Chapter 11

The questioning, believe it or not, didn't last all that long. After Matrika had been handcuffed and taken away, Deputy Bobby led me out to his cruiser. He held the door for me (passenger seat, not the back), and it reminded me of the other rides he had given me. And how he'd said, You're kind of a smart aleck. And the way moonlight had dappled his face as we drove through the spruce forest. I didn't feel much like a smart aleck right then, though, and the only light came from the soft glow of the dash and, far off, the old streetlamp down the block.

Deputy Bobby got behind the wheel. He rubbed his eyes. And then, voice strained, he said, "What were you doing?"

I told him.

After I'd finished, he didn't say anything for what felt like a long time. An ambulance came, and paramedics rushed into the house. Other sheriff's office vehicles began to arrive—lights on, but no sirens. A van marked MEDICAL EXAMINER was next. It made me think of that day in the kitchen when I'd thought I was so smart. I'd made that comment about a medical examiner removing Vivienne's body. The sheriff had taken the chance to put me in my place and told me he had the authority to remove it. I looked at the van and thought, But I guess the sheriff's dead now.

"Let me sort things out," Deputy Bobby finally said in that same wrapped-too-tight voice. "And I'll drive you home."

Through the windshield, I watched him as he moved from one deputy to another, answering questions, shaking his head. The scene wasn't exactly chaos—they were too well trained for that—but an electric current ran through everything like they were all about to jump out of their boots. Somewhere, a chief deputy was getting roused out of bed to learn two awful pieces of bad news: first, that the sheriff was gone; and second, that they were in charge now.

It wasn't long before Deputy Bobby came back. He buckled himself in, and we eased away from the house.

"Shouldn't you take me to jail?" I asked. I felt like I was floating, and like the words I was saying were drifting behind me as we drove. "Shouldn't you arrest me?"

"Do you want to be arrested?"

I shook my head.

He must have caught the movement in the darkness because he said, "Okay, then."

The trees. The smell of fir and salt and silty clay loam. The moon-shadows sweeping slowly back and forth.

Some of that floatiness started to go away, and I roused myself in my seat. "It doesn't make any sense."

Deputy Bobby stared out the windshield.

"None of it makes any sense."

"You've had a hard night. Take it easy."

A hard night didn't even come close, but that wasn't really the point. My brain was waking up again, and I couldn't make the pieces of the puzzle fit. "Did you know Matrika Nightingale had escaped from prison?"

"We knew. The penitentiary hadn't announced it publicly yet because they were hoping to bring her in before anyone found out."

"And you didn't tell me?"

That made him glance over at me. "No. I don't talk about ongoing investigations. That's policy."

Maybe, I thought, but that hadn't kept him from talking to me about the case when—well, when he'd been nicer to me. Before he'd turned into this Deputy Bobby, the one who seemed determined to be a hardnose about everything.

"Was she a suspect?" I asked.

It felt like a long time before Deputy Bobby said, "She was a consideration."

"A serial killer who escaped from prison, after she'd been threatening for years to kill the woman who put her in jail and the attorney who prosecuted the case—she was a consideration?"

"Wait, what?"

"She wasn't your prime suspect?"

"What do you mean the prosecuting attorney?"

"Mr. Huggins. He was the prosecuting attorney on Matrika's case. Nobody knew that?"

"How in the world was I supposed to know that? He was some two-bit lawyer who worked out of his house for a—" He managed to stop himself, but I had the feeling that whatever he'd been about to say, it wouldn't have been flattering to Vivienne. "We found out about Nightingale's escape after the investigation began." Deputy Bobby shifted in his seat. "And there was that secret passage from your room."

I rubbed my eyes. They itched with fatigue; everything from the last few days was catching up to me now that my adrenaline had peaked. "I cannot believe you didn't tell me." Before Deputy Bobby had to respond to that, I continued, "Never mind. It still doesn't make any sense. Let's say Matrika did kill Vivienne. Fine. But how did she get inside her room?"

"Maybe Vivienne let her in."

"The serial killer she put in prison?"

"Maybe Nightingale had a gun."

"Fine. She forces her way into the office with a gun, but instead of shooting Vivienne, she forces her out onto the balcony and pushes her."

"No noise," Deputy Bobby said. "She didn't want to wake anyone up."

"But what about Mr. Huggins?"

"Like you said, he was the prosecuting attorney."

"No, I mean the rest of it. Me inheriting everything. The deed to Hemlock House. That was all meant to frame me, and the only person who could have done it was Mr. Huggins. Why would he help Matrika murder Vivienne and frame me?"

"She threatened him. He was afraid for his life—reasonably, it turned out, since she killed him anyway."

"At Hemlock House?"

"She might have lured him there."

Everything Deputy Bobby said was—well, I wouldn't have said it made sense, but I could follow the chain of logic. The problem, though, was that it felt wrong. I didn't believe Matrika had frightened Mr. Huggins into framing me and then turned around, killed him, and tried to frame me again by leaving his body at Hemlock House with one of my bracelets on his body. It was too complicated, for one thing. And for another, Matrika didn't even know who I was—how could she have planned any of this to include me? But when I tried to organize my arguments, it was like trying to hold sand.

"Why come back? Why kill the sheriff?" Why, I almost added, did I believe her when she said she didn't do it?

Deputy Bobby's silence was broken only by the thrum of the tires. When he spoke, he sounded strangely defensive. "It was bad luck. She wanted something in that house—you saw how it was torn apart—and the sheriff walked in on her. You're lucky she didn't find you first."

