Take Your Breath Away

Thirty-Seven

Andrew

It was Monday, and we all had places to be.

I’d had two calls the previous week about possible jobs, so I was going to visit the sites today and provide some estimates. Jayne, who’d briefly considered taking a mental health day, and then an actual sick day when she woke up feeling nauseated from the pregnancy, decided in the end that she was going to go into the insurance office.

Tyler, while not exactly cheery, at least did a reasonably good impression of a human being at breakfast. He was dressed as though going for a shift at Whistler’s, in black pants and a white shirt, instead of his usual hoodie and jeans.

“What gives?” Jayne asked.

“Mr. Whistler asked if I could come in today, from like eleven to two, because some people are off sick and stuff. I’ve got no classes then so I said I could whip over and do them.”

Jayne didn’t look convinced, but said, “You sure you’ve got time to get over there and back before your afternoon classes?”

“I’m sure.”

“You want me to take a break and drive you over?” Jayne asked.

“Or I could,” I said.

Tyler had his bike, but school was in Stratford, and Whistler’s was across the bridge in Milford.

“I can do it,” he said. “Unless it rains. If it rains, can I call one of you guys?”

We both nodded.

I was, at some point today, going to try to learn what sort of arrangements were being made for Elizabeth McBain. Would I be welcome at any possible service? If not, should I at least send flowers to the funeral home? I was thinking I’d get back to Diedre later, given that she was the one who’d let me know Elizabeth had died.

Jayne was the first to leave for work. She got in her car at half-past eight, about two minutes before Tyler hopped on his bike and went tearing down the street, headed for school. I was settling in behind the wheel of the Explorer when I noticed, in the mirror, a vehicle stopping at the end of the driveway, blocking my way.

Shit, I figured. Detective Hardy again.

Except it wasn’t, unless Hardy had traded in her unmarked cruiser for a pickup truck. In my oversized door mirror I could see Greg behind the wheel. I was going to get out, but he bailed from his truck first and came up to my door.

I powered down the window.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said, resting his elbow on the sill, one of his personally rolled French cigarettes dangling between his lips. It was down to about a quarter of an inch and appeared to have gone out.

“Thought I’d swing by on my way to work and apologize for coming by last night,” he said, resting his arms on the door sill, his face partway into my car.

“For what?” I said.

He laughed. “I feel a little foolish, is all. I’d been talking for a while with Julie about whether I should ask you about teaming up again, you know. Finally, she says, I’m sick of hearing about this, why don’t you go and ask him? No way, I says. It’s late. So what, she says, get your ass over there and ask him. So, I did.”

“Sounds like Julie might be the best thing that’s happened to you in a while.”

“Yeah, that’s true. I did kind of put you on the spot.”

“I said I’d think about it. But for what it’s worth, Jayne thinks I should go for it.”

Greg looked impressed. “Well, nice to have her on my side.”

“Look,” I said, “I wanted to talk to you about something you said the other day. About when you came to see me, when I was at my worst. You know.”

“Yeah, what?”

“That part about me saying that it was all my fault. About Brie.”

“Don’t worry, man. I’ve never said a word about it.”

“That’s not — no, that’s not what I mean. I just wanted to say, that doesn’t have to mean what you might have thought.”

Greg shook his head. “You don’t have to explain.”

“No, I think I do. I can believe I might have said something like that. I mean, Brie and I had our troubles, and a lot of them were my fault. I think it’s more likely that’s what I meant.”

Greg nodded confidently. “I hear ya.”

“I’m serious. I think that’s what it was.”

“Then let’s consider it case closed,” Greg said. “We don’t ever have to mention it again.”

He smiled, and the butt that had been dangling from his lower lip dropped into my car, landing somewhere on the floor mat. I don’t think Greg noticed, and I pretended not to.

“Anyway,” he said, “I’m off. Gotta grab some donuts on the way to the mall. Want to keep the squatters on my good side.”

He gave me a thumbs-up, took his elbows off the door, and headed back to his truck.

My first stop was a waterfront home, worth a cool two mill easy. The owners wanted to build a large walkout from the back of the house, where they’d have a nice view of New Haven Harbor. I’d brought along an iPad and showed them a few pics of what they might want to consider, then took some measurements so that I could better prepare an estimate. Right off the top of my head, I was thinking twenty-five thousand to do the job, which after materials would allow me to clear a good six or seven grand. Of course, once you got started on a project, the client always started adding things. Hey, what if we put in a firepit over here? What about some overhanging beams we could let vines grow on? You just had to make it clear that there was an upcharge for everything. Once they saw the potential in a project, they usually went along with the extra cost.

I had a second stop planned for the afternoon, up in Orange. A young couple with a six-month-old was considering bumping out the back of the house to make a new baby’s room. The husband was the one who’d taken a leave from work to look after the kid, and his wife, a corporate lawyer, had the flow, and wanted to be there when I scoped out the job, so I wasn’t due there until five.

So I went home for lunch.

There were the makings for a decent sandwich in the fridge. Sliced ham and oven-roasted turkey from the deli counter at Whistler’s. (We figured, if the owner was good enough to hire Tyler, we should buy our groceries there.) I found some sliced cheddar in the fridge and half a loaf of whole-wheat in the cupboard. I took three slices of ham, three of turkey, two of cheese, and made the thickest honkin’ sandwich this kitchen had ever seen.

Washed it down with a beer.

I was killing off the last of the Sam Adams when I heard a car out front. I went to the window, saw it wasn’t a car but one of those huge GM SUVs. A black Chevy Suburban. So far as I knew, the cops didn’t use Suburbans, although they were often the vehicle of choice for big-time government law enforcement types.

Maybe the CIA was paying me a visit. I mean, was that any crazier than some of the other shit that had happened lately?

But the guy getting out didn’t look like someone who’d been sent from Washington to talk to me. He was about five-eight, pushing two hundred and twenty pounds, judging by the slight paunch hanging over his belt. He was in jeans and a button-down-collar work shirt, and he had a red ball cap on I thought might be a political statement in favor of a former president, but it had no message on the front. Not even a logo for a tractor or a sports team.

I came out the front door as he was walking up the driveway.

“Help you?” I asked.

He smiled. “Would you be Andrew Carville?”

“I would.”

“Glad I caught you while you were home. Kinda took a chance on it since I was passing by this way.”

“What can I help you with?”

“I hear you do renos, additions, that kind of thing.”

“You heard right,” I said.

“So, I’ve got this place up Wheelers Farm Road. You know it?”

“I do.”

“Got a house up there. Not the one I live in, but I rent it out. Kind of an investment place. Anyway, had a tenant lived there for a few years and he just moved out and he left the place kind of in a mess. Holes in the drywall, a busted door. Couple of windows need replacing. Bunch of little things, and maybe I made a mistake getting a place like that when I’m not all that handy, but it needs some loving attention before I can even think about renting it to anyone else.”

It didn’t sound like the kind of job I’d enjoy doing. Of course, money’s money. But if the morning project came through, and this other afternoon prospect looked promising, this was something I wouldn’t mind giving a wave. Then again, if I got neither of them, I’d be a fool to have turned this down.

“How’d you hear about me?” I asked.

“Someone you did a job for in West Haven gave me your name.”

“I built a two-car garage for a guy there last year. Wanted a place to park a couple of old, original Minis. That the guy?”

“I think that was it,” he said.

That would make sense. Only more recent customers would know me by my new last name.

“So this house of yours,” I said. “I could take a run up there tomorrow, or later in the week.”

“You think,” he said, looking hopeful, “you could take a look at it any sooner? Like today? The reason I ask is, there’s one or two places where the water’s getting in, doing damage to one of the interior walls. This asshole I was renting to never bothered to mention it to me and I kind of want to get a jump on at least that before it starts raining later in the week and the damage spreads.”

“I don’t—”

“If you could do it now, you could follow me,” he said.

It wouldn’t take that long to drive up to Wheelers Farm Road. I did have time to kill before heading over to do that other estimate in Orange.

“What the hell,” I said. “I guess I could have a look.”

“Oh, that’s great,” he said, smiling.

“I don’t think I got your name,” I said.

“Oh shit, yeah,” he said, smiling and extending a hand. “My name’s Matt. Matt Beekman.”

Thirty-Eight

Tyler had gotten home in time the night before, but that didn’t mean that he and his friend Cam hadn’t gotten into some trouble.

Cam had brought some weed, and while Tyler wanted to partake, he was too worried that he wouldn’t be able to get the stink off him before he got home. His sister was like a fucking sniffer dog, he said. He’d no sooner be in the door than she’d know something was up.

So they’d decided against that and had a couple of beers instead before they wandered over to a town house development and slashed a few tires. Cam had an honest-to-God switchblade that his older brother had given him. Flicked the switch and a five-inch blade popped out.

“Holy shit,” Tyler had said. “Aren’t those illegal?”

“Yeah, well, so is slashing tires,” Cam had said.

They slashed tires on maybe a dozen cars, never more than one tire per vehicle. “Spread the joy,” Cam had said.

It was something to do.

When they were done, Tyler felt nothing. No sense of excitement, no thrills. Maybe, just maybe, some regret. He kept hearing the words second chance in his head. He was thinking there might be better ways to spend his evening. And he had to admit he probably wouldn’t be doing any of this shit if it hadn’t been for making friends with Cam. He also worked at Whistler’s Market, and it was when their shifts overlapped that Tyler got to know him. Cam showed him how you could swipe the odd six-pack of Budweiser or a package of Twinkies without old man Whistler ever knowing a thing about it. After all, when you were in charge of unpacking the deliveries and stocking the shelves, you had first dibs on the stuff you wanted.

“Doesn’t that also mean you’re the first person Whistler’s gonna look at?” Tyler asked.

“Well, I guess,” Cam said.

Cam could be thick as a plank sometimes. And one thing Tyler had made a point not to do was steal from the store. He was willing to admit he’d done some stupid shit, but he wasn’t that stupid.

He actually liked this job. At first, when his sister said she wanted him to get a part-time gig so that he could make a contribution to the household — nothing major, the gesture more symbolic than anything — he found that Whistler’s, across the river in Milford, was hiring. He went in and interviewed with the boss, who said he needed someone who could do anything and everything around the store. Unpack the deliveries and keep the shelves stocked, help customers get their bags to their cars, round up carts that were scattered all over the parking lot, maybe even start working the deli counter at some point.

Didn’t sound like rocket science to Tyler.

He also liked the other people, other than Cam, who worked there. He especially liked two of the women who worked the checkouts. There was Mattie, young and heavyset, and Francine, who’d been working at the store for nearly two decades, since she was in her early forties. Francine’s favorite phrase, regardless of how well the day was going, was, “What a shit show.”

What really got Francine going was when shoppers put all their groceries on the rubber conveyor belt, only a couple of items left to scan, and then they’d remember the one thing they forgot and run off, disappearing down an aisle, while other people waited in line with full carts. That’s when Francine would turn to Tyler, roll her eyes, and whisper, “Fuckin’ loon.”

Mattie’s pet peeve was the little old ladies who didn’t use credit cards, and not only paid in cash, but waited until they were told what they owed, and only then brought up their purse, slowly opened it, found their wallet, and, in a bid to use up spare change, counted out what they owed to the penny. So if the bill came to $40.83, they would count out those eight-three cents in nickels, dimes, quarters, and pennies.

The other day, when this happened with Mrs. Hemsworth, a regular, Mattie said to Tyler, who had helped the woman with her bags, “I just had my entire period while she was figuring that out.”

So when Whistler said he was short-staffed on Monday, Tyler said he could come in. His classes were split apart that day. One in the morning, couple late in the afternoon. He could cover just before, during, and after lunch. The truth was, even if he’d had classes in the middle of the day, he’d probably have skipped them. Tyler would rather make some money than sit in some boring classroom listening — or not — to somebody drone on about the Emancipation Proclamation, like anybody cared about that anymore. History, Tyler thought, was so over.

So he hopped on his ten-speed and got to Whistler’s shortly before eleven, and was immediately put to work in the produce section, tidying up the romaine heads, which were supposed to be arranged neatly, but which several customers had moved all over the fucking place looking for just the right ones that didn’t have any hints of brown on the outer leaves.

That was when he first saw her.

She was choosing a bunch of bananas. Didn’t want any that were already ripe, but didn’t want a bunch that were really green. She found a bunch that was in between and put it in her cart.

It’s her, Tyler thought.

It was the woman whose face he had seen on that detective’s phone. Granted, that had not been the best shot, but then Tyler had done some online research and found photos of Brie Mason, and this very picky banana shopper sure as fuck looked like her.

Tyler finished his orderly stacking of the romaine lettuce and decided to try to get a better look at this woman. Sure, it might be her, but it probably wasn’t her. But he had to be sure. She moved on from the fruit section, disappeared around the end of an aisle. Tyler figured he would enter the aisle from the other end, get a better look at her face.

There she was, pushing her cart, checking out jams and spreads and peanut butter. Tyler walked halfway down the aisle, busied himself rearranging cans, moving things to the front edge of the shelf. He figured, in his Whistler uniform of white shirt and black pants, she wouldn’t pay any attention to him.

She was getting so close she was going to hit him with her cart if he didn’t move out of the way or she didn’t swing around him.

“Sorry,” he said, flashing her a smile and stepping back. “Right in the way, aren’t I?”

She returned the smile. “That’s okay. How are you today?”

“Oh, you know, another day livin’ the dream.”

That made her laugh. “I’ll just bet,” she said, and pushed her cart past him.

No point in stalking her any further. Tyler wasn’t going to get a better look at her than he already had. It sure could be her. But then again, it might not. What was he supposed to do? Come out and ask her: “Could I help you with your bags, and by the way, are you the lady who went missing six years ago that everyone thinks is dead?”

That definitely did not feel like the right way to go.

Should he call his sister? Call Jayne and tell her he was pretty sure he was looking at her boyfriend’s missing wife? Get her to run out of her office and drive over here in a panic, only to find out that it was a simple case of mistaken identity.

He’d need to know more before he did anything like that.

Tyler kept tabs on her from a distance, until she headed for the line of checkouts. Watched her unload her cart onto the conveyor belt. Francine grabbing each item and waving it over the scanner, hearing the distinctive beep, beep, beep.

When the woman had put her bagged purchases into her cart and was wheeling it toward the exit, Tyler approached Francine.

“Hey,” he said.

“What’s up, Ty?” she said.

“That lady, I think I know her from somewhere. Who is she?”

Francine shrugged. “She’s in here every once in a while.”

“Can you look at her credit card receipt or something and see what her name is?”

“She paid cash.”

“Shit,” Tyler said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Then again, what good would a name be? He figured, if that really was Brie Mason, and she’d been hiding out for more than half a decade, she was hardly going to have a charge card in her own name.

Duh.

And in that moment, he had a theory:

Witness relocation.

Yeah, he thought. Andrew’s wife had testified against the mob and the FBI had to create a new identity for her! Andrew never knew his wife had had any connection to organized crime and didn’t even know the feds had created a new life for her!

God, he was a genius.

Except. Hang on. If you were going to give Brie a new name and a new life, wouldn’t you think it was a good idea to move her out of Milford?

So, maybe he wasn’t a genius.

And maybe that wasn’t Brie. He decided it was time to get back to the produce section and—

No fuckin’ way.

Tyler was looking out the window to the parking lot. There was the lady, putting all her groceries into the back of a station wagon.

A black station wagon. A black Volvo station wagon. Just like the one in the photo on the detective’s phone.

She loaded up the back of the vehicle, closed the tailgate, and wheeled her cart into a nearby collection station. Tyler watched, open-mouthed, wondering what he should do.

He needed to know who she was. He needed to talk to her.

For his sister. For Jayne. So she could sort out, once and for all, what was going on with Andrew.

Tyler started running for the door. He had to dodge around some other customers wheeling carts toward the exit, and, when he reached it himself, had to hit the brakes while he waited for the glass door to swing open.

As he ran out into the lot, the Volvo was backing out of its spot.

“Hey!” Tyler shouted. “HEY!”

But Tyler was a good five car lengths away, and the windows were up on the woman’s car. There was no way she could hear him. The Volvo’s brake lights flashed for a second as she shifted from reverse to drive. Then she put her foot on the gas, heading for the road that ran past Whistler’s.

“Wait!” Tyler cried, hoping she might see him waving in her rearview mirror.

But she didn’t. She steered her car onto the street and drove off.

Tyler changed direction, hand already in his pocket looking for a key, and ran into the alley beside the store, where he kept his bike chained to a rack. He quickly used the key to remove the chain, tossed it to the ground, hopped on the bike, and shot back out of the alley, nearly colliding with a Honda Civic.

As he hit the street, he caught a glimpse of the black Volvo, stopped at the bottom of the hill at a red light.

Yes.

He pumped those bike pedals like he was the devil himself.

Thirty-Nine

Andrew

At least this Matt guy wasn’t one of those assholes who tries to lose you at the same time as he wants you to follow him. I’ve known guys like that. They say, “I’ll lead the way,” then run through yellow lights and get several cars ahead and you have ask yourself, what the hell are they doing?

But Matt took it easy, always glancing in his mirror to make sure he hadn’t lost me. The drive gave me more time, not that I really needed it, to continue mulling over the events of the past couple of days, and further back than that.

About a year after Brie vanished, I received a message from a Milford resident vacationing in Spain who said he was sure he had seen Brie on a street in Madrid. This traveler was a friend of a friend of mine, which was how the message found its way to me. There was no picture, no real details of any kind. I followed the story in the news, his forwarded email read, and when I saw this person I thought it might be her. Just wanted to help.

Yeah, well, thanks for that solid tip. What the fuck was I supposed to do with that?

There was a handful of letters in the mail. One lady wrote to say she had been told by God that Brie was working as a Russian spy for Putin, and had been called back to report on her mission. Clearly, Putin had been hard at work trying to get all of Milford’s darkest and deepest secrets. A detective from Washington State offered his services, saying he had a solid record of tracking down missing persons. An Internet search produced not one story to support his claim.

I’d heard from a psychic, too. Some local woman, said she’d had a vision about what had happened to Brie, and was willing to share it with me for five hundred bucks. I did some checking, learned she had run this kind of game before in Milford, then moved away to San Francisco for a while. I told her if her vision was so convincing, go sell it to Detective Hardy.

It was the last I heard of her.

Maybe the way I so quickly dismissed these so-called offers of assistance comes across as disinterest on my part, or, as Detective Hardy seemed to believe, evidence that I already knew Brie’s fate and therefore couldn’t be bothered to follow up on any of them.

I viewed it differently. I had what I believed was a reasonably efficient bullshit detector.

And, while I had to admit Saturday’s events were not as easy to toss off as those other developments, I was skeptical. I thought back to what Greg had said to me later on Saturday, that he thought Hardy was setting some kind of a trap for me. It seemed like a wild theory at the time, but in the absence of any other explanation, I wondered whether he was on to something.

