“Because she’s the one most affected. She was a suspect, she went through questioning, she’s still harboring so much pain and guilt and regret. One on one, it would have gone much better.”
“Maybe you’re right, but you can’t put the cat back into the bag.”
“I’m going to try and fix this. If you come, Carina is going to feel like we’re ganging up on her.”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll do whatever you want. Call me. Anytime. JT will give us a short break at some point.”
“Thanks.”
“JT is staring at me with his laser eyes.” Lucy heard Jack say something in the background, then laughter. “But Sean’s here. He wants to talk to you.”
“Okay. And Patrick? I just—well, I love you.”
“I love you too, Luce.”
Lucy gave Sean a brief update, then let him go too. They both had a job to do, and for the next couple of days, they would have to work alone.
Lucy looked around for Max Revere, but didn’t see her. Where had she gone? Lucy glanced down at her phone. She hadn’t thought she’d been talking long, but fifteen minutes had passed.
It was nearing the end of the school day for younger children, and Lucy watched as three mothers walked into the park with preschool-aged children. They let the kids run and play on the same playground Lucy and Justin had once enjoyed. Some of the equipment had been replaced, bark lined the foundation instead of sand, the trees had all grown and flourished, but the park was still the same.
She saw Max walking toward her from where she’d parked on the street. She met up with Lucy next to Justin’s tree. “I’m right.”
“About?”
Max opened her iPad and flipped to a mapping program. “I had my staff research the area at the time Justin was killed compared to now. These houses were all put in ten to twelve years ago.” She waved to the backside of the park.
“I could have told you that.”
“But,” Max continued, “the houses in front of the park were all here. Justin was buried…” She started walking, barely looking where she was going, her eyes focused on the map. Max was also wearing heels—how in the world did she walk across the grass without her heels sinking into the soil?
Lucy had to follow. She didn’t want to, but she had to.
Max stopped between two elm trees. “Here. And if you turn and look, this is the only place that has complete and total privacy.”
Lucy did look. Max was right. The park wasn’t large—the trees that framed the perimeter, where Justin had been buried, were only two deep, but they’d been growing here since before Lucy was born. A large grass area, perhaps large enough for a little kid’s soccer game, separated the trees from the playground. Beyond the playground was the corner and a four-way stop. The houses there were older, post-WWII-style bungalows, similar to the house that the Stantons had lived in when Justin was killed. But none of them were clearly visible from this angle, blocked by either the trees or the play structure.
Max showed her the map. “This is a satellite image taken only a few months before Justin died. These same trees were here, only a little smaller. But my staff says based on the angle, this is still the only truly private spot in the park.”
“It was the middle of the night—no one would be out.”
“But in case someone was walking their dog, or a car drove by, she wanted to make sure she wasn’t seen. The grave was shallow, but she still needed time to bury the body.”
Max was right. “It’s one more factor pointing to premeditated murder,” Lucy said. But right now, it didn’t help.
“Maybe she lived in the neighborhood,” Max said. “Would people here notice someone new? Maybe not now, but it was a much smaller neighborhood twenty years ago. And it’s a park—wouldn’t someone be suspicious if an adult was hanging out at a park without a child?”
“It’s possible. But she could have been a jogger, she visited after hours, or lived nearby. If she lived anywhere between Justin’s house and the park, the police would have spoken to her at least once. Or noted if no one was home and followed up.” Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose. The headache had been slowing coming on all morning, a combination of stress and lack of sleep and drinking only coffee this morning. “I’m blanking on your timeline for a minute—the other boys were found in similar parks?”
Max said, “Tommy Porter was found in a neighborhood park. Much larger than this one, with a baseball diamond and a soccer field as well as a playground. It was approximately one and a half miles from his house. Chris Donovan was found in a nature preserve less than two miles from his house. But there was a playground right down the street. Does that mean Chris wasn’t killed by the same person?”
“No, look up where Tommy was buried.”
“I just said—”
“I mean, exactly where in the park he was buried.”
Staring at the trees reminded Lucy of a game she and Justin used to play, sort of a weird version of Simon Says meets Truth or Dare. Because the trees were two deep, they would start at one end then ask a question of the other. Sometimes trivia about their favorite television shows—Full House and The Magic School Bus. Sometimes about what happened at Sunday dinner at Lucy’s house—she and Justin were both curious, and tried to learn everything they could about Lucy’s older siblings. Like when they hid in the back of Connor’s car when they were five and he was twenty. He still lived at home while attending the police academy. They really wanted to see his new girlfriend because Patrick kept teasing him about a girl named Darlene. But they didn’t realize that Connor was going to a party after Sunday dinner, and he drove all the way to La Jolla before realizing they were on the floor in the backseat. He had been livid with them for a week. Patrick had thought it was hilarious.
It was within the confines, the safe zone, of the trees where Lucy had once asked Justin why his parents never kissed each other—she’d seen her own mom and dad kissing, usually in the kitchen when they didn’t think anyone was around. It used to make Lucy smile and scrunch up her nose—it had grossed her out, but she thought it was funny how her mom would blush. There was never a doubt in her mind that her mom and dad loved each other. It wasn’t just that they said, “I love you,” usually in the morning when her dad went to work, but more than words, they showed it every day. The kisses. The way her mom would touch her dad’s hand when she gave him coffee in the morning. The way her dad would open a jar for her mom, then demand a kiss for his hard labor. Or the way he looked at her when she stepped into the room, as if she was the only person in the world in that moment of time.
These weren’t things Lucy could articulate when she was younger, they were things she’d simply grown up knowing, and now, looking back, she realized how good she’d had it. She knew what love was because her parents were deeply in love. So when she and Sean found each other, she knew it was real.
“I dunno,” Justin had said with a shrug. “Maybe because kissing is gross.”