by Kate White
“Alice, can you hear me?” I said, my mouth next to her ear.
No acknowledgment. I called her name again, twice, but she didn’t move.
I slid my purse off my arm and dug frantically through the bag, finding my phone and switching on the flashlight. I trained the beam on Alice. Her neck, I could see now, was at a terrible, unnatural angle, her chin raised too high, like that of a deer killed by a car on the highway. I leaned closer again and listened for her breath. Nothing.
Please, I begged, don’t let her be dead. Not Alice.
I focused on my phone and tapped 911. With the other hand I carefully grasped Alice’s wrist.
“What is your emergency?” the operator asked. I blurted out the details, stumbling once as I tried to recall the exact address.
“Is the victim breathing?” the operator asked.
“Not from what I can tell,” I said, my voice catching. “And I can’t find a pulse. But . . . I can’t be a hundred percent sure. Send an ambulance. And the police.”
Because my gut was telling me it wasn’t an accident.
The operator said she would stay on the call with me. I told her I couldn’t hold, but would wait for the ambulance. I wanted the chance to investigate the situation with both hands free.
I rested my palm on Alice’s back and jiggled again. No response.
“Alice, it’s me, Bailey. Hold on, help is coming.” But I was almost positive my words were pointless.
I trained the beam of light around her body again. There was no sign of blood, nothing to suggest she had bled from her head or anywhere else. My best guess was that her neck was broken. But not because she’d tripped on the stairs. She wouldn’t have been heading down to the dock when she was supposed to be making me dinner—and without even flicking on the lights below? I thought of the kitchen door, left weirdly ajar on a cool night. Someone came to her house, I told myself. And then they pushed her.
I rose to a standing position and directed the beam around the ground, farther away from Alice this time. No scuff marks in the dirt, no indication of a struggle. The killer might have shoved her down the stairs so that she broke her neck in the fall.
Alice’s words from this morning echoed in my head again. “A clue . . . And it’s scary as hell.” Had the murderer figured out that Alice was on to him?
I jerked the beam back toward Alice, dragging it down to her left hand and then her right. There was no sign of cut marks or anything resembling stigmata. I stared for a moment at her weathered fingers, remembering the ragged cuticles. A sob caught in my throat.
From far off on the lake came the roar of a motorboat gunning across the water, then fading. I was engulfed once again in silence. But then another sound broke through the night. Not the trees this time, though.
It was the sound of footsteps. Someone was walking across the patio, ten or so feet above me.
Chapter 16
I FROZE, STRAINING TO HEAR. ANOTHER SCRAPE, THE sound of a shoe or a boot on the patio. Someone was definitely up there, near the top of the stairs.
I backed up fast, into the shadows, and dropped onto my haunches, pressing my body tight against the embankment.
If Alice had been pushed, it seemed unlikely that the killer would still be on the property. Unless he’d come back. To make sure she was dead? To dispose of her body somehow? To mark it?
I stayed squatting, my eyes riveted to the steps. Another scrape. But farther away this time, I thought, as if the person was reversing direction.
After a minute, there were no other sounds from above and I sensed that whoever had been there was gone. I turned my gaze back to Alice and felt an urge to howl in despair.
Finally the whoop whoop of an ambulance pierced the night. I struggled out of my crouch and then charged up the steps, two at a time. As I reached the top, I spotted two male EMTs hurrying through the house.
“She’s down below, at the base of the steps,” I told them as I flung open the door. “I couldn’t find a pulse but . . .”
“Okay, take a seat inside,” one of them said. “The police should be here any minute.”
I didn’t like being banished indoors, but I needed to let the paramedics do their job. I watched as the two descended below, striving to hear their exchange. But their words were indistinguishable beneath the sound of the wind. I backed into the house and collapsed into an armchair next to a wood-burning stove, facing the patio.
I could smell the apple pie still, the scent mixed now with traces of wood smoke seeping from the stove next to me. Alice must have sat in this chair so many times, I realized—reading, savoring the view, talking with her husband when he was still alive.
My gaze fell on several framed photos on a small wooden end table. There was one of Alice leaning into a beaming, husky, gray-haired man, who must have been her late husband. And another photo of Alice, this time in her familiar car coat and linking arms with her son, Ben, whose picture she had showed me over dinner. I choked back tears.
I knew I needed to sit tight and not touch anything in the house, but I scanned the room with my eyes, looking for any sign of disturbance. The space was slightly rumpled in spots—a messy pile of books and a stack of Post Stars near the foot of the armchair; a mohair throw tossed haphazardly on the sofa; a vase full of mostly wilted flowers, but nothing suggesting an altercation.
On the far side of the room, an open doorway led to the screened-in porch. Though it was dark in there, I could make out the silhouettes of objects on the table, like a distant city skyline. There were wine and water glasses. And hurricane lamps. Alice had set the table for dinner.
I looked quickly back to the living space. There was no sign, I realized, of Alice’s laptop. Maybe she used a home office upstairs. But no, she’d said on the phone that she was working at her table. I bent at the waist, leaning forward, and glanced toward the dining area. The only thing on it was a coffee mug.