Before long, I was on Wheelers Farm Road, and Matt had put his left blinker on.

We’d passed a mix of houses, some small but others large, estate-like, most set well back from the tree-lined road. I was figuring it would be one of these, but the lane that Matt turned into led right into the forest, with no structure in sight.

The road in was not paved, but two hard-packed stone tracks with a strip of grass growing between them. Granted, some of the places along this stretch of road were secluded, with lots of trees between home and road. The trees not only offered privacy, but acted as a sound barrier. The lane widened up ahead for a short stretch, enough space for two vehicles to pass, and Matt pulled over as far to the right as he could, then stuck an arm out the window and waved me ahead.

I drove the Explorer alongside his truck, pulled ahead, and stopped. Was I supposed to turn off the engine and get out, or was I about to get more directions? I glanced back and saw Matt was getting out of his vehicle.

It seemed a strange place to stop. We were still swallowed up by trees, and if there was a house nearby, I couldn’t see it.

I put the Explorer in park, undid my seat belt, and opened the door. As I was stepping out, Matt was approaching. He was holding his right arm tight to his side, and I couldn’t see his hand.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“We have to walk in from here,” he said, then pointed with his left hand over my shoulder. “The access is washed out just ahead. That’s another thing I got to get sorted out before I can rent this place out again. You do that kind of work, too, or know anybody who does?”

“No, and yes,” I said.

I turned to see where he was pointing. The road looked okay as far as I could see. He might have mentioned this when we first talked, that this was going to be a job site with access problems. I wasn’t going to be hauling my tools and supplies all the way from here to some house I couldn’t even see. I’d probably need to hire an extra guy just to lug everything around so I wasn’t dead-tired before I’d even started.

I swung around to express my concerns.

“I don’t think—”

That was all I managed to say before Matt whipped up this thing he had been hiding in his right hand. It looked kind of like a gun, but not like any gun I’d ever seen before. And before I could get a closer look he squeezed the trigger and a couple of wires shot out at me and suddenly the most excruciating pain I had ever felt in my entire life was surging through my body, and I hit the ground and I thought, Holy mother of God, I am fucked.

Forty

If it weren’t for traffic, and one red light after another, Tyler would have lost the black Volvo wagon.

But he was able to keep it in sight, pedaling his bicycle as hard as he could. His heart was thumping, and there was sweat forming on his brow that actually felt cool as the wind dried it off. Tyler could never remember riding his bike this quickly, or with such a sense of urgency. He had to talk to this woman.

He had to know what was going on.

About fifty yards ahead, the Volvo made a right turn. Tyler kept pedaling.

As his legs pumped, he thought about what he would say, how he would handle this. Don’t overthink it, he told himself. Just fucking ask her.

Are you Brie Mason?

That seemed simple enough. And if she said no, then the follow-up was pretty simple.

Then who the hell are you?

The Volvo, at another light, made a left turn. Tyler cut across the road, prompting a trucker to hit the horn with such a blast that Tyler thought he’d have a heart attack. He didn’t really know this part of Milford, although he saw some businesses he recognized. A Ford dealership, the Carvel ice-cream place his sister and Andrew took him to the first week he was here.

Then Tyler thought, what if she wasn’t heading home? What if she was heading for the turnpike? Maybe she didn’t live in Milford. She could live in West Haven or Orange or New Haven. Then why the fuck did she buy her groceries at Whistler? Didn’t you buy your provisions close to home? If she got on the turnpike, he’d never be able to catch her.

Then he had to get close enough to read her license plate. He hadn’t thought to look at it when he was running after her in the grocery store parking lot. And now that she was on city streets he couldn’t get close enough to see it clearly. If he could close the distance, at least read and memorize the plate, so what if she got on the turnpike? He could tell Jayne the plate number and let her take it from there.

Hang on.

Tyler thought he was about to catch a break. The Volvo’s turn signal came on. It was heading for a residential street — the sign said Rosemont — with a dead end sign posted at the corner. So there was no way out. The chase was over. A dead-end street was definitely not going to lead to the turnpike.

The black Volvo made the turn, clipped along down the street, and slowed as it neared the end. The blinker went on again and it turned into the driveway of a small one-story house, the very last one on the right side.

Tyler was only half a dozen houses away. He stopped pedaling and allowed himself to coast for a few seconds. He was going to need a moment to catch his breath before he could say a single word to this lady.

He wheeled into the driveway and hopped off the bike while it was still in motion. It skittered across the asphalt on its side and the forward momentum carried Tyler a few steps on his feet. He put out his hands to brace himself, and they slapped into the Volvo’s tailgate window at the moment the woman was getting out of the car.

Her eyes went wide. “Oh my!” she said.

Now Tyler was bending over, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. The woman’s brief expression of panic turned to something closer to wonder when she realized who it was.

“Oh my!” she said again. “You’re from Whistler’s! Did I forget something?”

Tyler was still panting. He couldn’t get the words out.

“Did you really chase me all that way?” she asked, taking a step in his direction. She was smiling now, almost laughing. “Did I drop my wallet or something?”

Tyler, still winded, shook his head. “Not... wallet.”

“What, then?” She glanced over at his bicycle. “I hope you haven’t wrecked your bike.” She went over to it, grabbed it by the handlebars, and stood it up on its two wheels. “Looks okay.” She studied the underside of the bike, as though looking for something. “I guess bikes don’t have kickstands anymore.” So she gently set the bike back on the ground on its side.

She gave Tyler another smile and came around to the back of the car and swung open the tailgate. She scanned her groceries and said, “Everything seems to be here.”

Tyler said, finally, “Who are you?” And then thought, that was going to be his second question.

The woman froze for half a second, then slowly turned around. “Excuse me?”

“Are you her? Are you Brie? Are you Brie Mason?”

Forty-One

Andrew

During the time that I was on the ground and incapacitated from the Taser — and I didn’t have to be a weaponry expert to figure out that was what I’d been shot with — Matt rolled me onto my stomach, pulled my arms around behind me, and cinched a set of plastic handcuffs around my wrists.

The Taser shot had paralyzed me for several seconds, maybe as long as a minute, and while my mind was telling my body to fight him off, my limbs were not getting the message. While I lay there, wrists bound, Matt went back to his truck, opened the driver’s door, rummaged around for something, and quickly returned.

This time, in his right hand was a real gun, not a Taser. A Glock, it looked like, although guns were not my area of expertise. Whatever it was, it scared the shit out of me. In his other hand, a roll of duct tape.

He kicked me over onto my back. My bound hands dug into me, but Matt didn’t appear to be concerned about my comfort. He tucked the gun into his belt and stood over me, one leg on either side of my chest. If I’d had control over my limbs I’d have tried to kick him in the balls, but it was not to be.

He ripped off a length of duct tape, then bent over long enough to slap it over my mouth, and stepped away.

“I want you to understand something from the get-go,” he said. “Give me a moment’s trouble and you’re dead. You get that?”

I managed a nod as I shifted to my right side to take the weight off my wrists.

Matt said, “The tape’s temporary. I’m gonna explain some things and I don’t want you interrupting. And don’t think of shouting when it comes off.”

I nodded again.

“Okay,” he said, taking a step back. “Don’t go away.”

As he walked back toward his Suburban, I tried moving my various parts. He hadn’t bound my legs, and when I tried to move them, I was successful, if you can call being able to drag them across the ground like they were logs a success. And I was now able to wiggle my fingers, although for how long was anyone’s guess, given how the plastic cuffs were cutting off the blood flow.

Matt came walking back. He was holding a shovel. He pointed the blade into the ground, rested one foot on it, cupped his hands over the end of the handle, and turned it into a resting place for his chin.

“You’re gonna dig a hole.”

I listened. He stepped around me, leaving the shovel, deep enough in the dirt that it remained standing, and looked at my bound hands.

“You’re clearly a workingman. You got the hands. There’s a lot of digging, and I don’t need you whining about blisters.”

I made some noise behind the tape that sounded something like, “Why me?”

“This whole thing’s kind of a shot in the dark,” Matt said. “Hoping to confirm something for myself, and I might need help with that. That’s where you come in. Even for you, might not be easy, given all the time that’s gone by.”

He paused, gazed out into the woods, appeared thoughtful. “I hope I can find the spot. It was right close to a rock. Long as that rock’s still there, we should be okay.”

Matt turned his attention back to me. “I’ve got a reputation to maintain, you know? Word of mouth is everything, no matter what you do. So I get a call that I botched a job, that concerns me.”

I’m going to die. That’s the only way this ends.

“Get on your stomach and I’ll snip the cuffs off. Don’t try anything funny. You can take the tape off yourself.”

I rolled onto my belly, my head turned so I could catch a glimpse of him standing over me. He reached down and I heard a snip and my wrists fell apart. Matt took a quick step back as I slowly rolled onto my side, then got up onto my knees. I peeled the tape off my mouth, balled it up, and tossed it into the tall grasses by the road.

“Up you get,” he said.

I stood. There was a good ten feet between us. If I tried to rush him, I wouldn’t get halfway there before he pulled the trigger on the Glock. And let’s say I got lucky and he missed. He was still a big guy. Wrestling the weapon away from him would not be easy.

Then I thought, what if I simply turned and ran? A moving target wasn’t that easy to hit, unless Matt was a real sharpshooter. And if I ducked and weaved the whole time, I might have a chance. A slim one, but a chance.

And yet, there was a part of me that wanted to know why I was here.

“Grab the shovel,” Matt said.

I pulled it out of the ground and held it, horizontal, with both hands.

“Don’t hold it like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re some fucking gladiator getting ready to take a swing. Hold it with one hand.”

Hanging on to it with one hand, I let the shovel swing earthward. “How’s that?” I asked.

Matt fixed his eyes on me and didn’t say anything. We had a little staring contest for about five seconds before I said, “You killed my wife.”

Matt said, “I thought so.”

I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

He pointed his thumb at the woods. “Let’s go, pardner.”

Forty-Two

The woman with the black Volvo looked shaken.

“What did you say?” she asked Tyler.

“You heard me,” he said. “Are you Brie Mason?”

“Why would you ask me that?” she said, her voice shaking.

That was when he knew for sure. The way she said it. The look in her eye.

“Jesus, it’s not a hard question,” he said, his voice cracking as well.

“No, I’m not Brie Mason. Now leave me alone.”

“If you’re not her, then who the fuck are you?”

“You can’t talk to me that way. Who the hell are you? You’re from the market. Why are you following me?”

“Because you look like her. Like from the news stories, and you’ve got the same kind of car.”

“The same kind of car as what?”

“The same kind of car that came to my sister’s boyfriend’s place. His old place.”

The woman struggled for what to say next. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police.”

“Maybe you should,” Tyler said.

She grabbed some of her bags and headed for a door at the side of the house. Tyler picked up the remaining bags.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

“I don’t want your help,” she said, her back to him. When she got to the door, she set the bags down so she could free up a hand to unlock the door. But as she inserted the key she looked at Tyler.

“I can’t talk about this,” she said. “I’m sorry if what happened upset anyone, but I just... You have to leave.”

“What are you saying?” Tyler asked. “Was it you?”

She had the door open, set the groceries inside, took the other bags from Tyler, then stepped into her house and closed the door. He heard the turn of a dead bolt.

“This isn’t over,” he said.

He walked back to his bike, hopped on it, and started pedaling away. When he was several houses away, the side door opened again and the woman took half a step out, tears in her eyes, her jaw quivering.

Tyler didn’t know what to do next. As he rode his bike back in the direction of Whistler’s, he considered his options.

He could do nothing, pretend he never even saw her, say nothing to Jayne or Andrew. But he didn’t think this was the kind of thing he could keep to himself. So maybe he could call that detective. He’d heard her name — Hardy — when he’d listened to Jayne’s conversation with her and, later, with Andrew.

Yeah, he could do that.

But Tyler didn’t much want to talk to the cops. He didn’t actually know if the police were looking for whoever knocked over those gravestones, and slashed those tires, but you didn’t exactly want to walk into a police station when you’d been doing stupid shit like that. What if someone had actually seen them? What if there were descriptions out there of him and Cam?

There. That’s what he’d do. He’d call Cam.

Cam was his only real friend in Stratford or Milford, the only one he could talk to. When they’d been out last night, he’d told him all about what had been going on at his place. The visit from the cop, all the stuff about Andrew’s wife going missing. So Cam knew the backstory. He’d be as good as anybody to talk to about this, even if he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the marquee.

Another thing he knew for sure. He wasn’t going back to Whistler’s to finish his shift, and he was not going back to school.

And having made that decision, he made one more, which was to hop off his bike because he thought he was going to be sick. He wheeled off the road into a small park. Benches, a little creek that ran through the heart of it, even a few swans swimming about.

He let the bike fall to the grass and knelt over, hands on his knees. He didn’t know whether his queasiness was from the bike-riding — he’d had no lunch yet and was feeling woozy — or plain old stress. Tyler felt his stomach roll over a couple of times, but nothing was coming up. He stood, one hand on the back of a nearby bench.

His phone dinged. He took it from his pocket, saw that it was from Mr. Whistler.

What should he say? Quickly he tapped a reply:

Hit send.

Seconds later: OK. Take care of yourself.

Now Tyler had a text of his own he wanted to send. He brought up Cam’s number and tapped out with his thumb:

Cam was probably in class, but he’d feel the vibration in his pocket even if his phone was muted. He’d sneak a look, then tell the teacher he had to go to the bathroom.

Sure enough, three minutes later Tyler’s phone rang.

“What’s up?” Cam asked.

As quickly as he could, Tyler laid it out for him. That he’d seen this woman who might be Andrew’s wife. That he followed her home, but she refused to talk to him.

“What should I do?” Tyler said.

“That’s easy,” Cam said. “You go back and bang on that door until she answers and you find out what’s going on. You’ve got a right to know. Don’t be a pussy.”

Well, there you had it.

He ended the call, took another moment to prepare himself mentally for what might be an unpleasant conversation, then hopped on his bike and started pedaling back to that woman’s house. He was worried she might not even be there. She could have put away her groceries and gone out to run another errand or gone to work. Almost forty minutes had passed since he’d left her house.

But as he rounded the corner on Rosemont and headed down her street, he saw that her car was still there. Tyler set his bike on the lawn and went to the side door. There wasn’t a doorbell, so he rapped on it, hard.

“Hey!” he said. “I still want to talk to you!”

No response.

There were two small windows set high on the door and he peered into them, using his left hand as a visor. If he spotted her, he’d bang on the glass. He wasn’t leaving here until he got some answers.

As he was pressed up against the door, his right hand resting on the handle, he decided to give it a try, see if she’d unlocked it after he’d left.

It opened.

Fuck it, he thought. I’m going in.

Gifford Hunt, who lived in the house next door to the woman with the black Volvo, was coming out his front door at twenty-one minutes after one when he heard the shouting.

He’d just hit the remote to pop the trunk of his Buick because he was going to head to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls. Hunt, in his late sixties and retired from his traffic-light maintenance job with the city, kept his golf clubs in the trunk and liked to practice his swing when he wasn’t actually heading out to the course.

The shouting — it sounded like a male, repeating, “Shit! Shit! Oh shit!” several times — was followed seconds later by the sight of a young man, his hands bloodied, running from the house and hopping onto a bicycle.

Hunt watched, briefly stupefied, but then quickly thought to reach for his phone. He managed to capture several images of the man before he reached the end of the street and disappeared.

Now Hunt looked at his neighbor’s house. He crossed the lawn and walked down the side of the house to the door. He opened it and called inside.

“Candace?” he said. “You okay in there?”

Hunt, his hand shaking, pushed the door open farther and stepped tentatively into the house. He went up two steps and into the kitchen.

“Oh, sweet mother of God,” he said.

Forty-Three

Andrew

We’d trekked far enough into the woods that when I looked back, I could no longer see my Explorer or Matt’s Suburban. It wasn’t that they were specks in the distance. We had walked down into a small valley, then up again to the other side, and by that point had lost sight of the road we’d driven in on.

I stayed in the lead, as per Matt’s instructions. He was my guide, from behind.

“That way,” he’d say, and point. “Okay, over a little to the right. That’s it.”

After we’d been walking about five minutes, I spotted a large boulder ahead of us. A huge rock, about the size of a refrigerator, was sitting there amid the trees, as though it had been dropped from space.

“This is the spot,” Matt said. “Right around here. Go stand by the rock.”

I did as I was told, turning around and propping myself up on it. I still had the shovel in my hands. Matt stood about thirty feet away, looking at the ground, then at the rock, then back at the ground, one finger up in the air, as though testing to see which way the wind was blowing. He was six years in the past, trying to remember where, exactly, he’d done it.

He ran one work boot back and forth across the ground, brushing leaves and other debris out of the way.

“Was thinking there might still be a depression or something from the hole,” he said, “but I’m not seeing it. But I’m pretty sure it was right here. About ten paces from the rock, right in line with that birch tree over there.”

He made an X in the leaves with his foot. “Start there,” he said, then backed away to be out of range, should I decide to take a swing at him with the shovel.

I stepped forward, rested the tip of the blade on the ground, got my right foot on top, and pushed down. I turned over one small pile of dirt.

“Why’d you do it?” I asked. “Why Brie? Who are you? How did you know Brie?”

I’d spent the last ten minutes or so wracking my brain, trying to remember where I might have met this man before. Nothing about him was familiar. Nothing jumped out at me. But that didn’t mean Brie couldn’t have known him. Had there been something in Brie’s past, something she’d never told me about, that might have prompted someone — this man — to hunt her down and kill her? Did she have dark secrets she’d kept from me, just as I’d kept some from Jayne?

“Never met her before,” he said. “Didn’t know her.”

When he said that, I wondered whether Matt was some crazy serial killer, picking his victims at random. Maybe he’d seen Brie at the mall, on the street somewhere, and there was something about her, the way she looked, that triggered something in this guy. And he’d decided: She’s next.

“So you just saw her and thought, I’m going to kill her,” I said as I drove the shovel into the ground again. I was starting to make a pile of dirt to the right of the hole.

“You think I’m a psycho?” Matt asked. “That what you’re calling me?”

“I’m looking for a reason.” I continued to dig.

“It’s called working for a living,” he said.

“You were... hired?” I stopped shoveling, shook my head. “Someone paid you to kill my wife?”

Matt made a fist and raised a thumb. “Way to go, Sherlock.”

The enormity — the reality — of what was actually happening here didn’t quite hit me until that moment.

I was digging up my wife’s grave.

“You buried her here,” I said.

“I buried somebody here,” he said. “Question is, is she still there? If she’s not, that’s a problem. And if it’s not who it was supposed to be, that’s a problem, too.”

