Now Grace and Ellie were watching her closely. She ignored the looks of sympathy and talked about her job, some of the domestic abuse cases she’d solved, some of the brutal men she’d put away.
When she was done, they all held hands, said a silent prayer, and released the balloons, which slithered into the fog like jellyfish.
“Mom, I’m going to take pictures of the graves,” Ellie said.
“Sure, go ahead.” Once the sisters were alone together, Grace said, “Wow. Twenty years.”
Natalie nodded. “Hard to believe.”
Twenty years ago, Willow Lockhart had been savagely murdered by a jealous boyfriend behind the Hadleys’ old barn. Stabbed twenty-seven times. When Natalie’s mother heard the news, she screamed until her voice wore out. Sixteen-year-old Grace ran upstairs and vomited in the bathtub. Joey collapsed on the sofa, tears streaming down his face and dripping off his chin, like a drooling baby’s. Ten-year-old Natalie punched her fist through the mesh screen door and sprained her wrist. Days of mourning followed brutal loneliness. Her parents’ fights late at night. Phone calls from the media.
Now Natalie couldn’t help but feel that their grief had diminished over time, like a fading newspaper obituary. Every year, they stood in this same spot, summoning up the old heartbreak, but the loss wasn’t half as sharp or bitter as it had once been. Today felt more like an obligation. Like something to check off the to-do list.
“She’s growing up so fast,” Grace said of her daughter, who was traipsing among the weathered fieldstones, snapping pictures. “It’s a little scary.”
“She’s a good kid,” Natalie reassured her. “You raised her right.”
“One minute she’s my adorable little girl, and the next thing I know, she’s screaming at me like a banshee. Everything’s always my fault. She wants to get as far away from me as humanly possible.” Grace kept a careful eye on Ellie, who was taking pictures of a half-melted candle in front of a particularly decrepit grave. “Last night, for instance, she texted me IN ALL CAPS from the other room. And I told her—you need to come in here and talk to me face-to-face. I need to see you in real life.”
“She’s just testing the limits.”
“Fifteen, right? I guess it’s normal,” Grace said with a tired, proud smile. “She reminds me of you at that age.”
“Yeah?”
“Totally.”
Not really, Natalie thought. Grace couldn’t have remembered, because she had been six years older and living away from home by the time Natalie turned fifteen. Everything about being a teenager was difficult. Fifteen was a confusing, in-between age for a girl. You weren’t a child anymore, but you weren’t a full-grown woman yet. Life wasn’t rainbows-and-kittens anymore. The clouds weren’t made of cotton candy, other kids could be cruel, boys were suddenly interested, and it was up to you to navigate your way through this mess called adolescence, where your hormones kept pushing you toward spontaneous combustion.
“Anyway, she’s acing all her classes. Blowing away the competition. My little brainiac.” A damp gust made a play for Grace’s golden hair. She patted it down and said, “Did you check out that dating app I sent you?”
“God, no.” Natalie laughed. “Lol.”
Her sister’s pale forehead crimped with worry. “Eight months is a long enough time to waste on a broken relationship, Natalie. You should go out there and mix it up.”
“Mix things up?” Natalie winced. “What is this, the nineties?”
“I’m serious. I started dating a few months after the divorce.”
“Grace, you’ve been dating your entire life.”
She smiled and shrugged. “I can’t help it if I’m not as picky as you.”
To the left of Willow’s grave were Joey’s and Deborah’s plots. To the right of Willow’s grave were two empty plots reserved for Natalie and Grace. Neither one of them wanted to be buried here. Grace rubbed her shivering arms and said, “We should really sell those stupid plots, don’t you think?”
Natalie nodded. “Yeah, it’s probably time.”
“Just scatter my ashes somewhere pretty,” Grace said. “Better for the planet that way. Less creepy than being buried here for all eternity. No offense, Mom and Dad.” Her phone buzzed. She checked the number. “It’s Burke,” she said anxiously. “I have to take this. He wants to increase visitation rights, but then he shouldn’t have signed the divorce agreement, right?” Grace’s ex-husband, Burke Guzman, lived in Manhattan and was never around, so it fell on Grace’s shoulders to raise their only child. “I don’t want Ellie to overhear this. I’ll wait for you in the car, okay?”
“Sure. It’s going to rain soon anyway. We’ll be down shortly.”
Grace headed down the hill. “Burke?”
After a moment, Ellie looked up and noticed her mother was gone. She pocketed her phone, walked over to Natalie, and said, “You were in a coven once, weren’t you, Aunt Natalie?”
“Yeah, sure. We all were, for a short period of time.”
She tilted her head. “Why’d you quit?”
“The coven?” Natalie hesitated. “It got pretty dark.”
“How dark?” Ellie asked, her face tensing with interest.
“My friends and I decided to stop. We moved on to other things.”
“Your friends … including the girl who disappeared?”
“Bella. Yes. Only she didn’t disappear,” Natalie explained. “She ran off to California on the eve of our high school graduation.”
Ellie tugged on her earlobe. “Did you ever see her again?”
“No. In fact, I never heard from her again.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Then how do you know she’s alive?”
