Chapter 8

Sunday, March 30, 2004

5:00 p.m.

He was supposed to be home by now.

Troy never missed the chance to watch X-Men. It was the one night a week they got to watch their favorite show while their parents caught up with the next-door neighbors out front. Didn't matter they only owned two episodes. This was their time together. All they had to do was pop the tape into the VCR, and she was instantly assuming her superhero alter-ego right along with her brother.

Okay, yeah. There were probably less embarrassing things she could be doing than pretending she had the power to control the weather with a twelve-year-old, but she'd already finished her homework for the next week and none of her friends were allowed to hang out on Sundays. Sundays were devoted to God, neighborhood gossip, and rewatching X-Men. Sometimes Xena: Warrior Princess.

Leigh's fingers ached under the pressure of her hands clenched around the tape. Her parents were still deep in whispered conversation with the next-door neighbors, even as the sun went down. It wasn't like Troy not to come straight home from cleaning the church after services, and that should've ended an hour ago. He could've at least called to tell her he was blowing her off.

Fine, if he didn't want to watch with her, she wasn't going to wait anymore.

She peeled herself away from the front window looking out over their still street and shoved the tape into the VCR with a bit too much force. A piece of plastic broke off at one corner and disappeared inside the machine. "Shit."

A sinking feeling knotted tight in her chest. Her attention immediately went to her parents outside. They hadn't heard her swear. Thank goodness. That would've grounded her all the way until next month. Tugging the tape free, she forced her fingers into the VCR slot to retrieve the broken piece. Nobody had to know she'd broken Troy's favorite tape. Or possibly the VCR. She'd blame it on her brother. He was always getting that stupid army man he'd gotten from Mr. Ellingson stuck in there. The slot door bit into the backs of her fingers. Almost there. She could feel it.

The plastic shard fell deeper into the machine.

Her gaze went back to the front window. She was dead.

Low voices grew louder as the porch screen swung open. "Good night! I'll be sure to drop that book I recommended off tomorrow."

Leigh ripped her hand out of the machine and hid the X-Men tape behind her back. Her brain worked to figure out a plan to sneak back down tonight while everyone was in bed. She could fix this. She just needed time.

Her parents shucked off their coats and scarves before stepping fully into the house. It was still cold enough outside to convince her summer would never come, that high school would never end. Broad smiles lit up her parents' faces in the afterglow of getting the neighborhood lowdown as her mom and dad strode into the living room.

"Hey, honey." Her father checked his watch. He scanned the television. Their only television. Those oversized graying eyebrows of his dipped over the bridge of his nose. They matched the beard she'd loved to twist any chance she got as a kid. "Isn't it time for X-Men?"

"What? No." She inwardly kicked herself. She had to stay cool. They couldn't know about the tape just by looking at her. Right? "I was waiting for Troy."

"Where is your brother?" Her mother moved into the kitchen and pulled open the oven door. The smell of roasted chicken and potatoes with rosemary filled the living room. Leigh's favorite. "I told him to be home an hour ago."

"I haven't seen him." Leigh slid toward the couch. She could hide the broken tape in the cushion. "Last I heard he was staying after services to help Mr. Ellingson clean the chapel."

"Oh. I'll just call the church then." Lifting the handheld from the wall, her mother dialed with one shoulder against the wall and twined her perfect pink manicure in the too long coiled cord. After a minute, she pried the phone from her ear, hung up, then dialed again. And waited. She hung up as she turned to her husband. "That's weird. There's no answer."

Friday, March 12

10:00 a.m.

"Mrs. Carson, do you have any idea what your sister might've been up to in the days leading to her death?" Boucher pried open a manila file folder containing everything they had in their investigation so far. Which didn't include much other than a body and a whole lot of questions. No prints to run through AFIS, no foreign DNA to send to the lab. Even the make and model of the vehicle used to transport Michelle Cross to the bridge was up for debate based off degraded tire impressions left at the scene.

Tanja Carson swiped at her eyes for the dozenth time before intertwining her fingers together. A small shake of her head was all she'd been able to manage the past few minutes, and Leigh couldn't ease the familiar cut of dread. Dark circles beneath the woman's eyes said the trip from Concord to Lebanon's police station hadn't been pleasant. "No. Her boss said Michelle had gotten time off work to come visit me, but I haven't talked to my sister in weeks. We… We were fighting. Have been for a few months."

Leigh had been on that side of the table. She'd given her statement in this exact room to investigators after she and her parents had realized Troy wasn't just late coming home from cleaning the church. He wasn't coming home at all. As his big sister, she'd blamed herself. How could she not? She'd sat there in their living room so angry at him for missing their regularly scheduled programing instead of going back to church to find him. She'd broken his VHS tape and the family VCR in a teenage-sized temper tantrum when her brother had been going through what had to be the most painful agony of his short life. She should've known something had been wrong then.

