Sarit’s gasp was loud enough to make Bump tilt his head. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Houston,” Ellery repeated as she turned around with the water. “You’re job hunting there?” She set the bowl down on the floor.
“He said that—to you?”
“I believe Tula said it to him,” Ellery replied, and Sarit stammered in response.
“I n—never—I didn’t mean … nothing is settled yet. That’s why I haven’t brought it up to Reed.”
“Yeah, I don’t think Tula got that memo.”
Her parenting under judgment, Sarit recomposed herself and folded her arms. “My partner, Randy, has a job offer in Houston, and he’s asked us to join him there. If I can also find work, it could be a great opportunity for all of us.”
“Not for Reed. He would be far away from Tula.”
“I will never stop him from seeing his daughter. But it’s funny that you’re the one making this argument to me and not him.”
“He loves her.” She hesitated. “I would hate to see him punished because you have a problem with me.”
Sarit sniffed. “It’s not about you.”
“Tula didn’t get that memo, either,” Ellery said steadily, and Sarit’s expression turned guilty.
“Look, you have to understand—Reed has a bit of a savior complex. Yes, his instinct to help people is an admirable quality, but he takes it too far. He doesn’t know when to say when.”
“Meaning me,” Ellery said, her voice hard.
Sarit shrugged in a you said it; I didn’t kind of gesture. “You have to admit you met under difficult circumstances—historically dramatic, even. Adrenaline running high on all sides, I’m sure.”
“You seem to know a lot for someone who wasn’t even there. For your information, we barely exchanged any words back then. He wasn’t my case manager. He wasn’t my doctor or my shrink. He wasn’t anything to me.”
Sarit clucked at her. “Now who’s kidding themselves? No normal woman could ever hope to compete with you where Reed is concerned. I used to wonder, you know, what it would take to keep him from running out the door after the next missing kid or suspected serial killer. You’ve found the formula, I guess. You are his obsessions brought to life.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know him better than you do, apparently. Do you really think he’d be here with you if not for your shared history? Do you really think you’d pick him above all men—a workaholic who’s twice your age and comes with a seven-year-old daughter?”
“He’s not close to twice my age.”
“Sure,” Sarit said, now sweetly magnanimous. “Quibble about the margins. We both know I’ve drawn up the essence of it correctly.”
Ellery slumped, exhausted from the long day and this conversation. “Think what you want,” she muttered, walking away. “Hate me if it makes things easier for you.”
“I don’t hate you,” Sarit blurted, and Ellery halted with her back to the woman. “I quite admire you, actually. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in the shadow of that monster. Whatever he did to you, whoever you’ve become as a result of that, it’s not your fault.”
Ellery clenched her fists. “Thanks so much for the absolution.” She turned around and locked eyes with Sarit. “Just because your name is on a book about me doesn’t mean you know who I am. You know the facts of the case. You don’t know me.”
“And you don’t know where my daughter is.”
“She’s not my daughter.”
“Exactly. She’s not yours. You don’t love her. And yet I’m supposed to let her come here where there are knives and guns and unsupervised teenagers, and that’s just what I know about. She’s my child, it’s my responsibility to keep her safe, and I will do whatever it takes to uphold that duty.”
“Even if it means taking her from her father.”
“Even that, yes. If he’s not looking out for what’s best for her.”
Ellery shook her head with sadness. “I would never do anything to hurt Tula.”
“That’s not enough for me,” Sarit said in a clipped tone. Then her face softened. “It’s not enough for Tula.”
A ruckus at the front door caused Bump to leap up and bark. The doorbell rang three times in quick succession, and Ellery heard Reed’s baritone reverberating in the hallway. “That’s them,” she said, going to open the door. She flipped the locks in turn and revealed Reed, Ashley, and Tula on the other side.
“Sorry we’re late,” he said. “We stopped for hamburgers.”
“You haven’t been answering your phone,” she replied as the kids pushed past her into the apartment.
“No service on the T.”
“Too bad. You could have had advance warning.”
“Warning?” he said, his expression troubled. “Warning of what?”
Behind her, Tula shrieked with delight. “Mommy!”
The color drained from Reed’s face as Ellery gave him a tight smile. “Your ex-wife is here.”
26
Reed’s first thought when Ellery unlocked her bedroom door and left him inside with Sarit was how long it had been since he’d been alone with her in an intimate space like this. After eleven years of sharing the same bed, they met in common areas now—kitchens and living rooms and occasionally Tula’s bedroom with its menagerie of stuffed animals and their wide unblinking eyes. Sarit repeatedly tucked her hair behind her right ear, a gesture Reed recognized as nerves. Good, he thought. She’s not sure about this. Aloud, he said, “You didn’t tell me you were coming up to Boston.”
“I called. You didn’t answer.”
He had already checked his phone and seen her messages. “You called four hours ago, already in town, I take it.”
“I had a story in Connecticut, so it was just a quick trip from there.”
“Ah,” he said mildly. “To check up on me.”
