled over cracked asphalt and sleet streaked against the glass. The road was free of traffic, but even if another vehicle had driven past, the Jeep’s tinted windows provided protection from prying eyes. No hope against the automated door locks. She leaned forward, muscles trembling with effort, but a wave of nausea forced her back against the seat.

  “Don’t fight it,” Palmer said. “It’ll be easier if you don’t fight it.”

  She stared at him. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Somewhere safe.”

  “Safe from what? Why am I tied up? What the hell is going on?”

  “I was thinking about the various ways I could handle this,” he said in a confessional tone. “But then I thought… honesty is the best policy.”

  Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

  The spindles clicked softly. The tumblers fell into place. All the doors swung open at once. She saw it with crystal clarity— Palmer Dyson’s limitless deception.

  She reared like a horse twisting in its bridle, screaming and thrashing as the duct tape bit into her flesh. He observed her coldly, analytically. Zero emotion. Not a flicker.

  She stopped struggling and swallowed her outrage. “This isn’t you,” she insisted. “You’re a good person, Palmer. Stop the car and let me go. I promise I won’t tell a soul.”

  “Sorry, Kate.”

  Dumb. How dumb to have trusted him. She felt a pure shining hatred for this man, the same raw fury she’d seen in some of her chemically restrained patients—the impotent rage of the captive. “You’re sick,” she spat.

  “You have no idea,” he said.

  Her mind went blank. She screamed and twisted in her seat, flailing and thrashing again, wearing herself out completely, until a brutal hopelessness threaded through her veins. She collapsed, panting with exhaustion, like an insect trapped in a web.

  “Face it, Kate. You put yourself into this position. I told you not to be naïve.”

  A stillness closed around her. “Are you going to kill me?”

  He smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “Why would I do that? I feel a bond between us.”

  “A bond?” she sneered.

  “I know you feel it, too.”

  All she felt was a humming, deafening terror.

  “I consider us close. Yes, I do. I hope to explain it all to you someday soon. We can play shrink and patient, how about that? You can psychoanalyze me, and I can tell you how and why I did it. And then you’ll have your answers and I’ll have mine.”

  Another rolling wave of fear crested and broke inside of her. She twisted and pulled on the duct tape, but it only made things worse.

  “Calm down,” he said, watching her.

  She caught her breath and contemplated her next move. She would have to talk him out of whatever he was thinking. In a hostage situation, you were supposed to develop a rapport with your captor. Use their name a lot. Appeal to their ego. She would have to be smart if she wanted to survive.

  If Kate couldn’t use force, then she’d have to use stealth. She needed something sharp, something to cut through the duct tape binding her wrists. She looked around, but there was nothing in the back seat. She clasped her hands nervously together and noticed James’s ring. She felt the setting with her fingertips.

  “They won’t find the bodies until the spring,” Palmer said softly, and Kate glanced up. “A hiker or a hunter will stumble across the SUV on an old logging road. Stigler blew his brains out. He left a suicide note—I dictated it myself. Your father was his last victim. Stabbed twenty-two times. As a psychiatrist, I think you can appreciate the symbolism.”

  “What symbolism?”

  “Think about it.”

  Twenty-two times. Her mother had died twenty-two years ago. She stared blindly ahead, trying not to lose it completely as she angled the ring into the duct tape and began to saw back and forth with tiny motions. She kept her hands in her lap, out of
sight.

  “Anyone who is the least bit curious might get it. But I doubt the local police will be that astute. Regardless, Stigler will go down in history as one of the greats. He’ll be right up there with BTK and Ted Bundy.”

  “You sound envious,” Kate said.

  “Nah. I’d rather be a hero. You gave Dunmeyer the flashdrive, right?”

  She nodded. She felt a glaze of sweat break out on her face.

  “They’ll be honoring me posthumously. It’s all been arranged. I died undergoing an unproven treatment. A Mexican official will be sending my ashes stateside soon, along with the death certificate. You’d be amazed at the things people will do for a buck.”

  Her anger flared. “Do you even have cancer? Or was that a lie, too?”

  “It’s in remission. Going on ten years.”

  “So you aren’t dying?”

  Palmer shrugged. “Not today.”

  She took a sharp breath. The sleet was tapering off. The sun peeked out behind the clouds as the road began to climb. They were heading into the mountains, and the view was surreal. Remote as a postcard.

  She had to stay focused. She sliced into the tape with tiny precise movements—the tear was half an inch deep now. She had to keep him distracted. “You said you wanted to explain it all to me someday. Tell me now, Palmer.”

  He stared at her. “You’ll have to work harder than that, Kate.”

  “Come on. Psychiatrists are like priests. You want to confess. You’re dying to tell me about it. I’m the only person in the world who knows what you’ve done, that you spent decades setting up this elaborate game, and for what? So you could disappear and pretend it never happened? Be a dead hero? Doesn’t that bother you? It must feel like you just won at the Olympics, only you can’t even brag about it.”

  Palmer shook his head. “Don’t play me, Kate.”

  “I’m not playing you. You have your sick pride, and you’re the hero of your own story. So tell me why you did it. Natural psychopath? What catastrophic event in your childhood triggered all this carnage?”