Chapter Forty-One

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Detective Quentin leaned back in his chair. “That was impressive, Mr. and Mrs. Carter. You’ve spun quite a tale.”

It was the next morning, and we were back at the Coldlake Falls PD, sitting in an interview room. Quentin was talking to us alone; Beam was nowhere to be seen. Quentin was wearing black dress pants and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. When we’d called the police station to request a meeting with Quentin—we would talk to no one else—we weren’t even sure he would get the message, and if he did whether he would come. Maybe he was done with us. But within forty-five minutes, we got a call back at Rose’s to say we should come to the station because Quentin was on his way.

Eddie and I had decided to tell him everything—about Shannon Haller, about seeing the Lost Girl, about breaking into John Haller’s house and finding the roll of film with the photograph on it. We’d told him about ghosts and Eddie’s adoption and the strange way we’d ended up here without really remembering it. It didn’t matter that we sounded delusional and possibly unhinged. Eddie and I were done carrying the mysteries of Atticus Line around, letting them weigh us down.

We had only left out one part of the story—the attack on me. Whoever Trish was, wherever she was, she didn’t deserve questioning by police and possible attempted murder charges. Quentin might not believe us, but if he could find Trish, he would sit her down in this very room and try to figure out the truth. I didn’t want her to go through that. She’d been through enough.

Quentin crossed his arms, looking at us with his uncanny blue eyes. He had listened to us in silence. As usual, he had taken no notes, as if every word we said was immediately locked into his brain. On the table between us was our only piece of evidence—the photos we’d taken from John Haller, including the one shot on Hunter Beach.

“Mr. Carter,” the detective said crisply, as if he was told ghost stories all the time. “You’re saying that this woman”—he gestured to Shannon in the photographs—“is your birth mother.”

“Yes,” Eddie said. As strange as this interview was, he looked more relaxed than he had when we started, as if he was unburdened.

“You also claim that this woman’s father possessed a camera with this photograph on the film, which means the camera was obtained after she left home. This, to you, proves that the father saw the daughter at least once after she left, contrary to his missing person’s report. And from this, you conjecture that he must have killed his daughter on Atticus Line. In effect, your grandfather murdered your mother. Am I following this?”

“Yes,” Eddie said.

“Mrs. Carter,” Quentin continued, turning to me. “You have stated that your husband broke into the house of a man named John Haller in Midland, and that you followed him. Both of you illegally entered the man’s house through a window while he wasn’t home. In searching John Haller’s home, you found the camera with the alleged film inside, after which you produced these photographs.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“And by the two of you committing this crime, you both claim to have solved one of my oldest open murder cases, a case that—please excuse my word usage—haunts my career even now, nineteen years later, as a blight on my record, even though it happened before my time.”

I looked into his chilly blue eyes as I answered him. “Yes.”

Quentin leaned forward across the table. “I can make one phone call. One. I can call the Midland PD and ask if a man named John Haller has reported a break-in at his home, and the answer will be yes or no. If it’s yes, I will tell the Midland PD that I have two suspects here who are confessing. If it’s no, your entire story disappears. Neither of those options is very good from your point of view. So please explain, Mrs. Carter, why did you tell me any of this in the first place?”

He was hard to read, but I read enough. It was in the undercurrent of anger in his voice at the idea that we were wasting his precious time. “You don’t believe us,” I said.

“Believe you?” He tapped the photograph. “This photo could be of anyone. It could have been taken at any time, and it could have come from anywhere. You could have brought it with you from Ann Arbor, for all I know. It isn’t evidence. To solve a murder case, I require evidence. You’ve given me nothing.”

Eddie shifted in his seat beside me, because he didn’t like the way Quentin was speaking to me. But I held still and kept my gaze on the detective’s. “You don’t scare me,” I told him, my voice almost as icy as his. “Make your phone call. Do it.”

“I am not susceptible to women like you,” Quentin said as Eddie shifted in his seat again, getting angry at the phrase women like you. “Maybe everyone else you meet is, including your husband. They react to your blond hair, your looks, your smile. Pretty, but not too pretty, correct? The way you dress manages to show off your legs without being too showy. You don’t talk too much or too little. You don’t push. You pretend to be agreeable and obedient, and then you do whatever you want. Women like you can keep secrets for years—decades. Until death, if they have to. They never get drunk and slip up or get stupid over a man and tell him too much. And woe to anyone who crosses you. You think I don’t see it? Because I saw it from the very first second I walked into the room the night that Rhonda Jean Breckwith died in your back seat.”

His words fell hard, and I kept my face from flinching. I’d thought I’d been so careful. I should have known.

“You get off on this,” I told him, firing back. “Unnerving people, scaring them. Keeping them off-balance so they talk too much. You think you’re so powerful, but this room gives you most of that power. If you weren’t a detective, we’d be even, which drives you crazy. Because you like to intimidate women. You find that especially fun.”

“Unnerving people is how I solve cases, Mrs. Carter. On most people, it works.”