Her chin rose a notch in defiance. “The stories Tula’s been telling are concerning, Reed. Sleeping on the floor? Spending time in the care of a teenage runaway? And this place—it’s like a den of thieves designed it. Knives hanging on the wall in the kitchen. Look, there’s her gun right over there where anyone could grab it.” She pointed behind Reed at Ellery’s holstered weapon sitting on the dresser.
“Ellery’s used to living alone. I’ll talk to her about the gun, okay?”
“It’s not okay,” she said, her face screwed up in frustration. “We have one job as parents, and that’s to keep our kids safe. I get that she has no experience with … well, other human beings, apparently … but you’re the father. You’re supposed to see the loose gun before it becomes a problem.”
“It hasn’t been a problem. Tula hasn’t been in a room with an unattended gun.”
“Given your girlfriend’s history with firearms, that doesn’t make me feel a lot better.”
“But moving to Houston would solve everything.” He kept his tone as neutral as possible.
An emotion that might have been regret passed over Sarit’s features. “I wanted to wait until I knew for sure it was happening before talking to you. I guess Tula must have overheard a conversation or two.”
“You wanted to wait—why? So it could be a done deal and I’d have no way to fight it?”
“You don’t have much standing to fight it. You don’t abide by the agreement we have now.”
“That’s not fair. I see Tula the proscribed number of days per month, just not always on your schedule.”
“It’s not my schedule. It’s the schedule we worked out with the courts and then you don’t follow it, as usual. It’s not about me, Reed. It’s about Tula and giving her stability, constancy. She has to know she can depend on you.”
“She knows that,” he said testily. “I would do anything for her.”
“Anything? You’ve pawned her off on some troubled teenager you barely know so that you and Ellery can play single, carefree lovers together.”
“That�
��s ridiculous. I’ve been working, not canoodling with Ellery.”
Her mouth fell open. “Working. I suppose you think that’s better.”
“Sarit, my job requires—”
She held up both hands to forestall him. “I don’t want to hear another word about your damn job. You were supposed to be on vacation with your daughter this week.”
“I have been. She’s had a blast. Just ask her.”
“Just not with her father.”
Reed glared at her and stalked to the window. He looked out at the dark, empty street, where the streetlamps cast angled shadows. A young woman on a bike went by. “Do you know why Ellery was abducted by Francis Coben all those years ago?” he asked without turning around.
“He liked her hands,” Sarit replied, sounding tired. “It was the middle of the night and she was alone, so he just grabbed her. He was a murderous psychopath. Take whichever explanation you prefer.”
“She was alone, yes,” Reed said, turning around slowly. “Because her mother was at the hospital with her sick older brother. Her father had left the family.”
“Yes, I recall. It’s a sad story, Reed. What is the point?”
He spread his hands. “She had no one else. No aunts, uncles, cousins, or anyone else to step in when times got tough at the Hathaway household. If there had been someone … anyone to see that Ellery got fed supper that night. Someone, maybe, to bake her a birthday cake. Someone to keep her company in that apartment so she wasn’t out riding her bike in the middle of the night all alone. If there had been just one extra person to care for Ellery, she wouldn’t have been abducted.”
“People from nice, whole families don’t get victimized, then.” Sarit wasn’t buying it.
“They are less vulnerable. But it does happen, of course. However, then you have a family to help you heal from the trauma. You don’t have to weather it alone and the damage is less durable.”
Sarit rubbed her head as though it hurt. “Is there a point to this analysis, Mr. Profiler?”
“You want to protect Tula. I understand that desire because I share it.” He put his hand to his heart. “But this move you are suggesting would take her away, not just from me, but from her grandparents, her aunts, uncles, and cousins. People who love her and whom she loves. They are not just family but her safety net, too.”
“I’m trying to see that she doesn’t need a safety net.”
“You can’t,” Reed said with a tinge of sadness. “You can’t keep her safe from all harm because it’s not possible, not if you want her to have any kind of life at all. You are her mother. You were her first home, her first love. But you are not everything. Not now, and definitely not in the future, when she’s crying about some hurt that you can’t soothe either because you don’t understand it or you aren’t even there to see it.”
Sarit blinked back tears. “That’s a fatalistic vision.”
Reed shook his head. “You worry about Ellery and her mental health. I don’t think she’s any threat to Tula at all, but I do see a lesson from her. You can’t do it alone. You shouldn’t want to. Kids need mothers, yes, but they also need fathers who will buy them rocket ship shoes and push the swing as high as it will go in the park. They need teenage babysitters with blue fingernails. They need aunts to take them to the art museum and uncles who will show them how to change a tire.”
“I know how to change a tire,” Sarit said, her tone grudging.
Reed smiled. “And who taught you?”
She met his eyes and their gaze held for a long moment. “You did.”
* * *
When they left the bedroom, nothing was resolved as far as Houston, but Sarit had agreed to keep him in the loop on further discussions. He found Ellery standing at the kitchen island over a pizza. She nibbled halfheartedly at one slice while Tula and Ashley, perched on stools across from her, devoured the rest. “Didn’t you two just eat dinner?” Reed asked the girls.
“That was hours ago,” Ashley replied.
“Yeah,” Tula said, her mouth full. “Hours.”
Reed nudged Ellery. “Can I talk to you a moment?”