This was all starting to feel like a dream, or, more accurately, a nightmare. This could not be happening. I was not here. I was not digging this hole.

“Thought she was dead when I put her in, and even if she wasn’t, the dirt should have smothered her.” Matt seemed to be talking more to himself than to me. “Can’t imagine her digging her way out. Be like some kind of Stephen King movie.” He focused on me. “You one of the ones that spotted her?”

The recent sightings of Brie. He’d clearly been informed.

“No,” I said. “But I heard from others who did.”

Matt’s head drifted slowly from side to side. “Makes no fucking sense.”

What do you know? Something we could agree on.

I had to try and keep my head clear. Inside, I was shaking, and if I hadn’t been holding that shovel, my hands would have been trembling, too. My stomach was rising up into my throat, and it was taking everything I had not to double over and vomit.

“Who hired you to kill my wife?”

Matt shook his head.

But I persisted. “What’d she do? Why would anyone want her dead?”

He continued to shake his head. “Dig.”

I tossed a few more shovelfuls of dirt before pausing to ask, “How far?”

“You should hit something about a foot down.”

“You’re scared she somehow dug her way out,” I said.

Matt bristled at the word. “I’m not fucking scared.”

“Could have fooled me,” I said. “You’re scared she won’t be here. Who told you about the sightings?”

Another head shake.

I tried to recall all the people who had seen the woman who was, or was not, Brie. There was Max, and maybe the people who lived in the new house next to him. There was Albert and Isabel, and her husband Norman. And, finally, Elizabeth.

I forced the shovel down into the dirt, but with less force than I could have. It wasn’t that I was trying to buy time, although that was part of it. I was afraid of what I might hit, and how hard I might hit it. Like driving the shovel blade into what might be left of Brie would somehow do her greater injury.

“Gotta take a piss,” Matt said.

Would this be my chance? Was Matt going to disappear behind a tree long enough to empty his bladder?

Evidently not. He transferred the gun to his left hand, evidently more skilled at pulling down his zipper and digging out his dick with his right. The stream landed about four feet from where I had been digging, his piss soaking into what might be the foot of my wife’s grave.

I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my entire life.

Matt shook, then zipped back up. “Did I ask you to stop?”

“So let’s say we find her remains,” I said. “We’re done? You could have come out here alone and dug her up.”

“I need you to tell me if it’s her.”

I almost laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Maybe there’ll be something,” Matt said, still training his gun on me. “Like, maybe she had a filling in one of her teeth. Something like that you’d recognize. She was your wife. Who’d know better than you?”

I had created a hole a foot and a half wide, two feet long, and more than a foot deep. I hadn’t encountered anything but dirt. I took a step back so that Matt could give the hole a cursory inspection.

“Hmm,” he said.

Now my mind was considering the unimaginable: that Brie really had been buried alive, and somehow escaped. But if that was really what had happened, why had she gone into hiding for six years and suddenly reappeared Saturday?

“Hmm,” he said again.

I cleared my throat. “Maybe you got the wrong spot.”

Matt rubbed his chin. He looked to the rock, back to where I’d dug, then back to the rock again.

He pointed at the ground about two feet over from where I’d been digging.

“Try there,” he said.

Forty-Four

Yellow police tape surrounded the property at the end of Rosemont Street. Two Milford police cars, parked up by the corner, blocked access to the street. Out front of the house were two more police cars, one unmarked.

Inside the house, wearing paper booties, her hands gloved, Detective Marissa Hardy surveyed the scene.

A woman, mid-thirties, sprawled out on the kitchen floor on her back, her eyes open and staring vacantly at the ceiling, her head haloed by a pool of blood that appeared to have stopped spreading. There were no signs of a fight. No upturned chairs, no broken plates or glasses, although Hardy did notice that the edge of the counter, above where the woman’s body lay, had been chipped.

The countertop was not done in quartz or granite, but covered with a cheap laminate. Something, presumably the back of this woman’s skull, had hit the edge. When Hardy leaned in close, she saw some blood, and a hair. She wouldn’t be surprised to find that laminate chip on the back of this woman’s head once the body was sent to the forensic center.

So maybe she’d been pushed, hit her head, then went down. The blow hard enough that it killed her.

Somebody pushed her very hard.

A uniformed officer, also wearing the slip-on booties, was standing at the entrance to the kitchen.

“The neighbor who called it in is outside,” she said.

“Okay,” Hardy said. “What’s the victim’s name?”

“Candace DiCarlo,” the officer said. “Works at a fitness center.”

“Husband?”

“Neighbor says she and her ex split up a couple of years ago. She got the house and he moved out West to Nevada, or so the neighbor says.”

“What’s his name?”

“The ex?”

“The neighbor.”

“Hunt. Gifford Hunt. Retired guy.”

“Tell him I’ll be out in a second,” Hardy said.

The officer retreated. Hardy took another couple of minutes to take in the scene before deciding to go outside. Hunt, visibly shaken, was waiting for her out front of his house.

“Mr. Hunt?” she said, removing her gloves and extending a hand. “I’m Detective Hardy.” She took his trembling hand into hers for a second. “Are you okay?”

“Kind of in shock, I guess,” he said.

“You live here, sir?” she asked.

“That’s right. My wife, she’s gone to visit our daughter for a few days in Cleveland. I’m here on my own. I called her. I hope that’s okay.”

“Sure. That’s fine.”

“I told her not to come home, but I think she’s going to anyway.” He took a breath, put his hand to his chest. “I hope I don’t have a coronary event.”

“Do you have a history of heart problems, Mr. Hunt?”

“No, no, I’m kind of a hypochondriac, is all.”

“You found Ms. DiCarlo?”

“Yes. I went to the door after I heard all this shouting and saw the man ride away on his bike.”

“What was the shouting about? Was it two people arguing?”

“No, it sounded like one person. Just profanities. Yelling, ‘Oh shit,’ several times.”

“Did you recognize this man?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Never seen him before.”

“Ms. DiCarlo lived alone?”

“Yes, that’s what I told the other officer. She and her husband got a divorce and he moved away.”

“Boyfriends?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t really pay much attention. It was only by chance that I happened to step out of the house when I did. I was on my way to the driving range. I retired a couple of years ago. I worked for the city, maintaining and servicing traffic lights. If a traffic light went out, I was the guy they called.”

“What do you know about Ms. DiCarlo?”

“We talked occasionally. She works at a fitness center. I think she used to be a personal trainer but now she’s — she was in the office, I believe. And she was involved in various things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Theater, for one. Community theater. She told me the other day they had a play coming up. She had a juicy part in it. She loved that.”

“What’s the name of this theater group?”

“The Stamford Players, I think. Sometimes, my wife and I, we’d go to their shows, to be supportive, you know. Saw her a couple of days ago, she said we should get tickets because they were in rehearsals for a new show.”

Hardy had taken out a small notebook and pen to scribble a few notes. Then, suddenly, as if a light bulb had come on over her head, she stopped writing and froze briefly.

She turned, slowly, and looked at the car sitting in the driveway of Candace DiCarlo’s home.

A black Volvo wagon.

“Mr. Hunt,” she said, “is that Ms. DiCarlo’s car? I’m assuming it is, but we haven’t actually checked.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “She’s had that for a few years.”

“Stay here,” she said.

Hardy walked over to the car, slowly circling it, careful not to touch it. She peered through the windows, looking inside, then stood in front of the car, examining the hood. She dug into her pocket for her phone, opened up the photos, and found the one she’d saved of the Volvo in the driveway from Saturday morning.

The car in the picture appeared to have a dimple in the hood, about halfway between bumper and windshield, on the passenger side.

Just like this car.

Then she examined the license plates, front and back. She noticed traces of what looked like mud on the edges, as though they’d been dirty, but someone had cleaned them off recently, at least well enough to avoid getting a ticket.

She went back over to continue her questioning of Gifford Hunt.

“Can you describe this person you saw leaving Ms. DiCarlo’s house?”

“Slight, and young. Just a teenager. Longish hair. And he had blood on his hands. I could see that. But he was riding his bike pretty fast.”

“A motorcycle?”

“No, a regular bicycle. But like I said, he was going pretty fast, so I didn’t get a long look at him. But I got a shot of him riding away.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Hunt took his phone from his pocket. “I’m not really much of a techie, and it’s not like me to think fast enough to do something like this, but I guess today I was a little more on the ball than usual.”

He opened the photo app and brought up the snippet of video. “It’s not very good,” he said apologetically. “I didn’t think to try and zoom in or anything.”

“May I?” Hardy asked, holding out her hand.

Hunt gave her his phone.

She tapped the triangular play button and watched the few seconds of the cyclist racing off down the street. She replayed it several times. Then, the final time, she paused the video and used her fingers to enlarge the image.

“I know this kid,” she whispered quietly to herself. “Where did I just see him?”

And then it hit her.

Forty-Five

When Jayne pulled her car into the driveway, the first thing she noticed was Tyler’s bicycle, abandoned on its side, on the lawn. The second thing she noticed was that the front door had been left wide open.

Tyler usually left his bike around the back of the house, hidden from view. And he knew enough to close the door when he went into the house. Something was very wrong.

She got out of her car, and as she stepped past Tyler’s bike she noticed red smudges on the handlebars. There was also blood on the handle of the front door.

“Oh God,” Jayne said as she went inside and closed the door behind her. “Tyler!” she shouted.

No answer.

She quickly went through the first floor, looking in the kitchen, stepping out onto the back deck. She went back inside, stood at the bottom of the stairs, and shouted, “Tyler, are you here!”

Still nothing.

She got out her phone and opened the app that allowed her to know her brother’s location. According to it, Tyler, or at least his phone, was here.

Racing up the steps to the second floor, phone still in hand, she went down the hall to Tyler’s room and found the door closed. It was usually left open through the day. She rapped on it lightly.

“Tyler? You in there?”

“Go away,” he said.

Jayne opened the door. Tyler was sitting on the edge of the bed, bent over, head in his hands. He looked up as his sister stepped into the room. She could see the tears on his face.

“Tyler, what’s happened?”

He shook his head, unable to speak.

“Jesus, Tyler, talk to me. There’s blood on the front door, you— Christ, are you hurt?”

As she took a step toward him he raised his arm, palm up. “Stay back,” he said.

“Just tell me if you’re hurt. Do I need to get you to a doctor? Did you have an accident with your bike?”

“I’m not hurt,” he said, lowering his arm, allowing Jayne to take a step closer.

He was looking at her, but at the same time not looking at her. He seemed to be staring right through her, as though seeing something that wasn’t there.

“Tyler, talk to me,” Jayne said. “Are you in shock?”

Jayne was still holding her phone. She brought up Andrew’s number, tapped on it, and put the phone to her ear. After five rings, it went to voice mail.

“You’ve reached Andrew Carville. Please leave a message after the beep.”

“Andrew, it’s me. Please call the second you get this. Something’s happened.” She hit the button to end the call, then set the phone on the bedside table. She sat down on the bed next to Tyler and tentatively put her arm around him.

“Whatever’s happened, you need to tell me,” she said, noticing for the first time traces of blood on his fingers. “Whatever kind of trouble you’re in, we can fix this.”

“No,” he whispered. “No.”

“Whose blood is this?” Jayne asked, lightly touching his fingers. “Is it yours... or someone else’s?”

He put his hands to his face and started to cry. It was more than a few tears. His body went into wracking heaves as he sobbed and moaned.

“Oh shit shit shit,” he said.

Jayne held him close, pulled him into her embrace. Tyler mumbled something that Jayne couldn’t make out.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Screwup,” he said. “Fucking screwup.”

“No, no, we’re going to fix this.”

“All my fault,” he said.

“What? What’s all your fault?”

He turned his head to look at her, his eyes red from weeping. “I never should have let him shovel the driveway. It was all my fault.”

Jayne blinked. “What are you...”

But she knew he was referring to their father, who dropped dead clearing snow while Tyler slept in.

“Tyler, what does that have to do with what’s happened today?”

He sniffed. “If he hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have come here to live, and none of what’s happened... what happened today isn’t my fault, but they won’t believe that. It’s because of Dad. I’m going to be punished because of Dad.”

“Tyler, I don’t understand what—”

The doorbell rang.

Even before Jayne had turned her head in the direction of the door, the ring was followed by a loud, repetitive banging.

“Stay here,” she said to Tyler, and grabbed her phone as she fled the room.

She was almost out of breath by the time she reached the front door and opened it wide to find Detective Marissa Hardy standing there. Hardy had already noticed the bloody door handle.

“Ms. Keeling,” Hardy said. “Where is your brother?”

“Tyler?” she said, noticing that there were two uniformed officers standing behind the detective and three police cars on the street in front of the house.

Hardy already appeared to have run out of patience. “Do you have another brother, Ms. Keeling?”

“What do you want with Tyler?” Jayne asked.

Hardy waved an envelope in front of Jayne’s face. “We have a warrant for his arrest. Is he here?”

Jayne couldn’t find the words.

“Are there any weapons on the premises?” Hardy asked.

“No, of course not,” Jayne said. “This is ridiculous. Tyler wouldn’t hurt—”

“You believe he’s hurt someone?” Hardy asked. “Is there a reason why you think we’re here because Tyler hurt someone?”

Jayne was, once again, speechless.

Hardy pushed past her. The two uniformed officers followed.

“Please,” Jayne said, on the edge of weeping. “Please be gentle with him.”

She couldn’t bear to see it happen. She stepped out the front door, held up her phone, and called Andrew again. But this time the call immediately went to voice mail.

“Andrew, please, please call me,” she said. “They’re taking him away. They’ve come for Tyler.”

Even though she was outside, Jayne could hear scuffling and shouting up on the second floor. Then Tyler, screaming.

“Get your fuckin’ hands off me! I didn’t do anything! I only wanted to talk to her!”

Moments later, Hardy and the two officers emerged from the house with Tyler, his wrists cuffed behind him. Tears streamed down his face.

Jayne ran after him as he was bundled into the back of one of the police cars.

“It’s going to be okay!” she shouted. “I’ll find out what’s going on! I’m going to get you out of this!”

“I didn’t do it!” he kept shouting. “I didn’t!”

Tyler, once seated in the back of the car, turned and pressed his face to the window. His eyes were red with tears as he looked pleadingly at his sister.

She placed her hand on the glass. “Hang in there,” she said. “Just hang in there.”

An officer got behind the wheel and the car pulled away, Tyler twisting around so that he could see his sister out the rear window. Jayne, overwhelmed, felt on the verge of collapse. And then it happened. Slowly she crumpled, her legs weakening. She placed a hand on the pavement to keep her upper half upright.

She looked up and saw Detective Hardy standing there.

“How could you?” Jayne said. “What on earth do you think he’s done?”

“We’re arresting him in connection with a homicide,” the detective said.

“A homicide?” Jayne said disbelievingly. “Who?”

Hardy hesitated. “That picture I showed you on Saturday? The woman at Andrew’s old address? Her.”

“Brie,” Jayne whispered. “Brie Mason.”

Hardy extended a hand and helped Jayne get back to her feet.

“This woman’s name is Candace DiCarlo,” Hardy said. “Lived in a house over on Rosemont.”

Jayne blinked. “But... I don’t understand. I thought you said it was Brie.”

“I said it was the woman in the picture. But that woman isn’t Brie.”

“Are you sure? It’s not Brie, but this other woman — Candace? — with her identity?”

Hardy, stone-faced, said, “We’re in the early stages of our investigation, Ms. Keeling. I’m sorry. There’s not much I can tell you at this point.” She paused. “Do you know a good lawyer? Because your brother is going to need one.”

Jayne shook her head.

The detective sighed and gave Jayne a sympathetic look. “We can place him at the scene. He was witnessed riding away, covered in blood. He’s in a lot of trouble, Ms. Keeling. If I were you, I’d hire the best.”

The detective went back into the house, presumably, Jayne figured, to collect evidence.

This time, instead of phoning Andrew, she typed out a text. All caps. Two words.

It failed to deliver.

Forty-Six

Andrew

When my cell phone rang, the sound coming from the front pocket of my jeans, Matt perked up.

“Toss it over,” he said.

I got out the phone, saw that it was Jayne calling, then threw it over to Matt. It landed in the leaves. Matt bent over, grabbed it, then circled around me to reach the huge rock. Holding the phone screen down, he slammed it onto a jagged outcropping of the rock’s surface three times before he was satisfied it was dead. Then he pocketed it.

“Carry on,” he said.

I’d moved to the new dig location, only a couple of steps over from where I’d made the first hole. While my idea to start digging in a new spot had been simply to buy time, Matt was considering the possibility he’d had me start in the wrong place. I was ready to shovel a hole as broad as a tennis court if there was a chance it might give me time to figure out how to keep Matt from killing me.

I dug the blade into the ground and turned over some dirt. If the blade didn’t connect with bone — Jesus, the idea of whose bones it would be made my head swim — once I’d gone down twelve inches, I’d ask Matt whether he wanted to consider a third location.

“Anything?” Matt asked.

“No. You can take over anytime you want.”

Then it was his turn to have a cell phone go off. He took out his phone, glanced at the screen, rejected the call. I stopped and looked at him

“Wife,” he said.

If only he were closer. I’d fling some dirt in his face, try to temporarily blind him. Long enough to either tackle him and try to get the gun from him, or hit him over the head with the blade. Go in sideways, open the son of a bitch’s skull like a melon.

But what I actually did was drive the shovel into the ground for what felt like the thousandth time. “What if—”

I hit something.

A sliver of something gray-white, and what looked like nearly disintegrated fabric, could be seen through the dirt.

Matt took a step forward, still keeping his distance, but close enough to see that maybe I’d found something.

“Now we’re into detail work,” he said. “Hands and knees.”

I crouched down, the forest floor feeling cool on my knees even through my jeans. I began the process of scooping away dirt, a handful at a time, as though I were on some archaeological dig. Slowly, what looked like a rib cage began to materialize.

“I need a minute,” I said, and sat back on my butt.

“Don’t get all fucking weepy on me.”

That wasn’t going to be easy. I was overwhelmed. I’d seen more than a few movies where someone had been forced to dig his own grave, but I couldn’t recall one where a man was expected to dig up his own wife. I put my soil-smeared hands over my eyes and took a few breaths.

“Come on, let’s do this,” Matt said. From where he stood, he tried to get a better look at what I’d uncovered. “This is good. Means she didn’t crawl out or anything like that. Now we just have to make sure I didn’t grab the wrong person.”

“I left my DNA kit in the truck,” I said. “Wait here, I’ll go get it.”

“Funny,” Matt said. “Keep going.”

I resumed digging, shifting my attention to where I figured the head would be. Slowly, I began to uncover what appeared to be a forehead, then eye sockets. Wisps of hair. A head. I was still hoping that maybe, despite the odds, this skull, and the skeleton it was connected to, could not be Brie. That somehow this was someone else, however unlikely that seemed. That maybe that woman who’d mysteriously appeared during the weekend really was my wife.

