“Love you, Virginia!” her mother called just as Gin was closing her car door. As Gin backed out of the drive, she thought about her mother’s willingness to say those words, which her proper, buttoned-up family had eschewed all through her childhood. And she wondered why it was so hard for her to say the words back. Especially since she’d craved them so desperately for the first eighteen years of her life, when she would have traded her parents for ordinary folks in a heartbeat. Having a brilliant surgeon father and a former debutante mother who had inherited a steel fortune passed down from men who’d had the sense to get out in time, Gin had known status and wealth since birth—but it had come at a cost. With the single exception of Lily, her younger sister, they had all been distant with each other, almost cold—right up until the tragedy that tore them apart.
During Gin’s senior year of high school, Lily had gone missing. No trace of her was ever found, and her loss became a painful wedge between Gin and her past, her hometown, her family. When Lily’s body was discovered the previous summer, stuffed in a cooler near the water tower where the two had spent time with friends as teens, the old wounds were ripped open. Gin had taken a leave of absence from her job and come home to Trumbull, helpless in her renewed grief until she found an outlet in assisting in the case.
Now—with Gin’s help—Lily’s murderer was in prison, and Gin and her parents were doing their best to nurture the bond between them all. Her leave of absence had been extended indefinitely, and while Gin had not yet made up her mind to move to Trumbull permanently, the days passed without her making any plans to return to Chicago. The consulting work kept her busy and engaged for ten or fifteen hours a week. The rest of the time, she caught up on her reading, went for runs through the beautiful late-autumn mornings high above the river, and tried to enjoy her time with Jake without analyzing it or putting labels on it.
As Gin began the descent down the hill, she spotted the smoke, black and acrid looking, still belching into the sky. What did that mean? Why hadn’t they been able to put the fire out completely? She considered driving straight to the site, but she knew that it would be crowded with emergency vehicles already, and besides, she wanted to run.
She drove back to Jake’s house, where she pulled her hair into an elastic and splashed cold water on her face. She was glad she’d taken the time to go see her parents, something she’d promised herself she would try to do more often now that she’d moved home.
Her time in Trumbull had been good for her—despite the fact that she had no full-time job, no plans for the future, and no idea what she was going to do next week or next month. “Just for today,” she whispered, echoing a sentiment that the therapist her mother had connected her with was fond of repeating, a reminder not to let her mind travel too far forward—or, more to the point when they’d begun their sessions, backward.
She pulled on her shoes and headed down the stairs, out the door Jake had framed with his own hands, and into a frosty, forbiddingly gray November morning.
And then she began to run.
2
Half an hour later, a weak morning sun was making an effort to break through. The sky was turning faintly pink where it met the horizon, and the weak light illuminated the wet pavement of the road that had been built alongside the railroad tracks. In daylight, Gin would have chosen a different route, running along the trails high above town, past thickets and meadows and ash heaps that had barely changed since her childhood. But sunrise came late this time of year, and Gin stuck to the streets of town, counting on the reflective striping on her jacket and tights to protect her from the occasional car or truck.
Maybe it was the eeriness of her dream that had triggered her introspective mood, or maybe it was worry about Jake’s construction site, but Gin steered clear of the clean, well-lit streets near the town’s center and ran through the neighborhoods not yet touched by the nascent redevelopment efforts. Broken glass and plastic bags and bits of colorful paper littered the streets; houses leaned into each other as though they were exhausted.
At the corner of Miller and Park, she paused almost reflexively to make sure no one was coming out of the liquor store. This corner had been the site of frequent robberies and at least two murders in the last decade, as her mother had dutifully reported. But the evidence of more hopeful times was all around: at a nearby house, children bundled into colorful puffy jackets followed their mother to her car, a heap that looked like it would take a miracle to start. A white truck adorned with the logo of an organic bakery in nearby Pittsburgh lumbered by, headed no doubt for one of the new restaurants that had sprung up downtown.
Here was where Gin usually turned and headed back toward home, along Hornbake Avenue, a long street that climbed up the side of the hill before leveling out in the newer housing developments built during the first hopeful wave of gentrification in the early seventies. This route allowed her to pass by Hyacinth Lane and see whether the lights were on in her parents’ kitchen. Her mother was often out of the house early, but sometimes she would linger over coffee in an effort to draw Richard out of the funk that had held him in its grip since he’d abruptly retired after the discovery of Lily’s body in June. Madeleine often beseeched Gin to “check in on Dad,” even though neither of them believed she had the power to improve his mood any more than the mild antidepressant recommended by his psychiatrist. Gin was glad she’d taken the time to see her parents this morning, even if her motives had been selfish. She vowed to visit on another morning soon, once the current crisis had been resolved.
And here, on the northern edge of town, she was only a quarter of a mile away from Jake’s jobsite. Already she could smell the smoke, feel it scouring her lungs; the sky above the ridge was dense with it, even though the winds were sweeping it away from town, over into the valley on the other side. The worry that had sent her out into the frigid morning had turned, with every footfall on the cracked and broken asphalt of downtown, into a sharper, keener emotion. Something between dread and panic.
