“It’s the middle of the night,” he said, as though she hadn’t realized and his pointing it out might change her mind.
“I won’t be long,” she said, going around to his side of the bed. “I’ll be home in time for breakfast.” She leaned down and kissed him on the mouth. “Go back to sleep.”
She found her boots and pulled them on.
“At least let me drive,” he said, sitting up.
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I do. Your blood alcohol level is probably still off the chart. Seriously, Steve, I’ll be fine.” She opened the bedroom door.
“Be careful,” he said, lying back down. “There’s a thunderstorm on its way.”
Diamond raindrops freckled the windshield as Maggie drove out of Keene’s Pointe, the wipers kicking on and screaking across the glass.
First Dana, and now Lindy.
At least one, maybe two killers.
She wanted answers, needed them, in the same way an addict needed her next fix. It left her wired.
This was how it was with her.
Whenever things felt unsettled, a good night’s sleep was impossible. Maggie wasn’t sure if it was the whisper of those murdered that kept her awake, or her gut as it tried to alert her to things awry.
Unlike some of her fellow detectives in Major Case who quite happily left their work at the office, Maggie had never been able to fully detach. Casework distracted her, even when she knew she should be concentrating on her life outside the workplace.
Steve had tried several times to counsel her out of the habit, to reprogram her brain waves. His claim was that less was often more, and her being able to step away for a while would lead to a fresh-eyes approach. But she couldn’t change how she worked, the same way he couldn’t suddenly fall out of love with surfing. Some things were written in the DNA.
Her science-minded father had always maintained that “a photon is both a particle and a wave. Remove either one and you take away both. Like it or lump it, it is what it is, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”
She turned into Chase Road, her foot hard on the gas. The Mustang roared, eating up the asphalt like a panther stretching its legs.
Truly, the last thing she had expected to find in Dana’s car was Lindy’s body. How was she even going to begin to tell Ronda Munson that her daughter was dead, and in such a nightmarish fashion? Maybe she wouldn’t have to. The Sheriff’s Office had community relations people, trained to communicate with the families of victims. More than likely, the task would be taken away from her and given to someone better qualified. Someone less emotionally entangled in the case.
Still . . .
Maggie couldn’t shrug off her sense of responsibility to the girl, or to her mother.
Heavier rain began to patter the windshield. Maggie flicked the wipers fully on, the rubber blades sluicing off rainwater.
Lightning flashed, outlining towering thunderheads. Deafening rain drumming against the Mustang’s soft top.
Maggie kept her foot down.
Lindy’s murder pointed to several possibilities and several puzzling scenarios, all contributing to Maggie’s restlessness. She went through them, one by one, as she drove through the rain, the streets all but abandoned.
Possibility one: Cullen murdered Dana and then Lindy.
In this setup, Cullen had killed Dana early Saturday evening before later abducting Lindy from her home in Pine Hills while her mother was at work. Cullen had killed Lindy, hiding her body in the trunk of his wife’s car. Someone else—as yet, an unknown third party and Cullen’s accomplice—had driven Dana’s car to the Wildlife Drive dump site on Sunday evening and torched it with Lindy’s dead body inside. One killer. One aiding and abetting accomplice.
Possibility two: Cullen murdered Dana but not Lindy.
Similar to the first scenario in that Cullen killed Dana, only in this one, the mysterious third person had abducted and killed Lindy. Then, with Cullen removed from the equation, the second killer had dumped Dana’s car with Lindy’s body in the trunk. Two killers working as one.
Thunder broke across the sky, rattling the Mustang’s roof. Visibility reducing and rain bouncing off the roadway.
Both these scenarios raised further questions. But right now, Maggie was all out of answers. Of course, she could speculate, spin scenes in which Cullen and his accomplice did their dirty deeds. In her profession, speculation was a valuable tool. It acted like a mental sieve, filtering out the detritus, focusing on the important facts.
What did she know with absolute certainty?
