CHAPTER 27
AT 11:00 P.M. Chelsea opened the door to find Boyd. He reeked of liquor, and from the way he was leaning against the side of the door frame, it was obvious he had consumed a lot of it.
She crossed her arms, anger flaring in her belly. Why was he here? To scold her again for peeping into his windows?
But she realized he didn’t look angry. He was staring at the ground.
“You’ve been drinking.”
He nodded. “Just enough to get the courage to come here.”
“Why did you need to come here?”
Boyd looked up, making eye contact for the first time, but when he spoke next, his eyes flickered past her.
“For a lot of things, but mostly to apologize.”
“For?”
“For lying to you.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I warned you I was an asshole,” he said. “A couple of times.”
That was true. He had. Numerous times. But she’d thought he was just being funny.
“I was telling you the truth about not loving her. I haven’t for a very long time.”
“But you’re still married.”
“Yeah.”
“Were you ever even separated?”
“Yeah, I—” He stopped. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “No. Not yet, anyway. But I will be soon. It’s just . . . it’s complicated.”
“It sounds simple to me.”
“Well, it’s not.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You deserve better,” he said, his bloodshot eyes glistening.
“I know I do.”
His eyes locked on the floor again.
“Why are you here, Boyd?”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shifted his gaze to her doorjamb. “I just . . . I needed to see you.”
“Well, you’ve seen me now, so . . .”
“I want to be with you. To talk to you.”
He seemed so vulnerable. It reminded her of the Boyd she’d thought she had known. But that Boyd had never existed. He’d been a lie.
He stared at her. “I know what I did was wrong. Lying to you like I did. And I’m so very sorry. But I wasn’t lying about everything. I wasn’t lying when I said I care about you. That I love you. I know it has to sound strange, since we haven’t known each other very long, at least intimately, but I never stop thinking about you, Chelsea. Never.”
She wanted to believe him. But he’d lied. A big lie. And she had no clue what else he’d lied about. Or would lie about in the future. She wasn’t willing to go through the pain of finding out.
“You lied to me. I can’t trust you. I’d never be able to trust you.”
He shook his head. “Chels, that’s not—”
“We’re done,” she said.
She grabbed the door, and he stepped back into the hallway.
“Chelsea, please. Give me another chance.”
“For both of our sakes, don’t come back,” she said. “I mean it.” She swung the door shut and engaged the locks.
CHAPTER 28
IT WAS HALLOWEEN, and Chelsea was on edge. She drove a nail into the wall with a small utility hammer, then carefully hung the second of her framed sketches. Stepping down from the couch, she looked to see if it was level.
She’d meant to frame and hang her sketches months ago and was glad she was finally getting around to it. There was something soothing about the rural landscapes she’d drawn. And she desperately needed soothing today. She was hyperaware that it was Halloween, and the fifth anniversary of the murders.
She studied her drawings and thought about how proud she was for standing up to Boyd. It had been liberating. And it had provided closure. There was still lingering pain, a lot of it, but it would probably just take time.
Someone knocked on the door.
She frowned. Surely Boyd wasn’t coming back again after what she’d told him. She set a third framed sketch on the couch, then went to the door and peeked through the peephole.
It was Detective Lang.
She unlocked the door and opened it wide.
“Good morning,” Lang said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No. Not at all. Come in.”
“I just had a couple of quick questions, if you don’t mind.”
“I never mind.”
She motioned to the small kitchen table, and he had a seat.
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
She opened a cupboard and grabbed two mugs.
“Does the name Katherine Jones ring a bell?” Lang asked.
Her stomach suddenly clenched, but she wasn’t sure why. “I . . . I don’t think so.”
“I received a copy of your visitor log from the time you spent in the psychiatric hospital and saw that she visited you.”
Chelsea handed Lang his cup of coffee and sat down.
“I don’t remember that. Are you sure?”
“Positive. It’s in the log.”
She shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea who that is.”
Lang eyed her and looked as though he was going to say something else but then decided not to. He looked down at his notebook, and she saw that there was something he’d drawn several circles around.
“I was also rereading Boston PD’s reports, and there is a name that I’m not familiar with. Elizabeth Jessup. Who is she?”
“Yes, Elizabeth. She’s my friend.”
“And she was here when you found the first note?”
She wondered why he was asking. “Not when I found it but afterward. She lives here in the building. Why?”
“Just filling in some holes. The more information I have, the better. How long have you known Elizabeth?”
“Close to five years now. We met at the psychiatric hospital in Springfield.”
“She was a fellow patient?”
Chelsea shook her head. “Elizabeth? God, no. She was a nurse. She still is, here in the city.”
“So, you both moved to Boston from Springfield?”
“Yes.”
“How did that work out?”
“Elizabeth was offered a job out here, and a couple of weeks later, I followed her. I really wanted to get out of Springfield, away from everything that happened, and knowing I’d have a friend in Boston already, a close one, it seemed like it would be the perfect place to go.”
“What unit does she live in?”
“Six D. It’s just up the stairs.”
