Chapter Twenty-Four

Five minutes later, I'm pounding on the front door of Russ's house, not caring that it's too early or that I'm wearing just a T-shirt and boxers and slipped-on sneakers, the laces still untied.

Jennifer answers the door while tugging on a robe, the fabric parting around her pregnant stomach. Her sleep-shrouded gaze tells me I woke her up. "Ethan? What's wrong?"

"Is Russ here?"

"No. He's at the store. They're getting deliveries this morning."

"You still have the spare key my parents gave you, right?" I say. "You didn't lose it?"

When I was ten, only the neighbors on each side of us had keys to our house—the Chens on the right and the Barringers on the left. They had them so Mrs. Chen could water the plants when we went on vacation and so Mrs. Barringer could enter if there was an emergency while we were away. Since I checked the whole house, finding no broken windows and every door locked, the only way someone could have come inside is with the sole spare key now in Russ's possession.

"I—I don't know," Jennifer says as she runs a hand through her tangled hair. "I think so. Why?"

"Because someone broke into my house," I say, barely scratching the surface of what I think is going on, even though I desperately hope I'm wrong about that.

"Really?" Jennifer's eyes go wide. Fully awake now, she pulls me inside and leads me to the kitchen. Along the way, we pass the family room, where Benji sits on the floor munching cereal and watching an episode of Bluey.

"I think it's in here somewhere," Jennifer says as she rummages through a junk drawer in the kitchen. "Did they take anything?"

"No," I say, which is why I don't think this was your average break-in. Even though half the furniture is with my parents in Florida, a burglar surely would have taken something. My laptop in the study. The TV in the living room. Hell, my wallet was on the same nightstand as the notebook and pen, the only things that were apparently touched.

"I can't find it," Jennifer says, closing the drawer with a nudge of her hip. She calls down the hallway, "Misty? Do you know where the spare key to Ethan's house is?"

Russ's mother appears in the doorway, looking like she's been awake for hours. Her clothes are crisp and her hair perfect. "The spare key?" she says. "It's here."

She guides me back to the foyer and a side table by the front door. Sitting on it are a lamp, a bin of mail, and a bowl of keys. Mrs. Chen plucks one from the bowl and hands it to me. I look at the white label attached to the key ring. There, in my mother's handwriting, is my last name.

"And everything here was locked last night?" I ask, desperate. "No signs of a break-in?"

"We have a security system," Jennifer says. "It was activated all night."

I hand the key back to Mrs. Chen, who says, "Maybe you should call the police."

"Thanks. I probably will."

It turns out there's no need. Because as I walk back to my house, my still-untied shoelaces flapping around my ankles, I spot Detective Cassandra Palmer on my doorstep. Her presence, unexpected and unannounced, sends my anxiety spiking again.

"Good morning, Ethan," she says as she takes in my ensemble of boxers, T-shirt, and untamed bedhead. "Is everything okay?"

I stop on the front walk, trying to think of the best way to answer that. I have the urge to tell her no, that everything isn't okay. That, in fact, someone was in my house. But I can't. Because it wasn't just anyone who broke in last night. The spare key still at Russ's house proves it. A regular burglar—a human one—would need some way to get inside.

But not Billy.

He's a shadow.

He didn't need a spare key or unlocked door to slip inside, creep up the stairs, stand inches from my sleeping form as he wrote in the notebook.

Hakuna matata, dude.

"Just had to run next door for a second," I finally say. From her unimpressed expression, it's clear Detective Palmer doesn't believe me. Still, she says nothing else as I open the front door and usher her inside.

"Make yourself at home in the kitchen," I say. "I'm going to run upstairs and put on some pants."

"Please do," Detective Palmer says.

At the top of the stairs, I pause in an attempt to sense Billy's presence the same way I did the night I first noticed the lights flicking on and off around Hemlock Circle. If he's still here, there's a chance I won't need to tell Detective Palmer anything at all. Maybe she'll detect his presence on her own. Billy, however, seems to be gone. Right now, all I feel is the heavy silence of a house with only one person living in it.

In my bedroom, the notebook sits face down on the carpet, where I'd thrown it after seeing what had been written inside. I avoid looking at it as I slide on the same jeans I wore last night. After splashing my face and armpits with cold water, I head back down to the kitchen and start brewing a pot of coffee. "You want some?" I ask Detective Palmer.

"No thanks. I won't be here long. I just wanted to have a quick chat."

That sounds ominous. I look to the coffee maker, where a thin stream of liquid has started trickling into the carafe.

"I heard you had a nice conversation with Detective Patel yesterday," she says. "After he picked you up for trespassing on the grounds of the Hawthorne Institute. I guess you're still convinced they had something to do with Billy's murder."

But I'm not. Not anymore. What Fritz told me last night makes sense. He's a smart man. Smart enough to know not to dispose of a boy's body on the property he oversaw. Since I also believe his assertion that Ezra Hawthorne was too old and unsteady to do it, the institute and everyone associated with it have been demoted to possible, yet unlikely, suspects.

"I've changed my mind about that," I say.

"Care to tell me why you were there?"

"Looking."

"Me and my team already did that," Detective Palmer says. "Technically, we still are. If I wanted to, I could charge you with disturbing a crime scene."

I turn away from the coffee maker, nervous. Just because Ragesh declined to arrest me doesn't mean Detective Palmer won't.

"I didn't disturb anything. I just want to know who killed Billy."

"You already do. You were right there when he was taken."

"But I was asleep."

Detective Palmer folds her arms across her chest. "Which I find very convenient."

"I'm not a liar," I say. "I didn't see anything."

"I have no doubt you really believe that. But sometimes people forget things for a reason. Especially little kids who witness something too confusing or traumatic for them to process."

"You think I saw who did it and blocked it out?"

"Don't you?" Detective Palmer says.

Of course I've considered that possibility, as has every mental health professional I've ever talked to. But nothing has ever backed up the idea. Not decades of therapy, hypnosis, and dream analysis, including a child psychologist who showed me endless drawings of tents just in case one of them sparked a memory.

"It's not as simple as that," I say as the coffee at last finishes brewing. I grab a mug and prepare to pour.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe this recurring dream you keep having is just that. A dream. Or maybe it's a repressed memory you have of seeing who took Billy. One that messed you up so much that your brain deleted it."

I stop mid-pour. "What could possibly be that traumatic?"

"You'd be surprised. Think about who could have taken and killed Billy. Remember what I said the other day about the culprit likely being someone from Hemlock Circle?"

I do. Vividly.

"You told me the reason Billy didn't make a sound when he was taken is because he could have known who it was," I say as I resume pouring the coffee, sloshing it into the mug with unsteady hands.

Detective Palmer nods. "If I'm right about this, and I think I am, whoever took and killed Billy not only knew about the falls, which was the most convenient place to dispose of his body, but also who he was, where he was. They knew him well enough that he didn't panic when he saw them, even after they sliced through the side of the tent. Not a whole lot of people fit that bill. And you knew every single one of them."

"It wasn't my parents, if that's what you're implying."

"No, not them," Detective Palmer says. "In my mind, there's only one person who could be responsible."

I throw my head back and rub my temples, already knowing where this is heading. Based on all the established facts—that the killer was aware Billy was camping in my yard, that Billy didn't scream or panic because he knew his abductor, that whoever it was had knowledge of the falls two miles from my backyard—there really is only one viable suspect left.

"Billy's mother," I say.