THE MAN WHO thinks of himself as Holden is getting restless. No, it’s not summer yet, but this March has been one of the warmest on record—is that close enough?
Maybe. For right now, he’ll enjoy the sights and sounds at Tasty’s. So many people to choose from, men and women both. He’ll have to make a list and plan this out. He’s good at planning them.
Hell, look at last summer, the summer of 2011. Four victims! In one summer, he doubled what he’d done up until then. Zach and Melanie, that hooker named Bonnie, and the good ol’ police chief. The police chief!
And is he in prison?
Nope, he sure isn’t. How’s that for smart? You kill the chief of police and nobody can lay a glove on you.
His eyes wander beyond the crowded restaurant to the window, where he recognizes someone getting out of a car in the parking lot.
Detective Jenna Murphy, the sexy redhead detective. Blue jacket over a white blouse, tight-fitting jeans, low heels.
She thinks she’s smart. She thinks she’s smarter than everyone.
But she’s not that smart.
If she’s so smart, why doesn’t she remember me?
From all those years ago.
It might be fun to remind her one of these days.
62
OFFICER RICKETTS AND I are out of luck when we enter Tasty’s for lunch—no open tables. We take seats at the counter, with its view of the kitchen, where cooks in aprons and white hats are chopping and broiling and frying, reading orders off slips of paper clipped above them. The smells of garlic and tomato sauce and fried food fill the air.
Aiden Willis is sitting alone at a middle table, always that cap turned backward, the strawlike hair jutting out, those beady, meandering eyes. He’s reading something while he eats fried fish out of a paper tray. Time will come, I’ll ask him how that “burial” went yesterday, to see if he’ll keep lying about it, but I don’t want to tip my hand yet.
We both order scallops. Ricketts orders one of those iced-tea drinks served in those giant, colorful cans; ice water for me.
Over my shoulder, I see Chief Isaac Marks, wearing a bib and dipping lobster into butter sauce. Another table for one. He must see me, but after our words yesterday, there isn’t much left to say.
“Careful,” I tell Ricketts. “Chief’s sitting over there. Let’s not be too obvious.”
She leans into me. “How ’bout I just talk quietly, then? I won’t pull out my notes.” She taps her head. “It’s all up here, anyway.”
It’s pretty loud in here, so that would probably work.
“Give me the Reader’s Digest,” I say.
She takes a deep breath. A waiter serves us our drinks, mine in a plastic cup. “The Reader’s Digest,” she says, “is cree-py.”
A ripple of boisterous laughter behind us. I turn back and see a group of guys—construction workers, a testosterone fest—in the corner.
One of them: Noah Walker. T-shirt stretched tight over his chest, dirty jeans, work boots.
I feel my temperature rise and pull my shirt off my suddenly sticky chest.
Something about that guy. I can’t deny it. Can’t understand it, either.
I have my back to the crowd, but when I’m turned toward Ricketts, I have a good sight line to both Noah and Aiden Willis. Isaac is behind me.
Three men, all about the same age, all at Bridgehampton School.
Ricketts says, “The house at 7 Ocean Drive was built by a Dutch settler named Winston Dahlquist in the late 1700s. He had, like, this massive potato farm on Long Island and was crazy rich. He had a wife, Cecilia, and one son.”
Cecilia, O Cecilia / Life was death disguised.
“Cecilia died in 1813. They said she jumped out of her bedroom window. She landed on the spiked fence.”
“She … landed on it?”
“Oh, yeah, they found her impaled on the fence, twenty feet off the ground. Her body was almost cut in half. But the author of the book I read on this—she had someone diagram everything, the angles, the distances. She concluded that if Cecilia had jumped from her bedroom, she would’ve landed several yards short of the fence.”
“So the wife was pushed.”
Ricketts nods.
“Tell me about the son,” I say.
“His name was Holden. Holden Dahlquist.”
Noah’s eyes break away from his conversation and catch mine. He does a double take; then he fixes on me, his expression easing, his eyes narrowing.
“Holden was basically insane,” she says. “Erratic. Violent. Couldn’t be in school. The author of the book thinks Holden’s the one who killed Cecilia. He would’ve been seventeen at the time.”
“He killed his mother.” I nod along, casually, like she’s telling me about a new pair of heels she bought.
“Apparently, after Cecilia died, Winston was never the same. As time went on, Winston started going batty, too. He wrote in a letter—I remember this—he wrote, ‘I hesitate to declare what is more alarming, the extent to which my son is beginning to resemble a wild animal, or the extent to which I am beginning to resemble him.’”