Chapter 16

Tuesday, April 1, 2004

8:00 p.m.

Three days.

Troy hadn't come home.

Her legs ached from the miles she'd spent biking all day. Leigh had searched every inch of the park, the school, and the stretch of woods behind their house. She'd asked friends and teachers if they'd seen him, even Mr. Ellingson, the school's psychologist, who'd spearheaded the volunteer search team.

No one had seen her brother.

The police hadn't come by the house since the night Troy had signed up to help clean the church. That detective—Maynor—wouldn't answer her questions, wouldn't tell her if they'd found anything. What were the police doing all day?

Her brother was missing. They should've been on the streets. They should've been getting fingerprints, chasing down Troy's bike. Not letting the community take the lead.

But Leigh knew the truth. She couldn't explain it as anything more than an intuition she and Troy had shared their entire life. It felt as real as the wet paper towel in her hand. Like the sensation she'd read about in a news story where a twin had known the exact moment the other had died, even though they weren't together. She and Troy might not have come from the same egg, but their bond was stronger than most. They spent every day together. Making trains out of cardboard boxes, coming up with disguises and backstories for characters they'd created, getting him to eat his vegetables. She'd done that. She'd been with him his entire life.

He hadn't just walked out of the church on Sunday night and disappeared.

He'd been taken.

Someone had taken her little brother.

Soft sobs trickled through her cracked bedroom door. Mom was crying again and… there wasn't anything Leigh could do. She'd tried. Really. She'd offered to take over the cooking, to keep the house clean, to run the errands. None of it made a damn bit of difference.

She patted the long scrape from her bike pedal with the paper towel again and sucked in a hiss. Her bike had launched right out from under her when she'd gone down to the old mill on the river. She'd caught Troy there alone a few times, even when he knew he wasn't supposed to venture that far from home by himself. By the time she'd figured out which way was up, the sun had started going down, and she'd been bleeding.

"No." Her mother's voice raised. Glass shattered, causing Leigh to flinch. "No! Don't touch me!" Wracking sobs filled the house. "I just want him back. I want my baby to come home. You're his father. Bring him home, damn it! Do something!"

A door slammed. Then silence.

Leigh tried to creep to her bedroom door, only managing to remind her parents she was home when the creaking floor gave her away. She froze. A knock sounded, and she jumped back. Her father wedged the door open, and her heart gripped in her chest. He looked so… broken. Hopeless. She'd never seen him like this. Neither of them.

"I'm taking your mom on a walk. Stay in the house. Don't answer the door. Okay?" Her father threaded one callused hand into the hair at the back of her neck and tugged her in for a hug. "We'll be back soon. In the meantime, I'm sure your mom would appreciate it if you could clean up the plate that broke."

Leigh only managed to nod. Embarrassment spread hot up her neck from being caught eavesdropping, and she pulled away. "Sure, Dad."

"Good girl." He kissed the top of her head. "Be back soon."

He left after that. Probably trying to convince Mom to come home. She got like that these past couple of days. Angry. Leigh made quick work of cleaning up the plate behind the dining room table. There were still shards in the wall. It hadn't just broken. Her mother had thrown it. She took the dustpan outside to empty it into the big garbage can. No point in spilling more glass trying to get it into the bin in the kitchen.

The pieces clinked to the bottom, but one still managed to fall out. "Great."

She bent to feel for the piece of glass, faced with nothing but darkness.

There was one place she hadn't looked for Troy these past three days. He'd go there sometimes when he was upset. Especially after Derek's body had been found in that shed in the Garrisons' backyard. Troy didn't know she knew about it. Everyone needed their space, and she'd tried to give him his, but he hadn't been down there for months as far as she knew.

Leigh backed away from the garbage bins. Dragging the broom and dustpan back inside, she listened for her parents. No one was home. Her parents' bedroom was off-limits, but she'd sneak in there sometimes to test her mom's makeup or see what parents hid in their closets. What secrets they were keeping.

