by Dea Poirier
He sighs and leans into the table. “My mom had an obsession with QVC. She could never sleep, which I blame on a penchant for diet pills, so she’d stay up late ordering shit from infomercials. We got so many boxes every month that I told my mom there were enough to build a whole other house out of them.” He pauses to take a sip of his beer.
“So let me guess: you started with your room.”
He laughs. “Nah. I started in the backyard and built the living room first. Just as I finished my room, as luck would have it, a rainstorm came through, destroying all my cardboard. I was so upset. I just wanted to prove to her that I could do it.”
A laugh bubbles out of me and keeps coming until I can’t breathe. “That’s the most adorable and saddest thing I’ve ever heard. How old were you?”
“Eight or nine, I guess.” He shakes his head and takes a swig from his bottle. “Your turn,” he says with a grin.
“Ugh, no way am I telling you an embarrassing story.” I bite my lip and shake my head. I wish I had a less embarrassing story, but only one comes to mind.
“Oh, come on,” he urges me after I’ve been silent for too long.
“When I was in ninth grade, I had this huge crush on a senior. One of the few guys who didn’t grow up here. I loved the idea that he was a mainlander. It seemed so boring to me that people would date someone who already knew everything about them, their whole history. Part of the fun is supposed to be exploring one another, getting to know one another.”
He nods. “I can see that.” He takes a swig of his beer, and I spend way too long staring at his lips.
“Dating when you live in a small town seems like you’re just hooking up with someone from your extended family, you know? Your families share a history. Everyone on the island is entangled with everyone else.” I laugh. “Incestuous small towns. Anyway,” I say as I sip my beer, “I was in love with him pretty much immediately. Not like normal teenage love. I was obsessed. I memorized every fact about him like I was going to be tested on it.”
“Everyone has a crush like that,” he says, and I’m sure it’s to make me feel better.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if Rachel hadn’t found out. Once she figured it out, she decided to do me a favor and tell him during lunch. In front of the whole school.” My cheeks burn.
“That’s awful. Why would she do that?”
I shrug. That’s a question I asked myself a lot. Why would Rachel do that? I’m not sure she even knew most of the time. Dad said it was because Rachel had a weird way of protecting me. I think it’s because Rachel needed to control me. She may have hated Mom and wanted to be nothing like her, but when it came to controlling me, they were one and the same. “Who knows. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. I’ve always had a nervous stomach. All those eyes on me—I tried to run out of the cafeteria before I was sick, but I ended up puking in front of everyone. And that’s how I ended up with the nickname Chunks Calderwood.” I take a big swig of my beer, hoping it’ll calm the burning in my cheeks, but it does nothing.
“That’s awful,” he says again.
“I can’t believe I told you that.” God, I should have just made up a story.
Noah reaches across the table and takes my hand. “It’s fine, really.” He looks down, and his cheeks redden. “My brothers used to call me Nonie Pony Macaroni.”
I laugh so hard I start to cough. “Why on earth did they call you that?”
“Two of my brothers were too young to pronounce Noah properly when I was born, so they called me Nonie. Then once I got a little older, I was obsessed with this pony toy my mom and dad got me. I have no idea where macaroni came from, though; I think my brothers just added it because it rhymed.”
I shake my head as I try not to laugh. “That’s rough.”
He shrugs. “It was when they’d call me that at school; then everyone would start chanting it. But it doesn’t matter now.”
My own embarrassment fades.
“What happened to you after Rachel died?” he asks and takes a sip of beer. I narrow my eyes. He holds his hand up in mock surrender. “Not for the article—just for me.”
“I can’t believe you have the nerve to ask anyone about their past when you’ll barely talk about yours. All you’ve given me is cute anecdotes. Give me some meat.”
“You tell me something about your past, and I’ll tell you something about mine,” he says with a smirk.
I look down at the table and play with one of the coasters. That’s not a game I’d normally indulge. But I want to know more about him. “I lost it after Rachel died. Kinda went off the deep end and got into some trouble.” That’s as specific as I feel like being. “Your turn.”
“I dropped out of high school in my sophomore year. A lot of shit happened while I was in middle school. When I started high school, it really didn’t get any better. I couldn’t handle it and school. Something had to give, and that something was school. When my parents found out I’d dropped out, they kicked me out of the house, and I ended up staying with my uncle.”
“Shit.” The word escapes me with a trapped breath.
“I didn’t actually talk to my parents again until I was in my midtwenties. After my brother, Cameron, urged them to talk to me again.” He takes a long swig of his beer.
“How’d you end up going to college?”
“Got my GED when I was nineteen. Then did night classes while I worked as a lifeguard.”
“And your parents, how’d they feel about that?”
“Every job I’ve ever had is beneath me. That’s the nice way of putting it. I believe their exact quote is I’m wasting my fucking time.”
I roll my eyes at that. It’s exactly what my mom thinks of my job. My dad would be thrilled with me doing anything as long as I was happy, but my mom—I swear, anything short of bringing in a seven-figure salary isn’t what she wants for her daughter. Her expectations sting more than they should, because she didn’t have any until Rachel died. It’s as if all of her expectations for both of us ended up falling on me, and now no matter what I do, it’ll never be good enough—because I can’t become her.