If Alice had determined the killer’s identity and he’d come here to silence her, he would have, of course, wanted her laptop. That’s where she’d found the clue, after all.
A movement outside grabbed my attention. One of the EMTs was ascending the steps, speaking on his phone. I dashed back outside.
“Is she—?” I said, my voice pleading.
He placed a hand over the phone and shook his head, his expression somber. “I’m afraid she’s dead. An autopsy will have to determine the exact cause.”
I felt shell-shocked, unable to fully process the truth, though I’d had little doubt of it. I turned to see two uniformed officers, one a middle-aged male, the other a younger female. They were both with the state police.
“Please, miss, you need to wait inside,” the female cop commanded.
I retreated back into the living area, observing as the EMT conferred with the officers. The male cop descended to the dock with the EMT while the woman joined me inside. She chose the chair directly across from me and pulled out a pen and notebook.
She asked me to take her through what had happened. After explaining that I was a journalist friend of Alice’s, I spit out a quick recap of my experience tonight and then answered a round of questions—what time exactly had I arrived, had I noticed any sign of anyone besides hearing the footsteps, did the victim have any next of kin that I knew of?
This cop was aware, of course, that I might be responsible for Alice’s death. Maybe we’d quarreled on the patio and things had turned ugly, leading to an overwrought moment when I’d given my so-called friend a fateful shove down the stairs. I couldn’t let her become bogged down with that scenario.
“Can you ask that Sheriff Killian come by here tonight as soon as possible? It’s very important that I speak to him about Ms. Hatfield’s death.”
The request seemed to take her aback.
“Sheriff Killian? The state police are perfectly equipped to handle this.”
“Killian is overseeing the investigation into Shannon Blaine’s murder, and I believe Alice’s death is t
ied to it.”
She nodded after a moment, her curiosity clearly aroused. “Let me check to see if that’s possible.”
She went outside and spoke to the other state police officer, who’d come back up the steps, and they were joined soon by reinforcements: a man who, based on his bag, appeared to be with the coroner’s office, and members of the state police crime scene crew. A minute later, a guy of about seventy entered the house through the kitchen and charged into the room where I sat.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “Where’s Alice?”
“Are you a friend?”
“A neighbor. I live up the road and saw the ambulance.”
“I’m so sorry, but Alice is dead.”
“Dear God, no.” He swept both hands through his hair. “How?”
“I think she was attacked. So I’m sure the police will want to speak with you in case you saw anything.”
“Attacked? Are you saying it was a burglary?”
“Not a burglary. Did you see anything? Or anybody around here?”
“No, but I came by twenty minutes or so ago to return a wrench. I saw her car and another one but no one seemed to be around. . . . I need to get home. My wife’s alone there.”
“You came out to the patio?”
“Yes, right.”
“Do you know how we can reach her son, Ben?” I asked.
“Oh, that poor guy. I think my wife has a number for—”
The officer who’d interviewed me caught sight of the neighbor, hustled back into the house, and after determining that the man was not next of kin, asked him to return home, where the police would stop by and speak with him soon. Once he’d departed, she told me that they were reaching out to Killian, but she couldn’t guarantee he would come.
I parked myself back in the armchair to wait. My emotions were in a jumble but I detached myself as best as I could and tried to create a timeline for Alice’s movements during the second half of the day.
She and I had spoken right before noon. She’d found the clue by then but was seeking confirmation, which meant she’d continued to work for a while.
At some point she’d baked a pie and set the table on the porch. She washed the potatoes, but it didn’t appear she’d had a chance to start the main meal yet.
I was still in my seat thirty minutes later when, thank God, Killian arrived. I spotted him in plain clothes, dark pants and a brown windbreaker, along the side of the house. He spoke briefly to the female officer and then descended the steps to the lake. Ten minutes later, he returned to the patio and entered the house.
My face must have betrayed my distress because he approached with what seemed like sympathy on his face.
“How are you doing, Ms. Weggins?”
“Holding up. I appreciate you coming. I asked the police to contact you because I don’t think Alice’s death was an accident. I’m worried someone pushed her. Or killed her and threw her down the stairs.”
“Because?”
“She told me on the phone earlier that she’d come across what she believed was a clue to the murders. Something she found, quote, ‘scary as hell.’ She said she wanted to confirm it first and that she would tell me tonight over dinner, but obviously that never happened.”
My voice caught as I spoke the last words. Killian kept his expression as neutral as possible, but I saw his eyes widen slightly.
“When you spoke on the phone, did she give any hint to what she’d come across?”
“No, only that she’d found it buried online. It’s possible that she shared it with her boss or a coworker, though. What I do know is that she’d been looking for any references to missing or murdered women outside this immediate area. She also mentioned she was doing her research at the table, but there’s no laptop there now. So if it isn’t upstairs someplace, someone took it.”
He lifted a small pad and pen from a pocket in his windbreaker and scribbled down a few notes.
“What time did you arrive?” he asked.