She knew that, together with Tyler, Lindy had found Dana’s body, and that she had played the damsel in distress to Maggie and the camera. She knew that when she had confronted Tyler in his bedroom, he’d confessed that the date at the lake was “her idea,” implying that Lindy had set the whole thing up.
Did Lindy take him there knowing what they’d find?
The thought was an unnerving one. Right away, it spoke of Lindy having insider knowledge regarding Dana’s murder.
Is that what got her killed?
Did she know too much and became a liability?
It also suggested a premeditated involvement that put her alongside Cullen on the guilty pedestal.
But why would Lindy want Dana dead?
“If Dana was Lindy’s guidance counselor,” Maggie said out loud, “that’s their primary connection. Best to start there.”
Everybody had secrets, Maggie knew. Secrets that nobody wanted the world to know about. Secrets that might bring shame, or ridicule, or even retribution.
Did Dana hit a raw nerve in one of Lindy’s counseling sessions, uncovering a secret that put her life in jeopardy?
In not so many words, Ronda Munson had suggested that, when it came to sexual relationships, her daughter was licentious. In other words, she slept around. One of those popular girls who used her body to control the boys. Maggie remembered several of the girls she’d known when she was at school behaving similarly. In fact, Kristen, one of her closest friends in senior year, had slept with every member of the school football team, and several all at the same time. She’d said it empowered her as a woman. But Maggie knew it was all an act, set up to hide her insecurities.
“Did Dana question your promiscuity, Lindy? Is that what happened?”
It was possible that Dana had tried to reset the teen’s moral compass, and Lindy had taken exception to her interfering. She’d teamed up with Cullen to dispose of his wife. And then Cullen had brought in a third party to silence Lindy.
“Weak as station-house coffee,” Maggie said with a scoff. She tilted the rearview mirror so that she could see her own eyes. “Will you please stick to what you know? There’s no way Lindy would murder Dana over loose morals.”
Unless . . .
“You were sleeping with a teacher. Is that it, Lindy? Did Dana find out and threaten to expose you?”
It wasn’t beyond the scope of imagination. Lindy was a good-looking girl. Coming of age and bursting with youth. Dressed to kill and flirtatious, too; Maggie had witnessed it firsthand. With Lindy’s moral compass freewheeling, it was possible it had misdirected her to the bed of an older male. A predator waiting to take advantage of vulnerable girls. Dana had discovered Lindy’s indiscretion, prompting the teenager to take lethal measures to protect herself.
Did Lindy kill Dana so that she could hide an affair?
The thought was chilling, because it pointed to a cold-hearted killer who would go to any lengths to protect her wrongdoings. Add that to the fact that Tyler had told Maggie he had been instructed to bring what was, in effect, a kill kit to the lake, and suddenly Maggie could imagine Lindy playing a major role in Dana’s death.
Which led to . . .
Possibility three: Cullen didn’t kill anyone.
Instead, Lindy had killed Dana, and then, to throw the police off her scent, she’d framed Cullen for his own wife’s murder. She
’d then orchestrated the discovery of Dana’s body, using Tyler as her alibi, believing it would immediately rule her out of any other involvement.
Maggie made a mental note to find out if Lindy had had access to a handgun.
The traffic lights at the intersection with West Colonial were blazing away on red. Pink-blue lightning flooded the sky as she rolled the Mustang up to the line. The rain was torrential now, battering the bodywork and throwing the wipers into a frenzy.
Lindy killed Dana.
Maggie mulled it over as she waited for the signals to change.
It was a fascinating proposition, and if it were true, then Lindy was dangerous. But it didn’t explain everything. And it didn’t fill the gaping holes in the theory. For starters, why did Lindy insist Tyler bring the kill kit to the woods? And who killed Lindy?
The lights changed to green, and Maggie accelerated through the intersection.
She was going to get wet.
Sitting in her car, she waited for a gap in the rain that she knew would never come.