“So why’d you get arrested?” he asks with a quirked eyebrow.
“Jesus Christ, you really did some digging. Hardly anyone knows about that.” I shake my head. It never went on my record, and after my mother finished yelling, I never talked to anyone about it again. That was one of the worst times in my life.
“I’m good at digging,” he says with a grin.
I don’t want to share. But he did, and I want to know more about him. To get that, I’ve got to give a little. “After Rachel died, as I said before, I fell apart. I made some really bad choices. I did some awful things and hurt people in the process. It was two or three weeks after Rachel died, and I needed someone to talk to so bad. And my parents wouldn’t say a word about it. I swear it’s like they enjoy pretending she never existed. Every day, the silence killed me a little more. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get out. I wanted to go somewhere where no one had even heard of my family. I stole a boat.”
Noah’s eyes go wide. “You stole a boat?”
“It’s not like I was born a cop. I got into trouble.”
He laughs at that, like he can’t imagine any of it.
“Anyway, I stole Mr. Barton’s boat, went across the bay, and ended up in Rockland. I had a backpack full of stupid stuff that would have done me no good in the real world. And I had no plan to speak of. I spent a very long night in the park. In the morning the police found me, arrested me, and dragged me back to the island. Mr. Barton wouldn’t press charges after everything I’d already been through and insisted that he’d just forgotten that I borrowed his boat.” I pause to sip my beer. “It was all just one big misunderstanding, he said.”
“Holy shit, you got lucky,” he says, then winces when he realizes what he said. “Sorry, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, guess I discovered the perks of having a dead sister that day.”
After I’ve spent a couple of hours drinking and talking with Noah, it’s like all the weight has lifted from my shoulders. He listens so intently when I talk, as opposed to just waiting for his turn to speak. It’s a nice change of pace. God knows he’s the first guy to see me as more than a cop in a long time. His touch and the beer work together, making my skin hot and tingly. The alcohol takes down some of the walls I’ve built. I can’t help myself. I imagine those warm, strong hands venturing to other parts of my body. It takes too long for me to dislodge the thoughts. It’s like after weeks around Noah, I’m seeing him for the first time. That’s when I realize I need to get out of here. I need to get away from Noah before I’m in over my head.
I glance at the time on my phone. “It’s getting late. I’m going to head back to the station for a little bit.”
He raises an eyebrow at that but nods. “I’ll walk you.”
We weave through a crowd of fishermen that’s just filtered in the door and start down Main Street toward the station. The full moon illuminates the streets, and the sidewalks are powdery white, as if they’ve been dusted in sugar. I bundle my coat a little tighter around my chest as the cold slips in, and Noah wraps his arm around me as we walk, pulling me closer to him. His warmth bleeds into me. His proximity and the beer mix inside me, heating my core and blurring my thoughts. I’m so lost in my own mind that it takes me a moment to realize we’ve made it to the station.
“Thanks for walking me,” I say as I step toward the door, but Noah grabs my hand before I can get inside.
I turn around, facing him. There’s an intensity in his eyes, a desire that I swear mirrors my own. He reaches for me and brushes his hand along my cheek. I close my eyes automatically, relishing his touch. All I want is for him to close the gap between us, for him to kiss me. I don’t care who sees. There’s only a breath of space between us. My heart pounds as his chest brushes against mine.
“I’ll see you later, Claire,” he says, and when I open my eyes again, he’s gone.
I stand for a long moment, frozen, before finally heading into the station. Once I sit down at my desk, I’m finally able to shake the thoughts of Noah and get my mind back on the case. The facts of the girls’ murders keep going around and around in my mind. In Detroit, eventually the evidence led us in a direction, but right now it seems everything I’ve got could apply to most of the people on this island. I grab my phone and scroll through my contacts. I want to bounce my ideas off the most qualified person I know, and someone in particular comes to mind.
I hold the phone against my ear with my shoulder and flip open my notes.
“Hey, stranger,” Roxie says as soon as the call connects.
With the case taking up every single second I’ve had to spare, I haven’t had time to miss her, but hearing her voice makes my chest ache. I’d never been really close to anyone at the station until Roxie joined. We clicked immediately and worked most of the murder cases side by side. She’d been a profiler for the FBI but wanted to move back to Michigan to be closer to family.
“Hey, Rox.”
“How’s Maine treating you?”
I cut right to the chase, because that’s how Roxie and I have always been with each other. “I think I’ve got a serial killer on my hands. And I was hoping to bounce some ideas off you.”
While Roxie passed along some of her profiling knowledge to me, I’ve never exactly had to put it to the test. I never worked a serial case in Detroit.
“Really?” she asks, a bit more excited about it than I’m feeling.
I give her the details of all three of the murders and go over any of the elements I think might be important: where the bodies have been found, the method of killing, and how alike all the victims have been. Then I add in what the strongest fact is for me: that they all had tattoos cut from their bodies. Though I’ve never gone into great detail about what happened to Rachel with anyone else, Roxie knows a bit about the history—but thank God she doesn’t grill me for the rest of the details now.