“Right at seven.”
“One of the police officers mentioned that you heard noises on the patio when you were down below. You think someone was up there?”
I explained quickly that it had been the neighbor.
“Did you notice anything else that seemed out of the ordinary at the time?”
“Yes, actually, I was going to mention it. The kitchen door was open. At first I thought Alice had left it ajar for me because she was upstairs, but it was chilly inside, as if it had been opened for a while. And there was a bat in the house.”
“A bat?”
“Yeah, flying around. It probably snuck in through the door. So now I’m thinking someone might have run out of the house with the laptop and didn’t worry about closing it. Maybe Alice had a real lead on the killer, and he got wise to her digging. And came after her.”
Killian lowered his gaze and flicked through a page or two of his notebook. When he glanced back at me, his mouth was half scrunched, the right side tugged up. I was expecting him to say something blunt and gruff, like “Let us do the police work, Ms. Weggins,” which I’d heard more times than I liked in my lifetime.
“That’s good to know about the door,” he said instead, nodding slowly.
“One more observation I want to share. Alice made a pie—it’s on the counter, and when I arrived at seven, it was still warm, which means she probably didn’t take it out of the oven any earlier than five thirty or six. There are potatoes out, but she hadn’t done anything with them yet. If she’d planned to roast them for our dinner, she would have started a little after six, I’d guess. All of this suggests to me that she died somewhere between five thirty and six thirty, at the latest.”
This could have been another opportunity to tell me to back off and stop playing junior detective, but once again Killian nodded.
“I appreciate your input, Ms. Weggins,” he said. “In fact, if we’re looking at foul play here, on top of everything else that’s happened, we’re going to need to rely on every resource available. I think it would serve both our purposes for us to be collaborative going forward.”
Okay, this was good. He wanted my help and seemed to hint that he’d give me access to certain information in return. It was a coup for my reporting, but at this exact moment all I really cared about was Alice.
“I agree,” I said. “If someone murdered Alice, I want to do everything possible to make sure he’s caught. . . . Her son, Ben. Who’s going to—?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that.”
Killian dropped the pad and pen back into his pocket, signaling that his questioning was done for now. He then escorted me through the house.
“In the vein of cooperation,” Killian said as we reached the kitchen door, “is there anything else you want to share?”
“About?” Did he think I was holding back?
“Have you heard from your mystery caller again?”
“Absolutely not. I would have told you. But actually, there is something else I wanted to pass along.” I explained what the jogger had told me about the owner of the Lake Shore Motel, and also the fact that he’d been interviewed by Alice.
“Interesting. And is this woman still at the Breezy Point?”
I nodded and gave him the unit number. Oh, Miss Under the Radar was going to be tickled pink that I’d tipped off the cops to her location.
Killian walked me to my car and temporarily detached the yellow police tape by the driveway so I could escape. There were several hangers-on around the fringe, neighbors probably, but a state police person was encouraging them to return home. The ambulance, I noticed, had departed, though I hadn’t seen anyone bring up Alice’s body yet. The thought of her eventually lying on a table in the morgue made my heart hurt.
“Drive carefully, Ms. Weggins,” Killian said, opening my car door for me.
“Please call me Bailey.”
“Thank you, I will.”
I bumped along the road I’d driven down se
veral hours earlier in such a different frame of mind, so eager then for home cooking and the chance to spend an evening in Alice’s company. Someone had probably come down here not long before I had, intent on killing Alice, making sure she couldn’t report what she found—either in the Post Star or to the police. What the hell had the clue been?
I couldn’t bear the idea of being back in my motel room alone, so I headed south on Route 9 to the village. The place was nearly dead, not unexpected for a Sunday night, but at least Jake’s was open. I parked, nearly staggered to a seat at the end of the bar, and ordered a bowl of French onion soup and a glass of red wine. The bartender smiled empathetically as she quickly assessed me. I had a feeling she thought I’d been dumped on my ass by a guy only minutes earlier.
Speaking of guys, I felt a sudden, desperate need to speak with Beau. I checked my watch. Since it was one hour earlier in Bogotá, the worst I would be doing is interrupting his dinner plans. I tapped his name in Favorites. The phone rang six times and then went to voice mail.
“Hey, babe,” I said. “Can you call me? I just need to talk to you.”
As I waited for the soup, I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, trying to force my thoughts to quiet, instead of ricocheting crazily around my brain like a flying squirrel with its tail on fire.
How had the killer been tipped off to Alice’s discovery earlier in the day? Perhaps, in seeking confirmation of her revelation, she’d begun making inquiries, and word of those inquiries had made its way back to him. She might have even reviewed information with him without realizing what she was giving away.
Had the killer surprised her in the kitchen? And had she run out to the patio, fearing for her life? There had been no sign of commotion, of Alice trying to fight someone off, but it could have happened quickly enough not to leave any evidence.
I thought suddenly of the wineglass on the ledge of the stone wall. In my frazzled state, I’d forgotten to mention this detail to Killian—though, of course the police would make note of the glass when they saw it.
