Once it stopped snowing, the young people went outside. Kate watched from the French doors as Nikki’s friends remembered her in their own special way, laughing and sobbing, dueling breath clouds painting the air. They threw snowballs and traded war stories, and Kate found their raucous grief to be much more honest than the long faces indoors.
After a moment, she sensed a presence watching her and turned to find the older man she’d seen at church standing six feet away. He was in his mid-sixties and seemed very comfortable in his own weather-beaten skin. He was tall, like her father, but more muscular, formidable and square-jawed. He had a leathery, old-school style that reminded her of a character actor from a black-and-white western. Strong, proud, confident. Not ashamed to be different. He wore a fringed calfskin jacket and a bolo tie. He was idiosyncratic, and yet he radiated a temperate kind of professionalism.
“Hello, Dr. Wolfe,” he said.
“Sorry, have we met?”
“Palmer Dyson.” He reached out to shake her hand. His grip was firm. “I was one of the detectives on your sister’s case.”
Kate felt the surprise in her gut. She’d met him sixteen years ago, only he’d been much younger then, and thinner, with short dark hair and long ugly sideburns. He had worn sharkskin suits—none of these cowboy trappings.
Detective Palmer Dyson had been one of dozens of investigators working on her sister’s case—a polite, respectful, observant man who stayed mostly in the background. In contrast, she vividly recalled the lead detective, Ray Matthews, a scary-looking older guy with ginger hair and acne scars, who’d passed away a few years ago. And then there was the rookie detective, Cody Dunmeyer, now the chief of police, a handsome young man who’d managed to soothe Kate’s frazzled nerves while asking her some very probing questions. And last but not least was the medical examiner, Quade Pickler, with his outdated mullet hairdo and his cynical, mistrustful eyes—he was the one who’d gotten so upset when she peeked through the cracked-open morgue door.
So many professionals had been involved it was hard to keep track of them all. The FBI initially, because of the kidnapping angle, and the Blunt River PD, but also state troopers, social workers, members of the medical examiner’s office, volunteers from various missing-persons organizations, attorneys from the prosecutor’s office, private detectives, and the media. Kate had forgotten most of them in the blur of activity surrounding Savannah’s death.
She would probably have forgotten Dyson, except that he hadn’t allowed her to. Over the years, she’d received dozens of letters from him requesting a meeting to discuss an important matter involving her sister’s case. He signed his name with a flourish—Palmer. She’d thrown all his letters away, along with hundreds of other requests from people wanting to “discuss” the case with her: reporters on deadlines, authors with book proposals, psychics with visions, anti-death-penalty advocates with an agenda, true-crime bloggers, serial-killer fanatics, and various assorted freaks too scary to mention. She didn’t want to talk to any of them. She didn’t want to talk to Detective Dyson now.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t recognize you.”
“Been a long time.”
“You used to have sideburns.”
“Oh yeah, the sideburns.” He laughed. “A holdover from the seventies. I have a tendency to hang onto things beyond their expiration date.”
She smiled nervously. “What are you doing here?”
“Nikki’s uncle.” He pointed out a gray-haired man across the room. “He used to work for the district attorney’s office in Concord.”
“Oh.”
“Nelly Ward tells me you’re Maddie’s psychiatrist now?”
Kate was taken aback. “She told you that?”
“It’s a small world in our little corner of New Hampshire. Probably one of the reasons you left, I’m guessing. Everybody knows everyone else’s business. Claustrophobic for some. Paradise for others.” He smiled. “Like I said, I have a tendency to hang onto things. For instance, your sister’s case.”
Kate stared at him. Maybe this was how police detectives operated, especially detectives who held onto sixteen-year-old closed murder cases. They poked their nose into your business and wrote you letters, inviting you to meetings you’d never attend. They asked you to revisit what was dead and buried in your head, if not your heart. They had ulterior motives.
“Look, Dr. Wolfe, I’m sorry to bother you.” He placed his hand on her arm, and it was like being courted by a civilized bear. “I don’t know if you’ve read any of my letters, but I’ve been investigating some unsolved cases involving local girls gone missing. You may have heard of some of them. Makayla Brayden, for instance, who was from Blunt River. But there have been others, lesser known, from nearby towns… Anyway, I believe I see a pattern.”
“I have to go,” Kate said, feeling panicky and hemmed in. It was strange to hear Makayla’s name so soon after thinking about the case herself. She looked around for an exit.
“That’s okay. I get it.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t want to deal with it.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” she said angrily. “As for your letters, I threw them all away. I’m trying to move on with my life.”
“Fair enough.”
“Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“I didn’t mean to insult you.” Again, he rested his hand on her arm. “Indulge me for a moment. It’s just that Nelly has confided in me a good deal these past few years. And just recently she told me that she lied on the witness stand sixteen years ago. She insists they locked up the wrong guy.”
Kate’s heart was thundering. “How can you even say that!”
A few people turned to stare. She stormed off in search of her coat, but the detective followed her to the sunroom, where outerwear was piled high on a beige loveseat.
“Please, let me explain,” he said as she rummaged through the pile, pulling at parkas and wool jackets in search of her camel-hair Hugo Boss, the one that had cost her a mint. “I don’t mean to impose on you,” he said softly. “But if I could just have a minute of your time…”
“You’ve taken all the minutes I can spare.” She found her coat.
“Here. Let me help you with that.” He tried to take it away from her.
“No thanks, I’ve got it.” She snatched the coat away and put it on. “Excuse me,” she said and made her way to the front door and out of the suffocating house.
The detective caught up with Kate at the bottom of the driveway. “Dr. Wolfe? One last thing. I’d like to explain how your sister changed my life.”
Kate froze—it was such a hurtful thing to say. “Did you put her up to this?”
“Sorry—what?”
“Nelly Ward? Did you convince her to bring her daughter to Boston for treatment?”
“No.” He drew back, seemingly deeply offended. “Not at all. I bumped into Nelly yesterday, and she told me what was going on. I’m a detective. I’m nosy. It’s either a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. Look. Can we discuss this over coffee?”
“I really have to go,” she said stiffly.
“Just to be clear, I had nothing to do with Nelly’s decision to drive down to Boston,” he said emphatically. “It’s none of my damn business. Maddie’s a sweet kid who for some reason keeps hurting herself. That’s all I know. I didn’t mean to upset you. It certainly wasn’t my intent. I’m not good with people, I guess.”
She got in her car, slammed the door and buckled up. He tapped on her window, and she rolled it down.
“Look, here’s my card.”
She accepted it wordlessly, hoping to get rid of him.
“I understand evil, Dr. Wolfe. I have lived with it. I have hunted it down. And believe me… there’s a killer out there. Unknown, unsuspected, uncaught. Call me if you change your mind.”
20