But why would he bury victims in his own backyard?
What if Stigler had been set up to take the fall, just like Henry Blackwood? What if the real killer buried one or more bodies on Stigler’s property to implicate him? Whose blood was really inside the lake house? What if Stigler was dead and her father was alive? What if he’d only made it look like the opposite was true? What if Bram had staged his own death?
By the time she’d reached the village of Four Oaks, Maine, an hour later, it was beginning to snow. The downtown area consisted of a post office, a grocery store, three churches, and a feed store. Her grandparents’ farm was way out in the boonies, nestled in a landscape of ice forests and frozen lakes. She recognized the battered mailbox and pulled over.
Dead grape arbors lined the entranceway to Wolfe’s Dairy. The old sign was falling down. She let the engine idle. It was obvious nobody had been out here in quite some time. She couldn’t detect any tire tracks in the snow, just virginal drifts where a driveway should be. There was a back entrance, but you had to take a series of dirt roads to get there.
She tried calling Chief Dunmeyer via the police station, but he wasn’t taking any phone calls. She left a message with the desk sergeant and hung up. There was very little traffic out this way. Snowflakes swirled down from the sky with gentle, sinuous movements. She got out of her car, zipped up her parka, and headed for the farm through the knee-deep drifts. By the time she’d reached the broken picket fence, she was drenched in sweat.
The farmhouse sat on twenty abandoned acres, surrounded by dilapidated outbuildings. The snowy yard was etched with deer prints, like her grandmother’s pie crust poked with a fork. This used to be a working dairy. Now everything was buried under the merciless Maine winter.
A sudden flurry of snow hit her, and Kate ran for cover up the old porch steps. A rusty cowbell hung by a length of rope from the doorknob. She crossed the sagging porch boards and fished the keys out of her pocket. The cowbell jangled as the front door popped open.
An eerie chill surrounded her as she stood in the front hall, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. A bad odor filled her nostrils, and she spotted a dead squirrel in the hallway. She turned a corner into the living room, where the moth-eaten furniture, once upholstered in soft blues and ginghams, was covered with mold and dust. The kitchen smelled of decay. Various creatures had left their fetid aroma behind. She tested the faucets, but no water came out. She opened the cupboards and found her grandmother’s pie plates and Mother Goose cookie cutters blooming with rust.
The dining room was separated from the rest of the house by an arthritic pocket door Kate could barely shove open. She stood clapping the dust off her hands and listening to it echo off the walls. She remembered dinners with Gran and Gramps, their stories about farting cows and charismatic men who could make it rain for a price. She went upstairs, recalling the thrill of staying up late at night with Savannah, playing word games in the dark and listening to the newborn calves mewling in the barn. Now every corner contained dead insects stuck in cobwebs. The floors were slanted and the doorways were crooked. She could hear the blustery wind outside. The weather was becoming increasingly rough.
There were no signs of foul play. No serial-killer souvenirs, clothing or jewelry lying around. No scalps. No chainsaws. Her father wasn’t a serial killer. She’d been wrong. Palmer was right. Case closed.
She went downstairs and wandered through the back of the house—the mud room, rodent-infested pantry, her grandfather’s study. She poked through the dusty books and papers on Gramps’ desk and found an old class photo of her father and his schoolmates. Bram Wolfe had to have been the tallest ten-year-old in Four Oaks Elementary. He stood in the back row, hunching his shoulders like a fairytale goose trying to fit in with the ducklings. He’d grown up in a village full of rowdy farm boys who wanted to be hockey stars. No doubt they had wanted to knock him down a few pegs.
Kate felt an excruciating sadness. Her father had lived a life of self-imposed isolation. He was a difficult person to love—but that didn’t make him a monster. He’d loved Julia with all his heart. He loved his daughters, too. His only sin was marrying a woman who couldn’t be faithful.
Gray shafts of light filtered in through the dusty windows. She put the picture down and turned to leave. Then she saw it. A jar of Planters Roasted Peanuts perched on top of her grandfather’s bookcase, covered in a light sheen of dust. Her heart began to race.
The cowbell jangled on the front door.
Kate spun around.
Someone was inside the house.
57
A SHADOW TREMBLED ON the wall, moving swiftly toward her. A tall figure, the shape of the head unnatural. A ski-mask?
Dad?
She tried to run, but he tackled her and they went tumbling to the carpet, kicking up huge plumes of dust. She screamed, but he clamped his hand over her mouth. She bit down hard on a leather glove, and he jerked away, allowing her to scramble free. Kate took off running for the front door. She bolted down the porch steps into the knee-deep snow. He was fast on her heels, and soon overtook her. Now they were facing each other, breathing hard, the snow obscuring her vision. He stood between her and the driveway. Between her and freedom.
Dad?
She reacted with pure animal terror, waves of fear galvanizing her. She took out the pepper spray, aimed it at his expressionless eyes, and pressed the nozzle, but nothing happened. She shook the canister and tried again. Nothing.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
She dropped the can in the snow and tried to run past him, but he barred her way, as if they were playing a game of cat and mouse. She took off in the opposite direction, heading for the barn. The barn had pitchforks, tools she could use as a weapon. She plowed through the snow and looked back over her shoulder. He was bounding after her.
The world became a blur.
Fear pounded into her.
She reached the barn door, grasped the rusty handle and jerked it open. She ducked inside, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. The weathered interior was like an enormous shipwreck, full of rotten beams held together by rusty nails. The wind was howling eerily through the rafters. She streaked past tractor parts and old tires stacked on top of milk crates, heading for the back. She found a rusty machete hanging on the wall, right where her grandfather had left it, and grabbed it. She spun around.
He was barreling toward her.
“Dad! Don’t!” she screamed.
He tackled her around the middle and they landed on the rotten boards. She ate a mouthful of dust as she shrieked, “Dad, it’s me! Kate!”
He knocked the machete out of her hand.
“Stop!”
The dry winter air crackled with static. His full weight was on her. Fear took over completely. She screamed until there was nothing left but raw rags of breath. With her last ounce of strength, she reached for the ski mask and yanked it off his head.
Palmer Dyson was staring down at her.
He wrapped a muscular arm around her neck, and Kate’s world guttered out.
58
KATE CRACKED AN EYE open. Her body felt battered and sore all over, as if she’d been lying on top of a shattered mirror. Her vision was blurry. She had a pounding headache. How long had she been out? A minute? A day?
She struggled to sit forward, but her body refused to cooperate. It felt as if she weighed a ton. There was duct tape wrapped around her wrists, legs, and ankles. She was buckled into the back seat of a Jeep—the Jeep Renegade that had followed her, she realized—and Palmer Dyson was behind the wheel.
“Hello, Kate.”
She stared at him in disbelief.
“How are you feeling?”
She struggled to free herself, but the tape dug into her flesh and brought tears to her eyes. “I thought you were in Mexico?” she gasped with stunned incomprehension.