Lang scribbled the information down.
“You have a phone number for her?”
“Yeah.” She gave it to him, and he wrote it down.
Harry pressed against her leg and mewed loudly. “Are there any new developments on Ethan?” she asked, bending to pick up the cat.
Lang didn’t answer her.
When she straightened, she noticed Lang was staring at the sketches she’d hung. He stood up and moved closer to them.
“You said you drew those, right?”
“Yeah.”
He picked up the sketch on the couch and studied it for a long moment. She wondered why he was so interested in it. Although she loved it, it wasn’t particularly well drawn—it was just a drawing of old farmland.
“I’ve got to get going,” he said suddenly. He set the sketch back on the couch and limped quickly to the front door. “Thanks for your help. I’ll call you soon.”
CHAPTER 29
LANG LEFT CHELSEA’S apartment and sped the two hours back to Katherine’s farm in Springfield. He’d already had plans to go there today to ask her about the visitor log, but he had wanted to check in with Elizabeth Jessup first. Then Chelsea’s sketches had changed his mind.
Right now, he had a hunch. And hunches in his experience were usually gold. He’d always had a great sense of intuition, something that his father, who had also been a detective, had also had. Both his father and another late mentor of his had long ago told a very green Robert Lang that intuition was the
secret ingredient that separated the best in the field from everyone else.
And if his hunch was wrong?
At the very least, he would find out why Katherine had lied about visiting Chelsea at the hospital.
He considered calling her, to make sure she’d be home when he got there, but decided against it, once again wanting to capitalize on the element of surprise.
As he drove west on Interstate 90, he replayed his previous conversation with Katherine in his mind. When he had asked her if she’d seen Chelsea since the killings, she was very clear about the fact that she had not. Yet her name had been on the visitor log. According to the records, she had visited Chelsea one week after the killings and had stayed for fourteen minutes.
Again, why would Katherine lie about seeing Chelsea?
If they hadn’t been close, why had Katherine visited her? And why such a short visit?
There was something she wasn’t telling him, and he needed to find out what. And then there were Chelsea’s sketches. Chelsea seemed to have pulled her memory of the farm from her subconscious and drawn it. Numerous times. Lang wondered if that was a sign of something.
Reaching the farm, he bounced along the dirt path. When he got to the clearing, he felt a stab of disappointment.
Katherine’s car was gone.
He had gambled on surprising her, but this time he’d lost.
He parked next to her trailer, climbed out of his vehicle, and stretched his legs. Massaging his lower back, he called her cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail.
Damn.
He left her a message and then decided to look around outside.
He surveyed the perimeter of the trailer home. Other than a small grill that looked like it had seen better days, a folding chair, and a lot of crisp, brown Kentucky bluegrass, there wasn’t much to look at. He walked around the barn and found a rusted-out tiller and a few other pieces of long-abandoned farm equipment nestled in overgrown brush. Nothing of interest.
He walked to the pond, his mind turning everything over again. The pond was much larger than he’d originally thought. It was oval and framed on three sides by large trees and high weeds. The waterline today was extremely low, due to the lack of rain in Springfield over the summer and fall. It was the biggest drought Springfield had experienced in more than a decade, and six to eight feet of dark mud separated the thick reeds from the water’s edge.
Lang started to walk out onto the fifteen-foot-long dock but noticed many of the boards looked rotten. So instead, he walked around to a little clearing that gave him easier access to the bank.
He and his father used to fish together a lot when he was a boy in Alabama. They’d often take turns seeing who could skip a rock the farthest on Lake Guntersville. Whoever got his rock all the way to the other bank won. His father won most of the time back then, but today Lang would be unchallenged. He searched the bank for the perfect flat rock and bent to pick it up. Ignoring his back’s protests, he skipped it across the pond’s glistening surface and watched the ripples disrupt the flawless reflection of the surrounding trees.
Smiling, he reached into his pocket for his cell phone and tried Katherine again, and once again was sent to voice mail. The afternoon was mild for this time of year and the sun was strong, so he decided to sit beneath a large oak and make a couple of calls. The first to Elizabeth Jessup. When he dialed the number, he received a message that the number was out of service.
Odd.
He tried it again.
And got the same message.
Maybe he’d written the number down wrong. Or maybe Chelsea got the numbers confused. These days everyone’s numbers were in speed dial. They didn’t have to memorize much.
Watching a bird skim the pond’s surface in search of a meal, he tried someone else. Dr. Swenson, a psychiatrist who had been listed in the file that Delores Jones had kept about Chelsea. Dr. Swenson’s notes hadn’t been included in the paperwork that the Department of Children and Families had given him. Unfortunately, mistakes like that happened often with case files. People were responsible for the information they contained. People were human. They made errors.
Per Delores’s notes, Chelsea had seen Dr. Swenson a total of six times. He left the doctor a voice mail, explaining why he was calling. Talking with Dr. Swenson was certainly a reach, but since Chelsea’s memory of those days had been partially erased, he hoped the doctor could shed some light on her past. People who might have treated her badly while in foster care. Maybe she’d even mentioned Katherine to him. If Dr. Swenson agreed to meet, Lang was certain Chelsea would consent to the meeting. Then he called Garcia and asked for some basic background on Elizabeth Jessup.
