Black Rock Bay

by Brianna Labuskes

  Like that children’s game: all the dots were there; they just needed to put pen to paper to draw the final image. She could probably even build a somewhat solid case, depending on what she found tomorrow in the Bishops’ house.

  She caught the inside of her lip between her incisors and thought back to that photo hanging on the wall just outside the den where she and Izzy were standing—Mia’s face tipped up to Cash, like he owned her universe. She thought about the press of his thumb against her wrist on the pier. The warmth of his long body, the way his arms had gripped her like they’d missed her.

  Too close. She was too close to this all. It wasn’t that she was still in love with Cash. It was that she remembered the give of his hips before he’d grown into his height. It was that she knew he laughed too hard when someone tripped, knew that he liked to be outside when getting high, knew he always failed to account for the width of his shoulders when playing hide-and-seek, and knew that he probably hadn’t cried when he’d been told about Asher because he’d always tried to be strong back then.

  It was that he was part of her home. And maybe she hadn’t realized that meant something to her, but now she did. Now a tiny part of her understood why these people, her people, would have closed ranks to protect one of their own.

  You really don’t think Cash had anything to do with any of this?

  Izzy hadn’t moved since asking it, had barely breathed, and was watching her with a kind of reluctance Mia was getting used to. She made Izzy nervous. And maybe the woman wasn’t all that far off with her worry.

  “I don’t know if he does,” she finally said, because it was easier than all of that complicated mess of emotions. She’d promised Izzy the truth, but she hadn’t promised Izzy all her secrets. And the truth was, she didn’t know.

  Maybe Mia would have gotten away with it a few days ago. But Izzy was starting to be able to read her, which was scary in itself. Her expression didn’t relax; instead, everything sharpened.

  “You’re going to be late,” Mia cut her off. There was nothing to be gained from hashing it all out. “Quinn won’t risk it if you wait any longer.”

  Izzy’s gaze shifted to the window beyond Mia and then back to her face, mutinous and resigned at the same time. She wanted to argue, drag it all out, all the complications that Mia could barely put into thoughts, let alone words.

  “All right,” Izzy finally said, slinging her duffel over her shoulder. She paused in the middle of the room, then crossed to Mia in three long strides. In the next moment Mia was dragged into an awkward hug, with Izzy patting the back of her head. They didn’t do this; it wasn’t them. But Mia laughed lightly and tolerated the embrace for the few seconds it lasted.

  Clearing her throat, Izzy pulled back. “Just watch out for him. He’ll distract you with the Dark and Handsome, and you’ll forget about the Angry.”

  “Never,” Mia said. “Be safe. Let me know when you get in.”

  Izzy tossed her an easy two-finger salute and then headed for the door. She’d insisted she didn’t need Mia to walk her to the port, so Mia watched her go until her pink hair disappeared around a corner down the way.

  “She’s gone?” Edie asked, her voice coming from just inside the doorway to the hall.

  Mia didn’t bother turning around but simply stared at the place where Izzy had been. “Yes.”

  Edie wrapped an arm around Mia’s shoulders, her fingers digging into the bone. “Good.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IZZY

  The Rockport Police Station was small and crumbling, just a squat, long building on the corner of a block that was dominated by warehouses and three thriving minimarts.

  Izzy swung through the door and breathed in the familiar air with relief. It might as well have been years that she’d been on St. Lucy’s instead of just a few days.

  She greeted the uniform manning the lobby desk. He was a cute kid, with acne scattered along his hair- and jawlines. He went bright red from the attention but waved back.

  It was evening, so the bull pen was mostly empty. In the far corner, Rockport’s newest and very eager rookie, Detective O’Malley, was hunched over his computer, his back to her; there was a light on in Murdoch’s office, but Izzy couldn’t see the woman.

  Other than that, she was alone. It was on the later side, and Rockport’s crime levels didn’t necessitate a robust round-the-clock police detail.

  Izzy powered up her desktop as she sent Mia a quick text that she’d made it back to the station and was going to start digging in to find the Bells. It was a crapshoot whether Mia would get the message or not, judging by the storm that had been rolling in as Quinn and Izzy left the island.

  Tossing the phone onto a stack of files, Izzy turned back to her computer. She’d have to start with the basics—Google, a scan of the national databases, and anything Rockport had on file.

  She realized within a few minutes the futility of looking for such a common name.

  There was nothing in the federal criminal system nor in the local ones. As for the web search, there were a couple of society columns, a few mentions of Monroe’s death, a few more of the artist residency, and a profile of Charles and Bix from a few decades back that some quirky magazine had helpfully uploaded onto their site. She printed that out.

  Narrowing it down to the Boston Globe for any mentions garnered only an article on Bix’s gallery opening from ten years before Monroe’s death and an old engagement announcement.

  Izzy clicked on the short piece with the young couple.

  Charles Edward Bell, a prominent psychiatrist and the son of Hayes and Eliza Bell, was to wed Brenna “Bix” Connolly, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. The pair had met in Providence, when Charles commissioned a caricature from Bix, who had worked as a street artist to help pay her tuition. The quick sketch had cost him five dollars, and he’d walked away with her phone number.