Living with a man was not the same as knowing him—not, at any rate, the way Gin had once known Jake, when they’d been teenagers joined at the hip and anointed with first love, finishing each other’s sentences and almost smug in the knowledge that nothing would tear them apart. How wrong they had been. Now, having found their way back to each other after a separation of almost two decades, Jake and Gin were more cautious. They each protected parts of themselves; they held back.
Something had been brewing even before this morning, but Jake hadn’t told her what was at the root of his increasingly gloomy mood. She was nearly positive it had to do with money, with the calculated risks he’d taken with his business, not all of which had paid out. Each night at dinner, sitting at the kitchen table crafted from a single chestnut oak felled on his property, she tried to find the words to ask him how bad it had gotten and whether he would consider allowing her to help.
She never found the words. Instead, many evenings ended as last night had, when the pent-up questions and declarations and emotions translated into lovemaking that was needful, sometimes almost frantic. Each of them had grown bolder, each demanded—and gave—more and more. In fact, the longer they went without revealing their unspoken feelings to each other, the more they communicated in other ways.
Gin knew that Jake had the scratches on his back to prove it.
She started up the hill, pushing herself hard, trying to beat back her frustration by force. After all, she knew better; as a medical examiner, she had told countless families that the key to weathering difficult times was communication. She had seen marriages turn cold and empty without it. So why did the connection between her and Jake continue to burn so fiercely? Was it love—or was it the sputtering end of a relationship on the brink of failure?
By the time Gin neared the top of the ridge, the chilly air was beginning to warm, the sun breaking weakly through the clouds. The road narrowed as it rose past the developed part of town, and she kept to the shoulder, ignori
ng the occasional icy spray from a passing car. Down below, morning traffic was beginning to clog the road to the bridge connecting Trumbull to Route 837, which led north to Pittsburgh; those lucky enough to secure jobs in the city were headed there now.
In a few more minutes, she’d arrived, breathing hard, at the cleared, flat, two-acre parcel where the three homes were in various stages of completion. The Archer home, situated in the best part of the lot with a view from the back windows out over the river valley and a large, gracious circular drive in front, was unrecognizable. The stench was nearly unbearable, but at least the flames had been doused, leaving a charred black steaming wreck. Bits of burnt debris and ash floated in the air, making Gin cough, and the acrid fumes stung her eyes.
All over the site, fire and police vehicles were parked, and responders milled around. In what had been meant to be the side yard of the ruined house, she could see Jake slumped dejectedly against the framed-out walls of one of the houses that was still standing. As Gin started making her way across the construction site, going slowly and carefully to avoid twisting an ankle on the rutted earth studded with charred and unidentifiable gobbets, two marked county cruisers arrived and pulled up next to the house in the circular drive that had been carved from the raw earth. A third arrived seconds later, rounding the top of the hill fast enough that its occupants were undoubtedly being jounced uncomfortably.
All three vehicles bore the seal of Allegheny County on its field of royal blue, an image that never failed to move Gin. She’d written a sixth-grade essay on the symbolism of the images dating back to colonial times—the sailing ship representing trade, the plow and sheaves of wheat representing the bounty of the earth. Nowhere, she had understood even then, was there evidence of the steel economy that would someday lift and then decimate the region’s fortunes.
But now the beautiful image was nearly lost above the large stark letters spelling out “POLICE.” Light bars flashed the strobing blue and white that signaled the kind of trouble Gin had hoped was finally in the past. And moving purposely through the smoldering fire site was a figure she recognized with an involuntary shiver of dismay: Detective Bruce Stillman, who’d been the senior detective in the investigation of the discovery of her sister’s remains and the subsequent arrest and conviction of a woman who’d been a trusted family friend.
Stillman had shown little sensitivity to Gin and her family, despite the anguish they’d experienced at the discovery of Lily’s body seventeen years after she’d disappeared. His partner, Liam Witt—who was considerably younger and less experienced, still in his first year as a detective when he’d worked on Lily’s case—had been kinder but followed Stillman’s lead in most areas of the investigation. Neither cop had much regard for Jake, who’d been their prime suspect nearly until the end.
The fact that Stillman and Witt were assigned to this case did not bode well for Jake, who would need the investigation of the fire wrapped up quickly so that he could file an insurance claim and start rebuilding as soon as possible.
Gin was certain that Jake had spotted her, though he managed only a brittle and brief smile. He gave the burned house a final, baleful glance and started toward her.
“Hey,” he said, making another attempt at a smile, this one even weaker than the first. They stood together at a distance from the growing assortment of uniformed officers who seemed to be gathering next to a recently dug trench between the houses and the woods that came nearly to the edge of the clearing.
“I didn’t want to call,” Gin said lamely. “I knew you couldn’t talk . . . I just thought I could come by and see.”
Jake nodded wordlessly, the muscles of his face tight. He hadn’t kissed her. But maybe that didn’t mean anything; they weren’t really the type to kiss in public. Not yet, anyway, though Gin had thought that might come in time.