“She sent a bunch of postcards to her parents. No return address. I don’t think she wanted to be found.”
“Why not?”
“Long story,” Natalie said. Because her father was sexually abusing her, she thought, the old anger simmering just underneath the surface. “How did you find out about that?”
“Mom mentioned it once or twice,” Ellie explained. “How dark did it get? In the coven?”
Natalie smiled warmly at her. “Where are these questions coming from, Ellie?”
“I’m just curious,” the girl replied with deeper interest than mere curiosity.
Natalie nodded and said, “Bella and I thought it would be fun to explore Wicca, so we chose our witch names and slept under a full moon, you know … the whole nine yards. Black lipstick, astrology, Elvira streaks in our black hair. It was scary fun … until it wasn’t. I’m guessing you’re asking me about this now because you’re in a coven?”
Ellie’s pretty blue eyes widened. “How’d you guess?”
“Gee, I dunno.” Natalie smiled warmly at her. “Maybe it’s the hair that clued me in. Or the all-black outfit. Or the reference to wind, water, earth, and fire.”
Storm clouds were rolling in. Ellie kicked at the grass clippings. “Mom hates anything witchy. She says she saw a ghost once during a séance, and it scared the bejeezus out of her. She says that’s how she became so superstitious, because of the coven. She won’t even let me get a tattoo. All my friends have them. It’s no big deal.”
Natalie shook her head. “Are you kidding me? It’s a huge deal.”
“India has one. Why can’t I?”
Sixteen-year-old India Cochran was Ellie’s best friend—a natural beauty with almond-shaped eyes and raven black hair, and just like the rest of Ellie’s friends, a high achiever. Honor Society, debating team, class secretary two years in a row. “Since when did India get a tattoo?”
“Last summer. Besides,” Ellie stubbornly went on, “Mom’s got a tat over her left boob, which makes her a hypocrite.”
“When you’re young, all adults seem like hypocrites.”
“Seem like?”
Natalie smiled indulgently. “Does Grace know you’re in a coven?”
Ellie’s face flushed. “No. And please don’t tell her, Aunt N
atalie.”
“I won’t. But you should talk to her about it. She might surprise you.”
“Trust me.” Ellie rolled her eyes. “She’ll be furious.”
“Look, your mom hasn’t had an easy life. It may appear easy on the surface, but Grace is very sensitive. She cares a lot. Maybe too much. She only wants what’s best for you.”
Ellie glanced skyward. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Shoot.”
“What happened to you and Zack?”
Natalie heaved a sigh—her niece was all over the place tonight. “A relationship can swallow you up. At first it was exhilarating, but after a while, it felt claustrophobic.”
“Why?”
“Zack had to have an explanation for everything. He knew everything there was to know. He had to win every argument. And I let him, because it was too exhausting not to. After a while, we stopped communicating. And that’s death to coupledom.”
“What a horse’s ass,” Ellie muttered, the color rising in her cheeks.
Natalie tucked her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “We were just wrong for each other, Ellie. It took us both a while to figure that out. But I’m much happier now.”
“How come?”
“Dodged a bullet.”
With a loud clap of thunder, the sky opened up, and it began to pour. A flat-out torrent. They’d forgotten their umbrellas, so they ran down the access road together.
Grace waved at them from inside the Mini Cooper while Ellie hugged her aunt good-bye and hopped in the car, little loops of hair sticking to her pale face.
Grace rolled down her window and said, “Next time, Natalie, I promise, we’ll have dinner afterwards. Like a pro-pah deathiversary.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Natalie said, knowing next time would be no different. She watched as the Mini Cooper backed down the crumbling road toward the cemetery gates. Soon the taillights disappeared into the fog.
Drenched to the skin, Natalie got in her car, started the engine, and turned on the wipers. The rain made ever-changing streaks of amethyst on the glass. She could feel the fury of the storm as it approached from the south, could feel it booming through the hills and darkening the air, stirring the trees and driving the birds to seek shelter—how did they hang on?
She switched on her high beams and studied the fractal intricacy of the yellow foxtail growing by the side of the road. Twenty years ago today, Willow was stabbed to death by a self-proclaimed rebel who liked to dress all in black—black T-shirt, black denim jeans, black Chucks, jet-black hair. Natalie used to think Justin Fowler was cool. Now he wore prison orange and was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder.
You never got over it.
Rest in peace, Willow. Same time next year.
3
In a midsize town like Burning Lake, New York—population 50,000—there were slow days down at the police station, and then there were crazy days. As a general rule, their call volume held fairly steady and wasn’t as high as the typical caseloads you’d find in Albany or Syracuse, but the BLPD was busier than most of the sleepier burgs south of the Adirondack Mountains. They popped a lot of DUIs and had their share of domestic disturbances. This idyllic rural American town wasn’t supposed to have a drug problem, but in the past decade or so, methamphetamines and opioids had flooded into the upstate market. Black tar—a low-grade form of heroin that was cheap to buy and came in little balloons you could hide in your mouth while cruising around—was taking over the west side of town, where the residents had been hardest hit by the economic downturn.
