But I alternated between watching the street and reading through reports for a while. Bar dispute, domestic, domestic, drug-related home invasion, teenage girl charged with stabbing her friend in the arm with a homemade shiv, man stabbed to death in his North Linden home, no suspects. But forty minutes into it, I saw the word Belmont in an entry from the year before the Cook murders, and I got excited. The crimes appeared to be very different, but the victim, Mallory Evans, was eighteen years old, close in age to Sarah. To Brad Stockton, too. Wondering if they all knew each other, I opened a new browser tab and searched the Dispatch database for Mallory’s name.
The body of a Belmont woman who was reported missing last May has been found in southeast Columbus. A man hiking in the woods near I-270 and State Route 33 on December 5 discovered the body of Mallory Evans, 18, buried in a shallow grave.
Evans had multiple stab wounds, a police spokesperson said.
Evans was last seen at her Belmont home at 73 Providence Street on Friday, May 25, at 10 p.m. There had been no confirmed sightings of Evans since her disappearance.
Police are asking anyone with information to call the homicide squad at 614-645-4730. Detective Frank Weary is the primary investigator.
Frank Weary.
I reread it, heat flooding through my face. It still said my father’s name.
I quickly clicked through the other search results, but none of them contained much more detail or mentioned my father. The case appeared to be unsolved. Although my objective had been to try to establish a pattern, actually finding a similar crime jarred me a little, especially one that my father had worked. What were the odds? I was still staring at the screen when I heard a vehicle pulling in behind me, and I turned around to see a Belmont police cruiser parking perpendicular to my bumper.
“Now what,” I muttered. I put my computer on the passenger seat and got out of the car, too keyed up to sit still. It had stopped raining but the air was damp and cold. The cop took his time getting out of the cruiser. This guy was older than the officer from the other night, fiftyish and tall with short silver hair and a neat goatee. He was good-looking in a reliable sort of way, like he could build you a hell of a cabin. I could see sergeant’s bars on his sleeve through his tinted window. “Good afternoon,” he said.
“Hi,” I said. “Complaint about loitering, right?”
He walked over to me, nodding. His name tag said J. Derrow. “Can you tell me what you’re up to?”
“I’m waiting for someone. Well, looking for someone. I’m a detective, private.”
“Oh yeah?” he said pleasantly. “Can I see some ID?”
I leaned into my car and got out my license. He glanced at it briefly and handed it back.
“What brings you to Belmont?”
Since he’d already asked the same question, I gave him roughly the same answer. “Just looking into something.”
Derrow smiled. “Come on, humor me. I always thought about going private myself, after my thirty.” He looked skyward. “Four more years.”
He would have been a cop when the Cooks were murdered, I realized. “Do you remember a case about fifteen years ago, a double murder here in Belmont? A married couple were stabbed to death, and their daughter vanished?”
Derrow’s expression darkened. “Garrett Cook was a friend of mine,” he said.
I opened my mouth to respond, but he kept talking.
“Is that what you’re looking into? We got the guy already, thank God, and he’s on death row, where he belongs.” He ran a hand over his face. “We get this every now and then, people nosing around here, looking for details on the case. Like their house, before it got torn down. Always people in there looking for ghosts.”
“I’m sorry, about your friend,” I said quickly, and he nodded. “And I’m not trying to bring back bad memories. Just following up on a lead that Sarah might have been spotted here.”
“Here?” Derrow said. He twirled a finger around atmospherically to indicate the general vicinity. “Let me guess. Stockton’s sister told you that.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
He nodded slowly and sadly. “Nice girl, but maybe not too realistic. She comes in to the station sometimes, to ask about something she heard of, something she saw on CourtTV, what about DNA testing, what about this, what about that. I’ll tell you what we always tell her: The case is closed for a reason. Because it’s solved. You know he had the knife in his car, right?”
“Yes.”
“And he had a record, too.”
“Kid stuff, though, right?”
“If you call breaking into a teacher’s car and slicing up the seats kid stuff, sure,” Derrow said.
I felt my eyebrows go up. “Oh?”
“Not sure of the details, but it was over some kind of beef at school,” he said, shaking his head. “He got suspended. She left the school, didn’t even stick around long enough to press charges. I sure wish she would’ve, though. Belmont’s a nice town, and we never had any trouble before Brad Stockton.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. But based on what I’d just read about Mallory Evans’s murder the year before the Cooks were killed, it wasn’t entirely accurate that Belmont never had any trouble before Brad. “I just learned about another case though,” I said. “A young woman named Mallory Evans?”
It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “You know your local history,” he said. “Mallory Evans, poor soul. We weren’t part of that investigation, on account of where she was found, that was inside the Columbus city limits. But there was always a rumor floating around that it was someone she went to school with.”
“Really.”
“Nothing concrete, but yeah. Never even could find a name to investigate. The Homicide boys from Columbus didn’t want to haul in every student for questioning, which I guess makes sense. Parents would lose their minds,” Derrow said, shrugging. “But if I were you, I’d cut my losses. Stockton’s not somebody worth fighting for.” He added, “People around here get a little jumpy, so I’m not going to jam you up for loitering. But maybe it’s time for you to be on your way.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I was starting to feel that way myself. I was now in the murky middle of the case, where the early intrigue of the mystery had burned off, leaving me with the bitter taste of inadequate facts and loose ends in my mouth. But after Derrow left and I pulled out of the bank parking lot, I drove back across the street to Taverna Athena. It would be easier to blend in there, and I figured it would buy me another hour or so before I gave up for the day. Although I was cold, I knew I only had so long before I was lulled into stakeout complacency, where even if my subject walked right by me, I might not even notice.
Which is almost exactly what happened.
NINE
Shortly after four o’clock, a brown, curly-haired dog strolled into view. I watched it idly for a few seconds, nothing registering in my brain yet. But then I noticed the woman on the other end of the dog’s leash: the woman from the sketch.
“Thank you,” I murmured to the universe. I grabbed my keys out of the ignition and bolted across the street, narrowly avoiding getting hit by no fewer than three cars. “Sadie,” I called, for lack of a better idea.
The woman stopped in front of a ranch house two doors down from the gas station and turned around, smiling expectantly. She was about five-seven, slim, wearing a hip-length grey wool peacoat. Her hair, dark blond and cut into long layers around her ruddy face, was wind-whipped and shiny. As I jogged over to her, the smile turned confused. “Hi?” she said.