Chapter 10

The short answer, it seemed, was because you're so good at it, which was what Fox kept saying every time I objected.

Hours later, after waiting for the deputies to finish their search of Mr. Huggins's home, we were sitting in Fox's ancient van on a residential street in the eastern part of Hastings Rock. The homes were a mixture of bungalows and cottages that had a battered, huddled look, and although the streets were clean and the yards were kept, the air was stagnant and full of bugs, and there was a faint, unpleasant odor that had seeped into the car slowly in spite of the closed windows. This part of town, Fox had informed me on the drive over, had marshy areas; the Swift River created the eastern border of Hastings Rock, and that, along with its estuary, meant a very different (i.e., less desirable for most people) geography than the coast to the west or the bluffs and sea cliffs to the south. All of which only begged the question: why had Mr. Huggins lived here?

"But I don't want to be good at it," I finally tried.

"Alas, you can't always get what you want."

"Did you combine The Rolling Stones with ‘alas'?"

"Dashiell," Fox said, patting my shoulder as though, perhaps, this would distract me. "I understand that you don't feel comfortable—"

"Breaking and entering, no, I don't."

They raised their hands in surrender, but they continued, "And that's to your credit. But you do seem to have a knack for this—"

"So do you! You were great when we snuck into Vivienne's office!"

"And I already explained: I can't do it because I'm going to be the lookout. I'm the perfect lookout, you understand. People know me. They see me wandering around, doing strange things all the time. You are a suspected murderer and, on top of that, the new kid in town. You would stick out like a sore thumb. I, on the other hand, am a local artist. I'm so eccentric I'm practically invisible."

"It sounds like you rehearsed this. And I thought you weren't an artist. I thought you were a fraud and a sham and a huckster."

"That," Fox said—a little huffily in my opinion—"was earlier. And what would you do instead? Would you rather send Millie in there?"

I gave them a flat look.

"Exactly," Fox said. "Would you rather subject Indira to the threat of bodily harm in her, uh, advanced state?"

"Did you just call Indira old?"

"No, no, no!"

"You're basically the exact same age."

"Not really the point—"

"And Millie and Keme think I'm basically the same age as you because I'm past twenty-five."

"But if you—wait, really?" Fox settled back and blinked at me. "That's depressing."

"It's depressing for you?" I asked.

"Who do they think is cooler? Wait, do they still say cool?"

"I'm getting out of the car now. Please pay attention and don't let anyone murder me."

"A gentle maiming at the very most," Fox promised me, holding out a pair of disposable gloves.

Somehow, I managed not to slam the door.

Mr. Huggins's house was a small Cape Cod that blended in with the other houses on the street. It had asbestos-shingle siding in a utilitarian brown, and the curtains were drawn in all the windows. Fox had parked on a side street, so I approached the house from the back rather than the front door. Privacy hedges screened the backyard (perfect for the discerning murderer lying in wait), and with only a distant streetlight for illumination, it took me a moment to find the gate in the gloom. I pulled on the disposable gloves and let myself into Mr. Huggins's backyard.

It was much darker back here, with the hedges blocking the light from the street. From what I could make out, the yard was as utilitarian as the house—the grass was cut, but there were no flowerbeds, no rosebushes, nothing that indicated Mr. Huggins had taken an interest in this part of his property. A darker shadow suggested a shed at the back of the lot, but I decided to leave that for later; I had a mental vision of opening it and a body falling out, probably landing directly on me, and I just wasn't emotionally equipped to handle that.

A few steps brought me up to the Cape Cod's back porch. I reached for the door, and then I stopped. I hadn't thought about this part. I had a sneaking suspicion that Fox had, and that Fox had conveniently forgotten to mention it. How was I supposed to get into a locked and sealed house? Police tape crisscrossed the back door, daring me to try. Maybe a window? Or—

And then I noticed that the door wasn't fully shut. Something seemed strange, and when I leaned down to check, I saw that the door and jamb were splintered near the strike plate. Which meant, my seasoned crime junkie brain told me, that someone had forced their way into Mr. Huggins's house. Why? Who? The deputies? Maybe they'd felt like they couldn't wait for a locksmith. Or maybe it had happened before the deputies got here. Or maybe, I thought with a frisson, it had happened after. Because someone had been waiting for the deputies to leave. The same way I had.

I thought about going back to the car. I thought about calling it a night. But—but what would happen next? Because the problem was, I was sure something was going to happen next. The killer, whoever it was, was determined to frame me. Vivienne's will. Hemlock House. Even that stupid secret passage in my bedroom, although I had no idea how they'd arranged that. And then my bracelet on Mr. Huggins's body. Someone was determined to make me take the fall for these killings, and if I went back to the car and told Fox to take me home, I'd just be sitting there, waiting for them to make the next move. And the next move would probably put me in a prison cell for the rest of my life.