Downtown Burning Lake was clean and safe for the most part, and the business community worked hard to keep it that way. Main Street with its Victorian-era brick buildings and tree-lined sidewalks featured plenty of jazz clubs, bookshops, cafés, and art galleries. There was a summer music festival, a historical museum, and a performing arts center that headlined off-Broadway plays. Besides a myriad of cultural events, Burning Lake also boasted an enormous state park where you could go hiking, rock climbing, bike riding, skiing, and fishing. Not that the town was perfect. Far from it. The winters were bitterly cold. Heating bills could be a burden. Sometimes there was nothing to do. One of the main activities for the locals, especially during those long winter months, was drinking. Finding a bar wasn’t difficult in upstate New York, where it could dip to twenty below in the winter and the waterfalls could freeze solid.
Tonight, Natalie found a convenient parking spot—a rare occurrence during happy hour in the commercial district—got out, and dashed through the rain, splashing through the puddles. She ducked into the Barkin’ Dawg Saloon, very popular with law enforcement officers. Every Wednesday night, the lieutenant would get together with his staff over chili dogs and Rolling Rocks at the Barkin’ Dawg to discuss any unresolved issues they might be having in the unit, a tight-knit group of seven detectives on rotating shifts who shared one week of “on-call duty” per month.
This week was Natalie’s turn, lucky her. She checked her pager to make sure it was working and ordered a mineral water at the bar instead of her usual pinot grigio. No wine, no sleeping pills. You had to be alert and available twenty-four/seven.
The balding bartender didn’t acknowledge her right away. Windom Petrowski had a ruddy, pocked face and huge strong arms from lugging around kegs and crates. He made no secret of the fact that he didn’t think Natalie deserved the rank of detective and resented her promotion over his cousin, Officer Ronnie Petrowski.
“I’m on-call tonight, Windom,” she said. “Just a mineral water, thanks.”
He took his sweet time, serving another customer first, wiping down glasses, and counting out cash. Natalie leaned against the polished mahogany and decided to wait him out. The Criminal Investigations Unit consisted of six male detectives, one male technical expert, and the BLPD’s first female detective—Natalie. In Windom’s eyes, she was a diversity hire, but everybody knew that wasn’t true. She’d come up in the ranks with the rest of the recruits—working foot patrol, directing traffic, volunteering for overtime, taking any shit detail she could. In fact, out of a desire to prove herself beyond reproach, Natalie had worked twice as hard as everyone else. Fortunately, the guys in the unit were cool with it. Only Windom and a few others weren’t.
A few minutes passed before Windom strolled over and handed her a sparkling mineral water with a wedge of lime. She was tempted to give him lip for the lousy attitude. The BLPD was a high-testosterone zone. The language could get pretty coarse. Fortunately for Natalie, she had quite a mouth on her from all those years of hanging out with her father’s cop buddies. When in Rome.
She took the high road instead and thanked him, asked about his wife and kids, asked about his job and how things were going, softened him up a little, left a modest tip, and wished him a good evening. Then she made her way through the bar, which was packed tonight. The flickering red candles on all the round tables gave the place its special glow. The waitresses were known for their sarcastic, ballbusting wit. Natalie spotted Lieutenant Luke Pittman in one of the back booths—he was alone, which was odd, because it was only seven thirty, and these bullshit sessions of theirs typically dragged on until eight or nine o’clock. So where were the guys?
“Hey,” she said, approaching the booth with her Perrier and lime. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Natalie. We weren’t expecting you tonight,” Luke said.
She shrugged. “It started to rain, so we ended it early.”
“How’d it go?” he asked with a sympathetic smile.
“Feels like the past is fading away. And that makes me sad.”
Thirty-eight-year-old Luke had the kind of handsome, weathered face that suited his chipped, rugged personality. He and Natalie had known each other since he was thirteen and she was five. Luke’s father had abandoned him, and his mother had to work two jobs to keep them afloat. It wasn’t long before Luke was hanging out with the Lockhart girls in their backyard. He’d been there during t
he most crucial events in Natalie’s life. They shared such a rich history together that their current situation felt a little awkward at times, as if they were forever stepping over the line, and then retreating. She used to have a dreamy-eyed crush on Luke Pittman, but their timing was always off due to the eight-year age difference. By the time Natalie hit puberty, Luke was in college. By the time she’d kissed a boy, Luke was getting married and having a baby. By the time she entered college, he was divorced and in the army, being deployed overseas. By the time she joined the BLPD, Luke was a rock-star detective and Natalie was dating Zack.
Now she pointed out the empty beer mugs on the table. “Okay, I give up. Where’d everybody go?”
He shrugged laconically. “I guess things have been pretty smooth sailing down at the station lately.”
“Yeah, right. I work with six prima donnas, and I know that’s a load of crap.”
“Oh, you wanted the truthful answer. My bad.” He grinned. “You didn’t miss a thing, Natalie. I fielded a bunch of complaints and gave my usual spiel about budget cuts. They grumbled a lot. Brandon’s still here. He’s taking a leak.”
Trace of Evil Page 2