But then my finger caught on something.

A chain.

As I brushed away more dirt, I uncovered a choker. A necklace that would have held close to someone’s neck. It was silver, made of dozens of small loops of chain, interspersed with several links shaped like the letter G.

Gucci.

The choker I’d bought Brie for her birthday. The one I had seen her wearing when we had our FaceTime chat on that Saturday night six years ago, the night before she disappeared.

I let go of the chain, threw my hands out ahead of me to brace my fall, and collapsed over the grave of my darling Brie.

Forty-Seven

It was Tyler himself who gave Detective Hardy the name “Cam.” As they were bringing him down the stairs, Tyler had said to her, “Ask Cam. He’ll tell you. I only went there to talk to her.”

So the detective went looking for him. Tyler had said he worked with Cam, and when Detective Hardy learned that the two of them were employed at Whistler’s Market, she called the manager there and asked where she could find this Cam person.

“He’d be at school,” Whistler said, and he told her which school that was.

She went to the school office, found the principal, who determined Cam was in a chemistry class up on the second floor.

“Let’s go get him,” Hardy said.

They found the classroom. The principal interrupted the teacher mid-lesson, pointed to Cam, and beckoned him with his finger.

Cam, tall and skinny and ravaged by acne, stepped out into the hall and said, “What’s going on?” Then he saw Detective Hardy and said, “Who are you?”

She told him.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Is this about the slashed tires because we didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“What slashed tires?” Hardy asked.

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “So what’s up?”

“You were talking to your buddy Tyler this afternoon. Tell me about it.”

“Why, what’s happened? What’s going on?”

“Why did he go to Candace DiCarlo’s house?”

“Who’s that?”

“Tell me about your conversation.”

“Okay, so, there’s this whole thing going on with Tyler’s sister’s boyfriend, okay? Like, a long time ago, his wife vanished and people, like, you guys, think he killed her.”

“Go on.”

“But a couple of days ago she came back. And Tyler saw her at Whistler’s and followed her home.”

“Why did he do that?”

Cam shrugged. “He wanted to know if it was really her, because all this not knowing one way or another was really fucking things up at home. And he wanted to ask her if she was going to want to stay married to his sister’s boyfriend. Like, if that happens, Tyler doesn’t know what that’s going to mean for him and his sister, whether she’s still going to want him living with her, because he can’t go back with his aunt.”

Hardy blinked, not entirely following. “What about his aunt?”

“That’s some shit that happened back in Providence. She didn’t want to look after him anymore because of her eye.”

Hardy thought following this kid’s line of thought was like trying to track a firefly.

“So Tyler called you, and he’d been to see this woman and asked her all these questions.”

“Not yet.”

“What do you mean, not yet?”

“Okay, so he’d been there once, and this woman wouldn’t talk to him. She went in the house and locked the door and Tyler left. That’s when he called me.”

“Why did he call you?”

“I guess because he comes to me for advice.” He smiled, fancying himself as someone with great wisdom. “He was wondering what he should do. He was all agitated and mixed up and everything. I never heard him like that.”

“Was he angry?”

“Not angry. He was trying to figure out what to do. This lady wouldn’t answer his questions.”

“So what did you tell him?”

Cam shrugged. “I said he should go back there and get her to talk to him.”

“Did you, now?” Hardy said.

“Yeah. Why? That a problem?”

When Detective Hardy got back into her car she took a moment.

While solving DiCarlo’s murder looked like a slam dunk — Tyler admitted being at the house and there was a witness who saw the bloodied kid leaving the scene — there were still plenty of questions. If DiCarlo was, indeed, the woman captured in the surveillance video, why did she want anyone to think she was Brie Mason returning after a six-year absence?

Why pretend to be Brie?

Was it some sort of cruel trick? To make Brie’s family think that she was still alive? What was to be gained by that? Why raise a family’s hopes that way?

The thought had crossed her mind earlier that Andrew was behind this, that he’d hired someone to pretend to be Brie in the hope that it would persuade Hardy he had never killed her. The trouble with that theory was, why now? Brie’s disappearance was effectively a cold case. While it was always in the back of Hardy’s mind, she hadn’t had a fresh lead to follow in years.

Pretend to be Brie.

What had DiCarlo’s next-door neighbor said? Candace was part of a community theater group. So she’d be a natural at playing a role, assuming an identity.

She got out her notebook to see whether she’d written down the name of the theater group. She had. The Stamford Players.

Then she got out her phone, opened up a browser, and Googled the theater company’s name.

Up came a website for the Stamford Players. They had a new production set to open in a couple of weeks, just like the neighbor had said. Something called The Casual Librarian. There was information about ticket sales, who would be appearing in the production — there was a headshot of Candace DiCarlo — and then information about the play itself, that the playwright and the director were one and the same.

Albert McBain.

“Holy shit,” Hardy said under her breath.

Forty-Eight

Andrew

“Well?” Matt said with more than a hint of impatience. “Is it her?”

I needed a minute to pull myself together. I wiped my eyes with the back of my arm to clear away some dirt. My hands were black with moist soil. Slowly, I got to my feet, and used the shovel to help prop me up once I was standing.

Six years of never really knowing. Assuming the worst without confirmation. But here it was. I had no doubt that this was Brie. Admittedly, I was basing my conclusion on the necklace and a few wisps of desiccated fabric that looked like a nightgown she often wore, and someday, maybe, if Detective Hardy were to find Brie’s remains and do a DNA test, we’d have one hundred percent certainty.

But I didn’t need DNA test results. I knew in my heart and in my gut that this was Brie.

I also knew the odds were solidly against Hardy ever having the opportunity to find these bones and conduct any forensic tests. The more likely possibility was that I would be directed to dig a second grave and plant myself in it.

Avoiding that outcome was the current priority. I would have to grieve Brie, confront the trauma of digging up the woman I had loved, at a later date, given the opportunity. So, as I was getting to my feet, I had to consider any possible way to stall, to buy time.

Matt was starting to look annoyed that I hadn’t answered his question. “It’s her, right? You wouldn’t get that broken up over some stranger.”

“No,” I said.

Matt’s mouth opened. “No? What do you mean, no?”

My voice was breaking. I didn’t have to fake that. “It’s not her.”

The lie was, obviously, an impulsive strategy. My hope was that if I could get Matt to believe this was not Brie’s body, he’d have to figure out what his next step might be. And given that I was the one most qualified to identify Brie, maybe he’d need me a while longer to put the pieces of this puzzle together.

Then again, he could shoot me now and be done with it.

His skeptical expression told me he wasn’t entirely persuaded I was telling him the truth. “What are you talking about? You lost it. That was fucking grief.”

Still holding on to the shovel, I shook my head. “Not grief... relief.”

“How the hell can you know it’s not her?”

“You expected me to be able to tell if it was her, but now you’re asking me how I can know that it’s not?”

“Tell me how you know.”

“The necklace,” I said. “Brie didn’t own a necklace like that.” I was taking a chance he wouldn’t recall an item of jewelry Brie’d been wearing that night.

“You sure?”

I just looked at him. He got the message and sighed.

“So who the fuck is it?” he asked.

“I’ve no idea. This is your fuckup, not mine.”

Now Matt, in addition to looking pissed, appeared mystified. “I went to the right house. I know I went to the right house. I’d scoped it all out. There was nobody else there. How do you explain that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Thirty-six Mulberry.”

“Yes.” Curious, that he would remember that detail but not the necklace.

“An old house. Needed work. You were going to update it, fix it up.”

“Yes.”

How did he know that?

He was thinking, trying to remember other details from six years ago. He slowly raised a finger and pointed it at me. “Mice.”

“What?”

“You had a mouse problem, I figured. Flour on the kitchen floor. Waiting till morning to look for tracks.”

I nodded.

“I walked right through it, in the dark. Left shoe prints. First job I ever did where I had to vacuum before I took off.” Matt was thinking so hard I could almost smell wood burning. “You sure about the necklace?” It was clearly a detail he was fuzzy on.

“I’m sure,” I said.

“She have, like, a sister or something? A friend, who slept over? Anything like that?”

Feed him something. Mess with his head.

“A friend,” I said. “Sometimes, when I was out of town, like that night, she’d have someone come stay with her. Made her feel less anxious.” Then, thinking fast, I added, “A friend from her school days. Parents dead, no spouse, no kids. Sort of person, if she went missing, no one would even have noticed.”

Matt was moving his head side to side slowly, not buying it. “No,” he said. “No.” And then, very slowly, a calmness came over him.

“What?” I said, putting both my hands atop the shovel handle and resting my chin on them. “If it’s not her, you’ve still got a problem.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t. It doesn’t matter. The person I took from your house that night is the same person that’s in that grave. Whoever she is, she’s not picking me out of a lineup, not going to say, ‘That’s the guy.’ If your wife’s still out there somewhere, well, yeah, I should have got her, but it’s not like she’s got an ax to grind with me. You get what I’m saying?”

Sadly, I did.

I might have bought myself five minutes here, but this was turning into a no-win situation. Didn’t matter who was in this grave. What mattered was that someone was in it. Matt’s mind was put at ease.

Mine, not so much.

Matt, pointing his gun at me more directly, said, “Guess we’re done here. One thing all this has taught me is, be sure. Leave no room for doubt.” He cracked a smile that gave me a chill.

“Wait,” I said.

“What?”

“You’ve got a problem.”

“I think you’re the one with the problem. But it’ll be over soon.”

“My car.”

Matt blinked a couple of times. “Hmm,” he said once again.

I didn’t know whose land this was, or how Matt had come to choose this part of the woods to bury Brie, but if he drove out of here and left my car behind, it would eventually be found, and the police would eventually find Brie’s remains and, presumably, mine. That discovery might end up leading to Matt. Did he own this property? Did it belong to a friend of his?

“Let me go,” I said.

Flatly, Matt said, “No.”

“I’m serious. You... you’ve given me hope.” Stick with the charade. “I now know there’s a chance my wife’s alive, that the woman who showed up over the weekend, it’s really her. I know you didn’t kill her.” I pointed to the grave. “I don’t know who this is, and I can’t explain how you got the wrong person, but if there’s a chance my wife is out there, I have to find her.”

“No,” he said again.

“Come on,” I said. “Why?”

“Say you find her,” he said. “She tells you why she disappeared. Who would have wanted her dead. Cops find that person, it leads back to me.”

It was hard to argue with his logic. There was still the matter of my SUV, though.

“I’ll figure things out with your car,” he said. “Get a lift back.” Another smile. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

I had no arrows left in my quiver, unless you counted begging.

“Please,” I said.

“Start another hole.”

I moved my hands farther down the shovel handle, eyeing the ground, wishing Matt would take a few steps closer, get within shovel-swinging range. I was going to dig this hole like I was being paid by the fucking hour. I was about to ask him where he wanted me to start when we heard something.

“Hey!” someone called.

I looked beyond Matt, in the direction of where we’d come from, where our two vehicles were.

A man was coming our way.

“Hey!” he called out again. “What’s going on?”

It was Norman.

What happened next happened very, very fast.

Forty-Nine

Albert McBain was sitting in his small office at the Devon Savings and Loan on Broad Street where he was assistant manager, staring at some mortgage documents on his computer screen. He had two clients whose house deals were closing in the next couple of days, and if these docs weren’t pushed through, the deals could fall apart.

But this was his only reason for coming into the office, and he didn’t plan to be here for more than an hour. His boss and the branch manager, Ms. McGillivray, had told him to take the entire week off, considering that his mother, Elizabeth, had passed away the day before. And he fully intended to do that. There was much to be done, with help from his sister Isabel. A service to be planned, extended family to notify, an appointment with the estate lawyer, and then the unpleasant business of clearing out her apartment would have to be tackled.

It couldn’t have come at a worse time. The Stamford Players’ latest production was due to open in a couple of weeks. The previous day’s rehearsal had been cut short when Albert got the call from the hospital that his mother was close to the end. Was it realistic for Albert to think that, with all that was going on, he could really pull the play together in time? Should the opening be delayed? But tickets had already been sold. Okay, not exactly thousands of them, but at least a hundred or so. Would people demand refunds, or would they be okay with hanging on to their tickets for a later date?

Whoever had said, “The show must go on!” surely hadn’t had to deal with the death of a parent two weeks before opening night.

The stress of it all had given him indigestion. He opened his desk drawer and found a half-empty container of Tums. He tapped three of them into his palm and started chewing.

His phone rang.

He was going to let it go to voice mail — he’d already changed his message to indicate he would be gone for the week due to a family emergency — but he could see from the flashing light that it was not a call from outside, but from reception.

Albert sighed and picked up. “Yes?”

A young woman said, “There’s a police detective here asking for you.”

“Um, oh,” he said. “Did you get a name?”

There was an exchange of words at the other end, and then the receptionist said, “Detective Hardy?”

“Send — send her back.”

He put the phone back on its cradle and thought, Oh no.

Albert really did not want to talk to Detective Marissa Hardy. Needless to say, he no longer needed to feign interest in some mysterious woman who’d shown up at Brie’s old address. Nor did he need the detective to track down who had waved to him and his sister and Norman from the hospital parking lot.

Not important.

He rose from behind his desk and greeted the detective as she reached his office door.

“Mr. McBain,” she said.

“Detective Hardy,” Albert said. “Please come in and take a seat.”

Hardy sat. “I’d like to offer my condolences. I didn’t know, until just now, that your mother had passed. Your receptionist said I was lucky to catch you, that you’d only come in to the bank for a short period to clear up a few things.”

“Yes,” Albert said solemnly. “We knew it was coming, of course, but it’s still kind of a shock. I mean, we were all talking to her on Saturday and she seemed, well, she didn’t seem like someone who was going to go in the next day. But things can turn on a dime, you know.”

Hardy nodded sympathetically. “Of course.”

“But if you only just learned about my mother, that can’t be why you’ve come in.”

“That’s correct,” she said.

“You still asking around about our strange sighting on Saturday?”

“In part,” Hardy said slowly.

“You know,” he said, “I think we might have overreacted, jumped to conclusions. And we were several floors up from the parking lot. I’m sorry if we got you involved in this for nothing.”

“Not at all,” Hardy said. “I always like to follow up on any lead.”

“Well, okay,” he said. “But honestly, I wouldn’t worry much more about it.”

“The reason I’m here is, I want to ask you about the Stamford Players.”

“Oh?” He was genuinely surprised. If he’d ever known the detective was interested in community theater, it was a nugget of information that he’d forgotten.

“You’re the director, and author, of the upcoming production?”

“That’s true,” he said. “Although just now I was thinking about that, wondering whether we should postpone. Unless I can get someone else to take over the directing. There are a couple of members of the company I might be able to call on.”

Hardy nodded. “You have a Candace DiCarlo in the production?”

Albert thought, Oh-oh.

“Yes, yes, we do. Very talented actress. Not a professional, of course. She has a regular day job. But like pretty much all of us, we have theater in our blood. We may not be ready for Broadway, but we like to have fun.”

Hardy nodded slowly.

“Was there some reason you brought up Candace’s name?” Albert asked.

“When was the last time you saw or spoke with Ms. DiCarlo?”

“Uh, well, let me think,” he said.

Albert knew exactly when he had last seen or spoken with Candace DiCarlo. It had been the previous evening, at the Motel 6.

“Yesterday, at some point,” he said. “We had a rehearsal yesterday morning, but I had to cut it short when I got the call about my mother.”

Hardy said, “Hmm.”

“I’m still wondering, why do you ask?”

“I think it’s very possible, Mr. McBain, that your actress Candace DiCarlo is the woman you all thought might be Brie.”

Albert feigned surprise. “You don’t say.”

“I do.”

“She told you this? She confessed to it?”

“No,” Hardy said. “She did not.”

Albert felt a slight sense of relief. “Then what leads you to think this?”

“Her car, for one. Her Volvo wagon appears to be the same car from the neighbor’s surveillance video. And there’s a witness, of sorts.”

“A witness?”

“Someone who recognized her from the surveillance image.”

Albert said nothing.

After several seconds of silence, Hardy said, “Aren’t you curious to know why she might do something like that? Get everyone to think she was Brie?”

“Well, yes, of course. If it’s actually true that it was her. Have you asked her? Point-blank?”

“I would if that were possible.”

“And why isn’t it?”

“Because Candace DiCarlo is dead, Mr. McBain.”

Albert’s lips looked ready to form words, but nothing came out. He was stupefied, and his hands, resting atop his desk, began to shake.

“Are you okay, Mr. McBain?”

“I... uh... I don’t understand. Candace is dead?”

“That’s correct.”

“What — what happened? An accident? Was she in a car accident?”

“No, Mr. McBain. She was murdered.”

Albert looked as though he might choke. He put a hand to his throat and coughed. “How... That’s impossible.”

Hardy said, “I’m afraid it’s not. I’m sorry. I’m assuming, given that she was part of your theater group, she was a friend.”

“She — yes, she was a friend,” he said. He scanned the top of his desk as though looking for something.

“Mr. McBain?”

“I need... I need a drink of water.”

There was a plastic water bottle on the other side of his computer monitor. Hardy pointed and said, “There.”

Albert found it, twisted off the cap, and took a swig. “This is just... this is horrible. This is unbelievable. Who... what happened?”

“We have someone in custody. The thing is, Mr. McBain, it appears that her death and her little performances on Saturday are linked. I want to ask you again, why do you think she might have posed as Brie?”

“I... I...”

Albert was too shaken to speak.

“Mr. McBain, what was the nature of your relationship with Candace DiCarlo?”

“She... she was in our production.”

“Was that the full extent of your relationship?”

He turned away from the detective, looked at his screen, the mortgage numbers blurring beyond his tears.

“We... we were... we were seeing each other.”

“Seeing each other? Romantically? An intimate relationship?”

With considerable difficulty, as though there were an iron rod in his neck, Albert managed to nod. “Yes,” he said.

“If you were involved romantically, is it possible Ms. DiCarlo confided in you as to why she was pretending to be Brie?”

Albert’s nose twitched at the question, as though Hardy had asked him the wrong thing. She picked that up and asked, “Or maybe it was the other way around. It was your idea, something you talked her into doing.”

“That’s... that’s a little closer.”

The detective said nothing. Waited.

“You see,” Albert began slowly, “when Candace first auditioned with the company — this current show was not her first with us — I found myself very attracted to her, and, well, we began to see each other. Quietly, secretly, because I’m still working through a separation with my wife, Dierdre.”

Hardy, content to let Albert fill the silences, continued to remain quiet.

