Boyd. Could he have . . . ?
After all, the timing was too . . .
But no. It couldn’t have been him. He would’ve had to have known about the message left the night of the murders, and the only way he could possibly know that was if Elizabeth had been right and the information had been leaked.
That, or if he’d talked to Ethan since that night.
She circled back to how raw and genuine Boyd had seemed during dinner. How honest, kind.
No, he wouldn’t have done that.
It was Ethan.
It’s always been Ethan.
Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. “Do you think that your friend Boyd could have left it? After all—”
Chelsea shook her head, not ready to admit that the thought had crossed her mind, too. Elizabeth said something else, but Chelsea had stopped listening. White noise flooded her mind as she drifted back to that night. To everyone drinking and having fun. To her feeling queasy, Ethan trying to feel her up, Christine and Amy dancing in the middle of the living room, the little mouse scurrying across the kitchen floor. The scents of whiskey, pizza, cigarette smoke. To everything fading to black, and then waking up in the bathtub freezing and in gut-wrenching pain.
“Chels, you’re white as a ghost.” Elizabeth pressed the back of her hand to Chelsea’s forehead. “You should lie down.”
Elizabeth pulled her to her feet and led her toward her bedroom.
“I should call the police.”
“Yes, but take a few minutes to calm down first. You don’t want to have one of your blackouts.”
Elizabeth was right. She hadn’t suffered a blackout in almost a year, and stress always brought them on. And once she began blacking out, she tended to spiral quickly in the wrong direction. She couldn’t let that happen.
“The office. They’re expecting me. I can’t not go—”
“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do,” Elizabeth said. “You’re going to lie down, and I’ll go pick the stuff up for you. Give me the address, and stop worrying about it. Just focus on relaxing for a few minutes.”
Elizabeth helped her into bed and sat beside her, pulling a pill bottle from her nightstand drawer. She shook two Valium out and handed her a glass of water. “Take these, and try to relax. I’ll be back in less than an hour.”
This was exactly what she needed. Elizabeth in full take-charge mode. Both as a nurse and as a friend. As much as Chelsea didn’t want to continue to rely on her, it felt good that she could, at least for now.
Her blood still electric, she swallowed the pills. Then she lay on her side and replayed finding the note and seeing the guy sitting in his car just a few mornings earlier and thinking it had been Ethan. She’d been right, after all.
But then Boyd’s face flashed into her mind, and she winced. As unlikely as it was that he had left the note, she couldn’t totally discount the possibility.
She wouldn’t think about that now. Elizabeth was right. She needed to try to calm down. She pushed her thoughts to the back of her mind and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 6
ROBERT LANG’S STOMACH growled as the scents of beef and garlic wafted through the living room’s air vents and into his nostrils. He was playing with his three-year-old grandson, Nicky, while his daughter, Victoria, cooked dinner in the next room.
Waiting for dinner to be ready, he batted a red balloon high into the air. Nicky squealed, then took off running after it. When his phone rang, Lang looked at the incoming number.
Boston area code.
He frowned, wondering who it could be. Nicky handed the balloon to him. He batted it in the air again and watched Nicky chase it again with delight, then accepted the call.
“Lang here.”
A beat of silence, then: “Detective Lang?”
No one had called him that in a while. “Retired.”
Lang had retired at thirty-eight as a result of a car accident. Luckily he’d been on duty at the time, which qualified him to collect a good pension. It was generous enough to ensure he wouldn’t have to work again, if he didn’t want to. But he did. Last week he’d signed on to work part-time, reviewing some of the Springfield PD’s cold-case files. Going back to work wasn’t about the money. His needs were few. He just needed to stay busy and get back to doing the job he loved.
Detective work was in his blood. He’d become antsy sitting around at his daughter’s house, watching Nicky and shuttling back and forth to various rehab appointments. There were only so many jigsaw puzzles he could assemble at home. He needed to be out in the field. He needed to be challenged, get his sense of purpose back—and the only job that had ever awarded him a sense of satisfaction was being a detective.
“How can I help you?” he asked, taking the balloon from Nicky. He pressed his index finger to his lips to let the little boy know he should be quiet before tossing it high in the air again.
“Lang, this is Detective Roy Garcia, Boston PD. Your station gave me your number.”
He watched Nicky barrel down the hallway and vanish into his bedroom. A second later the bedroom door slammed. “What can I do for you, Detective?”
“You headed up the Springfield Coed Killings five years ago, right?”
“That’s correct. At least, initially.”
“You remember Chelsea Dutton, the survivor?”
Of course he remembered Chelsea. She’d been gravely injured when he and a young officer had discovered her in the apartment’s hallway bathroom. And she had haunted his dreams ever since.
