“What is?”
“Carl Dawson’s face when you told him.”
That moment back at the playground was still etched in her mind. And ever since they had started the interviews, Dawson had seemed like a broken man to her. There had been no bursting into tears, shouted denials, or collapsing with shock. There was an emptiness to him, but also a strange kind of resolve. As though he had carried heavier weights than this before, and whatever it took, he was going to do so again now.
Dwyer looked at the screen.
“I still like him for it,” he said.
Amanda sighed to herself. Whatever her reservations, there was a good chance that Dwyer was right. And anyway, especially with Paul refusing to talk, Dawson was all they had right now.
“Round three?” she said.
“Oh, let’s.”
The office they had retreated to was only two doors down from the interview room. As they reached it, Amanda’s phone rang. She took it out of her pocket, wondering if it might be Paul. But she’d programmed his number into her cell, and she didn’t recognize the one flashing up now.
“You make a start,” she told Dwyer. “I’ll join you in a second.”
“Fine by me.”
Carl Dawson looked up as Dwyer walked in, his face still lost and empty, and then the door closed, blocking her view. She answered the call and leaned back against the wall.
“Detective Amanda Beck,” she said.
“Detective Beck?”
It was a woman’s voice. Amanda couldn’t place it, but even with just those two words she registered the urgency and panic.
She leaned away from the wall.
“Yes. Who is this, please?”
“It’s Mary.”
“Mary?”
“Mary Price? You came to our home a few days ago to talk about our son’s murder. I really need to speak to you. I’m so scared.”
Michael Price’s mother. Amanda recalled sitting in a front room still scattered with the boy’s possessions, the air saturated with grief, desperate to be anywhere else.
“Mary,” she said. “Of course. Please try to calm down.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry.”
“I should have called you sooner. I just didn’t … Oh God.”
I’m so scared.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Mary.”
“My husband.”
Dean Price. Amanda remembered how the man had suddenly left the room, unable to accept that his son had been killed because of the story she’d told them both. Are you saying my son was murdered because of a ghost? And the threat she’d sensed in him. The barely concealed violence she had felt bubbling below his surface.
“What about him?” she said.
Mary was crying now.
“I think he might have done something bad.”
THIRTY-NINE
The hall light clicked on, and I found myself staring at a pair of combat boots.
They kept swimming in and out of focus. I was lying curled up on the polished floor, trying desperately to breathe through a pain in my lungs that was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It seemed like the man had barely moved, but he’d somehow hit me in the stomach with such force that he’d knocked the air from me and made it impossible to draw in more.
“Shallow breaths,” he told me. “You’ll live.”
His voice was blank and emotionless: stating the facts without really caring about the outcome. But it turned out he was right. The effect of the impact subsided gradually, and I managed to draw in small mouthfuls of air, the pain flaring less with each one.
The whole time, the man stood there waiting as I recovered, entirely motionless. Somehow I knew better than to attempt to stand up—that he wanted me on the floor, and that I’d simply be knocked down again if I resisted—but after a moment I risked looking up at him. He was standing in the doorway to the front room, dressed in dark combat trousers and a black sweater. His body seemed thin and wiry, and built for violence. His hair was close-cropped. I didn’t recognize his face, but the expression there was as implacable as his voice had been.
In one gloved hand he was holding a hunting knife.
Terror began humming in my chest.
“What do you want?” I managed to say, each word making the pain in my chest flare.
The man ignored me, shrugging off a backpack I hadn’t even noticed until then. With his free hand, he reached inside and then tossed something in my direction. I flinched as it landed on the floor beside me with a clatter.
Handcuffs.
“Put them on,” he said.
Every instinct in my body told me not to. But even if he hadn’t had the knife, and I hadn’t been lying powerless on the floor, I could tell I was no match for him physically. That he would simply put them on me himself, and it would hurt a lot more if I made him do it.
He took a step closer, turning the knife in his hand.
“I won’t tell you again.”
“All right.”
I picked up the handcuffs. They were solid and professional, with little distance between the cuffs. Police-issue, I thought—or military, perhaps. And there was that air of authority to the man, as though controlling and hurting people came naturally to him.
I slipped one cuff over my left wrist and clicked it shut.
“A bit tighter,” he said.
I did as I was told.
“Now the other.”
I repeated the action with the other wrist. The action rendered me helpless, but I had been already. Maybe there was even some comfort in the knowledge that he felt the need to restrain me. If he wanted to kill me, I would surely be dead by now.
“What do you want?” I said again.
And again, there was no answer.
Instead, he squatted down and looked me over dispassionately. The knife was much closer now, and I could see it was serrated on one side, thin and wicked on the other. The way the man looked at me, it was like he was examining a carcass he had been given the task of butchering, and a chill ran through me as I realized there might be other reasons to restrain me, and that there were worse fates than simply being dead.
I felt a buzzing against my thigh.
My phone ringing.
The man heard it too and reached into my pocket. He examined the screen for a moment, then placed the phone casually on the floor and sent it spinning away into the dark front room.
He held up the knife.
“Do you see this?” he said.
“Yes.”
“This means you and I are going to have a talk.”
“About what?”
“Be quiet. The talk will go on for as long as it needs to. If you don’t give me the answers I want, I will hurt you very badly until you do. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Because I know you have those answers. I know you know what happened to Charlie Crabtree and where he disappeared to.”
I blinked.
I wasn’t sure what I’d been thinking this was—a robbery, perhaps. But I remembered Billy Roberts now, and how shaken Amanda had seemed after coming from the scene.
The talk will go on for as long as it needs to.
The man placed his knee on my side, leaning down and pinning me to the floor, then traced the tip of the knife over my shoulder.