“It’s been a very difficult time, you know. I mean, never knowing what happened to Brie has weighed so heavily on the family, first of all, and then these last few months my mother has been so ill. Candace, she’s been the one port in the storm for me, who’s supported me through this, and I noticed, at times, that there was something about her that reminded me of Brie. She’s about the same size, holds herself the same way, and from certain angles she almost looked like her. She even did her hair almost the same way.”

“Go on,” Hardy said.

“And as we’ve been getting closer, and I’ve kind of opened up to her more, I told her how worried I’ve been about my mother, how she was going to die without ever knowing what happened to my sister. Whether Brie was alive or dead. Whether someone had killed her or she’d gone off and found a new life for herself, for whatever reason. I mean, the questions that tormented my mother are the same ones that have tormented Isabel and me, but maybe one day we’ll get some kind of answer. It wasn’t likely my mother was going to have one before she died.”

Hardy slowly nodded, like she knew where this was headed.

“And so... I had this idea,” Albert said. “What if... what if my mother could die with some hope?”

“An illusion of hope,” Hardy said.

“Yes, that’s fair,” Albert said. “At one point, early on, I’d wondered about whether to send a fake letter to my mother, as if it were from Brie, but my mother’s always been something of a skeptic. She worked in the news business, and she was always the type of person who needed convincing, evidence, you know? She probably made a lot of reporters’ lives hell, demanding they nail down their sources, get more confirmation, that kind of thing. So I knew my mother would take some convincing when it came to tricking her into thinking Brie was alive.”

“Okay,” Hardy said.

“I told Candace there needed to be witnesses. People who could claim to have seen Brie. Maybe Isabel, or her husband. Or others Brie knew. Maybe even, if there was a way, for Elizabeth to see her in the hospital. But then Candace had this idea, a way of kind of kicking it up a notch.”

“And what was that?”

“Well, like I said, I’d told her the whole story, including how the cops, like you, always thought it might be Andy who killed her, you know? I’ve never been as sure as my sister that he had anything to do with it, but Candace was, like, maybe there’s a way to give my mother some peace of mind and shake up Andy at the same time. Get some idea of whether he was guilty or not by how he reacted.”

“And how did she propose to do that?”

“She’d do one of her appearances as Brie on his turf — well, his former turf. Show up where he used to live. Get seen by people who’d alert him.”

“Someone like... Brie’s old neighbor. Max.”

“Yes,” Albert said. “Candace had this idea of showing up in her car with groceries, then freaking out that her house was gone. I’d told her that the house had been sold, torn down, a new one built on the site. I thought it was too risky, but she was getting so excited about the role, really thought she could pull it off. That she could show up, then take off before anyone could really figure out what was going on.”

“That part worked,” the detective said. “How about the plan to rattle Andy?”

Albert shrugged. “I guess we wouldn’t really see how that part would play out. That’d be where you come in.”

Hardy’s nod was one of understanding, not approval.

“Anyway,” Albert said, “we thought an extra appearance or two would really bring it home when it came to convincing my mother. So Candace appeared in the hospital parking lot, which would fool Isabel and Norman. More real witnesses. Then finish it off with something big, by appearing at the hospital in the middle of the night. By that point, I figured, even someone as hard to convince as my mother would believe Brie really was alive.”

“Audacious,” Hardy said.

“I suppose. How she got in and out of the hospital at night without being seen — I don’t know how she did it. Oh Jesus, I can’t believe it.”

He clapped a hand over his mouth, stifling a cry. After a moment, he continued. “I think, in a way, that our mother passed yesterday because she’d found peace. She let herself go, because she believed Brie was alive. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know why Brie had disappeared, why she’d been missing for six years. It was enough to know that she wasn’t dead.”

Albert sighed and bowed his head. “Because that’s what I’ve always believed, and still do, that she’s dead. But if Mother could die believing something different, I thought that was a good thing.”

“And you were saying your sister didn’t know. Does she now?”

Albert shook his head. “No. And no. I didn’t want anyone else to be in on the plan because they might have given it away, told Mother by accident.”

“So you’ve given her some false hope, as well.”

“I was going to explain it to Isabel later, hoping she’d understand I... I was well intentioned. But I don’t understand. How could what we did end up getting Candace killed?”

“You let the genie out of the bottle,” Hardy said. “The law of unintended consequences.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You start out intending to do one thing, and end up causing something else to happen. Mr. McBain, creating the impression that Brie was still among us may have comforted your mother, but it clearly unsettled someone else.”

“Last night,” he said, “she told me she thought maybe someone was following her. I think maybe she was being paranoid, on edge, you know? But before she came to the Mo—”

Hardy’s eyebrows rose.

“But before she came to the Motel 6, she said she thought a car had been following her.”

“Not a bicycle,” Hardy said.

“A bicycle? No, a car. Why would you ask if it was a bicycle?”

Hardy shook her head. “Never mind.”

And then, suddenly, Albert crumpled. He put his face in his hands, lowered his head, and began to weep.

“I loved her,” he whispered. Hardy didn’t know whether he was referring to his mother, or to Candace DiCarlo. Maybe both.

His body was wracked with sobs for a few moments, and then, struggling to compose himself, he raised his head and looked pleadingly at Hardy.

“We meant no harm,” he said.

Fifty

Andrew

The mind can process a lot in half a second. Let’s take the first half of that half-second — a mere quarter of a second.

In that quarter, when I saw that it was Norman approaching Matt and me in the woods as I stood there, shovel in hand over Brie’s grave, I thought: You bastard.

It was Norman who’d hired Matt to kill Brie.

It all made sense. No, wait, let me qualify that. It didn’t make sense that you would kill your sister-in-law because you were afraid your wife was going to find out you had a one-night stand with her. In a sane world, that didn’t make any sense at all. But the thing was, insane things happened in our sane world all the time, and looked at from that perspective, yeah, it all made sense.

Maybe Brie had decided that she would tell her sister, Isabel, how she had betrayed her, even though she’d made me promise never to say a word. Brie was going to confess to her sister she’d had sex with Norman.

Norman knew, and had to stop her. He had her killed not only while I was away fishing with Greg, but while he was in Boston with Isabel. The perfect alibi.

It seemed pretty out-there, I admit. But someone had hired Matt to kill Brie, and Norman now seemed the most likely suspect. How else did one explain Norman’s arrival, at this moment, in these woods? The only explanation I could come up with, in that quarter of a second, was that Norman knew what was out here. Knew that Matt had buried Brie here. Knew that Matt was going to bring me here.

Knew Matt, period.

The possible reappearance of Brie — and I still had no idea what that was about — had unnerved Norman, and he’d clearly been in touch with Matt to ask what the hell might have gone wrong six years back.

All that thinking went into that first quarter-second. The next quarter-second was occupied with a more urgent thought.

This might be your only opportunity.

I guess it was more instinct than thought, because what I did at that moment when Matt turned to see who’d called out didn’t require much in the way of planning. I just acted.

I brought that shovel up level, turned that curved blade, with its pointed tip, into a spear, and charged Matt.

He still had the gun in his hand, but it wasn’t pointed in my direction, and when he heard me coming, closing that eight to ten feet between us, he turned back from looking at Norman to look at me, but not in time to aim.

He’d been standing there with his jacket open, and the only thing between his belly and my shovel was a flannel work shirt. And when the blade reached him, it cut through that shirt like it was made of gossamer.

“Fuck!” Matt screamed, stumbling backward as the blade sliced open his belly, creating a jagged, almost smile-like rip in his flesh.

He tripped over his own feet and hit the ground on his right side, the arm holding the gun slamming on the ground. But Matt managed to hold on to his weapon as he put his other hand to his stomach, blood seeping out between his fingers.

My attention was focused on that gun hand. In another half-second, Matt could have it pointed at me. Which was why I needed to pin that arm to the ground and wrestle it away from him.

The adrenaline was racing through me, and I wasn’t about to temper my responses. Which explains, I suppose, why I came down so hard on Matt’s arm with the shovel blade.

I don’t honestly think it had been my intention to cut off his hand.

But I brought that blade down with enough force, and right on target, that when it connected with Matt’s upturned right wrist it went right through and into the forest floor like a cleaver going through pork tenderloin. He’d already been in the process of aiming the weapon my way, but what came up was a forearm minus a hand. A fountain of blood poured forth.

His hand, still gripping the gun, lay there on the dirt.

The scream that Matt let loose was enough to send birds scattering from the trees.

“Jesus!” shouted Norman, who was still a good sixty feet away.

I then did something that, in retrospect, makes no sense whatsoever. Intending to kick the gun away from Matt’s grasp, I booted it, and the hand looped around it, a good six feet away.

His screams persisted. Blood continued to flow from his stomach and the end of his arm. It was the latter that looked more serious.

I heard another scream, and realized very quickly that it was coming from me. A kind of primal cry, some Neanderthal reaction buried deep within me. A cry of triumph, or release. Or maybe I was just losing my mind.

But I couldn’t afford to lose it for long. I hadn’t forgotten my first thoughts, from only seconds earlier, that Norman was in on this. And if that was true, the threat was not over.

I wanted more than a shovel to deal with Norman. And there was that gun right there on the ground. I tossed the shovel, dropped to my knees, and pried the gun from the fingers of the severed hand, all to a background soundtrack of Matt’s incessant cries of pain. That man was going to die if I didn’t make some effort to save him. A tourniquet on that arm.

But that would have to wait. I had Norman to deal with. I got to my feet and pointed the gun at him.

He stopped dead in his tracks and shouted, “Christ, Andrew, it’s me!”

I must have looked like a crazy person to him. Wide-eyed, covered in dirt and now splattered with blood from Matt, and waving a gun around.

“I know who the fuck you are!” I shouted at my one-time brother-in-law. “Stay right there!”

“What the hell’s going on?” he yelled. “Who’s that—”

“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” I shouted.

Matt had stopped screaming long enough to crane his head in my direction and say, “I’m gonna fucking die. Help me.”

“How did you know?” I asked Norman.

“How did I know what?”

“How did you find us? How did you know about this place? You knew he’d brought me here, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know anything about this place,” he said, taking steps in my direction.

“Don’t come any closer, Norman,” I warned, pointing the gun at him.

“Andrew, what is it you think I’ve done?” He took another five steps toward me. “That man, who is he?”

“Like you don’t know,” I said. “Why? Why’d you do it?”

“Why’d I do what?” he asked.

“Why’d you hire him? Why’d you hire him to kill Brie?”

Norman’s shocked look was Oscar-worthy. “What the hell are you talking about? Brie may be back! Isabel’s told you. I know that. We saw her, from the hospital.”

“No,” I said. “She’s right back there, in that grave. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

A moaning, dying Matt had turned over to see who I was talking to. He mumbled, “Who the fuck is he?”

That threw me. Either they were both very good at playing their roles, or Norman and this man really did not know one another.

“Tell me,” I said. “How’d you know about this place?”

“I told you, I didn’t,” Norman said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you. I tried to call you the other night but you wouldn’t answer. I was driving to your house, saw you drive off, and followed. Then you turned in here and I sat up by the road, waiting for you to come out. It got to be a long time and so I drove in, saw the two cars there. Something about it didn’t look right. I heard some talking in the woods, and started walking this way.”

I blinked several times, trying to get the grit and sweat out of my eyes. What Norman was telling me sounded almost believable.

“You have a phone,” I said.

Norman nodded.

“Call 911,” I said. “Much as I’d like to let this guy die, it might be useful to keep him alive.”

Norman had his phone out, was tapping in the number.

“Get back out to the road, direct them in,” I said.

Norman nodded, turned, and started running back in the direction he’d come from, the phone to his ear.

I knelt down next to Matt.

“You’re losing a lot of blood,” I said. “I don’t know that the paramedics are gonna make it here fast enough. Although, one thing that might help, that would buy you some time, would be a tourniquet.”

Matt, seething between gritted teeth, said, “Yeah, that might.”

“I could take a lace out of my boot,” I said, “and give it to you, but I’m thinking, with one hand, you might have some difficulty applying it yourself. But I could do it for you.”

Blood was soaking into the forest floor.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“A name,” I said. “And an explanation.”

Matt closed his eyes.

I began to unlace my boot. “What do you say? I was thinking there, for a minute, that it was Norman, but now I’m not so sure. You want to clear that up for me?”

Matt swallowed, whispered, “Not Norman.”

I had the bootlace half out of the eyelets. “That’s good to know, I guess. So if it wasn’t Norman, who, then?”

Matt was weighing his options. I didn’t see where he had much to lose here by giving up a name, but everything to gain. He was fucked, plain and simple. He could be fucked and die, or he could be fucked and live.

I almost had the bootlace out. The blood was draining out of Matt like oil from the Exxon Valdez. I didn’t give him much longer without the tourniquet.

“What’s it going to be, Matt?”

He nodded. “Okay,” he said.

Matt gave me a name.

I shuddered. “Now a few details. Convince me.”

Matt gave me a few details. I was convinced, if a little shaken.

I started lacing up my boot.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “You gotta tie it off.”

I continued threading the laces through the eyelets until I had them back in place. I gave them a good tug, then knotted them.

“Wouldn’t want to trip on the way back to my car,” I said.

Fifty-One

Detective Hardy: How are you doing now, Tyler?

Tyler: I didn’t do anything. I know it might look like it, but I didn’t.

Detective Hardy: We’ll get to that.

Tyler: And I want my sister to be here.

Detective Hardy: She’s probably waiting for you, but right now it’s just the two of us. I understand you’ve come to live with your sister recently, but she has not applied for legal guardianship.

Tyler: Yeah, but she’s my sister.

Detective Hardy: There’s a process to these things, Tyler. Your rights were explained, right?

Tyler: Yeah, but I didn’t do anything.

Detective Hardy: Then I guess we’re good to go. Why don’t we start with you telling me what you were doing at Candace DiCarlo’s house?

Tyler: I don’t even know who that is.

Detective Hardy: That’s the woman who was murdered.

Tyler: I didn’t murder anybody. And I knew her as somebody else.

Detective Hardy: Who would that be?

Tyler: You already know this.

Detective Hardy: Tell me anyway.

Tyler: I figured she was Brie Mason, that woman you were asking about when you came to the house on Saturday. Like I said, I saw her at the store and recognized her and wanted to ask her some questions.

Detective Hardy: What sort of questions?

Tyler: Like, what the hell was going on, basically. Was she going to come back and still be married to Andy, you know, my sister’s boyfriend? Because then everything would go to shit.

Detective Hardy: So you followed her home. How’d you do that?

Tyler: On my bike.

Detective Hardy: You must be pretty fast.

Tyler: She hit a lot of red lights, so that’s kinda how I kept up.

Detective Hardy: And you followed her into her house. What happened, Tyler? Did she get scared when you confronted her? Did she fight back? Is that what happened?

Tyler: I didn’t go in her house. She told me to go away. She went inside and locked the door. And so then I left.

Detective Hardy: Okay. But you went back, didn’t you?

Tyler: (unintelligible)

Detective Hardy: I didn’t hear that.

Tyler: Like, maybe half an hour or so later. Yeah.

Detective Hardy: Why’d you do that?

Tyler: It was Cam’s idea.

Detective Hardy: Your friend. So Cam told you to go back and kill Ms. DiCarlo?

Tyler: Fuck, no. He just said I should go back there and not leave until I got her to answer my questions. So that’s when I went back the second time.

Detective Hardy: And what happened then?

Tyler: I knocked on the door again and she didn’t answer. But her car was there, so I figured she was home and, like, ignoring me.

Detective Hardy: Then how did you get into the house, Tyler?

Tyler: I kinda... I tried the door to see if it was still locked, and it wasn’t. So I opened it.

Detective Hardy: Go on.

Tyler: And, like, as soon as I stepped in it felt weird in there.

Detective Hardy: Weird how?

Tyler: I don’t know. It was really quiet. The only noise was the fridge humming. I took another step in, to the kitchen, and then I saw her.

Detective Hardy: What did you see?

Tyler: She was on the floor, on her back, and at first I thought, shit, maybe she had a heart attack or some kind of seizure or something, and so I bent down real fast to check on her and didn’t even see all the blood. It got on my hands and my knees and...

Detective Hardy: And?

Tyler: I just need a second.

Detective Hardy: Take your time.

Tyler: I sort of freaked out. All this blood was coming from the back of her head.

Detective Hardy: Did you say anything?

Tyler: Like what?

Detective Hardy: Did you start shouting?

Tyler: I might have. I was in shock, I guess. I was totally freaked out. I’ve only ever seen one other dead person.

Detective Hardy: Who would that be?

Tyler: My dad. He had a heart attack shoveling snow.

Detective Hardy: So, is that when you called the police?

Tyler: What? I didn’t call the police.

Detective Hardy: I know. Why didn’t you?

Tyler: Well, I mean, she was... there wasn’t anything anybody could do. She was pretty obviously dead.

Detective Hardy: Still, just about anybody would have called 911. Get an ambulance there, just in case there was something they could do.

Tyler: I guess I didn’t think of that.

Detective Hardy: Why do you think that was?

Tyler: I don’t know. I guess I should’ve done that. But at the time, I wasn’t really thinking that straight.

Detective Hardy: I see. You know that doesn’t look good, don’t you, Tyler? Fleeing a crime scene like that?

Tyler: Maybe it wasn’t. You know, a crime scene. Maybe she just fell.

Detective Hardy: Is that how it looked to you, when you saw all that blood?

Tyler: I wanted to get home. I needed to think about what I should do. I wanted to talk to my sister.

Detective Hardy: I see.

Tyler: I would never, ever do anything like that. I didn’t hurt her. I didn’t touch her or anything. You have to believe me.

Detective Hardy: You’d never lose your temper, maybe do something you really didn’t mean to do?

Tyler: Never.

Detective Hardy: How’s your aunt doing? Clara, isn’t it?

Tyler: What?

Detective Hardy: How’s her eye coming along?

Tyler: That was a totally different — who told you about her?

Detective Hardy: Before I came in here I got off the phone with some folks in Providence. Seems you had a little trouble there.

Tyler: It was an accident.

Detective Hardy: Just looking at the report here... Here we go. Smashed a glass and some shards went into her eye. That sound about right?

Tyler: I didn’t throw it at her. I wasn’t aiming at her. I didn’t know that would happen. I tried to get it out. I took her to the hospital.

Detective Hardy: What would make you so angry that you would do something like that, Tyler? Did she provoke you? Had she thrown something at you? Was she abusive?

Tyler: It wasn’t like that.

Detective Hardy: Help me understand. You’d gone to live with her after your father died, right? Was she mean to you? Demanding? Not understanding everything that you’d been through?

Tyler: She was always trying to be so... so nice.

Detective Hardy: I’m sorry?

Tyler: She was always worried about my feelings, like, how I was dealing with my dad, you know, dying and everything. It was like she wanted me to have a meltdown or something, like it would be a breakthrough, and I wanted her to just leave me alone.

Detective Hardy: So your aunt nearly loses an eye because she cared too much. That what you’re saying?