Now here she was all over again. In this room with its cinderblock walls painted white, the same stain at the corner of the carpet, and the conference table too large for the room. The blinds had been drawn this time. To give Tanja Carson privacy as she mourned her loss. Leigh hadn't been given that courtesy. Detective Maynor hadn't come right out and said it, but she knew he thought she'd had something to do with Troy's disappearance. Why else would he have brought up how angry she'd been at her brother that night over and over?

But this wasn't about Troy. This was about Michelle. A woman who'd investigated an old abduction-murder before she'd been killed in the same manner as two past victims. Leigh had to remember that. "Fighting about what?"

"She was isolating herself, getting obsessed." Tanja stared down at her hands, picking at a stray hangnail on uneven and thin fingers. "It started out with cancelling dinner plans, but then it got worse. She wouldn't return my calls. She ignored my text messages. She missed her niece's birthday party, all so she could prove police had the wrong man in a murder investigation that happened here twenty years ago."

"The Joel Brody case." Boucher didn't look at her. Didn't acknowledge Leigh existed in that moment, but the truth was, he couldn't. Not really. She was a criminology consultant. Not law enforcement. Not an investigator with a personal connection to this case.

"It was all she talked about." Tanja pressed one palm into her temple. "How Joel Brody was framed, why she thought those boys were targeted. She even had a theory the police department was involved in a cover-up. It was insane the amount of hours she spent trying to squeeze blood from stones everyone wanted to forget, that I wanted to forget." She crossed her arms over her chest. "But Michelle just wouldn't let it go. She even started selling our family belongings after our parents died to fund her investigation. Said she needed the money to give people compensation for talking to her about the case."

"That would explain why it looked like she was squatting in her own house," Boucher said.

"Why?" Leigh asked. "Why that case?"

"I don't know. It didn't start there," Tanja said. "She came across one of those true crime podcasts a couple years ago. You know, the ones that walk you through a police investigation. She ended up guessing who the killer was before she got to the end of the season. It was like a switch had been flipped. Michelle became obsessed. My sister was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. She tends to hyper-focus on things that interest her. Sometimes for months at a time. I thought being consumed by that case would burn out within a few weeks, but she just wouldn't let it go. She listened to every podcast she could find, bought every true crime book she could get her hands on, started watching those forensic shows on TV. After a while, I think she convinced herself she could solve a case that hit close to home, you know?"

"It's come to our attention Michelle was involved in the Joel Brody investigation in a way." Boucher took note in the same notebook from their search of the victim's home. "She gave a statement at the time accusing someone else of killing those two boys. Cost the man his job."

"Chris Ellingson. I remember him." Tanja Carson sat back in her seat, the wear of grief heavy. "Michelle used to see him a couple times a week for problems she was having in school, but if you're asking me why she told police her school psychologist was a killer back then, I can't help you. She wouldn't tell me. Anytime my parents asked, she'd shut down and hide in her room."

"Apart from her latest obsession, how was Michelle lately?" Boucher cocked his head to one side, still taking notes. "Any problems at work, with neighbors? Did she say anything about someone new in her life?"

"No. Nothing like that." Tanja attempted to fold her arms then but seemed to think better of it. "But as I said, we haven't been in contact the past few weeks. I think she thought she was actually conducting an investigation, and she wouldn't talk about it. No matter how many times I asked or tried to connect with her on her level. After she missed my daughter's birthday party, I gave Michelle a choice. She could keep going down this path or she could be part of our family."

"She chose to keep investigating." Leigh understood that choice more than most. Friendships had never come easy to begin with—not since parents had started locking their teens behind doors to keep her away from them—but as an adult, she just couldn't seem to connect the way most women her age expected. That left her with a lot of open nights assembling Legos and trying to fit pieces of the past into a uniform picture she could understand.

Fresh tears welled in Tanja Carson's eyes as her gaze ping-ponged between Boucher and Leigh. "Do you think her death has something to do with the case she was looking into? The Joel Brody case? Did she really find a lead?"

"We don't have all the facts yet, Mrs. Carson." Boucher tapped the end of his pen against the table—too loud—and a deflating sensation flooded through the room.

They weren't getting anywhere. Boucher knew it. She knew it. Without a crystal-clear picture of what Michelle Cross was doing in the days leading up to her murder, they couldn't be sure of time of death let alone who'd tortured her until she'd bled out. It'd taken an hour to get the wall of notes, articles, and surveillance photos from the victim's attic space catalogued. Despite Michelle Cross's obsession and organizational skills, none of it would prove Chris Ellingson had abducted and murdered two tween boys.

Or that he'd killed again.