She cut through the house into the bedroom. The closet door was closed, and she tested the doorknob as quietly as possible. Just in case her parents came back. The hinges screamed, but if she kept moving, they'd stop. Grabbing the flashlight her dad kept on the closet shelf in case of emergency, she gripped the ring for the crawl space access leading beneath the house and swung it open.

A thread of panic flicked through her stomach. The black hole seemed to breathe. Leigh compressed the flashlight's power button and shined the beam down into the hole.

She screamed at the small half face staring up at her.

But it wasn't Troy's.

Sunday, March 14

9:00 a.m.

Visiting hours had ended during the week, but there were perks to carrying federal credentials.

New Hampshire State Prison for Men was the oldest prison facility in the state, housing minimum-, medium-, and maximum-security inmates. The building itself was starting to show its age. Worn red brick—cracked in places, missing in others—lined with curling barbed wire and chain-link fence stood guard. Chimney stacks on each building looked as though one soft earthquake or an artillery training from the National Guard would dislodge them and send them crumbling through the patched roof. Even the interior walls couldn't be cleaned anymore.

The feeling of being watched prickled along the back of Leigh's neck as she counted eight cameras mounted to columns set throughout the cafeteria/visitors' area. White tile, minimalistic furniture, fluorescent lights. Not a window in sight. Too much of a risk. Sweat odors and something metallic settled at the back of her throat, and she worked to breathe through her mouth. It was no use. Bright blue chairs around rectangular tables and artwork suggested calm and a brightness, but she was circling through nerves and excitement at a mile a minute. She'd been stripped of the pen she'd brought to take notes and her phone. All she had now was the case file. Nothing to wring with her hands as the seconds ticked by.

Would he want to see her?

A heavy metal door swung open at the opposite end of the room, and two men stepped over the threshold. Manacles dragged along the floor as he moved. A connected strand of links hung from between his wrists.

Leigh stood, the chair biting into the backs of her knees. The navy uniform and white tennis shoes her father wore were so different from the plaid shirts and jeans she'd grown up around. Outside these walls, Joel Brody had been a god of home projects, keeping elementary-aged kids from killing each other, and taking care of his family. But in here… There was something missing. A spark she'd always been able to rely on.

He locked that familiar brown gaze on her, and suddenly, she felt she should be grounded for a month. No emotion. No recognition. Had it really been so long that he wouldn't know her when he saw her?

She smoothed her palms down her slacks. If she'd known she would've been this nervous, she wouldn't have worn all these layers. Seeing as how it wasn't every day the FBI came to speak with an inmate, she and her father had the room to themselves apart from the guard. "Can you remove the restraints, please?"

"You've got fifteen minutes." The corrections officer unhitched his keys from his utility belt, collected the restraints, and strode to take position by the door they'd come through.

Fifteen minutes. That wasn't enough time. She had two decades' worth of conversations in her head. Accomplishments, interests, everything about her first love, her first job, her first everything. They needed more time. Leigh motioned for them to take their seats, and her father followed suit. Pressure built beneath her sternum as the seconds slipped by. "Do you know who I am?"

"You think I wouldn't recognize my own daughter?" Joel shifted in his seat, rubbing his wrists. The skin where the cuffs had been didn't look chafed, but she imagined the habit had stuck with him. "I told you not to come here."

"I remember." It'd been one of the very last things he'd said to her during his trial. No goodbyes. No sweet words she'd be able to keep with her as they fought his conviction. The moment that guilty verdict had been read, Joel Brody had no longer been her father. He'd become state property. Looking back now, she knew he just hadn't wanted her to see him like this. Alone. Broken. A victim. "But I'm not here on personal business. I'm with the FBI now. I'm investigating a series of murders. In Lebanon."

"The FBI?" A hint of wonder—perhaps even pride—brought out a glimmer of the happy-go-lucky man she'd known as he sat straighter. Her father shot a glance at the guard at the door, and within a split second, the glimmer had disappeared. As though it'd never existed. "Not sure what that has to do with me." He spread his hands, palms up, over the table. "As you can see, my schedule is booked until I die."