Tyler: It makes it sound bad when you put it like that.

Detective Hardy: I guess what I’m sitting here wondering, Tyler, is, if you could get that angry with someone who was trying to help you, how angry might you get with someone who was threatening the very stability of your home situation?

Tyler: I don’t... it wasn’t...

Detective Hardy: What do you think might have happened if this woman had been Brie Mason? And if Andrew decided to leave your sister and resume married life with Brie?

Tyler: I don’t know.

Detective Hardy: I imagine your sister would have been devastated. A lot for her to deal with. I wonder if she would have found looking after you more than she could deal with. Maybe she would have to find another place for you to live. Is that what you were thinking?

Tyler: I don’t know what I was thinking. But it wasn’t that. I panicked. That’s why I ran. Maybe I figured that cops like you would find a way to blame me for it so I had to get out of there.

Detective Hardy: It doesn’t look very good for you, Tyler. You were there. You had Ms. DiCarlo’s blood on you. A witness saw you fleeing the scene. Got it on video, even. And you had a reason for what you did. You know what might help, Tyler? If you just got it off your chest. Unburdened yourself. Admit what you did. That you were overwhelmed. That you struck out at this woman, she fell and hit her head on the way down, and she died. I don’t think you ever meant for that to happen. But that’s the way it went down.

Tyler: I swear, I—

There is a knock on the interrogation room door. Questioning suspended.

Hardy exited the room. A uniformed officer was standing there.

“She’s demanding to see you,” he said.

“The sister?”

“That’s right.”

Hardy nodded. “With lawyer in tow, no doubt. Check in on him in there every once in a while. Get him a drink of water or something.”

Hardy found her way to the police station entrance, where Jayne Keeling was sitting alone on a bench, looking at her phone. When she saw Hardy, she tucked the phone into her purse and stood.

“Ms. Keeling,” Hardy said, approaching her.

“How is Tyler?”

“He’s fine.”

“I want you to release him,” Jayne said.

“When I heard you were here I thought you might have brought a lawyer.”

“You can’t hold him. He’s a kid.”

“I’m afraid we can hold him, Ms. Keeling. He’s the prime suspect in a homicide.”

“He didn’t do it,” Jayne said.

“Ms. Keeling, if you love your brother, and it’s obvious to me that you do, the best thing you can do for him is get him legal representation. Like I told you before.”

“You don’t understand,” Jayne said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Why are you here, Ms. Keeling?”

“I’m here to confess,” Jayne said. “Tyler didn’t kill that woman. I did.”

Fifty-Two

Andrew

I sat there, in the woods, until it was clear Matt was dead, then worked my way back to my car. The keys were in it. As I got in, I tucked Matt’s gun into a pocket in the driver’s door, turned the vehicle around, then drove back out to the main road, where I found Norman leaning up against his silver Nissan. I powered down the window.

“Ambulance should be here any second,” he said.

I nodded, like there was still time. “They better hurry,” I said.

“You’re not leaving?” Norman asked.

“I am.”

“You can’t. You’re going to have to talk to the police about whatever happened back there.”

“They’ve always figured out how to find me,” I said.

“Andrew,” he said, coming close to the driver’s window, “what the hell was that?”

“That man killed Brie. And that was where he buried her. After Saturday’s events, he wanted to be sure she was still where he’d left her. Wanted me along to try and identify her.” Another pause. “It’s her.”

“But then who—”

“I don’t know who it was that you and Isabel and Albert, and my old neighbor, saw on Saturday. I still can’t figure it out.”

“But why... why did that man kill Brie?”

“He was hired to do it,” I told him.

“Jesus,” he said. “By who? Did he say?”

“No,” I lied.

Did I catch something in his eye at that moment? Relief? No, I didn’t think so. Unless Matt had lied to me in his final moments, Norman was in the clear.

Like I said, unless he lied. You reach a point where you don’t believe anything that anyone says.

“So why’d you follow me up here?” I asked. “Why’d you call the other night?”

Norman took a breath. “Because of Elizabeth, in part.”

I waited.

“I had some time alone with her and she wanted to know if I’d ever shown any gratitude for what you did. Or, more like what you didn’t do.”

“I wouldn’t have expected any,” I said. “Your wife’s had you and the whole family convinced I killed Brie.”

He shook his head. “I was never sold on that. I mean, yeah, I wondered, but I felt you were as devastated by her going missing as the rest of us. You were Isabel’s scapegoat. Someone to blame to make herself feel better. Anyway, Elizabeth said I owed you one, for never telling.”

Norman let those last three words hang out there for a moment.

“I did tell,” I said. “I told Detective Hardy. I told her about you and Brie.”

“I know,” he said. “And I don’t fault you for that. And that didn’t do any harm, because Hardy cleared me right away. Me and Isabel were out of town.”

It occurred to me then that being out of town didn’t absolve anyone, considering that Brie’s murder had been contracted out.

Norman was still talking. “The big thing is, you never told Isabel. It would have destroyed her. Given how much energy she put into ruining your life, it’s a wonder you didn’t want to ruin hers. And, by extension, mine.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” I said. “I did it for Brie.”

“Anyway, it seemed like it was better late than never. That I thank you.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“But there’s more, something else that’s been eating me up since she disappeared,” he said. “I saw her that day.”

“What?”

“That Saturday, of the weekend she disappeared, I went to the house.”

I blinked. This was news to me. “When?”

“In the afternoon. There was a van there. A pest control guy. When he left I went to the door and knocked. Wanted to talk to Brie, to tell her again how sorry I was about what we’d allowed to happen. It was such a stupid thing.”

“You spoke to her?”

“For half a minute. She said she didn’t need any more apologies, that there was nothing more to say, and she sent me away. And that was it.” At this point, he bit into his lower lip briefly. “But I can’t help but think, if I’d hung around, maybe I would have seen... maybe I could have done something. But Isabel and I were driving up to Boston later that day, and I... I’ve always wondered if I could have done more...”

I could understand why he might want to beat himself up, but what had happened to Brie occurred hours after he’d come to the house. I’d spoken to her that evening. Matt, before he died, had as much as said he had come in the middle of the night.

I said, “You saved my life, Norman, showing up when you did, so I think you’ve paid your debt, if there’s even a debt to pay.”

“Yeah, well.”

“There’s one thing you can do for me now,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I need a phone. Matt, that guy, smashed mine pretty good. I got a few calls I need to make.”

Norman got his out of his pocket, but he seemed reluctant to hand it over. “Just a second,” he said, and did a few taps with his thumb. I had a feeling he was deleting something he didn’t want me to see.

Finally, he handed it over. “Get it back to me soon as you can?”

“I will. Is there a code?”

“Twenty nineteen,” he said. “My thumbprint will open it, too, but I’d kind of like to hang on to that.”

His joke made me think of that severed hand in the woods.

The phone was already active when he handed it to me, so I didn’t need to enter the security code. “Thanks for this,” I said, then powered up the window and hit the gas.

My contacts weren’t going to be in Norman’s phone, so I had to actually recall Jayne’s cell phone number and enter it digit by digit. I put the phone to my ear as I aimed the car in the direction of home.

The phone rang twice.

“Hello?’

I would imagine she was puzzled when she saw Norman’s name or number pop up on her screen.

“It’s me,” I said. “It’s Andrew.”

“Oh my God, I’ve been trying to get you for hours!”

I couldn’t recall ever hearing that level of panic in Jayne’s voice before. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Where have you been? Why are you using Norman’s phone? Are you okay?”

There’d be plenty of time later to bring Jayne up to speed on what had happened to me in the last several hours. What I needed to know now was why she’d been so anxious to reach me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Where are you?”

“Heading into town.”

“Come straight to police headquarters. I’m talking to Detective Hardy right now.”

That was not where I wanted to be. I had something else on my mind. “What’s going on there?”

“They arrested Tyler for murder.”

“They what?”

“They think he killed the woman who came to your old address.”

“What?” I said again. This was turning into a day of nonstop shocking developments. Jayne’s comment contained more information than maybe she realized. So we now knew who was in the picture? And she was dead? And Tyler had killed her?

I supposed what I’d planned to deal with next could wait.

“I’m on my way,” I said.

Fifty-Three

“That was Andrew,” Jayne told Detective Hardy.

“Let’s find someplace to talk,” the detective said, and steered Jayne down a hallway to another interrogation room. She directed Jayne to a chair, but before she sat down herself she asked whether there was anything she could get Jayne. Water, a coffee?

“Nothing,” Jayne said.

The detective took a seat across from her, pulled the chair in, then sighed sympathetically.

“Do I have to sign something?” Jayne asked. “Do you want me to write it all down?”

“Ms. Keeling, you—”

“I did it. There’s no way Tyler did it.”

“Ms. Keeling, the evidence against your brother is substantial. We have motive. We have opportunity. We have a witness seeing him leave the scene.”

“But you don’t understand, he just wouldn’t do it.”

Hardy offered a sympathetic smile. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

“It is true, he wouldn’t—”

“Would his aunt say the same thing?”

That stopped Jayne for a second. Her eyes danced. “You know about Clara.”

“I know about Clara. Made some calls to Providence. Know some people there. They pulled the file.” Her expression hardened. “He nearly blinded that poor woman.”

Jayne shook her head. “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Because I did it.” Jayne extended her wrists, inviting Hardy to handcuff them.

Hardy ignored the gesture. “So you want to confess.”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t you want a lawyer to advise you?”

“No, I don’t need one. I don’t care about that. I just want to see justice done. And I don’t want to see an injustice done. That’s why I’m telling you this. Tell me what I have to sign so that you can release Tyler.”

“And why did you kill this woman?”

“Because... because I didn’t want her to come back and take Andrew away from me.”

“I see. Except this woman wasn’t Brie Mason.”

“I thought she was at the time. That she was using a different name.”

“Her name was Candace DiCarlo. The neighbors had known her for years. It was something that Albert, Brie’s brother, and Ms. DiCarlo cooked up.”

“What do you mean? Cooked up what?”

“Those performances were designed to persuade Albert’s dying mother that Brie was still alive.”

Jayne was stunned. “Oh my God. That’s... oh my God, that’s insane.”

“No argument. But let’s get back to your confession. I can find you a pad of paper and a pen and you can write it all out for me. But a small matter to clear up first. Once we charge you, who will we release Tyler to?”

Jayne blinked. “To...”

“Not to you, of course. You’ll be in jail, at least until a lawyer can arrange bail, if it’s granted. And if your intention is to plead guilty, you could probably start your sentence right away. So, what about Tyler?”

Slowly, Jane said, “Well, there’s Andrew...”

“Yes, Mr. Carville,” Hardy said. “Presumably he was good enough to take Tyler in because he was living with you. But once you’re out of the picture, will he still want that responsibility? And let’s say he does. There’s still a cloud hanging over your Andrew. Brie remains missing. There’s a strong likelihood she was murdered. Andrew remains atop the list of suspects. One day his luck may run out. If he’s charged and convicted and sent to prison, and you’re already there, what becomes of Tyler then?

“Stop,” Jayne said.

“I simply want you to consider the consequences of this impulsive, no doubt well-intentioned confession you’re determined to make,” Hardy said.

Jayne said something under her breath.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I’m going to have a baby,” Jayne said.

Hardy sighed. “I see.”

“I found out last week,” she whispered.

“Do you want to give birth in jail, Ms. Keeling? Is confessing to a crime you didn’t commit, to spare your brother, worth giving birth behind bars? There are facilities that will allow you to raise a baby, in the early months, while incarcerated. But is that what you want?”

A tear ran down Jayne’s cheek.

Hardy said, “Maybe, if I were you, I’d be thinking of doing the same thing. You’re terrified for Tyler. But the smartest thing you can do is find him a good lawyer. Someone who can cut a good deal for him.”

Jayne reached into her purse for a tissue.

Hardy pushed back her chair and stood. “You’re welcome to stay here a moment while you pull yourself together.”

Hardy left the room.

As Jayne finished drying her tears, she heard the ping of a text on her phone. She took it from her purse, saw that it was from NORMAN, which meant, of course, that it was from Andrew. The text read:

I’m here.

Fifty-Four

Andrew

Jayne appeared within a minute of my text, entering the police station lobby from an adjacent hallway. I could tell she’d been crying, and at the sight of me she ran into my arms and hugged me, but not before taking in my appearance.

She let go of me, gave me a one-second appraisal, and said, “My God, what’s happened to you?”

I glanced down, having almost forgotten what a sight I was. My clothes were covered with grit, my face and hands smudged with soil, dirt under my fingernails. There was probably some blood mixed in with it if you looked hard enough. I had, after all, just killed a man.

“Your story first,” I said. “But let’s get out of here.” It was more than privacy that prompted me to find another place for us to talk. I didn’t want to run the risk of Hardy seeing me like this, and having to explain. It wouldn’t be long before she learned about what had gone down in those woods.

I led Jayne outside the headquarters building, a broad, one-story, drab red-brick structure with a foreboding, massive black entryway. There were no park benches around, so I led her over to my Explorer and got her into the passenger seat. I went around and slipped in behind the wheel, turning the key only so that I could put down the two front windows to let in some air.

“Talk to me,” I said.

She told me about Tyler’s arrest for the murder of a woman named Candace DiCarlo, as well as the pantomime orchestrated by Albert and the dead woman. That left me speechless. Albert’s stupid stunt got a hit man to second-guess himself, and nearly got me killed in the process. I wanted to find him and smash his head up against a tree.

And now Tyler had been ensnared by the entire mess.

“I’m scared to death for him,” Jayne said.

“They’ve got a witness, they know he was there, and there’s blood,” I said. Jayne nodded. “Do you think he did it?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said confidently. “He would never do that to anyone. Except...”

“Except what?”

“There’s something I never told you. About why Tyler’s aunt wouldn’t look after him anymore.” She told me the story. About Tyler’s angry outburst with Clara, that Detective Hardy had found out about it. “I’m sorry I never told you. I should have. You had a right to know.”

I didn’t see where I had anything to complain about, given how much I had kept from Jayne. “It’s okay. But, shit, it makes him look bad where this Candace woman is concerned. And he ran away from the scene?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t call the police?”

“No.”

“Christ, Jayne, forgive me, but it kind of looks like he did it.”

Jayne nodded. “It looks that way, but...” She paused, sniffed. “I tried to confess.”

“What?”

“I told Detective Hardy it was me. I told her I did it. She wouldn’t believe me.” Her voice briefly adopted an almost dreamlike quality. “Maybe I can still convince her.”

“For God’s sake, Jayne,” I said, “there’s got to be a better way to help him than doing something crazy like that.”

“I love him,” she said. “He’s my brother. I was never there for him. It’s time that I was.”

“Listen, Jayne, I have to tell you what happened to me today. Why I’m such a mess.”

She focused on me and said, “Tell me.”

“I know what happened to Brie.”

Her focus became sharper. “Oh my God.”

I related the events of the afternoon. How Brie was murdered by a hit man named Matt, then buried in the woods north of town. How Norman showed up at the right time and that Matt was dead. I didn’t get into the shoelace story, or that I got some significant information out of Matt before he died.

“Dear God, he made you dig up her grave,” Jayne said, looking as though all that had happened, to both of us, in the last few hours was going to cause her to faint. “Andrew, how are you even putting one foot in front of the other? What are you doing sitting in the car talking to me for? You need to go in there and tell all this to Hardy.”

“In time.”

“Now that you know who killed Brie, maybe she can figure out who it was who hired him.”

When I didn’t say anything right away, Jayne whispered, “You know.”

“I know.”

“Tell her. Tell me.”

I shook my head. “I want to be sure. There needs to be a conversation.” It was time for a change of subject. “We need to find a lawyer for Tyler.”

“I don’t... I can’t think of anyone.”

“I hired a woman named Nan Sokolow a few years ago when Hardy was harassing me. See if you can get in touch with her.”

“And what are you going to do?” But she knew. “Don’t do this yourself.”

“I have to.”

“I don’t think... I’m not sure I can drive. I’m a total wreck.”

“I’ll drop you.”

She started looking in her purse for something. Seconds later, I heard the jangling of keys. “I’m not sure I locked my car.”

Jayne was reaching for the door handle when I said, “I’ll do it. Where are you parked?” She pointed to the far end of the lot. “Be right back.”

I jumped out of the Explorer and strode off in the direction of her car. As I got closer, I saw that she’d most likely not only left it unlocked, but the driver’s window was down.

When I got back to my car, Jayne said, “What took so long?” She was correct in thinking that I had been gone longer than it should have taken.

“The windows were down,” I said. “Had to get in and turn the key to get them up. Engine didn’t want to turn over at first.”

“Oh,” she said.

I started the Explorer. We hardly said a word to each other on the way. When we got back to our place and were in the driveway, Jayne said, “You really need to clean yourself up.”

I didn’t want to take the time for that, but she was right. I could take a shower and change into some fresh clothes in ten minutes, I was betting.

I did it in nine.

As I was getting ready to head back out again, Jayne met me at the door. “I’m going to drop Norman’s phone back at his place,” I said. “Can I have your cell?”

I figured, given that we were among the last people on the planet with a landline, she could use that to try and reach Nan Sokolow. Jayne got her phone and handed it over. I didn’t have to ask her for her passcode. We used the same one for both our phones.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “We’re going to get through this.”

She put her arms around me again. “Call me with any news.”

“You, too.”

I went to the car and got in. I put both cell phones in the center console — easy enough to tell one from the other. Norman had a drab brown leather cover on his, and Jayne’s encasement was vivid with a floral design. I grabbed it, wanting to double-check that I could, in fact, get into it, and I did.

I must have sat out there for a few minutes, not realizing how much time had gone by, because finally I heard a rapping at my window and found Jayne standing there, staring at me. Through the glass she said, “What’s going on?”

After I’d set down her phone, keyed the ignition, and powered down the window, I said, “I think I’m in a bit of a daze. Overwhelmed. Shell-shocked, maybe.”

“Come inside. I’ll make us some coffee. Or make you something stronger.”

“No, I’ve got to go.”

She stepped away as I backed onto the street, stood and watched as I drove off. In my rearview mirror, I saw her step into the street and wave. I was halfway down the block when Jayne’s phone rang. The caller ID was blocked.

I picked up.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Carville.” I knew the voice.

“Detective Hardy,” I said. “Sorry, you were probably wanting to speak to Jayne.”

“No, in fact I was hoping to reach you. I tried your number and it went straight to voice mail.”

“My phone’s broken,” I said.

“I need to see you right now.”

“Sorry, I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment. What’s this about?”

“I think you know. Your name just popped up on another matter. Something that happened up on Wheelers Farm Road.”

“Figured I might hear from you.”

“There’s a dead man in the woods and an open grave. I’m heading up there shortly. Meet me there.”