They'd found hand-scrawled theories on yellow legal pad paper—most of which had snowballed into rumor and become the subject of town gossip. A list of questions that'd haunted Leigh for years had been scribbled on the back of a plain white envelope with the top torn open. Nothing detailing who the questions had been meant for or if their victim had gotten an answer before her death.

But the killer had targeted Michelle Cross for a reason.

If not for the vague research she'd collected in her attic, then for something else. Assuming this was tied to Troy's death in the first place. Leigh's gut said it was. Why else replicate a signature of Lebanon's deadliest killer? Why carve her name into the bottom of two toy soldiers and leave them with these current victims? Why pull her in now? "Mrs. Carson, we believe the person who killed your sister may be responsible for the death of another victim. Gresham Schmidt. Does the name sound familiar? Did Michelle ever mention speaking with a detective from London or Scotland Yard? Maybe she reached out to him in some capacity during her investigation?"

"I don't recognize the name." Tanja shook her head, and a fresh wave of tears glittered in her eyes. "I'm sorry. I just… Maybe if I pushed her to tell me what she'd gotten herself into, she'd still be alive, or I'd at least have something to contribute."

"That's okay. You're doing your best, and that's all we can ask for." Leigh wasn't sure where the empathy had come from, except she knew what helplessness felt like from sitting on the other side of that table. "One last question, and we'll let you get back to your family. We found a collection of notes, photos, and newspaper articles your sister had gathered during her investigation into the Joel Brody case in the attic space of your family home, but her laptop and phone were missing. Presumably taken by her killer. Can you think of a reason why? Did she keep other notes or sources stored digitally that you know of?"

Warning solidified from her left where Boucher turned his attention to her.

"Um, the last time Michelle came to my house, she disappeared into the guest room. I went to get her for dessert and realized she'd left the door cracked. She was speaking into her phone like this." Tanja tipped her hand back, fingers up, to mimic speaking into the bottom of a phone, where the microphone would've been on Michelle Cross's device. "No one was answering back, so I assumed she was recording herself. Asking questions. I didn't catch the whole thing."

"But you caught part of it?" Leigh asked.

"Just a couple of words. A name, actually," Tanja said. "Katherine Garrison."

"Katherine Garrison." A line of tension wrapped through Boucher's expression. He shifted in his chair, chancing a glance in Leigh's direction before turning back to the victim's sister. "As in Derek Garrison's mother? Are you sure?"

Tanja nodded confirmation. "I think she was recording a list of questions to ask her. I only got bits and pieces of it before my daughter came running down the hall to ask if she could have more ice cream. Michelle must've realized I'd been listening. She pulled open the door and accused me of spying on her. We argued, and she left right after that. It was the last time I saw her."

There it was. The guilt that simmered beneath the surface until it burned out a person's insides. Leigh could see it in the slight digging of Tanja's fingers into her palms, hear it with the drop in octave of the woman's voice. People who hadn't lost someone to this kind of violence wouldn't acknowledge it for what it was: a call for help. But Leigh recognized it, and a suctioning black hole behind her rib cage begged her to answer.

"We're doing everything we can to find who did this, Mrs. Carson, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry for your loss." Leigh didn't know what else to say. Didn't know how to ease the heaviness and the hurt this perfect stranger would have to live with. She didn't even know how to do it for herself. How could she expect to help someone else? "Truly."

"You're her, aren't you?" Tanja's voice softened. "Joel Brody's daughter."

Leigh braced for the backlash, for the hatred and fear everyone in this town had weaponized before her father had even been sentenced. Her mouth dried as Boucher shifted in his seat, ready to intervene.

"You lost a sibling, too." Tanja Carson's face hollowed then, and she suddenly looked ten years older. More worn. Tired. "Does it get better?"

Leigh didn't have to ask for an elaboration. They understood each other on a level no one else would. She could lie, but false hope hadn't ever helped anyone. "No. Not until you know what happened." Her phone sounded with an incoming message. She drove her hand into her blazer to retrieve it, desperate for a release valve on the emotion charging up her throat. "Excuse me. I have to take this."

She escaped the conference room and let the door secure shut behind her. It was easier to breathe out here, but all too soon, the door opened once again, and Boucher met her on the other side. He said something Leigh didn't catch as she skimmed the report attached to an email meant for Director Livingstone. An email the team's federal investigator—Chandler Reed—had blind copied her in on.

"Call me old-fashioned, but it's customary to wait until the interview is over before you leave the room." Boucher headed straight for an empty desk a couple yards from her position at the door and tossed the case file onto the surface. "Who pissed in your Cheerios, Brody?"

"It wasn't a match." Disbelief twisted hard and fast. That wasn't possible. The test had to be wrong. She was sure of it.

"What wasn't a match?" he asked.

"Troy's—my brother's—toy soldier." The ringing in her ears was back. "It didn't come from the same set as the ones left with Michelle Cross's and Gresham Schmidt's bodies."