“Know what color, by chance?”
“Not sure. White or gray. Maybe silver.”
“Thank you, Chief.”
* * *
The cars filled the parking lot next to St. Adams Church, and overflow had to park along the road. Mourners dressed in black lined up to offer condolences to Terry Fogarty. As Bobbi approached, walking down the street from her apartment building, she saw another man with Fogarty: Harriet’s son, Victor.
Harriet had kept a picture in her office of Victor in his cap and gown, graduating from Colgate University. He’d grown a beard and seemed to have aged more than the five years since his graduation. Bobbi got closer, stepped into the back of the line. She acknowledged the few mourners she recognized from DSS with a tip of her head. She didn’t see Rachel.
When it was her turn to speak to Harriet’s husband, Bobbi’s throat dried out. But she touched his shoulder and whispered how sorry she was, unprepared for the tears that suddenly sheeted her vision.
“Thank you, Bobbi,” Terry Fogarty said. “Harriet liked you a lot. She was very happy you’d joined the group over there.”
Bobbi wanted to stare into his face and hunt for any sign that he blamed her. She wanted to sink to her knees, grab his legs, and beg his forgiveness. But she turned toward Victor, said, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” and moved swiftly out of Victor’s range of intensity.
Rachel was already inside, sitting in the middle section of pews, near the front. When she saw Bobbi coming she lifted her bag out of the way, offered a wan smile, and Bobbi sat down.
It had been years since Bobbi attended a church service of any kind, but she was surprised when Rachel lowered the kneeler to genuflect and bowed her head in prayer. Several months at the DSS and Bobbi never knew Rachel was a worshipper.
She joined in and tried to focus on Harriet, to think good thoughts, but became distracted by Victor’s face, burned into her mind. It was impossible to let go of the idea that this could all be for her – that if she’d been killed instead of Harriet, such a memorial service would be happening at her own church back home, the one where her father brought her and her foster brothers. And that it would be her body lingering at the morgue, part of evidence in an unsolved murder case, not Harriet’s.
Whether by fate or chance, she was a mourner. At least, as long as her luck held out. In her dreams, it didn’t.
In one dream she left the clinic and boarded a city bus, like the RTS back in Rochester. After driving around through unfamiliar neighborhoods, the other passengers de-boarded, one by one, leaving her alone with a single man who sat at the back, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, his face hidden. She stayed on the bus like a hostage, unable to leave, until eventually he got up and walked to her, pulled a gleaming knife from the folds of his sweatshirt, and started slashing at her. She tried to fight him off but was slowed by a thick, invisible force. When he raised the knife for the final strike, his hood fell away, and Jamie looked down at her with black eyes.
Bobbi snapped out of it, realized that Rachel had moved to a seated position in the pew. Harriet’s brother Joe, a big man with a shaved head, was giving the eulogy. The church was hot and she felt the sweat spreading over her neck and back.
It felt like someone was watching her.
She glanced around and saw Mike Nelson. A corner of his mouth curled up and he made a small nod. Then his smile faded. He seemed to know she had something to tell him.
* * *
“Jamie Rentz?”
“Yes.” Bobbi lifted the coffee to her lips and blew on it. Then she remembered it was iced coffee. Mike noticed her slip but didn’t mention it.
“That’s James, or…?”
“Jameson. He always hated the name. Said it made him sound like a rich person. So he never used it. Always went by Jamie.”
Pieces of stained glass, made into sun-catchers, hung from suction cups against the windows of the café, burning in the intense July light.
“I just…” Bobbi chased around for the right thing to say. “I don’t… I know you can only say just so much. So maybe you have a suspect and this is silly of me. I saw Harriet’s other brother at the service…”
“I’d like to hear what you have to say, Bobbi.” He clearly avoided admitting Steve Pritchard was a suspect. “We’re looking at everything we can right now,” he said.
She was nodding, perhaps too vigorously, feeling frustrated, crowded. The café, which sat close to the church, was packed, eyes darting to her and the investigator. She recognized some of the people from the memorial service. Mike had asked her to talk back at the police station, but she’d chosen the coffee place and now thought it was a bad idea.
“I need to stop thinking about this,” Bobbi said. “It just goes on and on. I haven’t been sleeping. Jamie, he… I don’t know if he’d…” She forced herself to stop.
Mike kept his voice low. “Did he ever hurt you?”
Her memory flashed on a couple of occasions – just quick moments – Jamie’s hand drawn back in a fist, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “He grabbed me a couple times.”
Mike waited.
“You know, grabbed my shoulders. One time he shoved me and I tripped. He got on top of me, but he… my roommate interrupted. This was at my dorm room.”
“At the University of Rochester…”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s still in Rochester? Living there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I asked my mom and she didn’t know. I thought about calling his mom, but…”
“Did you report it? When he grabbed you?”
“We were breaking up. He… that was the last time I saw him. He called and left messages, apologizing up and down, asking to see me. But… I’m not, ah…” She let slip a fluttery laugh, high-pitched. Dammit, she was losing it.
She wasn’t nervous; she was pissed. Pissed at Jamie. Someone she’d left behind, yet here he was, still causing trouble in her life. She kept catching the eyes of curious onlookers.
“Would you like to leave?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, I totally would.”
He stood up and Bobbi followed him to the door.
He held it open for her and they stepped out into the bright sunshine. “You didn’t tell campus security? Anything? I’m just looking for any sort of paperwork on Jamie, any official report.”
“No, I didn’t. But he had other things.”
They headed down the hill toward the lake in the center of the village. The route took them by a busy hotel and across Main Street, choked with traffic. Independence Day had kicked off the official summer season and Lake Placid thrived on tourism – boating, camping, canoeing, hiking – but as they stepped into a small park with a couple of benches and a picnic table, everything seemed sinister, everybody had something to hide. Like the man standing by the water’s edge, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt, his hair frizzy and pulled back. He didn’t look right. He looked like Gavin Fuller, father of the boy Harriet had been placing in care.
They grabbed a bench and Bobbi took a hit from the iced coffee, tried to taste its sweetness. Mike asked her what she meant by “other things” and she told him what she could, that Jamie had a temper, that he had been arrested for fighting once, that he liked knives.
“Knives?”
She nodded. The man in the tie-dye suddenly scooped up a little girl and laughed with her. He wasn’t Fuller – she was getting full-on paranoid. Bobbi turned to Mike, saying, “Jamie hunted with his dad down in the Southern Tier. And he had this idea of killing a deer using just a knife. He had dozens of them. I don’t think he ever did…” She trailed off. “You’re probably wondering why I didn’t say anything about him before.”
He grew thoughtful, then said, “Maybe you just didn’t want to admit it was possible.”
“He texted me. Last night. Do you want to see it?”
“Please.”