“Just because he committed that crime doesn’t mean he committed this one.” Jamie sighed. “Fiona. I told you, I know nothing about this case. But if there was no arrest, it’s because the officers in charge of the investigation didn’t find enough evidence to arrest a suspect. It’s their job to close cases, their job to chase these things down. You’re looking for something that isn’t there.”
“Isn’t there?” she nearly shouted. “If the police had done their job, even a little, Tim would have been arrested before Deb even met him. She would be alive.”
“Assuming Tim did this,” Jamie countered, indicating the articles strewn on the table. “This girl was hit with a baseball bat, not strangled. She was left at her parents’ house, not dumped in a field. Deb was seen with Tim dozens of times, while this girl was not. What evidence do you have that he was dating her at all?”
“She admitted to her brother that she was.”
“Did the brother ever see him?” Jamie asked. “Did Tim come to the house? Meet the parents? Did he talk to them on the phone? The cops would have asked her friends and family if they’d ever seen her with him. Did they do that?”
Fiona was quiet.
“Of course they did,” Jamie said. “So she never told her parents about this great boyfriend she was supposedly seeing, and she never told her friends. Just one person knew, her brother. And he was reliable?”
“He was into drugs,” Fiona said. “It got worse after his sister’s attack. He became an addict. But he wasn’t an addict when it happened. Just a teenager messing around.”
“For God’s sake, Fiona,” Jamie said. “You’re listening to a story spun by a drug addict? Because that’s who you’ve been talking to, isn’t it? The brother.”
Damn it. She had known this would happen, that he would be like this, and it made her so angry. “He’s telling the truth,” she said, fighting the impulse to shout. “He knows what his sister told him. There’s nothing wrong with his memory.”
“And how did he find you?” Jamie’s gaze was hard and cold. “Because he did find you, didn’t he? He found some way to approach you and reel you in. You’re a smart woman, Fee, but when it comes to anyone mentioning your sister’s name, you can be completely goddamn stupid.”
She stared at this Jamie and she didn’t know him. “Fuck you,” she spit at him. “That’s the cruelest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I’m cruel?” he said. “Did you plan to go to your father with this? Was that your idea? To rip his wounds open with an unproven theory that his daughter’s death could have been prevented? Your evidence is hearsay from a girl who hasn’t spoken in twenty years and an addict. You’ll kill him with this kind of shit.” He took a breath. “But it’s all an acceptable sacrifice, isn’t it? Your life, your father’s life, your own happiness, our relationship—it’s all an acceptable sacrifice to you. This case has already taken your parents’ marriage and your mother’s life. What’s a little more misery for the pile?”
The words made her wince—yet she felt that only now, after a year together, were they getting to the heart of it. “You think I should drop it,” she said.
“Of course I think you should drop it. Do you know why? Because you should fucking drop it.”
“Really? Or does this have to do with your precious police force?” She shoved the words at him. “The cops did a shit job on this case, Jamie. You know as well as I do that it’s always the boyfriend. It’s always the boyfriend. You think someone came up randomly behind her with a baseball bat? Did anyone think that, even for a minute? But we’re talking about Tim Christopher, aren’t we? Rich, good-looking, his family one of the wealthiest in the county. Oh, no, sir. No way it could be the boyfriend! Sorry to bother you—we’ll just be on our way!”
“Goddamn it, Fee!” Jamie shouted. His face was red.
“You want to talk about acceptable sacrifice?” Fiona said to him. “What’s an acceptable sacrifice to you? Is it acceptable that Helen’s case is never solved, that her attacker goes free, just so that the Christophers aren’t bothered with too many questions? Is it an acceptable sacrifice that you brush me off, just so no one asks questions now? So that the force doesn’t face any criticism? Everything is smoother, easier, if we just let it go.”
He was breathing hard, trying to keep control. “You need to leave,” he said, his voice low and furious. “Now.”
“You’re right,” Fiona said. “I do.” She picked up her papers, put them in the folder, and walked out the door.
Chapter 26
Barrons, Vermont
November 2014
Fiona was hungry by the time she got home to her apartment. She pulled a box of crackers from the cupboard and stood at the kitchen counter, dipping the crackers in a jar of peanut butter and eating them, as she stared at the file that contained Helen Heyer’s press and refused to think about Jamie. It was hard to look at the photo of twenty-year-old Helen, with her clear eyes and silky dark hair, and compare it with the face she’d seen this afternoon. Helen at forty-one was vacant, confused, her eyes sunken and the corners of her mouth turned down, her hair graying. She looked at least fifty. She’d sat in the chair in the corner of her hospital room and watched her brother anxiously, rubbing the knuckles of her left hand with her right fingers in a gesture meant to soothe herself.
Jamie was right that almost nothing about the two crimes matched, but Fiona knew it in her gut. They didn’t match because Tim Christopher had a temper. The crimes hadn’t been planned; he’d simply done what was easiest in his white-hot rage when a girl made him angry. Strangled her in his backseat. Hit her with a baseball bat. Whatever made her shut up for good. He was so careless he’d rubbed Deb’s blood on the thigh of his jeans as an afterthought.
The ice in Jamie’s voice: What’s a little more misery for the pile?
Screw it. Fiona opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out the bottle of wine she kept there for emergency purposes. It had been there since last Christmas, because very few things counted as big enough emergencies for Fiona to drink chardonnay, but screw it. Her sister was dead, her love life was a mess, she had no career to speak of, and she was scooping crackers in peanut butter alone in her apartment. It was time for a glass.
She had just taken a sip, making that involuntary shudder that always accompanied the first swallow, when her cell phone rang. It was Anthony Eden again. She sighed and answered it. “Fiona Sheridan.”
“Fiona,” Anthony said. “I’ve been getting calls from the press about the body found at Idlewild. What do I say to them?”
“Calls? From who?”
He listed two names Fiona didn’t recognize, probably second-stringers or freelancers. “Word has gotten out,” he said. “What do I say?”
Fiona picked up a cracker and jabbed at the jar of peanut butter. She wasn’t hungry anymore. “Tell them you have no statement yet,” she advised him. “You’re waiting for the police to notify next of kin. That’s how it works. The next of kin hears it before the media does.” Sonia Gallipeau had no next of kin, but the ruse would work for a while.
“All right,” he said, sounding relieved. “And one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“I hear you somehow found the Idlewild records.”
That surprised her. “How the hell do you know that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Anthony said. “The records weren’t on the grounds when Mother and I bought the property. I thought they were lost. I’d like to have them back.”
Margaret, Roberta, and now Anthony—it seemed a lot of people were looking for the records. But she was not in the mood to be nice. “You can’t have them,” she told him. “I need them for research.”
“But they’re part of the Idlewild property.”
“When they were sent to the dump in 1979, they ceased being Idlewild property,” she said. “They became garbage. Which makes them mine.”
“Fiona, I would really like those records.”
“Then get a court order,” Fiona said, and hung up.
She sipped her wine again. He hadn’t answered the question of how he knew she had the records. Roberta knew, but Anthony didn’t know her. He could have been in touch with Sarah London, or Cathy. Or his mother could have been making an educated guess.
She looked at the boxes, stacked in her living room. They seemed to stare back at her.