She shook her head. He wasn’t sick, she realized now; he was healthy, his eyes sharp and unclouded. The gray of his skin and his matchstick thinness spoke of addiction instead.
He looked away, past her shoulder, as if considering what to say. He really hadn’t planned this, she thought. He’d likely thought she wouldn’t follow the note. He scratched the back of his neck with a restless hand. “I followed you here from Barrons.”
Fiona’s blood went cold.
“You met with that woman,” Stephen Heyer continued. “I thought maybe . . . But I don’t recognize her. I don’t know who she is.” He looked back at her face, and she saw something naked in his eyes, a desperation that looked painfully familiar. “Does she have something to do with Tim Christopher?”
Fiona took another step back as if she’d been slapped. “Fuck off,” she said to him, with all the icy cold she could summon into her voice, denying her fear, her sudden shakiness. She turned and walked away.
She could hear him behind her, trailing her. “Wait,” he said. “You’ve been going to Idlewild. To the restoration. I’ve seen you there.”
What the hell was this? Some stupid game? She kept walking. “Leave me alone or I’ll call the police.”
“I go to Old Barrons Road, sleep there sometimes,” he said, still following her, as if he was compelled to explain. “The old man who used to run the drive-in lets me use his place.”
“You go there to get high?” she shot back over her shoulder.
“No, no,” he protested. “I have some problems, yeah, but that’s not why. That’s not what I’m getting at.”
Her mind was racing. If he was a Barrons local, he must have known about Deb. He was around her own age, the right age to have been a teenager when it happened. She racked her brain again for the name Stephen Heyer, trying to put it in context, but she was sure she’d never heard it before, that he hadn’t gone to her high school. She pegged him as some kind of creep, a ghoul, maybe looking to scare her for money. She did not need this shit. She really did not.
“I’ve seen you,” he said. He was following at her shoulder. He gave off a curiously diminished vibe, as if he was so low on life force that he couldn’t be dangerous. Fiona knew by instinct that she didn’t have to run or scream; if she got in her car and drove away, he’d simply recede, defeated. So she strode purposefully toward the parking lot. “That red hair,” he continued. “It’s unmistakable. I’ve seen you, Deb Sheridan’s sister, the journalist, coming back to Idlewild. Looking, looking, right? They’re restoring it, and you can’t stay away. I figure you must be looking, looking. You think I don’t understand, but I do.”
Fiona turned and stared at him. He wasn’t lying; he was telling the truth, at least as he knew it. “Listen,” she said to him. “Whatever you think you know, I do not give a shit. Do you understand? Stop following me, or I’ll call the cops. Whatever crazy shit is in your brain right now, I suggest you forget about it. Forget about me. I am none of your business.”
“You want answers,” Stephen said. He didn’t seem high, but she wondered how long it had been since his last fix. “Closure, right? That’s what they call it. The therapists and group sessions and grief counselors. They don’t talk about what a load of bullshit that is.” He stared at her, and she saw frustration behind his eyes, some kind of crazy pain that spiraled through him, undulled by drugs. He gestured down at himself. “You think I got this way because I got closure?”
Her mouth was dry. “Closure for what?”
“You’re not looking hard enough,” Stephen said, echoing his own note. “I’ve been looking for closure for twenty years. Just like you. But I looked harder. And I found you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell that means.”
“I know how it feels.” He was strangely eloquent now, his eyes bright, an evangelist speaking the truth he knew best. “You’re all in here”—he tapped his temple—“and you can’t get out. It goes round and round. You’re thinking, thinking—always fucking thinking. The therapists and the grief counselors, they don’t understand. They want you to talk and write things down and share, but nothing makes it go away. I did drugs. You go walking at Idlewild.”
It was as if he were hitting her with the words, punching her in the stomach. “Did you know my sister?” she rasped.
“No,” Stephen Heyer said. “But I want Tim Christopher dead.”
“What—” She tried to get a grip, sound rational. “Are you some kind of death penalty advocate?” Vermont didn’t have the death penalty.
“I don’t give a shit about the death penalty,” Stephen said, his eyes alight. “I just want him dead. Not for what he did to your sister. For what he did to mine.”
There are moments when everything shifts, when the world becomes eerily like the kaleidoscope toy given to children, where with the turn of a cheap plastic knob everything changes, becomes different. Fiona looked at the man in front of her and the calm of downtown Portsmouth disappeared; the colors changed; the air smelled different. Everything flew upward, scattered, and landed again. Her head throbbed.
“Who was your sister?” she asked him. “What did Tim do?”
“Who is my sister?” he corrected her, his voice bitter. “Helen Elizabeth Heyer, born July 9, 1973. Would you like to meet her?”
Her voice was a rasp, but she didn’t hesitate, the words slipping out of her as they always did when she was buzzed like this, restless, the madness in her blood. “Yes,” she told Stephen. “I would.”
“My car is parked over there,” he said, pointing down the street. He smiled when he saw her expression. “How the hell do you think I followed you to New Hampshire? I’m a fucking addict, not a bum. It’s a blue Chevy. I’ll pull out and wait for you.”
“Where are we going?” Fiona asked him, her temples pounding.
“Back to Vermont,” he said. “I’ll lead the way. You follow.”
Chapter 25
Barrons, Vermont
November 2014
The Barrons police department was emptying out at five o’clock, the day staff packing up and going home. They kept a dispatcher on at night, but in a town as small as Barrons, that was all that was needed. A few cops were kept on call in case of emergencies, and a duty officer stayed on until midnight in case of evening domestic disputes, noise complaints, or bar customers that got out of hand. The parking lot was nearly empty when Fiona pulled in, though Jamie’s SUV was still there.
Holding a file folder in her hand, Fiona walked through the front door and saw the dispatcher sitting behind the front desk. He looked to be nearly seventy, and he was peacefully leafing through a fishing magazine. He looked up with some surprise.
“Help you?” he said.
He knew who she was. Of course he did. If he didn’t know she was Malcolm Sheridan’s daughter, dating a fellow cop, she’d eat her journalism diploma. But she said, “I’m looking for Jamie Creel. Is he around?”
“Are you here to report a crime?” he asked.
“I’m here to see Jamie.”
The dispatcher slid a clipboard across the desk at her. “You’ll need to sign in. Name, address, identification.”
It was bullshit. This was Barrons, not Rikers Island. “Just tell me where to find him.”
His hairy white eyebrows rose on his forehead. “I’ll have to get my supervisor’s approval to let a journalist in here.”
“If you know I’m a journalist, then you know my name.” She slid the clipboard back across the desk at him. “Go ahead and write it down.”
She walked past before he could protest.