Kate sawed harder at the duct tape.
“Those peanuts in your office? I bribed one of the cleaning crew. I thought it was a pretty good joke. Your patients are nuts. I enjoy my little misdirections. Did you notice all the other things that’ve gone missing over the years? Reading glasses, undergarments…”
“Why?”
“Whim.”
She stared at him with revulsion and imagined her father’s body wrapped in a plastic shower curtain. She pictured Stigler slumped over the wheel, his skull like a burst water balloon.
“I enjoy watching you try to figure things out, Kate. You keep looking for answers when they’re right in front of you.” He grinned. “I left a trail of breadcrumbs. You nibbled them up.”
A thick fog cushioned her brain. Don’t stop what you’re doing. Stay focused. “So you led me every step of the way? How did you know I was going to look at the flashdrive? How did you know I’d tell my father about Stigler killing my mother?”
He sighed with impatience. “Come on, Kate. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the flashdrive, and when you inevitably checked it out, I knew there was a high probability you’d tell your father about it. I had other plans in place in case you didn’t tell Bram about Stigler, but these things have a way of working themselves out.”
A trickle of sweat curled down her forehead. “You left the peanuts at my grandparents’ farmhouse?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“Why? What was the fucking point?”
“When we talked about the killer’s motivation, you said it was all about power and control, and that’s true. But it’s also fun to confuse people. It amuses me. I know everything there is to know about the people of Blunt River. I like to mess with their heads. I’ve been to your grandparents’ farmhouse a handful of times. I was wondering when you’d venture out that way, but I had no idea you’d go there thinking your father was a serial killer.” He laughed. “I liked it when you called me ‘Dad.’”
She stared at him in disbelief.
“I wanted to tear you down, bit by bit,” he said. “You once bragged that you could handle it—that you worked at McLean Hospital, remember? Trust me. You aren’t prepared for this.”
Her hands were covered in sweat. She momentarily lost her grip.
“I’ve known you longer than you realize.”
“What are you talking about?” she breathed. “We only met properly a week ago.”
“I’ve known you since you were a baby. I’d sneak into your parents’ house late at night and watch you play in your crib. They kept the spare key under a flowerpot, imagine that? People are dumb. Sometimes I’d watch Julia sleep. She clung to her side of the mattress and got as far away from your father as possible. I stole little things—jewelry, books, letters. I killed her cat. She was already losing her grip. I like to think I helped.”
Kate realized he was talking about the moon-shaped pendant. “So you stole my mother’s necklace and strangled Susie Gafford with it?”
“Like I said, that was a rookie mistake.”
She could feel her thoughts spinning out of control. Stay focused.
“I’ve been over every inch of that house. I know where your mother kept her birth control pills. I know where your father stashed his porn. I know where you kept your razor blades, Kate. I saw the wad of bubblegum under your sister’s bed long before you did. I know more about your family than you do. I know everything there is to know about you.”
Kate stared at him.
“This is what you’re dealing with. This is who I am.” He looked at her with dead eyes. “Cue the applause.”
“Why?” she asked breathlessly.
“Why not?” he said defiantly.
Kate’s eyes burned as she resumed her desperate task. The tear was two inches long, and the duct tape beginning to loosen around her sweaty wrists. He had watched her sleep. He took her things. “This is all about my mother, isn’t that right? It’s why you framed Henry Blackwood and William Stigler. Because they slept with her. That’s why you killed my father.”
Palmer shrugged. “You’re the psychiatrist. You tell me.”
“You hated that she slept with other men. You were obsessed with her.”
“I loved her,” he confessed. “And she betrayed me.”
“How? Tell me what happened.”
“We went to school together. I’ve known her since she was a skinny, ugly little thing. She was supposed to be mine. But she threw it all away.”
“So you killed her?”
“No, no, no. You’re missing the whole point. I didn’t kill her. Stigler did. He was drunk, he was jealous, and she provoked him. She was very good at that. He followed her down to the river and killed her, and then he covered it up. It only took me twenty-two years to get even with the son of a bitch.”
She stared at him. “So this was all about revenge?”
“Why does that confuse you?”
She scissored through the duct tape with frantic little motions. Almost there.
“Your mother had a rare kind of beauty, a special quality… but she threw it all away. She treated herself like dirt. Half the men in town were crazy about her. I was fourteen when she took pity on me. We slept together a couple times before she dumped me. She was fickle that way. She ended up marrying your father, God knows why. You’d think being a doctor was better than being a rock star. Anyway. He took what was mine. So I took what was his—his daughter, his peace of mind. People should pay for their actions.”
She felt a sharp pang as she spotted a road sign—they were in Piscataquis County, heading north. Twisting through the mountains. The road was narrow and curving. It had stopped snowing, and she could see down into the valley, a vast expanse of old-growth forests and lakes.
“So you killed Savannah to get even with my father—and with Blackwood, once you realized he was her biological father, even if he clearly never did?”
“Yes.”
“What about the other girls?” Kate asked. “How did you choose them?”
“I convinced Stigler’s research associate to give me the names of the study subjects. It was easy. He was a drug addict, so I blackmailed him.”
“Once you had the names, there must’ve been hundreds of girls to choose from, right?”
“In every instance, I had to wait for the opportunity to present itself.”
“Meaning… you had to wait until it was safe to abduct them?”
“And the timing had to sync up with Stigler’s out-of-town trips.”
Kate nodded. “In order to bury the bodies on his property without anyone noticing? And that’s where the police are going to find the four missing girls—in his backyard?”
“Asphyxiated. Heads shaved.”
“Why would you shave some of the victims’ heads, and not others?” she asked. “You told me Susie Gafford and the two suicides only had small pieces of hair cut off.”
“I can control myself when necessary, so long as I get a little of what I need. It would have been pretty dumb to go to the trouble of staging suicides only to attract attention with matching buzz cuts.”
“And you built this case over years… How did you know you could pull it off?”
“I’ve developed a knack for predicting behavior.”
“In my profession, they call that grandiosity.”
“It’s a small town, Kate. Small minds. After years of observation you know how people will act. On the other hand, sometimes you can predict the behavior of a complete stranger. All you have to do is find out their daily habits—a few days’ stakeout will often suffice. What time she leaves the house in the morning, how hastily she departs, how icy her porch steps are. Especially after you’ve hosed them down. Sorry about your mother-in-law. That was unfortunate.”
Kate struggled to grasp what he was saying.
“James was becoming an annoyance,” Palmer explained. “But easy to predict that he’d abandon you in favor of mommy dearest. On the other hand, I didn’t predict you’d drive up to your grandfather’s house today. I just ran with it. And you thinking Bram might be the killer was a wildcard.”