I ignored the jab. I tried to replay the night's events. I was almost certain that I'd heard the sheriff moving around inside the house, and then the sound of a door, and then the sheriff asking, What are you doing here? Not like he was surprised—more like he was annoyed. What did that mean? Had he been working with Matrika? Had he been her accomplice this whole time?

"I don't know," I finally said. "It doesn't make any sense."

"It doesn't have to make any sense to you. That's the whole reason we have law enforcement officers." Deputy Bobby's voice softened fractionally as he added, "You need to get some rest. It's over; you don't have to worry about it anymore."

We finished our drive to Hemlock House in silence.

"Do you want me to come inside?" Deputy Bobby asked as he stopped at the door.

I shook my head and unbuckled my seat belt.

"I'm sorry for my tone earlier. It's been a stressful few days."

"Sure."

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around what happened. The sheriff, I mean."

I drew a breath and said, "I know. It's okay. I'm sorry I made things harder for you than they needed to be."

In the dark, with only the glow of the dash for light, I couldn't see the rich, burnished bronze of his eyes. They were just little slivers of light.

"Get some rest," he said again. "Are you sure you don't want me to come in?"

I nodded as I slid out of the cruiser. I shut the door, gave the car a little rap of goodbye, and headed inside.

Dark halls. Dark rooms. Big, dark silences. I got into my room and started to barricade the doors, and then I realized I didn't need to. They'd arrested Matrika. The case was closed. I lay in bed, staring up at the white ghost of the canopy. I wanted, with a visceral kind of pain, to go home. But the truth was that I didn't have a home. Not anymore. I wouldn't go back to Hugo. I wouldn't go home to my parents. I didn't belong here. I'd have to go somewhere else now. Start over. I'd have to figure out how to get a job. Maybe I'd move to Portland; the joke I'd heard in Providence was that Portland was where young people went to retire.

Even though I felt wrung out, my eyes grainy, my head aching, sleep didn't come. And then my stomach rumbled.

Had I eaten dinner? I couldn't remember. Would Indira have left something to eat in the kitchen? If not, was I bold enough to try something myself? Maybe a peanut butter sandwich. Or I could DoorDash something. Or I could drive into town—a glance at the clock showed me it wasn't even eleven yet. I could go to the Otter Slide. I could have another delicious burger and fries.

Or you could check the kitchen, a voice said inside my head, and see if Indira left some of that cake.

No cake, I told myself. A peanut butter sandwich. A glass of—uh, warm milk? That was supposed to put people to bed. Detective Will Gower drank warm milk in one story. In that one, he'd been an Amish minister, though, and I'd been reading a lot of books about the Amish, and somehow warm milk had seemed like a crucially vivid detail for Brother Will.

Warm milk, I told myself as I padded downstairs. And one vegetable. My stomach roiled in protest, but I mustered my moral fortitude. A carrot, maybe. You could eat carrots if they were smothered in peanut butter.

The problem, though, was that Indira had left the cake right on the counter, and my moral fortitude went straight into the trash.

After a slice of cake and a glass of milk (cold, thank you), I felt a little better. I decided to forgive myself for the carrot slip-up. I would eat two carrots tomorrow. Or, better yet, I'd find somewhere I could get a smoothie. They could put as many carrots as they wanted in the smoothie as long as it tasted like banana-berry when they were done. I headed back upstairs. The only sound was the whisper of my steps on the rugs and, far off, the crash of waves. I thought maybe I'd try some reading. A comfort read. Maybe Sue Grafton.

I stopped in my doorway and forgot all about Sue because someone was rifling my suitcase. The figure was dressed all in black; they would have been invisible in the dark except for the flashlight they were holding. They must have heard me or sensed me, though, because they turned. For a moment, we were looking at each other—not that I could see anything with the flashlight shining in my eyes.

Too late, I managed to say, "Hey."

Will Gower would not have said hey.

I reached for my phone, and the figure broke into a run. They charged straight at me. In the dark, I had an impression of movement. The beam of the flashlight bobbed and strobed, making it hard to get a sense of space and distance. I tried to plant myself in the doorway, but I was too slow—I was off-balance when the figure crashed into me. They hit my shoulder, and I felt a big red warning light go on. I stumbled back, caught myself against the wainscotting, and managed to keep from falling. The figure in black, though, just kept running.

"Hey!"

It was a little better—at least this time it was a shout.

As soon as I had my feet under me, I took off after them. They charged down the grand staircase. I sprinted, almost slipped on a rug, and caught a baluster, which probably saved my life. My momentum spun me down the stairs—I kept myself upright somehow, but it felt like more of a controlled fall. And, somehow, I was gaining on the figure. The surprise, more than anything, had given them the advantage, and although running for exercise ranked high on my list of the seven deadly sins, I was definitely faster.

When the figure reached the bottom of the stairs, they darted left. That didn't make any sense; the front door was straight ahead. Instead, the figure darted into the den. The door slammed shut behind them. I barely heard the crash because my blood was pounding in my ears.

I reached the door a moment later. It was locked. I threw myself into it. That red light in my shoulder went on again. The door rocked in its frame. It was an old door, solid, not some hollow-core modern nonsense. But the latch was old too, and the house was old, and when I threw myself against the door the second time, the latch popped free of the frame. The door swung inward. I took in the room in a series of impressions: the dark paneling, the heavy curtains, the window, still shut, and the built-in bookshelves lining a cold fireplace. Gilt lettering on the spines of the books caught the faint ambient light like brushed gold.

Empty. The room was empty.

Somehow, they'd gotten away.