  It was a cute story, and she wondered if it were true. Probably they’d hooked up in a bar and had made up the rest of it so it would be a good read.

  Either way, now Izzy had a real name. Brenna Connolly. Somewhat less glamorous than Bix Bell, but somewhat more helpful when it came to searches.

  With that, she started getting real results.

  Including an obituary.

  “All right, here we go,” she whispered to the mostly empty room. O’Malley grunted but didn’t look up, and there had yet to be any movement coming from Murdoch’s office.

  The obit was from a paper in Cooperstown, Maine. Izzy tabbed over to a new page, pulled up a map, and typed in the town.

  Just outside Portland.

  Izzy’s pulse stuttered as she scanned the rest of the obit. Bix had died in September—only a month after Monroe’s supposed suicide. There had been a fire.

  That’s all the short announcement mentioned, but there was a link to a full article at the bottom of the page. Izzy clicked it.

  There were more details in the full story. The police reported that Bix had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in the living room, near a stack of magazines and art supplies. Bad luck and poorly stored turpentine had caused it to spread out and consume the entire bottom floor of the house. Firefighters had tried to rescue her but had been unable to get to her in time. No one else had been home.

  Officials said no foul play was suspected.

  “What’d you find?”

  Izzy jolted back, a full-body jump. She panted, her hand on her chest, as she looked up to find Murdoch hovering over her desk.

  “Give me a heart attack,” Izzy muttered, but was quick to smile up at her boss. “Hi.”

  “You found something.” Murdoch didn’t mess around with small talk, never had. Izzy loved her for it.

  Izzy tried to think of the best way to shorthand everything that had happened. She and Mia had tried to keep Murdoch updated, but communications had been so limited; it felt like they’d told her nothing. “The reporter who was found dead out on St. Lucy’s? Think he was looking
into some suicides on the island that involved this family.”

  “The Bell family?” Murdoch asked, her eyes on the screen over Izzy’s shoulder.

  “Yeah.”

  Murdoch nodded for her to continue.

  “Right.” Izzy snapped her fingers. “Well, turns out the mother, Bix, died in a fire only a month after the family left the island.”

  “Aah.” Murdoch’s attention focused, just like Izzy’s had. “Do we suspect the husband in both deaths? Possible homicides, instead of a suicide and an accident?”

  It fit. “Maybe,” Izzy said, and Murdoch studied her, probably picking up the hesitation in the drawn-out word.

  “No?”

  Izzy tapped her finger on the desk, reading over the details of Bix’s death once more.

  Those girls were all scared. And now two of them were dead, and the third was hiding out, living among her own nightmares painted on canvas.

  “I don’t know.”

  Murdoch only spoke when she had Izzy’s attention once more. “Seems like the obvious conclusion. What’s bothering you?”

  The answer was an itch beneath her skin, noticeable, distracting but out of reach.

  Izzy glanced toward the windows on the other side of the room, already knowing what she’d find. The blue tint to the sky had faded into black so that she could see only her reflection in the glass rather than anything outside.

  “Think I’ll drive up there,” she said despite the hour. If she left now she could find a hotel along the way. That would put her in Cooperstown early in the morning. Maybe she could get an address from the local station up there.

  “You need company?” Murdoch asked.

  Backup. That was the underlying question. Did Izzy need backup? Her eyes slipped back to the obit. “Nah, I’ll be okay. More worried about Mia to be honest. That whole island gave me a creepy vibe.”

  “Creepy vibe?” Murdoch laughed.

  “Hey, don’t mock the gut,” Izzy said. They both knew that lesson too well.

  “Touché.” Murdoch sobered. “Well, call me if you need rescuing.”

  “Doubt I’ll even find anything,” Izzy said, already talking to Murdoch’s back. She shut down her computer, grabbed her duffel, and headed for the door, restless to do something, anything, now that she wasn’t stuck on a square mile of land in the middle of the ocean.

  Her car was a Honda Civic from the previous decade, which often took no less than three tries to start. This was one of those times. When the engine finally turned over, she plugged coordinates into her GPS, thankful that she was back in the world of reliable technology.

  The storm was projected to slip up the coast, mostly missing Rockport, pummeling the islands instead. But it still must have scared a few people inside here. The roads were mostly empty, and when she hit the highway, her eyes became unfocused, the hum from the radio interrupted only by the rhythmic slap of rubber against road.

  That itch, it was still there, burrowing deeper with each passing mile, and part of the problem was they’d let the teenagers’ deaths and Robert Twist’s become so entangled that Izzy couldn’t stop trying to solve the old murders along with the new one. And they just kept going in circles.

  The GPS cut into her thoughts, a calm British voice informing her to take a right soon. She shifted lanes, only half her mind on the road.

  Was there any truth to Martha’s suspicions? Had Asher seen something? If he had, it would have had to be damning enough for Charles Bell to consider the death of his own daughter worth the price of covering it up. That seemed implausible.