The wind picked up, and he started to get cold. He decided to go back to his car and wait. He’d either wait for Katherine to return home or find out where she was so he could meet her.
As he was in the process of standing, he spied another great rock, flat, a little smaller than the palm of his hand. He stopped and picked it up. The weight was perfect. About the weight of a tennis ball. He windmilled his arm to limber it up. He knew he’d probably regret it, but for old times’ sake, he took a deep breath, got a running start, and flung the rock with a side pitch as hard as he possibly could.
Just as he’d thought, his back screamed. But he was getting used to that. The afternoon sun reflected brightly across the water and made it difficult to see very far, but he kept his eyes peeled on the waterline.
He saw the first splash. Then another ten yards farther. Then another. The rock bounced past a thicket of weeds in the center of the pond, then:
Ching!
Lang was surprised by the sound. The rock had hit something. And from the sound of it, something metal. He squinted out over the lake and saw the ripples on the far shore, close to the frayed remains of an abandoned rope swing. Then a glint of silver flashed in the sunlight.
He limped around the pond quickly, keeping his eye trained on the area where he’d heard the sound as he navigated the tall, thick reeds and cattails along the edge of the pond. When he finally got to the other side, he looked at the water about twenty feet out and saw what the rock had hit.
“Son of a bitch.”
Lang yanked his phone out of his pocket and made a call.
CHAPTER 30
AROUND 11:00 A.M., it began to storm, and Chelsea found herself having darker thoughts than she’d had for weeks. Maybe months. She sat on the couch, wrapped in her afghan, and sipped wine.
Elizabeth turned toward her from the recliner, concern creasing her face. “You okay?” she asked.
No. “Yeah,” Chelsea said.
Elizabeth was well aware of how Halloween affected her, so she’d gotten there early and was doing her best to distract her. She’d brought three documentaries to watch and a big spread of food. Chips, hummus, sour cream and onion dip, a plate of nachos. She’d also filled the freezer with potpies and TV dinners. All Chelsea’s favorites.
Chelsea had already eaten a ton of food. After all, who the hell cared if she got fat? It was more important to feed the pain right now. Crowd it out so nothing else could fit.
Network television was airing a special of the fifth anniversary of the Springfield Coed Killings tonight, so they were having a documentary marathon instead. They were now on their first DVD: Inside Job, a documentary about the financial crisis of the late 2000s. But Chelsea couldn’t get into it. She wouldn’t be able to get into any of the DVDs today. She was glad Elizabeth was there, though. That she wasn’t alone.
Since Lang had mentioned the name Katherine Jones, Chelsea hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. She experienced a visceral reaction almost every time the name flashed into her head. Twice today she’d vividly smelled the odors of gasoline and fetid pond water. But why?
Elizabeth paused the DVD and turned toward her. “If you ever had to go away, somewhere . . . anywhere, where would you go?”
The question seemed totally random. It had come out of no
where. “Why would I have to go away?” Chelsea asked.
“It’s hypothetical.”
“I don’t know. Why? Where would you go?”
“I’m thinking Florida. Like down in the Keys somewhere. I’ve been checking it out online. It’s beautiful down there.”
Is this Elizabeth’s idea of a distraction? she wondered. Or was she thinking about going away?
Her mouth went dry at the possibility that her friend might be thinking of leaving.
Was Elizabeth getting bored with Boston?
Bored with her?
Every time they got together, they did the same things. Maybe that was why she’d picked up extra nursing shifts lately. Because she was bored. Elizabeth was definitely more adventurous than Chelsea was. She often went out to dinner with nurses she worked with, as well as other colleagues. But she still seemed to always be there when Chelsea needed her. Was she getting weary of Chelsea’s dependence on her? Or were her concerns right now just wine fueled?
“Are you getting tired of being my friend?” Chelsea asked, searching.
“Huh?” Elizabeth asked, a chip in her hand. “Why would I get tired of being your friend?”
“Because we just do this.” Chelsea motioned to everything around them. “Sit around my apartment, staring at a screen and gorging on crappy food all the time.”
“But I love doing this,” Elizabeth said. “Of course I don’t get bored with it.”
“We can go out to dinner sometime. Do something different, you know?”
“Sure. But I don’t really care either way.”
“So, that’s not why you’re talking about going away somewhere?”
“No. Like I said, it was just hypothetical.”
“Are you sure? It’s not because you’re getting bored hanging out here?”
“Mm-hmm. Positive.” She stuck the chip in her mouth.
Her cheek didn’t jump. She was telling the truth.
Chelsea took another sip of wine and stared out the French doors. “Detective Lang stopped by earlier. He said he wants to talk to you.”
Elizabeth straightened in her chair. A strange look crossed her face. “Why?”
“Because your name was on one of the police reports. I guess he wants to talk to anyone who was around at the time.”
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