Across the street, a thick shawl of rain shrouded Dana Cullen’s picture-book cottage. Obscured behind raindrops the size of golf balls, bouncing a yard high in the street, the noise earsplitting.
Briefly, lightning crackled, turning night to day and painting details on featureless shapes. Forget the theme parks; Florida’s thunderstorms were some of the wildest rides in the state, with light shows to beat any Fourth of July fireworks.
Not for the first time, Maggie asked herself what she was doing here.
It was the middle of the night, a tropical storm tearing up the heavens. The only people out and about at this hour were those with no choice.
She had a choice.
She’d chosen this.
What was she thinking? She should have been at home with Steve, in bed and cuddling up. Of all places, she shouldn’t be here. This was madness.
But Maggie couldn’t help herself.
A twenty-year-old debt was being called in.
She put on a pair of latex gloves from the crime scene kit stowed in the glove compartment, and grabbed her flashlight. Then, with her jacket held over her head, she ran through the downpour to the back of the house.
She was soaked within seconds.
It was pitch black in the backyard, deepened by the overhanging trees. Spanish moss dripping. Warm rain drumming against the patio and kicking up the gravel. She felt her way to the back door. It was open. She let herself inside, dripping water on the floor tiles.
She shook off her coat and left it draped over a stool at the breakfast bar.
Then she stopped, reminding herself that she could turn around at any moment and never come back.
No choice.
Although the residence wasn’t designated as a crime scene per se, it had been deemed a point of interest in light of Cullen’s arrest, and a weekend judge had signed off on Forensics taking the place apart—if so doing led to a successful murder prosecution. As lead investigator, Maggie had every right to be here, even at this unconventional hour, but it didn’t stop her from feeling like an intruder.
Her flashlight projected sharp shadows across the small kitchenette and into the chintz-laden living room.
Forensics had spent most of the afternoon here, sifting through the neatly stored contents with a fine-tooth comb. Every nook and cranny inspected, including the small attic and the cramped crawl space. Techies in white coveralls turning over every rock in Cullen’s beloved alpine garden, emptying out his tool shed and removing his outdoor grill for further analysis. Every possible hiding place checked, meticulously, and luminol used to locate any possible blood trace.
Forensics had come away empty handed.
No clothes in the laundry stained with gunshot residue. No box of 9 mm bullets hidden behind the bleach bottles under the kitchen sink. No blood in the drains. Nothing to add to the incriminating items collected from the property earlier in the day.
The lack of corroborating evidence hadn’t daunted Smits one bit. Following Maggie’s interview with Cullen, Smits had decided they had enough circumstantial evidence to present to the state attorney. In his opinion, with or without a definite kill site, the burden of proof had been met, and the case against Cullen looked airtight. Formal charges could be brought.
But Maggie had clung to her doubts, unable to resist cleaving to her gut instinct.
A droplet of rainwater ran down her face, and she brushed it away.
Although Cullen was probably guilty of being a pitiful excuse for a husband, in light of Lindy’s murder, Maggie wasn’t sure that he was solely responsible for his wife’s death, or that he had even played a part in her killing at all. Right now, she couldn’t put her finger on it, but something felt amiss.
Trailing wet boot prints behind her, Maggie followed the beam of her flashlight deeper into the house.
The carry-on was still in the hall near the front door. She carried it through to the master bedroom, laying it down on the bed and unzipping it.
Forensics had already processed the luggage, but Maggie wanted to see it for herself. It was likely that the carry-on was the last thing that Dana had handled before leaving home and never coming back. Maggie’s gut had been telling her to check it from the moment she’d first laid eyes on it from Cullen’s doorstep.
She emptied the contents onto the bed.
Two changes of clothes, Lycra gym gear—including sneakers with thick white sports socks jammed deep inside—accessories, a makeup bag, toiletries, and a sealed plastic pouch containing various medications.
