“I told you what happened.”
“Yes, you told me: you leapt like a tiger from the trees, whereupon you and Willett struggled for control of Officer Hathaway’s weapon. The gun got loose, Hathaway retrieved it, and she fired to stop Willett from strangling you to death.”
“That’s right.”
McGreevy squinted at him. “Your face is bruised all down one side. You’ve got a nice shiner and a real lump on your head. Your hands look like they’ve been through a meat grinder.”
“You can see then why I was losing the fight.”
“But I don’t see any markings on your neck,” McGreevy finished, fixing Reed with a hard look.
Self-conscious, Reed put a gauzy hand to his throat. “It was more of a crushing feeling than a squeeze…”
“Willett also had ligature marks on his wrists.” McGreevy paused to indicate the spot on his own hands. “Here and here. And there was rope found at the scene.”
“Maybe he liked to tie himself up,” Reed said coolly. He held McGreevy’s gaze. “He was one sick bastard—or didn’t you notice?”
“Oh, we noticed,” McGreevy said heartily as he shifted in his chair. “We noticed so much that probably no one is going to look too closely at these little discrepancies in your story. Because you know very well it is a story. I’d file it under ‘f’ for ‘fiction.’”
Reed knew that discretion was the better part of valor in this case, so he said nothing.
McGreevy sighed again and tugged at his chin. “They finally found Shannon Blessing about an hour ago. She’d been buried far out in the backyard, little more than a skeleton now, but dental records are a match.”
“That’s all of them, then,” Reed murmured. Julia Parker was in the closet. Bea Nesbit’s remains had been discovered packed away in a heavy-duty freezer in the basement of the house. Mark Roy had been dug up the day before. His hands had not yet been found.
“I’ll give her this: Ellery saved the taxpayers a ton of money on a trial and spared the families the trauma of having to relive it.”
Reed had already considered this and wondered whether Ellery had been thinking of it when she pulled the trigger. Or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of her days living inside some other serial murderer’s head. Brady couldn’t touch her now. Couldn’t even breathe her name.
“Of course,” McGreevy continued, “her shooting him in the head means we’ll never be able to question him. We’ll never understand why he did it.”
Reed bowed his head at this essential truth. “No,” he agreed, “we never will.” He hadn’t been able to see Ellery in the past couple of days because they had been kept separate until their statements could be recorded. From what McGreevy said, it sounded like Ellery had stuck to the narrative. “What’s going to happen now?” he asked his boss. “To Ellery.”
McGreevy’s frown softened a bit and he cleared his throat. “That isn’t up to me. Or you either, for that matter. She’s on mandatory leave at the moment, but I think she’ll be cleared in the shooting. After that? Well, shit, Reed, you know how these things go. Four people are dead. Ellery held some things back early in the game that might have broken the investigation sooner. I can’t promise you she emerges clean from all of this.”
“She’s the only one who saw this coming,” Reed protested. “She tried for years to draw attention to these cases, but Chief Parker wouldn’t listen.”
“Yes. I’d say he paid the price for that, wouldn’t you?” The two men eyed each other through a tense beat of silence. McGreevy broke first, with a heavy sigh. “You’ve seen how this breaks down in big cases, Markham—there’s what actually happened, and then there’s the story that gets told about it afterward. My advice to Ellery Hathaway is to get herself a lawyer and try to seize control of the narrative. Hell, maybe she can write a book that will outsell yours.”
Reed thought of Ellery’s stricken face as she stood over the body, the dead quiet that had filled the room. “Ellery would never go public on her own,” he told McGreevy.
His boss shrugged and shook his head, dismissing the whole case into history. “Nothing more you can do for her, then. Tell her good-bye and come on home.” He pushed aside the legal pad and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink or six. Somewhere dark and quiet. What do you say?”
Reed had three empty water bottles lined up on the table in front of him, the product of his new, unslakable thirst. The hours he’d spent in the dirty, sweltering closet leached half the sweat from his body. McGreevy’s offer, and the thought of cold hard alcohol, made his mouth tingle. A few quick drinks and maybe he’d no longer see Julia Parker’s handless corpse, or hear the ringing shot from Ellery’s gun.
His palms itched and stung like hell under the bandages. He held them out loosely for inspection, pondering their significance. Alcohol would numb this pain, too, if he wanted. He could forget how desperately he’d clawed his way out of Brady Archer’s makeshift coffin. Or he could embrace the sting like a slap across the face. The life he’d fought so hard to reclaim, it could still be lost. He carefully laid his hands on the table and looked McGreevy in the eye. “No, thanks. I’ve got to go.”