“He wasn’t dead when I left him, but he said his name is Matt,” I offered. “He killed Brie. Her remains are in that grave. I think if you do a DNA test on them, that’ll be confirmed. He lured me up there, made me dig her up on the off chance I might be able to say whose bones they were, and then he intended to kill me.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. I got lucky. Norman — Brie’s brother-in-law — happened to be in the right place at the right time and created enough of a distraction that I came out of it alive.”

“You killed this Matt person.”

“Like I said, he was alive when I left.” I was surprised how easy it was to lie about this. “I’d sent Norman to call for an ambulance. He went up by the road to wave them in. I stayed with Matt a few more minutes, talked some, then made my way back to my car and said goodbye to Norman.”

“Why was Norman there?”

“He wanted to thank me.”

“Thank you?”

“For never telling Isabel what I told you. For not ruining their lives when I had every reason to. You can ask him, if you want. He saw me driving out of town and followed.”

“Meet me there. I’m not going to ask again.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because I’d be getting tired of having to say no. I know who did it, Detective Hardy. I know who hired him to kill my wife.”

“This Matt told you?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I guess he felt a need to unburden himself,” I said.

“Tell me. I want the name.”

“Soon,” I said. “I’ve got a few questions to ask first.”

“Mr. Carville — Andrew. Please, just meet me at—”

There she was, asking again within seconds of saying she wouldn’t. I ended the call. And then, in case she could use Jayne’s phone to track me, I powered it off.

I imagined she’d be putting out a description of my car. I hoped I could get done everything I wanted to do before I was spotted.

First stop was to drop off Norman’s phone.

I wanted to have a word with Isabel. Who’d been up in Boston, with her husband. Far, far away when Brie was abducted and murdered.

Fifty-Five

Detective Hardy was almost at the scene when Andrew Carville ended their call.

“Shit,” she said.

She saw a collection of vehicles up ahead, pulled over onto the shoulder of Wheelers Farm Road. Police cars, an ambulance. She parked her car and went to the first uniformed officer she saw, a man who didn’t look old enough to have graduated from high school. Why, Hardy wondered, did everyone seem younger every year?

“Where’s the guy who called it in?’ Hardy asked.

The officer pointed to a man leaning up against a silver Nissan. Hardy recognized Norman from the times she had met, over the years, with his wife, Isabel. Hardy walked over to him.

“Norman, isn’t it?” Hardy said.

Norman pushed himself off the car and extended a hand. “Yeah. The paramedics, then that cop over there, they told me to wait for you. The one who really should have waited is Andrew. But he took off.”

“I know, but for now you’re all I’ve got. Tell me what happened.”

Before Norman had gotten very far into his story, Hardy said, “Show me,” and Norman led her down the rutted road to where he had found Andrew’s car — now gone — and the SUV that belonged to the other man. Hardy gave the vehicle a quick look, including opening the glove box and looking for the registration.

“Matthew Beekman,” she said under her breath, and made a quick call with her cell. Once she was finished with that, she let Norman continue giving her the tour.

“I heard voices coming from up that way,” he said, pointing deeper into the woods. They started making their way until a large rock became visible in the distance.

“That’s where it happened,” Norman said.

“Tell me what you saw.”

Norman said Andrew, shovel in hand, was standing over a pile of dirt and two holes in the ground, a few feet ahead of the rock. The other man was pointing a gun at Andrew. When Norman called out, all hell broke loose. When the gunman looked around, Andrew charged him with the shovel.

“He told me to call for help, and that’s kind of all I know,” Norman said.

“Mr. Carville says you followed him up here.”

Norman looked to the ground and nodded. “Yes. I had some things I wanted to say to him.”

Hardy waited. Norman told her he’d wanted to thank Andrew, and also wanted him to know he had been to the Mason house on the Saturday of the weekend Brie vanished.

“You never told me that,” Hardy said.

Norman shrugged. “I know.”

Hardy told him to go to his car and wait in case she needed to speak with him further, then made her way closer to the scene.

Matt’s body had not been moved. The area had already been cordoned off with police tape, a few nicely placed trees used as anchor points for the corners. Hardy ducked under the tape and moved carefully around the scene. Studied the wound in Matt’s belly, the severed hand, the liters of blood that had drained from his wounds into the forest floor. Then she had a look at the hole in the ground that revealed a hint of uncovered skeleton, a necklace that still looped loosely around the neck.

Her cell rang.

“Yes?” she said.

“Ran that name,” said a man at the other end. “Matthew Beekman. Forty-one, lives in New Haven. Suspected in at least five contract hits since 2011, at least three related to ongoing investigations of biker gangs, but never charged. Did you hear about this Glenn Ford guy who bought it couple of nights ago?”

“Glenn Ford the actor? He died a long time ago.”

“Some writer guy. Witness in a biker hit, hiding out up in Hartford. They think Beekman’s involved in that one. Day job runs a laundromat, married, two kids. Regular family guy who makes money on the side killing people, making them disappear.”

“Pull together everything you can on him and send it to me,” she said, and ended the call.

Hardy looked at the partially uncovered grave, and then the forest around it. She wondered whether any of Beekman’s other victims might be buried out here. She looked back at the dead hit man, and the hand that rested among the leaves a stone’s throw away from the body.

“Where’s the gun?” she said out loud to herself.

Fifty-Six

Andrew

While I’d been intending to make Isabel and Norman’s house my next stop, something new was nagging at me that prompted a detour along the way.

I wanted to take a run by Candace DiCarlo’s house. I wanted to see where it happened. A couple of minutes online, and I’d found the location. There were two police cars at the end of Rosemont, plus a van and a flatbed truck. I couldn’t park near the house. I left my car more than three houses away.

I was doing a lot of thinking as I got out of the Explorer. About who had ordered the hit on Brie, and who might really have killed Candace DiCarlo.

It was all coming together for me. I was pretty sure I knew what had happened, and I believed Jayne when she said that Tyler couldn’t have done it.

An idea came to me. A long shot. Might not amount to anything. Something that, if I was going to try it, I had to make the decision right then and there. It’d either work, or it wouldn’t. Time, and the thoroughness of Detective Hardy, would determine that.

I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves that had been sitting in the center console back from when we were going through the pandemic. I’d always slipped them on when I had to press all those buttons at the self-serve gas bar. They were tucked down there along with a couple of masks and a nearly empty bottle of hand sanitizer that I should have thrown out long ago. I snapped the gloves into place.

Hands in my pockets, I walked up to the house, saw the Volvo wagon in the driveway, and recognized it from the surveillance shots I’d gotten from the man who’d built the house on my old lot. That explained the flatbed truck. They were probably going to take the car away and subject it to a forensic examination.

The closest I could get to it, however, was the end of the driveway, because the property itself was marked off with police tape. The car was maybe ten feet away. A uniformed officer was standing at the end of the drive to make sure I wasn’t going to cross the yellow tape perimeter.

At the side of the house was someone in one of those get-ups you see them wearing in the crime shows. A hazmat suit. Conferring with someone else in the house. That explained the van parked in the street. These were the so-called scene-of-crime tech guys. Even when a case looked like a slam dunk — they already had Tyler in custody — the authorities wanted their case to be airtight. No stone left unturned, and all that.

Confident that Tyler had not killed DiCarlo, I was willing to try something that might steer the investigation away from him. Muddy the waters, as it were.

“Wow, what happened here?” I innocently asked the cop standing guard.

She gave me a friendly smile. “Sorry, sir. I’m not really at liberty to provide any details.”

I looked toward the end of the street. “Do you know if they’re closing off Rosemont completely?”

She followed my gaze as I took my hands out of my pockets. “Don’t know, sir.” She turned her head back to look at me. By then my hands were tucked away again. “I’m going to have to ask you to go back to your vehicle.”

“Sure thing,” I said, nodding respectfully.

I was ready to go, anyway. I’d done what I’d come to do. I returned to my truck and peeled off the rubber gloves.

I parked in front of Isabel and Norman’s house, a bland two-story built in the seventies. Norman’s Nissan was not there, so I figured he was still where I’d left him, no doubt enduring a barrage of questions from Detective Hardy. But Isabel’s car was there.

With Norman’s phone in my pocket, I went to the door and rang the bell. Isabel’s eyes popped when she saw who was standing there. It wasn’t like I’d dropped by to say hello very often in the last six years.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I held out Norman’s phone. “First of all, to return this. It’s Norman’s.”

She took the phone and, looking alarmed, asked, “Why do you have this? Is he okay? What’s happened?”

“He’s fine,” I said. “I know this is not a good time, that you’re probably making arrangements for your mother’s service. But I wouldn’t be here unless it was important. May I come in?”

I could have asked her to be my best friend and not received a more stunned expression. “Okay,” she said slowly.

She directed me to the living room. I sat on a La-Z-Boy chair, resisted the temptation to kick it back into a reclined position, and waited for Isabel to take a spot on the couch opposite me.

“Where’s Norman?” she asked.

I told her.

“What’s he doing up there?” she asked.

“He happened to spot me up that way, maybe he thought my car had broken down or something, and got out to see whether I was okay.” I paused. “The thing is, he saved my life.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Before I get to that, let me tell you why I’m here,” I said. “You’ve made my life something of a living hell the last few years, and—”

“I’ve had every reason to—”

I raised a hand to cut her off. “Let me finish. In your position, I might have done the same. I’d have wanted justice for my sister. Believe me when I say I’ve wanted the same for Brie, but I didn’t have a convenient suspect to focus my attention on. I was... directionless in more ways than one. I wanted to know what had happened to Brie but had no idea where to look. I knew I hadn’t done it, but there was no way to convince you of that. So you went after me. I can’t say that, over the years, I blamed you.”

I took a breath and said, “I’m a little parched.”

Isabel didn’t move for a second, then, realizing I was asking for a glass of water, went into the kitchen and returned with one.

“Thank you,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t know if the news has reached you yet, but the woman you saw from the hospital window, the woman who came to my old place, was definitely not Brie.”

“Who was it?”

“A woman named Candace DiCarlo. An actress. Well, an amateur actress would be more accurate. If you want to know more about why she did what she did, you’re going to want to talk to your brother.”

“Albert?”

I nodded, and told her the few facts that I knew.

“Oh my God,” she said, astonished. “What a complete fool. Didn’t he understand that, in getting our mother’s hopes up, he’d be getting everyone’s hopes up?”

“I think it’s fair to say he didn’t think it all the way through,” I said. “But his little charade ended up backfiring pretty spectacularly. It got someone killed.” I told her that Candace was dead, but left out, for now, who’d been arrested for the crime.

“And there’s more. The person — the people — responsible for Brie’s death also became somewhat unnerved by the possibility that she might still be alive.”

I let that sink in for a minute.

“I see,” she said.

“Because Brie isn’t alive. That was confirmed for me today. Someone was hired to kill her.”

“Dear God,” Isabel said.

“That way, Brie could be killed while the person who hired this hit man was out of town.”

I watched Isabel closely for her reaction.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said. “What are you implying? Norman and I were in Boston. Andrew, what are you suggesting?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” I said. “I’m going to tell you what I know. Because you deserve to know before anyone else.”

Fifty-Seven

Tyler had been brought back to the interrogation room where he’d been interviewed earlier by Detective Hardy. He sat at the table alone. A small bag of potato chips and a bottled water had been left for him. He devoured the chips. He hadn’t had a proper meal since breakfast and his stomach had been growling.

Tyler had no idea what might happen next. He was scared.

The door opened.

A woman carrying a small briefcase entered. She looked to be about the same age as Tyler’s sister. Dark hair and glasses. She was wearing black slacks and a white blouse with a black jacket over it, and when she looked at Tyler she smiled.

“Hello, Tyler,” she said. “My name is Nan Sokolow. I’m going to be your lawyer.”

“Hi,” Tyler said nervously.

“Your sister, Jayne, has engaged my services on your behalf,” Nan said, sitting across the table from Tyler. She took in his puzzled expression and said, “I’m here to help you. The first thing I want to know is, have they been treating you well?”

Tyler shrugged. “They got me these chips.”

“I just want to be sure you haven’t been mistreated in any way.”

“They’ve got me here when I didn’t do anything. Isn’t that being mistreated?”

“That’s what I’m here to talk about with you. From now on, I don’t want you to say anything to the police or answer any of their questions unless I’m right beside you.”

“I already answered a ton, but I didn’t tell them anything bad.”

“You admitted you were there. That you went into the house.”

“Yeah, well, that.”

She managed a wry smile. “We’ll do what we can about that, but just so you understand, not another word.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to tell me everything you told them. And anything that you might have left out.”

Tyler told his story.

“So when you left Ms. DiCarlo’s house the first time, she was still alive.”

“Yeah.”

“And when you came back, she was dead.”

“Yeah.”

“And during this period you talked to your friend Cam.” Tyler nodded. “How much time elapsed between your first and second visits to Ms. DiCarlo’s house?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Half an hour?”

“Maybe a little more than that.”

“Forty minutes?”

Tyler thought. “Probably. They took my phone, but my texts with Cam are probably there. They’d show when I was talking to him.”

“Okay.” Nan made a note on her yellow legal pad. “When you were at the scene the second time, when you found Ms. DiCarlo, did you get the sense that there might be anyone else in the house at that time?”

“Like, hiding?” Tyler asked.

“Yeah, like hiding,” she said.

“I didn’t hear anyone. But, I mean, I didn’t exactly go looking around. After I found her, I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.”

“You were in shock.”

“Well, I don’t know if I was in—”

“You were in shock,” Nan said again.

“Yeah, okay, I guess I might have been.”

Nan smiled. “Good, you’re catching on. What I’m trying to work out here, Tyler, is a defense strategy, and one part of that defense is being able to prove that you weren’t the only one with an opportunity to do Ms. DiCarlo harm. It looks to me that there’s as long as three-quarters of an hour that someone else could have entered that home and killed that woman.”

“You think?”

“Well, Tyler, if you didn’t do it—”

“I didn’t.”

She smiled. “Of course. What I’m going to be arguing is that there was plenty of time for someone else to get into that house and kill Ms. DiCarlo. And anything you can think of, anything you might have noticed, that might suggest someone else had been in the house will be very helpful to us.”

Tyler nodded slowly.

“Maybe... the sound of someone breathing, hiding in a closet. Or a squeak on the stairs. Someone clearing their throat really quietly. You get where I’m going here?”

Tyler nodded again. “I might... I might have heard something.”

“And when you heard this noise, you realized, instinctively, that the killer might still be in the house, which is why you didn’t call the police, and instead ran for your life.”

“I guess... I guess that’s what might have been what I was thinking.”

Nan smiled. “There you go. Let me make some more notes.”

Fifty-Eight

Andrew

I told Isabel I wanted to take her for a ride.

“I don’t want to see my sister’s grave,” she said. I had filled her in on most of what had happened to me in the afternoon. “I’m not ready for that. I’m not sure I can handle it.”

“Not there,” I said. “Someplace else.”

She shot me one wary look before we left. “What if this is a trick? What if I end up disappearing just like Brie?”

“Call or text anyone you want,” I said, “and tell them you’re with me. That should offer you some level of protection.”

She agreed to go. Once we were in my car, she had questions.

“If you know who hired this hit man,” Isabel said, “then why haven’t you gone straight to Detective Hardy?”

Both hands on the wheel, I glanced her way and smiled. “She and I have something of a strained relationship, which you should understand better than anyone. Anyway, before she slaps the cuffs on this person, I want a little face-to-face time. And when you’ve heard the truth, maybe you’ll finally be satisfied I didn’t have anything to do with Brie’s disappearance.”

Isabel looked increasingly uncomfortable. She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’m going to kill Albert.” Her brother had tried to phone her twice in the last twenty minutes, and both times Isabel had declined the call. “What an idiot.”

“I suppose,” I said, trying to give her brother the benefit of the doubt, “that he thought he was doing the right thing.”

“You know what the road to hell is paved with,” she said.

“I do.”

“Even though I did everything I could to get Hardy to go after you,” she said, “I always held out some slim hope, you know? So when I saw that woman from the hospital window, pretending to be Brie, I wanted to believe. Didn’t you?”

I had to think about that. “If there had been a way for Brie to get in touch, to let me know she was okay, she would have done it directly. So I was skeptical. But Albert’s stunt accomplished more than he could have imagined. It might have given some false hope, but it also started off a panic.”

“You know, I was always jealous of her,” Isabel said. “Of Brie.”

I glanced over at her, then eyes back to the road.

“She was always the prettier one, the more popular one. I wanted to be that pretty, that popular. And then she ended up with you, and I guess I became even more envious.”

Wasn’t expecting that.

“Handsome, skilled, decent,” she said. “That’s what you were. And I ended up with Norman.”

“Norman’s okay.”

Isabel looked reflective. “I’ve treated him horribly,” she said.

I didn’t see any point arguing with that.

“Belittled him, mocked him. All I’ve ever wanted was for him to strike back, to stand up to me, to put me in my place. I felt like I was pushing him to be a man, and he just wasn’t up to it. I don’t know why he’s put up with it.”

“Maybe he believes he deserves it,” I said.

Isabel gazed out the window. “Wherever it is we’re going, are we almost there?” she asked.

“Almost,” I said.

I’d been heading north on the Milford Parkway, and when we reached the Merritt Parkway I took the long curving ramp to get onto the westbound lanes. We kept going until we got to Trumbull, where I took the White Plains Road exit. I made a few rights and lefts until we’d reached our destination.

“I remember shopping here once or twice,” Isabel said as we entered the lot of the TrumbullGate Mall. “I didn’t know it had gone under.”

I gave her the two-minute lesson on how TrumbullGate was typical of hundreds of malls across the country. Victims of online shopping, the collapse of anchor stores, and, more recently, the pandemic, which forced millions of people to alter their retail habits.

“The owners tried to make a go of it but they’ve thrown in the towel. Now they’re letting various contractors pick over the remains. The retailers removed all their merchandise years ago, but there’s plenty of other stuff to cannibalize. Shelving, railings, light fixtures, all sorts of stuff.”

The massive lot was empty, save for part of the north end that had been cordoned off and was full of those Hyundais.

“There’s his truck,” I said, pointing to a pickup parked by a false front that hid the loading docks.

I parked the car, grabbed Matt’s gun, which I’d tucked into a compartment in the door, and got out. Awkwardly, I slipped the weapon into the back of my belt, then, like a true gentleman, went around to the other side of the truck to open the door for Isabel.

“What’s with the gun?” Isabel asked, raising a worried eyebrow.

“Never know what you’ll run into in an abandoned mall,” I said, offering a reassuring smile, but Isabel did not look particularly reassured. “It’s okay. I just don’t want to leave this in the truck.”

Then I made a trip over to Greg’s vehicle, found it unlocked, and opened the driver’s door. I leaned in, peered under the seat.