He meant that it didn’t work on me, but I didn’t care for the compliment. I pointed to the photo on the table, to Shannon Haller’s face. “That’s your unidentified murder victim from 1976. Her name is Shannon Haller. Maybe you believe that her ghost haunts Atticus Line, killing other hitchhikers, or maybe you don’t. But as we told you, we already gave this information to Officer Syed. He said he can check the dental records from the postmortem. If you can match the dental records—or her blood—then you have evidence. And the identity of your unknown victim is solved.”

His jaw tightened. He didn’t have to tell me that none of it would happen quickly, not in a case this old. Whether the results came in a month or a year, it would still be proof one way or another.

And in the meantime, John Haller’s missing person’s report matched the description and time frame of the murder of the unknown girl. It was a lead he hadn’t had before, and Quentin was a detective. He would follow it.

“Are you going to arrest us?” Eddie’s voice broke into our standoff. “I’ve never confessed to a crime before. I don’t know how this works.”

Quentin’s look was calculating as he turned to Eddie, and then he seemed to make a decision. He shook his head.

“I don’t have time for this.” He picked up the photos from the table and put them into his breast pocket. Eddie flinched, and I knew he wanted to protest, because aside from the picture of Shannon and Eddie—which we hadn’t given up—those were the only photos he had of his mother. But we had the negatives, and we could print them again.

“What do you mean, you don’t have time?” I said.

“Old legends. Ghost stories. Unprovable theories.” Quentin pushed his chair back. “I don’t deal in those things. I deal in facts and evidence, and that’s all.”

“You’re not going to investigate?” I asked.

“Investigate what? There’s nothing here. What I’m going to do, Mrs. Carter, is go back to my other cases—cases that need my attention—and pretend this meeting never happened.”

Eddie and I exchanged a look. He didn’t have to believe us about the Lost Girl, but we had confessed to a crime. Didn’t he care?

“What do you want us to do?” Eddie asked.

“That’s easy, Mr. Carter. I want both of you to pack your bags, go back to Ann Arbor, and never come here again.”

“A few days ago, you told us not to leave town,” I snapped.

“I changed my mind. This is over. We have someone in custody for the murder of Rhonda Jean Breckwith, and both of you are cleared as suspects. Go home.”

What if John Haller reported the break-in?I was about to ask it, but I didn’t. Maybe John Haller wouldn’t report the break-in if it meant questions about what was stolen. He had secrets to cover up.

Quentin stood, and Eddie pushed his chair back and stood, too, tense with anger. “My mother was murdered. Her killer is still out there, free.”

“That is your theory, Mr. Carter,” Quentin said. “It’s a theory with no proof, and I’ve heard plenty of those—including the theory that I committed all the murders myself. Maybe you’d like me to investigate that one next?”

“So that’s it?” I stood, too, and the three of us faced one another over the table. “You just pretend that none of this ever happened?”

“Because none of it did happen. Nothing that you can prove.” Quentin looked from me to Eddie. “The two of you were drawn into a difficult and stressful situation the night you picked up Rhonda Jean. It made your imaginations overreact. Mr. Carter, you’ve wondered about your birth parents all your life, have you not? You’d grasp at anything that seemed to answer your questions and let wild theories fill in the blanks, especially considering your precarious mental state. It’s unfortunate, but it’s what happened. I’m not going to investigate this supposed break-in, and in return, you’re free to go.”

He didn’t wait for us to argue again. He turned and left the room.

---

—Detective Beam was standing in front of the Coldlake Falls police station, smoking a cigarette and waiting for us. He took in our surprised faces and asked, “What did he say to you?”

Eddie and I exchanged a look. “We’re leaving town,” I said, skipping over the confession we’d given that Quentin had discounted. “He told us to go.”

“Oh, did he give his permission?” Beam gave a bitter laugh and tapped his cigarette ash to the sidewalk. “How generous of him.”

I took in his expression, his tired, bloodshot eyes. “Why do you work with him if you hate him so much?” I asked.

Beam exhaled smoke and dropped his cigarette to grind it out. “I don’t have much choice, do I? He closes cases, and that’s all that matters. No one cares that he’s a soulless bastard. Besides, it’s nothing to me anymore. I’m taking retirement next month. Some other detective can deal with the great, almighty Quentin.” He trained his gaze on Eddie. “I heard how he talked to you at Rose’s, tried to make you feel like you’re crazy. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. He doesn’t know.” He nodded at my husband. “I did two tours in Vietnam, son. I know what crazy is, and you aren’t it.”

Eddie held Beam’s gaze. “My discharge papers disagree,” he said quietly.

“Because they’re trash,” Beam replied. “Put them in the trash where they belong. Whatever’s going on, Carter, you’re not the crazy one, and neither am I. Men like us know the truth. It’s the world that’s crazy. We’re the only ones who are sane.” He took a step toward the doors of the police station, then turned back. “Don’t let anyone tell you different,” he said to Eddie. “Not doctors, not Quentin, not anyone. The things we’ve seen mean the world is crazy. Not us.”