  The simple act wasn’t hard to imagine. Izzy had enough experience with rage that she had no doubt that it could blind a man, could lift his control to the extent that he murdered a supposed loved one. But in those cases the killings were close, personal—intimate almost. Usually it involved hands around throats, or weapons that required proximity to the victim. A knife, most likely.

  This, though. This was razor blades slashed across the wrists in neat wounds. Izzy had looked at Mia’s. There wasn’t even a hesitation notch at either end of hers.

  Izzy would request the files for the case once she got back to Rockport. Even if the cops had marked it suicide, they still would have taken pictures of the scene, of the cuts.

  As a psychiatrist, Charles could have drugged them all; he had access and knew how to use the medicine to make his victims docile, compliant. It could explain the neatness of the deaths.

  But not the reason he’d involved Monroe. The drugging meant there was some forethought. Even if Asher had witnessed something like Charles harming Bix, even if he’d then run off to tell Monroe all about it, it still felt like a leap for Charles to kill his own daughter over it. He probably would have been able to convince her it was a misunderstanding. Children were primed to believe their parents, no matter how outlandish the lie.

  Killing someone, planning to do it, not just snapping in anger, took a cold, calculating person to pull off.

  Had Charles Bell been that man?

  A long, rude horn brought Izzy out of her own haze, and she jerked the wheel too far to the right to overcompensate for where she’d drifted into the trucker’s lane. The rumble strips protested, the dullness of the sound reverberating in the confines of the car.

  Izzy breathed out a curse as she righted the Honda into the center of the lane. Her hands had gone shaky where she clutched the wheel, her knuckles white against the sandy-colored leather.

  At the next neon sign advertising gas, she pulled off the road. She popped into the minuscule convenience store and bought the largest size of coffee they had, not caring that it was chunky and tasted of burned toast. Caffeine was crucial.

  When she was back on the road, she didn’t let her mind drift again. Or mostly not. She was still trying to figure out Charles. He fit better than most, although she hadn’t written off Cash covering up for Earl. Was Sammy Charles’s point of contact on the island? Is that how the man was still pulling the strings, even when not physically there?

  The British voice once again sliced through the frustrated scream in her own head. She’d be in Cooperstown in ten minutes.

  With one hand, Izzy reprogrammed the coordinates to find a place to stay in the next few miles. She looked back to the road, squeaked out a distressed sound, and turned just in time for the driveway of a hotel.

  The A in the VACANCY sign flickered, but the place didn’t give her murder vibes and she doubted she could really do any better at this point, so she got a room for the night.

  Barely looking up from his newspaper, the old, portly gentleman working the front desk shoved two plastic cards at her and pointed down a long hallway, grunting as he did.

  By the time she dropped onto the bed, she was too tired to even strip the comforter off, even though she, like everyone else in America, had watched those stupid exposés that used blue lights to show all the fluids that saturated the fabric. Her body ached, and her shoulder throbbed, no longer bleeding but bruised, and she knew if she tried to close her eyes, sleep would evade her anyway. She spared a thought to Mia’s insomnia and wondered how the woman was still functioning. This buzzing beneath her skull was brutal in its subtlety and persistence.

  Her email notification dinged on her phone, and it was only then that she remembered she still had an unread message about Peter, the artist.

  She patted the bed blindly until she found her cell, and dismissed the junk message that had set it chiming in the first place. There beneath it was the one from the uniforms who had looked into Peter’s identity. Another possible missing piece in their puzzle.

  Izzy clicked on it and blinked hard to get her eyes to focus as the screen loaded.

  While she skimmed the email, the fingers on her free hand tapped out a staccato against her jean-clad thigh, more an expulsion of energy than a nervous tic.

  Peter Hughes. An amateur artist out of a small town north of Portland, he was a bartender by night and worked at a grocery store during th
e day. He also hadn’t returned to either position after he’d quit for the Bell residency.

  That might not be odd. That’s how artists were, right? Whimsical, untethered to reality and things like addresses.

  There were a few other small tidbits but nothing earth-shattering. At the bottom of the message, the uniform had attached a profile of Peter that had run in what looked like a tiny artist magazine, if she had to guess by its name alone.

  Her phone lagged under the weight of the motel’s shitty Wi-Fi, and her eyes blurred, at the point of exhaustion from the long day, the long drive, the long pause of nothing but white screen.

  Then the article loaded, fuzzy at first before sharpening with the internet’s final push. When the picture at the top came into focus, Izzy sat up fast so that the rush of it caused black spots to pop in her eyes.

  Jesus.

  Izzy checked the caption three times just to be safe and then thumbed over to her call list. Mia’s phone sent her straight to voice mail four times in a row. The storm. The goddamn storm.

  She dropped the cell to the bed, bringing up the screen with the profile, her fingertip pressing against Peter Hughes’s face.

  It was the same one she’d seen just days ago after he’d been pulled from the bay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MIA

  The skin beneath Cash’s eyes was puffy, and he simply blinked at Mia after he opened the door, as if trying to make sense of her presence.