Something about the young woman had touched him. It wasn’t only sympathy for the young survivor of such a grisly crime, but something more personal. Maybe it was because Chelsea Dutton had reminded him of his daughter. They had the same dark hair and olive skin, and they were very close in age. But while Victoria had made the somewhat common mistake of getting involved with a man who didn’t love her and getting pregnant at a young age, Chelsea Dutton had made the mistake of inviting the wrong guy into her apartment, who’d ended up killing her roommates and leaving her at death’s door. Or maybe it was the fact that Chelsea had had very few visitors at the hospital as she’d fought for her life in the intensive-care unit. Only two friends, fellow students of hers from Springfield, had visited her. Girls who had been in her study group.
He remembered the first time he’d walked into Chelsea’s room in the intensive-care unit and had seen how bare it was. No get-well balloons. No stuffed animals. So he’d gone down to the gift shop and bought her some. The second day into the investigation, he’d sat at her bedside for about thirty minutes, hoping that someone would show. But no one had. She’d been pale and frightened and struggling to make sense of everything that had happened to her and her friends. Confused, she kept asking him, “Why would he do this?” and “Why did he kill them and not me?”
The third day into the investigation, Chelsea had crawled out of her hospital bed, found a pair of surgical scissors, and opened her wrists.
Once she had been stabilized physically, she had been transferred to a local psychiatric hospital and put on a three-month hold. He had been en route to the hospital when he’d heard. But not five minutes after receiving the call, an SUV had hit him head-on. He’d sustained a lumbar spinal fracture and a fractured patella and spent the next four years in and out of surgeries and rehab and on various drugs for pain management.
It had always disturbed him that the case had gotten away from him and gone cold. That the two dead girls, Dutton, and the families involved had never received justice. That the department had failed them. Not that it was so unusual.
Lang’s gut told him that Detective Duplechaine, who had taken over the investigation after his accident, hadn’t exhausted all the leads. Not that Duplechaine wasn’t a competent detective. But detectives, like everyone else, were human and often made mistakes, especially when their units were short-staffed, as theirs was at the time.
“Dutton found a note on her vehicle this morning,” Garcia was
saying on the other end of the line. He went on to tell Lang the circumstances. When Lang heard what the note had said, he understood why Garcia was calling him.
The message on the bathroom mirror the night of the murders had been classified. Other than law enforcement at the scene and the crime-scene investigators, no one had known there’d ever been a message, let alone what it had said. No one, of course, but the person who’d left it.
The bedroom door flew open, and Nicky shot out into the hallway, then back into the living room. He climbed up on the couch and leaped to the recliner.
“Our understanding here is that the key suspect in the Springfield Coed Killings was a man named Ethan Klebold,” Detective Garcia continued. “But he was never taken into custody, and the case ended up cold.”
“That’s affirmative.”
Garcia filled him in on the incident that happened in Boston earlier that day and asked a few more questions. When they hung up, Lang called his supervisor at Springfield PD and told him what had happened.
Then he carried Nicky into the kitchen, where Victoria was preparing Lang’s favorite dinner: meatloaf, asparagus roasted in garlic butter, and a Caesar salad.
He switched off Victoria’s country music and situated twenty-five-pound Nicky into his high chair. As he set the boy down, a bolt of pain lit up his back. Even after all the surgeries and physical therapy, his back and knee were still in bad shape. If it were up to him, he would discontinue therapy. It seemed pointless. But Victoria insisted on it. Victoria insisted on a lot of things. And as infuriating as that was, it didn’t make him love her any less.
Victoria turned, licking a wooden spoon. “Who was on the phone?”
“Boston PD,” Lang said. He grabbed Nicky’s favorite Elmo bib and fastened it around his neck.
Victoria’s brows met in the middle. “Oh?”
“Something’s come up. I’ll probably be in Boston for a little while.”
Concern creased her face. “What? Why?”
Lang pulled out silverware and began setting the table. “There’s been a new development in an old case.”
“Is everything okay?”
Chelsea Dutton’s face flashed into his mind. The mere thought of her being in danger again seemed so wrong, almost obscene. “I hope so.”
CHAPTER 7
CHELSEA SAT BUNDLED up on her balcony and watched as a storm slowly rolled into the city.
Breathing in the scent of ozone and roasting meat from an apartment nearby, she replayed everything that had happened the day before. A Detective Garcia and an officer whose name she couldn’t remember had shown up and taken her statement and the note, then said they’d get back to her in a day or two. She’d tried to get some work done a few times since waking that morning, but she couldn’t get Ethan off her mind. Now she was almost certain he was out there somewhere, watching her. Her veins went icy just thinking about it.
When the wind on the balcony became too strong, she retreated inside her apartment and made a mug of hot cocoa, then sat on her couch and listened to the howling wind shake the windowpanes.
Her phone buzzed.
It was a text from Boyd.
Would you like company Friday?
Seeing his name, she felt her heart lift a little. But then she thought about the note again. She reminded herself that it was extremely unlikely that he even knew about the message left on the mirror that night. And if he didn’t know about the message, he couldn’t have possibly left the note.
You’re just being paranoid.
Stop.
The timing is simply a coincidence.
She sank down deep into the couch and thumbed:
Found a creepy note on my car yesterday.