“Based on the proximity to the water, my guess is they’re killed on a boat, then dropped in the park,” I add. I don’t know that for a fact; so far that just lines up with Emma’s murder. But seeing how Madeline was also killed somewhere else and dropped in the park, my guess is the killer takes them onto the water for the privacy.
“They all had flesh removed?” she asks after a long pause.
“Yes, a religious tattoo was cut from each of the girls.”
“Pre- or postmortem?”
“Post.”
“Any signs of sexual trauma?” she asks. I knew that’d be her next question.
“None on any of the victims.”
“It seems like your killer either is single or has a wife who works nights, since he’s able to capture these girls and kill them in the middle of the night,” she says as she clears her throat. “The cutting off of religious symbols makes me think the killer suffered a trauma from a member of the clergy.”
As far as I know, the church scandals have never touched Vinalhaven. So could it have been a trauma that happened off the island?
“The long cooling-off period between Rachel and Emma makes me wonder if the killer was off the island for an extended period of time, or if the new killing was an anniversary of sorts,” I say.
“Or there was no one who really fit the profile the killer needed, or maybe your killer was locked up for a while.”
“The real thing I want to be sure about is covering the faces of the victims. Is it because he can’t stand for the victims to see him, or is it because he’s imagining someone else as he’s killing them?” I ask.
She pauses for a moment. “It could be either, really. Since all these victims are likely people that he knew very well, he may not be able to stand looking them in the eye when it’s time to kill them.”
“I’m worried I’m not going to be able to find him before he kills again.”
“With fifteen years between the first and second kill but such a quick turnaround for the third victim, I have to wonder if there were other victims elsewhere. Maybe in other towns? Other places. The MO would be similar.”
“There have been a few other bodies found in the water. The women were strangled, but none had flesh cut from the bodies as far as I know.”
“Does your gut tell you that they’re unrelated or related?” she asks.
I lean back in my chair and tap my pen against the desk. “I don’t think they’re related.” Though I’ve gone over it in my mind many times, I just can’t see how they’re connected—why don’t the victims in the water have flesh removed? Why would the killer drop some on the island and others in the water? If I can’t find a solid answer to these questions, I have to assume there are two killers.
“I’ve got a friend who still works at the FBI. She’s got access to a tool that allows us to cross-reference MOs to see if the killers were actually active anywhere else in the US. If you want, I can see if they’ve got any hits on this.”
“Thank you. I appreciate any help I can get.”
“It doesn’t sound like you need much help. You’re on the right track.”
Roxie and I catch up on what I’ve missed in Detroit. And once she’s got to go, I realize how much I miss working with her.
CHAPTER 17
After my drink with Noah and call with Roxie, I continue working on the case, going through the interviews Allen has done with the girls in the choir. Finally, I’ve looked at my screen for so long my eyes have gone from blurry to lost cause. They burn, and no matter how many times I rub them, it does me no good. It’s time to pack it in. The sun set hours ago, and the clock is ticking dangerously close to ten p.m.
I grab my bag, tuck away the files I know I’ll want to look at again tonight, and shut down my computer. As I flip off the light and head out to the main room, I realize I’m not alone. Allen turns around slowly, his long dark hair falling in his face. Since I've arrived here, he hasn’t said a single word to
me.
This close to him, alone, a bad feeling imprints on me so deeply I’m sure its fingerprints are on my soul. He drags the back of his hand slowly across his lips. Something lingers behind his eyes, and I swear they sharpen. When Allen stands, he’s got a foot on me; it doesn’t help that he’s also at least a hundred pounds heavier. Though I’ve got a gun at my hip, it does nothing to calm my nerves. After all, he’s got his own.
I swallow hard and walk toward the door, pretending that he doesn’t exist. When I’m ten feet from being free, my heart pounding, Allen steps in front of me, blocking my only path out.
“You shouldn’t be here.” The words practically come out as a hiss.
“Well, I’m heading home now,” I say, swallowing back the snide comment I want to hurl at him. I always feel like I’ve got to be careful as a woman in this world. Men can get away with anything in criminal justice. Women, though? We have to fight tooth and nail to get where we are. When we lose ground, it’s not just an inch—it’s a mile.
“No, you shouldn’t be on this island. You should have never come back here.” He spits the words, looking down at me like I’m shit stuck to his shoe.
“And why is that, exactly?”
“You know why. Ryder tried to kill himself because of you,” he growls. But it isn’t anger lingering behind his eyes; I swear it’s pain. If he’s so worried about Ryder, why is he here and not at the hospital? Did he come back just to confront me?
“Because of me? I hadn’t questioned him. He wasn’t a suspect.”
“He knew you were asking about him. It was only a matter of time until you tried to pin this on him, because that’s what everyone else on this island does.” He clenches his fists at his sides.
Frustration piles inside me, brick by brick. “If I hadn’t shown up, Ryder would be dead. I’m not out for him. I’m not out for your family—as much as you seem to want me to be.”
Allen has always been a loner, always clung to his family and protected them viciously, even back in school. That’s the one thing about him that I admire. He’s never liked me, but then again, I don’t know if he’s ever liked anyone on the island. He’s never been downright hostile, though.