Dana had packed for a weekend away. Cullen was probably right: a beachside hotel with fitness facilities. A private getaway from her golf-mad hubby.
If Dana had remembered to take the carry-on with her, Maggie wondered, would they have found it tossed in the lake or crammed in the trunk of Dana’s car with Lindy?
Maggie inspected the makeup and pill bags, then prodded around the interior, looking for anything hidden away behind the red silky lining.
Why did Dana forget to take the carry-on with her?
Finally, Maggie pulled the socks out of the sneakers, raising her eyebrows at the thick rolls of crisp hundred-dollar bills stuffed into the shoes.
“Sneaky,” she said, tipping them out onto the bed.
The rolls were wrapped tight with paper currency bands. Four rolls with $2,000 written on each in black marker. Maggie was in no doubt that this was the same $8,000 that Dana had withdrawn from the Wells Fargo on Friday.
“Where were you going with this much in cash?” she wondered out loud. “What was it for?”
Maggie took photos with her phone. Then she put the bank rolls to one side and packed everything else back in the carry-on.
She turned her attention to the primary reason for her coming back here at stupid o’clock: Dana’s notebook.
It was still in the dresser where Maggie had left it.
She sat down on the corner of the bed, opening the notebook, straightaway the flashlight picking out the word Helga written on the Polaroid photo tucked inside the front cover.
Maggie’s stomach tightened.
She hurried past it, wanting to know what the rest of the book contained.
Mostly, poetry and personal observations, by the looks of it. Poems tackling segregation and subjugation, a feminist roster. Views on antiestablishmentarianism and nihilism, all very dark and dismal. Personal accounts of activities at school and after.
Dates in the top right corners, going back twenty years, to the start of their senior year.
These were Rita’s thoughts.
Obsessively, Maggie kept turning pages, occasionally pausing to read a verse or two, marveling at the complexity of the writing and the way that Rita was able to express herself with such clarity. Although Maggie could take or leave poetry, she appreciated the word wizardry involved.
Something was pushing open the pages in the middle of the notebook.
Maggie flicked through
to it, her fingers finding a small white envelope that was being used as a bookmark. It looked old, its edges yellowed and worn, the flap tucked in at the back, and a recipient’s details written in red pencil on the front.
Lightning flashed, lighting up the bedroom, and thunder roared, vibrating in her chest as a chill rose in Maggie’s belly.
The name and address on the envelope were hers.
The address corresponded to her home on Wineberry, and at first Maggie was unable to explain it.
A decade ago, when she’d made the decision to buy the family home from her divorcing parents, it had been met with negativity from both of Maggie’s siblings. Up until then, Maggie had rented an apartment in the city, but she’d never considered it permanent, or homey. Not like the four-bed, three-bath house on Wineberry, with its rich Novak history and its roots reaching all the way down to the fossil record.
Nora had told her it was a bad idea, Maggie buying the house, and that the family needed a clean break after years of parental squabbling. If that meant selling the house to strangers, then so be it. And Bryan had simply told her that she was being selfish as usual, and that Maggie’s opting to buy the house where they’d all been raised was her way of cheating both him and Nora out of their rightful inheritance. Of course, their fears had been unfounded and misguided; Maggie had insisted on paying top dollar for the property, with every penny of the profits being split equally between their warring parents. How their mom and dad then chose to distribute their share of the estate to the three children somewhere down the line was their choice, not Maggie’s. But even ten years later, her ownership was still a bone of contention with Bryan especially, and he never let her forget it, arguing that due to the depressed housing market, she’d snapped it up for a song. The fact that the house had almost doubled in value since then only added fuel to his fire.
But she wasn’t for giving it up anytime soon.
What was her address doing on the envelope?
Did Dana intend to send it to her, only to be killed before she could? If so, why did it look so old? It even smelled musty. The only explanation Maggie could think of was that this was an unsent letter, dating from before the Grigoryan house fire, when Dana had been Rita.
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