He wasn’t making this easier for her, she thought in frustration. Yes, of course the fire was a terrible blow; of course he was devastated. He might be thinking of the long and arduous road ahead of him. And yet. Wasn’t that the whole point of loving someone, of making them your partner—not having to be alone in life’s most difficult moments? Weren’t they meant to face these challenges together?
Guilt pushed its way into Gin’s thoughts—she had been the one to leave him the first time. And even if they’d still been kids, even if there had been terrible extenuating circumstances, maybe she wasn’t entitled to expect Jake to trust her easily now that they were together again.
She pushed down all of her hurt, her negativity, and tried to come up with something encouraging to say. But as she was deliberating, a large van drove up, this one bearing the markings of the county crime scene investigation unit.
“Aw, hell,” Jake muttered.
It wasn’t a good development—the decision to call the CSI team meant that the responding officers suspected arson. “They can’t think someone set it deliberately,” Gin protested. “Who would do something like that? I mean, what possible reason could they have?”
Jake shrugged, using the motion to turn his body slightly away from her. “You know as much as me at this point.”
Which wasn’t true, not by half; but Gin could sense Jake’s mounting despair and knew he wouldn’t want to talk further about it—not with her, anyway. The firefighters had managed to extinguish the fire before it could consume the framed structures of the other two homes, which had suffered only some minor scorching when the wind carried the flames consuming the Archer home. Maybe they could be saved as they were—there were no finishes to absorb the smoke, drywall to crumble, carpet to sag, or wallpaper to peel away under the hoses.
But it was impossible not to gawk at what was left of the Archer mansion, which only two days ago had stood tall and glorious against a brilliant wintry blue sky, sunlight glinting off its windows and burnishing the polished hardware of its custom-made double entrance doors. What was left of the dove-gray siding was now peeling and blackened, the windows were shattered, and the brand-new roof was caved in. Where the firefighters had used axes to release some of the fire’s rage, the raw splinters looked like fresh wounds. The smell of smoke and ash and melted synthetic materials and metal was both cloyingly sweet and throat-scrapingly acrid. A number of the responders had tied bandannas and handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths.
Gin’s gaze fell on the detectives, who were conferring with several of the firefighters. As she watched, Stillman broke away and began making his way toward them, stepping carefully around charred debris and orange cones, a frown of distaste marking his otherwise blandly handsome features. Gin’s heart sank.
Jake followed her gaze. “Is that . . .”
“Stillman and Witt,” Gin confirmed with a sigh of resignation. “Of all the officers who could have turned out, it had to be them.”
Stillman came up even with them before Jake could respond. The men acknowledged each other tersely. As far as she knew, there had been no contact between them since Jake was cleared. Some members of the investigation, including Detective Witt, had attended Lily’s memorial service, forming a respectful queue in the back of the hall and leaving before the reception; Stillman was not among them.
He’d done nothing technically wrong. Given the years Gin had spent working with the police on investigations of suspicious deaths, she knew that the best officers did not allow emotion or personal bias to stand in the way of investigatory zeal, and she didn’t hold Stillman’s dogged pursuit of the suspects in Lily’s murder against him, even if he had been misguided and ultimately wrong; even if their interactions had proved him to be aggressive to the point of badgering.
What she couldn’t forgive him for was never acknowledging to her family that he had been wrong when the real killer was revealed. Her parents deserved better. Jake deserved better. And maybe even she had deserved better too.
“What do you know about this place?” Stillman demanded without preamble. “I mean, how did you pick this particular site to put up your McMansio
ns?”
Jake let the insult go by, though the twitch in his jaw gave away his anger. “I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. I’d bet you already know that I bought this parcel from Corinne Rudkin’s estate after she died earlier this year. I can assure you that everything was done in compliance with every law and code and rule that the county threw my way. You can look at all the paperwork at the city offices. I’ll even spot you the thirty bucks for the records fees.”
“That right?” Stillman raised one bushy eyebrow, and the smirk that characterized most of their conversations settled onto his thin lips. “You got a hell of a deal, is what I heard. Have to say I wondered about that.”
Gin sensed Jake stiffening at her side and touched his wrist, willing him to keep his temper in check. There were still those in town who’d love nothing more than to see Jake hauled off for fighting, just like when he’d been a moody high school student being raised by a single dad who just happened to be the local chief of police.
“Listen, Stillman, I don’t know who set this fire, but I sure hope you track them down and prosecute them to an inch of their life. I’ve dotted every i and crossed every t on this project, and believe me, I have absolutely no motive to interfere with it. I’ve got pretty much everything I own tied up in these three houses.”
Gin wondered if it was only her who noticed the faint cracking of his voice on the last few words.
“Calm down, buddy, I’m not here to waste my time on building codes,” Stillman retorted. “Believe it or not, you’ve got even bigger problems than a firebug with an ax to grind.”
His smirk widened as though he was enjoying this. She seethed; Stillman was the sort of person who thrived on the discomfort of others, who enjoyed making accusations with little regard to whether they were on the mark just to see people squirm.
All the Secret Places Page 2