It was dark when Reed left the station house, but reporters swarmed him like pickpockets, eager to steal whatever bit of him they could pry free. He put up his injured hands as a shield. “No comment. No comment.” He ducked away from the cameras and the lights and the microphones, wanting no part of the dog-and-pony show. He had already seen enough of the reports on TV, the coverage endless on all the news channels. CNN played it on a loop now: Brady’s picture taken from his social-media accounts; the footage of law enforcement traipsing in and out of Brady’s bloody lair; the breathless accounts from neighbors who’d heard the gruesome details and could not wait to share them with the world. Reed had participated with pride in the media circus fourteen years ago, but now, knowing young Brady had been taking it all in with hungry eyes, it mostly turned Reed’s stomach. As the infamy machine went to work on Brady Archer, Reed had to admit there might be another little boy out there watching the news and imagining his future.
* * *
The next day, Reed made a last trip out to Ellery’s house on Burning Tree Road. He had a plane ticket home at four that afternoon, and Sarit promised to be at the airport with Tula. He ached at the thought of holding them again, that they would be a family for a few minutes, at least until he picked up his baggage.
He stood on Ellery’s porch with a paper sack clutched awkwardly in one bandaged hand, wondering how he was supposed to knock in his condition. He hadn’t actually formulated a plan when the door swung open and Ellie leaned against it, looking solemn. He smiled at her and held up his hands in surrender. “You saved me from knocking,” he said. “I can’t bend my hands yet.”
She said nothing.
“Can I come in?” he asked, and she hesitated a moment before stepping back and allowing him inside. As he crossed the threshold, Speed Bump came limping toward him, tongue slobbering everywhere, but this time, Reed grinned at the sight. “I see the beast is recovering well.”
“Searchers out in the woods heard the shot that night,” Ellery said. “They got here pretty quick, and the bullet went clean through. The vet said Bump should be chasing squirrels again in no time.” She leaned down and scratched him on the head.
“Just not any poodles—right?”
Ellery gave a small smile, humoring him. “Right.”
They stood in awkward silence for a moment and then he thrust the bag at her. “Here, I wanted to give you this.”
“What is it?” She accepted the paper sack and peered in at the pink frosted cupcake he had purchased from the bakery in town.
“It’s your birthday today,” Reed explained. “Everyone should have cake on their birthday.”
She just stood there, her eyes welling up, and he felt guilty regret wash over him. He’d been presumptuous. “Ellie, I d
idn’t mean to—”
“I haven’t celebrated my birthday in years,” she cut in, holding the sack to her middle.
Reed bit his lip. “Maybe it’s time you start,” he suggested gently. She looked away, shaking her head. “Hey,” he said, shifting so that he was in her line of sight again. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here.”
She snorted a protest. “I think you have that backward.”
“No, if you hadn’t kept him talking, I wouldn’t have had time to get through the ceiling to the attic. I would be full of holes right now.”
“Don’t,” she said swiftly. “Don’t even say that.”
He looked her over searchingly, willing her to look at him, to truly see him and how he had changed. “You saved me,” he told her seriously. “More than you know.”
She sniffed and scuffed at the floor with one shoe. Bump raised his large nose to sniff at the paper bag in her hands. “You didn’t have to cover for me about what happened. I don’t want … I don’t want you to have to lie. To live with secrets. It’s harder than you might think.”
Reed considered this with a tilt of his head. “He’s dead. We can’t change that, and I can’t say I’m sorry. Can you?”
“No,” she admitted slowly.
“He wanted us to keep talking about him, to keep telling his story. You and I were supposed to be the ticket to his immortality.” Reed paused for effect. “So I propose we don’t ever mention the little bastard’s name again. What do you say?”
She looked at the floor for a long moment, and when she raised her head, he saw her eyes were clear. “I say … this cupcake looks too big to eat by myself, and Bump isn’t allowed to have chocolate. Do you want half?”
“That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.” He followed her into the kitchen, where she took down two small plates and fetched a knife. “Wait,” he blurted out before she could divide the cupcake in half. “Do you have any candles?”
“Let’s not push it,” she replied, eyeing him. “I’m rusty at this, remember?”
He straightened up and nodded. “Right. Of course. Got it.”
She set his half on the plate and gave him a fork. They ate together as the sun slanted in through the kitchen window, the dog thumping his tail between them, ever hopeful. Then Ellie informed Reed that he looked like a mummy as he fumbled to hold the fork with his bandaged hands, pink icing smearing across the gauze. He licked it off anyway. Her gray eyes went wide in shock at his indecency before she broke into a surprised, genuine laugh—a clear crystal sound that harkened back to the fourteen-year-old girl she might have been. Reed smiled, savoring every last bite on his plate, because it was very sweet indeed.
About the Author
JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN is a scientific editor who spends her days immersed in research on potential new therapies for cancer, addiction, and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Previously, she worked as an editorial producer for ABC News, where she advised and wrote for programs including World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and daughter. The Vanishing Season is her first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE VANISHING SEASON. Copyright © 2017 by Joanna Schaffhausen. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photograph of woman © Carmen Winant/Getty Images
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-12604-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-12605-4 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250126054
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: December 2017
The Vanishing Season Page 26