“What are you looking for?” Isabel asked.

“Nothing,” I said, then slammed the door shut. I looked around to see if Greg’s girlfriend Julie’s car was here, and didn’t see it. I was relieved about that.

I pointed to some nearby loading docks.

“This way,” I said. I led her up a set of stairs that went up to the loading area, then found an unlocked door that took us into a cinder-block hallway. We went a short way down it to another door, and when we opened it, we were in the main area of the mall.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met Greg,” she said.

“Oh, he’s quite charming,” I said. “He’s my best friend.”

Fifty-Nine

Andrew

“Well, isn’t this creepy,” Isabel said.

The abandoned mall was making the same impression on her as it had on me when I’d come in here two days earlier.

She let out a minor shriek when a squirrel ran across her path. A pigeon flew by, but I didn’t see any sign of that hawk this time. And I spotted a couple more sleeping bags than I did my first time here, but no actual homeless people. I figured they went out and about during the daylight hours.

We found more evidence of unauthorized visits. Used condoms, McDonald’s wrappers. I knew from reading online articles that exploring abandoned sites was a popular pastime for some people. But so far, we seemed to have the place to ourselves.

Except for Greg. He was here somewhere.

“Let’s head upstairs,” I said. “That’s where I saw him last.”

We went to the escalator. I went first, testing to make sure the steps, while not moving, were at least secure. They seemed structurally sound, so I motioned for Isabel to follow me, pointing out the steps that were missing. I offered a hand since there was no rubber handrail to grab on to, and she took it with what seemed some reluctance.

When we got to the upper level I raised a finger, signaling Isabel to be quiet while I listened for sounds of work. Power tools, hammering. There was mostly silence.

One thing was different from last time. More of the railings that were designed to keep customers from plunging to the first level were missing.

“Last time I was here,” I said, pointing, “he was working in that end.”

Our steps, and our occasional words to each other, echoed throughout the empty space. We’d only taken a few steps when I heard an industrial grinding or cutting sound. Short, repetitive bursts. Too noisy for a cordless drill. Probably that reciprocating saw I’d seen Greg wielding the last time I was here.

I pointed, and we started walking in the direction of the sound.

We’d gone about a hundred feet, sidestepping trash, a rusted-out bicycle with one wheel, a couple of shopping carts, and a leaning, bird-shit-stained statue of P. T. Barnum, the long-dead founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus. He was, according to the plaque that was hanging to the base by a single screw, a native of Connecticut. Right now he looked more like the toppled statue of Saddam Hussein.

We stopped in front of what was once a dollar store, faded banners advertising 50 percent off! and all sales final! dangling from the ceiling. Inside, hacking away at some wood shelves, was my longtime buddy Greg Raymus.

He had on a pair of plastic goggles, but no helmet. Greg had always shunned extra steps to protect himself. There was an inch-long cigarette pinched between his lips.

He did like to smoke them down to nothing.

He must have sensed us standing there in the concourse watching him, because he took his finger off the saw’s trigger, set it down, swept the goggles from his eyes, and looked in our direction.

“Hey!” he said, and laughed nervously. “Wasn’t expecting to see you. At least, not till later.”

He tossed the goggles and strolled out into the concourse, still holding the saw, pointing it toward the floor. It hung from his arm like some bizarre weapon designed to kill aliens. He took the inch of cigarette from between his lips and tossed it.

“Greg,” I said evenly. “Thought I’d just drop by.”

He looked at Isabel and said, “Have we met?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“This is Isabel,” I said. “Brie’s sister.”

Greg put on a concerned face. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said solemnly. “I really liked Brie.”

I could sense Isabel’s tenseness. She’d figured it out. Why I had brought her here, why we were talking to Greg. She was owed this. Her campaign to get justice for Brie had been genuine and heartfelt. The only problem was that it had been misdirected.

The true target was standing here in front of her.

“Where’s Julie?” I asked, feeling the gun at my back, under my jacket.

“She was here a bit ago,” he said. “Been gone most of the day. Just dropped off some donuts. Want one?”

“No, thanks,” I replied. Casually, I said, “Matt’s dead.”

Greg blinked three times. “I’m sorry, what?”

“He died a few hours ago,” I told him. “In the woods, where he’d buried Brie.”

Greg laughed nervously. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Matt who? What woods?”

“You called him,” I said. “When you thought Brie might have returned. Wondered whether he’d actually done what you’d hired him to do. Freaked him out, too. So he took me along, had me dig her up just to be sure.”

“Honestly, Andy, nothing that you’re saying makes any sense to me.”

“But you can rest easy,” I said. “He did what you paid him to do. That Brie who showed up this week was a fake. But I’m guessing you know that by now, too.”

“What?”

“Did you see her by chance, too? Just like Tyler did? Followed her back to her place and killed her before you realized you had the wrong person?”

“Okay, now I’m really confused.”

I had no doubt that he was. At least about the most recent accusation.

“It’s only been a little while since I found out it was you who wanted Brie killed, so I haven’t had long to try to figure out why, but I’ve got a couple of ideas,” I said. “I’m guessing it had something to do with the business. Something Brie found out.”

Greg said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes.

“You son of a bitch,” Isabel said.

Greg licked his lips. “Look, Andy—”

“What always seemed weird, but I never really thought about until today, was how Brie encouraged me to take that fishing trip with you. She wanted me to spend time with you. That wasn’t like her, you know? Because she was never your biggest fan. I remember her asking me what we’d talked about, when I chatted with her on the Saturday night. Like she was waiting for some specific topic of conversation to come up.”

Greg’s eyes were darting about, as though looking for an escape route.

“Remember that time when you kind of made a pass at her? Had a bit to drink, acted stupid. Brie told me about it, and I took your side.” I shook my head regretfully. “I made Brie feel like it was her fault. Not that she’d brought it on, but that she was making too big a deal about it. I think, after that, Brie felt there wasn’t anything to be gained by pointing out your transgressions. I wouldn’t take them seriously.”

I took a breath. “What I’m thinking is, maybe you did something else, something bad, certainly worse than patting Brie’s backside. But instead of her telling me, she twisted your arm and told you to confess. And that if you didn’t, she’d have no choice but to tell me herself.”

Greg appeared to shrink before my eyes. His head dropped, his shoulders slumped. He kicked at a piece of debris with his boot.

“They were going to kill me,” he said, barely loud enough for me to hear.

And to his obvious surprise, I said, “The bikers.”

“What?”

“Matt told me a few things at the end. You ripped off some bikers.”

Greg appeared to deflate. I didn’t know everything, but I clearly knew more than Greg would have guessed.

“You know I was never one to say no to something that fell off the back of a truck,” he said. “If something found its way into my hands, hey, I was happy to take it. Remember that VCR I scored back in the day?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a habit I should have given up. Remember when I broke my leg? Said I’d jumped from some scaffolding?”

I nodded.

“That’s not exactly what happened. You know Beaver Meadow Road?”

“Vaguely.”

“South of Middletown? Nice stretch of road through the Cockaponset State Forest, east of Route 9, on the way to the Connecticut River. Remember that old MG I used to have? The convertible? Got it for a song because it wasn’t in the best of shape? And didn’t keep it long because I couldn’t afford the repairs?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I was taking it for a spin up that way. On my own, riding along behind this biker guy. A Harley, handlebars up in the stratosphere. A fucking deer runs into the road and he swerves and wipes out. I pull over, you know, see if he’s okay, and he’s out cold. So I put in a call, 911. Didn’t give my name, just told them where to send an ambulance.”

I wanted him to move it along, but I’d waited six years to hear this. I guessed I could wait a little longer.

“Anyway, I finish making the call and I notice this satchel the guy’d been carrying. It’s kind of opened some, and there’s some cash that’s spilled out. A lot of cash. I mean, like a hundred grand in cash, although I didn’t know it was that much until later, when I counted it.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“The guy’s still unconscious, the ambulance hasn’t arrived yet. And there hasn’t been another car along that stretch for a while, but you never know when one’s gonna show up. So I had a decision to make, right?” He paused. “I made the wrong one.”

“Did the guy live?” I asked.

“Yeah, he made it. I guess he’d made some kind of drug delivery and was coming back with the cash when he wiped out. He’d been ripped off but it wasn’t like he was going to tell the cops. But he and his buddies figured it had to be whoever made the 911 call.”

“You didn’t leave your name, but there was a record of your number.”

Another nod. “I don’t know how they got it, but they did. And once they had the number they were able to track me down. Paid me a little visit. I hadn’t spent much of the money, just a few hundred. Gave it back, but my apology didn’t cut it.”

“That’s when they broke your leg.”

“Yeah. Held me down, went at it with a sledgehammer.”

Isabel winced, but there was no sympathy in her eyes.

“They weren’t done. They said, you rip us off, you pay us back double. They wanted another hundred grand. Or the next time, we hammer your skull, they said.”

“You could have gone to the police.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “Yeah, tell them I ripped off some bikers, could you help me out? And if they had someone inside who could trace my call to 911, maybe they had someone inside who’d tell them I’d tattled.”

“The hundred grand,” I said slowly. “Let me guess. This is around the time we started losing all those jobs.”

Greg grimaced. “This is hard to talk about.”

I waited, feeling the gun at my back like it was a huge stone in my shoe.

Greg moved the reciprocating saw from one hand to the other. It had to be getting heavy. “Believe me when I tell you I never wanted to do this. I felt sick about it, still do. It was a shitty thing to do. At the time, I didn’t see any way out, you know?” He paused, then said, “I sold us out.”

“How?”

“I went to our competitors. Leaked our bids, allowing them to undercut us, even offer more for less.”

“And they paid you off,” I said.

He nodded. “They were big projects. It was worth it to them, slipping me twenty or thirty thousand to get those jobs. They’d recover it all on the back end. I fucked us over on enough bids to get almost all of it, then sold the MG to get the rest. I got the hundred grand I needed to keep the bikers from bashing my head in.”

“You destroyed our company. All that we’d worked for.”

He broke eye contact with me, and when he did I took a second to adjust the gun at my back so it wasn’t digging in quite so uncomfortably. Greg might have missed it, but Isabel didn’t.

I couldn’t believe he’d done this to us, sabotaged our entire enterprise, and yet I knew there was an even greater betrayal to be told about.

“You could have come to me,” I said. “Told me the trouble you were in. Figured a way out of it. You didn’t have to sell us out.”

“And what would you have done?” he said. “Were you going to pull a hundred thousand bucks out of your ass? Huh?”

I shook my head sadly and said, “Why don’t you get to the part where Brie found out.”

Sixty

Jayne was in the kitchen when the phone rang.

She’d been holding one of the cordless receivers that was linked to the household landline, given that Andrew had taken her cell phone with him. She’d been hoping he’d call, tell her more about what he planned to do. He’d been vague about his intentions when he’d left. Wanted to drop by Isabel and Norman’s house to return his phone, he’d said. But she knew he had much more on his mind than that.

She suspected — no, feared — he’d gone to confront whoever it was who’d hired that man to kill Brie.

She’d wanted to think Andrew had more sense than to take the law into his own hands. She’d wanted to think he’d go straight to Detective Hardy with whatever information he had. But what she wanted him to do, and what she believed he would do, were two entirely different things. And she understood why he wouldn’t have wanted to go to Detective Hardy, who had hounded him for six years.

So when the phone in her hand rang, she thought it might be him. She hit the button and put the phone straight to her ear.

“Yes?”

“It’s Nan Sokolow.”

“Oh God, yes, yes, thanks for calling. Are they going to let you in to see Tyler?”

“I’ve been,” she said.

“How is he? He must be terrified.”

“He’s okay. Look, they have a strong circumstantial case against him, but I’m working on a strategy. An alternative way that things could have happened. That Tyler ran because he was in shock, that he thought the killer was still in the house.”

“But you believe him, right? You know he couldn’t have done it.”

“Ms. Keeling, it doesn’t matter to me whether he did it or not. What matters is that we build a credible defense for him. It’s going to take some work.”

Jayne could hear it in the lawyer’s voice, that she believed her brother really had killed Candace DiCarlo.

“But what if—”

Before Jayne could complete her question, the doorbell rang.

“I have to go,” Jayne said. Still clutching the phone, she ran to the front door, opened it, and found Detective Hardy standing there.

“Where’s Andrew?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“He took your phone,” the detective said.

“Yes.”

“And he’s turned it off,” Hardy said. “I can’t reach him, can’t track him. You must have some idea where he was going.”

“I don’t. I wish I knew.”

“Did he tell you he thought he knew who was responsible for Brie’s death?”

Jayne hesitated before answering. “Yes.”

“Did he tell you who it was?”

“No.”

“Do you have a guess?”

“No.”

“What was his state of mind when you last saw him?”

“Seriously?” Jayne asked. “A man took him into the woods and made him dig up his own wife. What would your state of mind be?”

Hardy sighed in frustration and turned to look at the street. When she spun back around to face Jayne, she said, “We have to find him. If he calls you, you have to let me know where he is.”

“Please, God, tell me you still don’t think he killed her? Tell me you’re not still after him for that.”

“No, I don’t think he’s killed anyone. Not yet. But I want to stop him before he does. I think he’s armed. I think he took the gun from that man who made him dig up his wife’s grave. We have to stop him before he does something stupid.”

Sixty-One

Andrew

Greg said, “You remember there was a while there when Brie was helping us out in the office.”

I remembered. It wasn’t the fanciest headquarters. It was an office trailer, white metal, a few windows, a basic bathroom, with all the architectural charm of a kid’s playhouse made out of a refrigerator’s cardboard delivery carton. We had leased it and set it up on a vacant lot in Milford’s west end, hoping one day to construct something more permanent. We were really busy, putting together all those bids for several jobs — the ones I now knew we’d lost because of Greg — and Brie, who was good with numbers and putting together proposals, had come in for a week or two to get us organized.

“Go on,” I said.

“We were both out at a site when a call came into the office, from one of our competitors. Dumbass called the office instead of my cell. Brie took the call. Recognized the name on the caller ID as the company we most wanted — well, that you most wanted — to beat for the Wilkins job, that auto repair shop we were going to build. Brie asked if she could take a message and the guy, flustered, hung up, but not before he’d said the meeting was all set.”

“She knew something was up,” I said. “We’d already lost the Frampton job.”

Greg nodded. “Yeah, the condo thing.” He shook his head. “Brie figured something was up, followed me. Saw me meet with the guy, saw him pass me an envelope. She, uh, she confronted me about it later. Said she wouldn’t tell you, that I had to man up, tell you myself. And if I didn’t, she would.”

“The fishing trip,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“But you had no plans to confess.”

“I... I couldn’t. And hear me out, okay? I was... I was thinking of you.”

“Really.”

“If I’d confessed, you being kind of a Boy Scout and all, you’d insist on going to the police. The whole thing would unravel. They’d have killed you, too. I couldn’t let that happen. That’s why I’m telling you all this, so that maybe you’ll understand. I did something awful, but at least they didn’t kill you.”

My cheeks felt hot. It felt as though my eyes were filling with blood, that I was looking at Greg through a red filter.

Just shoot the fucker now.

No, I couldn’t do that. Not yet, anyway.

“I explained the situation to them. They recommended someone, this Matt guy.”

“He did it while we were at the cabins,” I said. “You knew it would happen. You had her killed, and then let the world think I’d done it.”

“Yeah, but you were alive,” Greg said.

“And when that fake Brie showed up this week, it freaked you out.”

Greg nodded. “I called him, asked him if somehow he’d fucked it up.” He looked at me pleadingly. “Would you at least give me a head start?” he asked.

“No.”

“I know you’re going to turn me in. I get that. Even an hour. Give me a chance to pack a bag, you know. Say goodbye to Julie. I know you won’t believe this, but it’s been eating me up for years.” He paused. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

I had no reply for that. But I had one last question. “Tell me about Candace Di—”

Before I could get out my question, Isabel let out a cry. The homeless man who’d made an appearance my last time here was making his way toward us, and his entrance into the scene had startled not just Isabel, but all three of us.

“Hey,” he said, looking at Greg.

Greg glanced nervously at him. “Not now, Neil,” he said.

But Neil kept coming. “I saw your girl come in with a Dunkin’s box.” Neil, for the first time, focused on Isabel and me. “Some kind of meetin’ going on?”

Greg raised the saw as if it were an actual weapon, using his other hand to steady it. He gave the trigger a quick squeeze. The sound it made was as intimidating as the blade that jutted back and forth at high speed.

“Fuck, fine!” Neil said, backing away.

Greg squeezed the trigger again, holding it this time, and lunged toward me. That high-speed blade, designed to cut through just about anything, would do some serious damage if it reached me. I quickly sidestepped, reaching for the gun at my back at the same time.

But I fumbled it.

The gun clattered to the floor.

“Shit!” said Neil.

Greg wasn’t sure whether to go after the gun or keep coming after me with the saw. He settled on the latter, squeezing the trigger in short, menacing bursts.

There was the sound of a shot, like a cannon going off in the mall’s cavernous concourse, the echo bouncing off the walls and the shattered glass ceiling.

Isabel had grabbed the gun and fired it wildly, effectively getting Greg’s attention, but missing him by a mile.

“Stop it!” she screamed. “Put it down!”

She pulled the trigger again, the recoil throwing her arms upward. Greg tossed the saw and started running in the direction of the closest deactivated escalator.

He wasn’t the only one running for his life. Neil, who clearly had no idea who the good guys and the bad guys were here, had figured the only thing to do was get the fuck out of there.

Isabel looked like she wanted to get off another shot, but Greg and Neil were on intersecting flight paths, and she clearly didn’t want to take out the homeless guy, although with her aim I had a sense we were all safe except maybe for some pigeons roosting up near the overhead windows.

Greg was still headed for the dead escalator, but Neil had some other destination in mind, and ended up sideswiping Greg, who lost his balance and began to stagger toward the railing. He reached out for it to stop his fall, but instantly realized his mistake.

The bolts that held the railing to the floor were either shot or not there at all, and the railing gave way like it was made of nothing stronger than toothpicks.

Greg went over the edge and disappeared, his lungs bellowing out a loud, “Fuuuck!” as he went down.

Isabel screamed.

I was running.

I reached the escalator and descended the steps two at a time, careful to navigate the gaps where steps had been removed, and hit the lower level, my heart pounding. I had to backtrack past a few empty storefronts until I reached Greg, on his back, one leg twisted around so impossibly that it was almost up to his ear.

“Greg,” I said, getting down on my knees.

He turned his head a fraction of an inch to look at me, tried to move his lips.

Isabel made it halfway down the escalator, then stopped and watched.

“Greg,” I said again. “Hang in there. Just for another minute. We’re not done. I’ve got one more thing to ask you about, and it’s really, really fucking important.”

I asked him my question and put an ear close to his lips to hear what he had to say.