She looked at Sarit and then back at him, obviously trying to guess the nature of his proposed conversation. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think she can be trusted here with the knives?”
Ashley tittered while Sarit shot her a dirty look. “I’ll risk it,” Reed said, tugging on her hand.
She allowed him to half-drag her to the bedroom, where he shut the door. “If you want to yell at me about the gun, Sarit already beat you to it.”
“I don’t wish to yell at you.” He tugged some more until she stumbled into him, at which point he wrapped his arms around her. She was stiff and unyielding in his embrace. “I’m sorry she decided to parachute in behind enemy lines like this,” he said against the side of her head.
“Is that what I am? The enemy?” Her voice was muffled against his shirt.
“No, of course not.” He ran his palm down the smooth plane of her back. “Poor humor. I just meant that it wasn’t fair of her, showing up like this out of the blue. One more person in your personal space, hmm?”
“One that hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you.” He paused with his chin atop her head, considering. “She’s a brilliant woman who is suspicious of things she doesn’t understand. This includes you.”
Ellery pulled away with a sigh and sat down on the end of the bed. Reed joined her. “What did she say about Houston?”
“We’ve agreed to talk more about it when I get home.”
Ellery flopped backward on the bed and looked at the ceiling. “Home,” she repeated. “Yes, I suppose you’ll have to get back there soon.”
He lay back with her and studied the cracks in the painted ceiling. Old buildings wore their years like wrinkles on the body, each one a testament to survival.
“Reed?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think we would be together if it weren’t for how we met?”
His logical brain pounced on the inherent fallacy in the question. Of course they couldn’t be together if they hadn’t ever met. But he sensed what she really wanted to know. “If it wasn’t for Coben, you mean.”
She nodded, still looking at the ceiling. “It’s macabre, right? He’s the reason we’re together.”
His spine stiffened at the idea. “Did Sarit say that to you?”
“Not in those words. But I’ve wondered. You know how it looks from the outside, like I’m some unfinished project for you.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
She didn’t reply, and he had to wonder if maybe she believed it. He took her hand, the thing that Coben had most coveted, and kissed her knuckles. “I don’t know if we would have met some other way. There is no way to know it. I do know that if we crossed paths otherwise my assessment of you would be the same. You are vexing and delightful in equal measure. I’ve interviewed a dozen Cobens, and I can promise you this much: I wouldn’t be who I am now if it weren’t for you.”
She gave him a faint smile, as though she didn’t quite believe him, but she didn’t pull her hand from his. “What did you find out from Justin Stone?”
“He doesn’t think much of his father, the esteemed professor. He confirms what I’d discovered in my trip to Philadelphia: the elder Stone has a penchant for young women. This got me thinking about a young woman who might have crossed Ethan Stone’s radar some years ago, Beth Frick. She’s the daughter who died in a car crash some weeks before her mother was murdered in the Stone house along with Trevor Stone.”
“Right, I recall that.”
“I called Baltimore today to speak to the accident investigator who looked into the crash. She said it was a single-vehicle incident, and the signs suggested Beth was driving more than a hundred miles per hour when she lost control of the car on the freeway and ran into a concrete barrier. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was ruled dead at the scene. The investigator said there h
ad been a long dry spell followed by patchy rain, which has the effect of bringing all the built-up oil out of the pavement and making the roads extra slick. There had been a number of fatal crashes the same weekend.”
“Okay, so a teenager drives stupidly on the highway and pays the ultimate price. What’s that got to do with Ethan Stone?”
“Part of the tragedy of Beth’s death was that she was due to start college in the fall on full scholarship. At Penn.”
Ellery yanked her hand away and sat up to look at him. “Where Ethan Stone teaches.”
“Yes. Possibly a coincidence, but it’s also probable she sought out his advice when applying. There’s another thing. Her sister Lisa didn’t mention it, so I am not sure if she even knows. She was quite young when Beth died. The autopsy revealed that Beth was pregnant.”
“Just when you think this story can’t get any sadder.”
“I think it all fits together somehow—the crash, the gun in the Stones’ backyard, the murders. I just can’t make all the pieces come together.”
“If Carol found out Ethan Stone was abusing her daughter, he might have killed her to shut her up.”
“But killed his own son, too?” This was the piece Reed couldn’t make fit with Ethan Stone as the killer. The man’s grief over his dead child struck Reed as genuine, although he supposed the prominent picture displayed in Stone’s office could also be considered performative. Still, it would take a skilled sociopath to pull off this level of deception.
“It does happen. Stone hasn’t remarried, right? He’s enjoyed playing the field. Maybe he saw Trevor as a barrier to his new life.”
“Maybe.” The best way to trap a sociopath was through repeated, probing interviews designed to allow them to spin grandiose lies and then to call them on the lies. Inconvenient truths had a way of slipping past the mask of sanity and revealing the lack of conscience underneath. Reed doubted he could make Ethan Stone sit for a second interview unless he had something concrete to force his hand.
“He has an alibi for the time of Chloe’s disappearance. Whatever else Ethan Stone might be guilty of, he doesn’t have Chloe.”
Every Waking Hour Page 24