She pressed “Send.”
Five seconds later, thought bubbles popped up, and she replied.
Creepy? What did it say?
You made me.
U made me what?
I don’t know.
That’s strange. Who do u think left it?
I’m not sure. Ethan maybe?
What? R u serious? Why would u think it would be him?
Should she tell him that it had been the same message left the night of the murders? She knew the information had been confidential five years ago, but was it now? She decided to ask Lang before saying anything.
I called the cops. They’re checking into it.
OK, good. Are you OK?
I’m fine.
As she waited for his reply again, she suddenly felt the sensation of someone watching her. Dread curling in her chest, she jumped up and peered through the French doors to see if there was anyone on the street below.
A streak of lightning sliced across the sky as she scanned Dartmouth Street and the little bit of Newbury Street she could see.
There was nobody there.
She watched for several minutes, until the rain began coming down in sheets. Then she double-checked the lock on the French doors.
She was about to pull her curtains closed when there was a knock on the door.
Lang knocked on the door of Chelsea Dutton’s apartment, glad to see that she was living in a nice building in a safe neighborhood.
He heard footsteps approach from inside, then silence.
A soft voice asked: “Detective Lang?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He heard a door chain disengage, then a lock turn. Then another. When Chelsea Dutton finally opened the door, he was immediately transported back to the scene of the slayings. To the image of her cowering in the bathtub like a wounded animal, looking like death itself. Then to the confused, sorrowful girl that lay in the hospital bed afterward, asking so many questions that he still couldn’t answer.
She looked different now. Not only was it obvious she’d grown older; her whole countenance was different. She looked confident, not meek. Her pallid color had been replaced with a warmer tone, her cheeks had a healthy flush, and the dark circles beneath her eyes had all but disappeared. The only visible sign of that night was a nasty scar on her cheek that extended from the side of her nose to her left ear.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”
He’d hoped his visit wouldn’t be upsetting. “I hope it’s okay. I was going to call—”
“No. It’s totally fine. Is this about the note? Did Detective Garcia call you?”
“Yes, ma’am. To both.”
She moved aside to let him in. “Come in. Please.” A smile spread across her face, revealing perfect teeth.
He realized this was the first time he’d seen her smile.
She took his umbrella, then moved aside so he could enter. He walked in and made mental notes as he surveyed her small third-floor apartment. The place was both feminine and cozy, and the savory scent of bacon grease hung in the air, making his stomach growl. The coffee he had picked up at a gas station on his way to see her had been anything but satisfying.
Her furnishings were sparse but comfortable. An overstuffed white couch sat against the far wall of the living room. A collection of yellow throw pillows and colorful knickknacks brightened the room even more. French doors afforded a nice view.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked. “I have hot cocoa.”
He shook his head. “No, thank you.”
“Okay, well, then please have a seat.” She motioned to the couch. “I’ll just be a second.”
He watched her disappear into the kitchen and took the extra time to look around a little more. The place was very clean, tidy and bright. There was a desk in the corner of the living room. A cat walked out from beneath it, stared at him, and meowed.
“Hi, kitty,” he said. He thought about bending to pet it but figured it would be a bad idea.
On top of the desk was a laptop, a few files, and a potted rosemary plant. Several sketches had been taped up on the wall above it. He moved closer to see them. “You draw these?” he called.
She reappeared holding a mug of steami
ng cocoa. He noticed pink slash marks on the backs of her hands and the little bit of her forearms that were exposed below the sleeves of her blue sweatshirt.
She glanced up at the sketches. “Yeah. They’re just doodles. Drawing helps me relax.”
“You’re talented.”
She looked pleased.
“Really? You think so?”
“I do. They look like they’re all of the same place.”
“Yeah.”
“Somewhere you know?”
“I’m not sure. It’s probably just an image stuck in my head from a magazine,” she said. “But my memory is still a mess, so . . .” She shrugged. “Yeah. Who knows?”
Her posture straight, she walked to the other side of the living room. He watched her fold her slender body onto the couch.
“Crazy weather out there, isn’t it?” she said, pointing her chin toward the balcony.
“It sure is,” he said, lowering himself onto her recliner. His back throbbed something fierce, and he tried not to groan out loud. The drive to Boston had been grueling on his back and knee.
“We’ve been getting a lot of it lately. More than we usually do this time of year,” she said. The cat jumped up on the couch and took a seat in her lap. It eyeballed him. “God, I’m so surprised to see you. It must mean Detective Garcia is taking the note seriously.”
“Yes, ma’am, he is. We both are.”
“I’m so glad,” she said, her eyes shining. She was tearing up.
“So, how are you these days?”
She smiled again. “Better than I was last time I saw you.”
He realized she looked even more like Victoria when she smiled. “I’m happy to see you looking so good.”
“Thank you.”
“So, how bad is it these days? The amnesia?” he asked.
Chelsea’s mouth turned down a little at the corners. “My memory isn’t much different from before. I remember bits and pieces of stuff here and there. But not much.”
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