When I prodded the door with one finger, it rocked open a few inches. The hinges didn't squeak. There wasn't a gust of suspiciously foul-smelling air. No ominous music began to play in the background. I wet my lips and gave the door another push, and it opened farther. The deputies had forced the door, I decided. Or someone else, someone who had come before the deputies got here. The killer, I thought. Wouldn't the killer have come over here straightaway? They wouldn't have waited for me to find Mr. Huggins's body.

It all sounded, to my own expert ear, like someone trying to rationalize while on the brink of a panic attack.

I forced myself to move. I squeezed between the strips of police tape and found myself in the kitchen—even in the dark, I could tell from the glowing clocks on the appliances. I turned on the flashlight on my phone and looked around. Walnut cabinets. Laminate countertops. The sink had some rusty-looking gunk congealed around the handles and the tap, and the vinyl tiles underfoot were peeling up in a million different places. Fingerprint powder covered pretty much everything. But what made me stop and stare was the detritus of smashed plates and bowls, the spilled coffee grounds and tea bags and what appeared to be Honeycomb cereal. The mess covered the floor, and I knew, in a heartbeat, the deputies hadn't done that. Someone had come through this house looking for something. And they'd been in a frenzy.

An opening on the far side of the kitchen connected with the living room. I picked a path through the destruction, wincing every time I jarred a piece of crockery, and the sound of ceramic grating against ceramic broke the silence. The living room didn't appear to be in much better condition. There was a Naugahyde recliner and a microsuede sofa, and the art prints of the Oregon Coast had the black poster frames you could get at Walmart. One thing was immediately clear to me: Mr. Huggins had never had a woman (or, for that matter a gay man) inside this house. Ever. One of the lamps looked like a lady's leg, complete with stocking and garter. I was pretty sure it was from a movie.

The destruction continued here. Cushions slashed. Drawers pulled out of tables and the entertainment center. A CHiPs VHS had been half unspooled, a glossy black snake of magnetic tape doubling back on itself on the floor. The lamp had somehow survived unscathed; maybe someone's artistic sensibilities hadn't permitted wanton destruction.

The front door was still locked (I checked), and a flight of stairs led to the Cape Cod's second floor. Instead of going up, though, I circled back to the kitchen and followed a short hallway past a small laundry room (torn apart), a powder room (the toilet lid lay on the floor in two pieces), and then the master bedroom (ransacked). Clothes lay everywhere. Photos had been ripped from the frames. The box spring and mattress had been leaned against the dresser and then slashed open. The attached bathroom had suffered even worse, with drawers staved in and the mirror shattered. They'd been getting angrier. They hadn't found what they were looking for.

What were they looking for? And for that matter, what was I looking for? I wasn't sure. Anything that explained why Mr. Huggins might have tried to frame me for Vivienne's murder. Or who his accomplice—or employer—might be. Anything, basically, that might help me make sense of the events of the last few days. Admittedly, that was a pretty wide net to cast, and as I stared at the savagery of the search that had been conducted here, I felt dismay and, yes, a little panic growing inside me. There was no way I had time to search through this chaos. And, worse, I had a feeling that if there'd been anything to find, it was gone now.

But giving up now meant going back and waiting for the killer to come after me again, so I looped back to the front of the house and went upstairs. The treads creaked quietly underfoot, but the rest of the house felt still. The air seemed mustier; it smelled like carpet that needed to be replaced, with a hint of something my brain associated with foot powder. When I got to the small landing at the top, I had three doors to choose from; all three stood open. The one to my right looked in on what had probably been a guest room before someone had torn it apart. The one directly ahead of me opened onto a small bathroom, which had also been searched. And to my left was Mr. Huggins's office.

The desk had been pulled out from the wall. Drawers had been ripped free and thrown to the floor. Banker's boxes lay on their sides, spilling papers everywhere. Paperwork spilled from a filing cabinet's gaping drawers. Mr. Huggins's diplomas had been knocked from the wall and now looked out from behind shattered glass (an Oregon State man, and then University of Oregon for law school). No computer, although cables suggested that there had been one until recently. Either the killer had taken it, or the deputies had.

Crouching, I took a closer look at the papers strewn across the floor. I wasn't a lawyer, but I recognized legalese and boilerplate, and there was plenty of both. A lot, actually. And although occasionally I saw another name, it looked like much of the paperwork was Vivienne's—contracts with publishers, licensing agreements, even banking and investment documents. That slowed me for a moment. I wondered if that was normal. Did lawyers often handle that kind of financial work for their clients? I had no idea. My mom and dad had a number of people who helped with financial issues, but most of it went through their accountant, not their lawyer. So, why had Mr. Huggins had this stuff? I thought about the will that Mr. Huggins had somehow faked. I thought about the deed he had somehow forged. I thought about what Fox had said, about Vivienne's finances. She'd been broke. And that just didn't make any sense. Not unless Mr. Huggins had been stealing from her.