She'd missed his dry humor. Growing up, she'd often taken it as mockery, especially directed at her. Now she understood what his jokes had really meant: his way of taking the horror out of reality. Leigh dragged the case file between them and opened the front cover. A photo consumed her father's attention, as she'd meant it to. Michelle Cross on the bridge. Steepling her fingers on the photo, she slid it out of the way to expose the next one. Gresham Schmidt found propped against a tree at Poverty Lane Orchards. She moved on to the last photo. Of Dr. Roxanne Jennings's body deposited against the bandstand in Colburn Park. "Michelle Cross, Gresham Schmidt, and Dr. Roxanne Jennings. They were each stabbed twenty-two times, not counting the dozens of cuts and lacerations leading up to the final blow. The first two were missing for three days, the last one less than twenty-four hours."

Her father moved to reach for the first photo. Hesitation gripped him to the point she wasn't sure he'd let himself touch the reflective surface, but she hadn't known Joel Brody to ever shy away from a challenge. He seemed to study every pixel for a series of breaths then set the photo back in place. Did he see something? Did he recognize Michelle Cross? "There's a lot of anger in these stab wounds. They don't seem as smooth or controlled as they were with your brother and Derek. Whoever did this…"

Leigh held her breath, waiting for him to elaborate, but he didn't. Dr. Jennings hadn't said anything about the shape of the killing blade or the force used to end these victims' lives. Then again, she hadn't gotten a chance to finalize the autopsy report at all. That would be left up to whoever took over the case. "What do you mean?"

"What do you want from me, Leigh?" Joel seemed to deflate right in front of her. No longer the strong father who'd survived a life sentence in maximum-security prison, but a withered old man who had nothing left to hope for. "To look at these and have an answer as to who's cutting up these victims?"

"You say that as if you haven't been studying Troy's case all this time. As if you haven't been trying to prove your innocence." She pushed the first photo closer to him. "Someone is killing people the same way they killed my brother and his best friend. Whoever did this, abducted, tortured, and filleted these people to make a point, and I want to know who it is. You say he's angry? Tell me why. And to answer your question, yes, Dad, I want you to look at these photos and tell me what I might be missing. We both know you didn't kill those boys, and that you have a pretty good idea who did. I need you to tell me his name."

She needed him to say it. She needed to have one person in this forsaken town who agreed with her, who was on her side.

"You sound just like her, you know. Look like her, too. Your mom. Could've sworn it was her standing there waiting for me when I came in." His voice softened in love, in loss, and in pride. The same hers did if she ever let herself talk about her mother. "She never could sit still. Always had her hands busy. A new way of cooking, another class or date night idea. Used to drive me crazy. In the end, it drove her crazy, too. If we learned anything in the days after you found Troy, it was that we couldn't do anything. I think she hated herself for that. That's why she…" Her father sat back in his seat, arms crossed. "I'm proud of you, kiddo. I'm proud of what you've made of yourself. I can't tell you how much, but this…" He glanced down at the photos. "This will destroy you if you keep going down this path. Just like it did her. None of it is going to bring them back, Leigh. Trust me." Joel signaled the guard and stood. "We're done."

"We're not done." Panic infused her bones, and she shoved to her feet. The guard was closing in. He was going to take her father back to his cell. She was going to lose the only chance she had in twenty years to connect with someone who cared about their family as much as she did. "Did Michelle Cross come to see you? Did she interview you for the book she was writing?"

"Let it go, Leigh." Joel maneuvered his wrists together as the guard approached with the shackles, unable to even look at her. "Won't change anything."

She couldn't let it go. Not yet. Leigh rounded the table but pulled up short as the guard stuck his hand out for her to keep her distance. "She did, didn't she? She told you she didn't believe what was written in the original police reports. She must've noticed an error or saw something in the case files. Because she believed Chris Ellingson killed Troy and Derek. So she came to you to get the truth. What did you tell her?"

"The same thing I'm telling you." Joel turned to face her as the corrections officer led him toward the door they'd come through. "Leave it alone."