I gathered some of the paperwork to take a closer look. Mr. Huggins's chair lay on the floor, its cushion slashed, so I moved over to the dormer window, with its built-in seat. Diffuse light from the street filtered through the thin curtain, pushing back the darkness a little, but I'd need my phone to read—

As I sat, the seat gave slightly beneath me. And I instantly knew what it was: the lid for the window seat's storage compartment. I stood and considered the seat again. It was just painted wood, and now that I was looking for it, I could see where the top of the bench was cut to allow for the storage compartment's lid to open and close. But from a distance, if you were in a hurry, it might have looked solid.

I dropped the papers I'd gathered, knelt, and opened the window seat. The storage compartment was a decent size, and inside was another banker's box. An untouched banker's box. One box. Only one.

Inside were files. Lots of files. Old files, to judge by the smell of aging paper and mildew. I took one out, flipped through it, and stopped. I went back to the beginning and looked at each document more closely. The paperwork all had to do with the Matrika Nightingale case. And it didn't look like newspaper clippings. It looked like official paperwork. The stuff that police investigations—and subsequent court cases—are made out of. And it was here. Inside Mr. Huggins's office. Hidden.

As I continued to scan the pages, something caught my eye, and I stopped. I went back and read the page again. It appeared to be the prosecutor's affidavit charging Matrika Nightingale with ORS 163.107, which I didn't have to be a genius to know must have meant murder in the first degree. But what made me stop and go back and make sure I wasn't imagining it was the prosecutor's name on the affidavit: Adrian Huggins.

I flipped to the next page mechanically, still trying to make sense of what I'd seen and why—how—Huggins could be connected to the Nightingale murders. But then I stopped thinking and stared at the page in front of me. It looked familiar, and I knew where I'd seen this kind of thing before: the loose-leaf paper, the furious ballpoint scribble, even the handwriting. The words scrawled across the page said You set me up. And there were more. Dozens and dozens of them. All neatly filed away in Mr. Huggins's secret box. Like Vivienne's own collection of messages from Matrika Nightingale.

My phone buzzed. I grabbed it by instinct and saw a message from a number I didn't recognize: Somebone's coming.

Another message came through: Someone's coming.

The sound of the back door opening was faint. I almost thought I'd imagined it. Then I heard footsteps.

I snapped a photo of the affidavit and Matrika's note, and then I lowered the lid on the window seat. I climbed onto it to check the window. It had ancient cam locks that were rusted shut, and no matter how hard I tried, they refused to turn. Maybe the dormer in the guest bedroom, I thought. Or the window in the bathroom. The footsteps were still moving slowly around the main floor.

As I hurried toward the landing, I told myself, Maybe it's just a deputy. Maybe someone saw my flashlight, and I'm going to get chewed out and arrested and thrown in jail, which all sounded preferable to being trapped inside a '90s-era bachelor pad with a frustrated murderer.

Before I could step out of the office, though, a voice came from downstairs.

"What are you doing here?" Sheriff Jakes asked.

For a moment, I thought he meant me. And then I realized the voice had come from too far away, and he must have been speaking to someone else.

A gunshot clapped through the house. Someone shouted. Footsteps rang out. And then another gunshot cracked the air.

I was moving before I could consider what I was doing. I sprinted down the stairs, swung around the newel at the bottom, and stumbled through the debris in the living room. Then I stopped.

Sheriff Jakes lay on the floor, and he wasn't moving. Standing over him was a woman. It took me a moment to place her—in part because she was older than she'd been in the pictures, and in part because of the clothes: a baggy cardigan, mom jeans, a black paisley bandana over her hair: Matrika Nightingale.

It didn't seem possible, but there she was. She had pouches under her eyes, a hint of a double chin, and a pallor that, even in cloudy Oregon, suggested a need for industrial quantities of Vitamin D. Something about her seemed familiar, and then I realized where I'd seen her before: the woman at Pippi's author reading, the one in a fedora and trench coat.

"I didn't do it," Matrika said, and that's when I noticed the gun in her hand. "I didn't do it!"

The front door flew open, and Deputy Bobby charged into the room. A moment later, the back door flew open, and the female deputy I remembered from Hemlock House charged into the kitchen.

"Drop the gun!" Deputy Bobby shouted. "Drop the gun! Drop the gun!"

Matrika let the gun fall from her hand. She burst into tears.

And just like that, it was over.