Chapter 12
12
Shit. I wipe at the stain spreading across my shirt with a paper towel. Now I have no coffee, and I’m supposed to be at the police station in five minutes. All morning, I’ve been distracted, thinking about Fred Rooney and what I could have done differently. And then there’s what he said about Sister Cecile. I spent an hour searching various combinations of her name, but came up blank. Could she really be out there, alive? Or was he messing with me? But now it’s two minutes to nine and I need to stop thinking about it. I dig through my drawers, but I haven’t done laundry yet, so the pickings are slim. Finally, I pull a cleanish sweatshirt on over my bra.
Outside, I hurry to the car. At least we didn’t get more snow overnight. The last thing I need right now is to dig out the car. But when I pat my pocket for the car keys, I can’t find them. “Shit,” I yell, loud enough to get a dirty look from a woman walking her dog. I don’t apologize, just dash upstairs.
Fifteen minutes later, I pull into the station parking lot, eyes on the clock, as if that will make it say something other than 9:27. A dark shape appears in front of the hood and I slam on the brakes. A police officer stares me down. I raise my hands in the universal gesture of I’m sorry, I’m a complete idiot . He shakes his head and disappears into the building. Sweat prickles down my back. I hate being late. The clock ticks up to 9:28. I jog across the parking lot.
As usual, Bev is sitting behind the reception desk, today in a sweater covered in rainbow pom-poms. She lifts a hand, telling me to wait, and picks up the phone. A few seconds later, Parker appears in the lobby. His uniform is rumpled and his hair flattened. There are dark purple bags under his eyes. It’s unfair how men can continue to be good-looking even when they look terrible.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I say.
Parker nods, distracted, but doesn’t say any more about it. “Thanks for coming. Come on. I’ll introduce you.”
The station feels busier than before. Or maybe it’s just giving off a different energy. Before, it felt somber and restrained. Today, officers are seated at desks, legs bouncing in impatience. One cracks his knuckles as I walk by.
Parker leads me toward a knot of people at the back of the room. They part to reveal a woman in a dark pantsuit, sitting on the edge of a desk. One pant leg is hiked up to reveal a flat black boot. Not one of those TV detectives who run around in three-inch heels, then. Her makeup is minimal, her hair pulled into a low bun. Everything about her feels polished. Professional. Though I do catch a glimmer of gold around her throat. As we get closer I see it’s a thin chain with a tiny cross. She catches sight of us and gives Parker a slight nod.
“Thanks, everyone,” she says to the crowd around her. “Find me if you have any questions. We’ll brief again at the end of the day.”
The knot of officers gathered around her breaks apart like athletes going onto the field. She slides off the desk and comes to her full height, which is a good five inches shorter than me. Yet she still projects an aura of authority.
“Alex,” Parker says, “this is Detective Garcia. She’s here from state.”
Detective Garcia holds out her hand and I catch a hint of perfume. Something lush and tropical. It reminds me of one of those expensive candles everyone in Brooklyn has on their mantel. Jasmine. Lily of the valley. Tuberose.
“Thank you for coming,” Garcia says. By her tone, I can’t tell if she’s thanking me for coming or berating me for my lateness. The morning is making me feel off-balance. I half expect to see the floor tiles lifting as a wave moves beneath the surface.
“Let’s find somewhere quiet to talk,” she says.
Parker leads the way to an interview room. The drunk tank. The bed is gone, along with the guy in the expensive sneakers. Without him, the room is identical to the one I sat in with Parker and Officer Washington two days ago. The table. The four plastic chairs. The only difference is the framed poster. This one shows Lake Champlain at sunset, a white sailboat cutting across the water. The real lake—or at least our little inlet—is obscured by the cinderblock wall.
When I sit, this chair also rocks back and forth. I smile. But when I look up, Garcia is watching me, her lips pressed together into a thin red line. The smile drops from my face.
She sits down and opens a folder. “Let’s get started,” she says. “Officer Parker?”
Parker adjusts something on the camera mounted to the wall. “All good,” he says. He catches my eye and gives me a small smile. My insides settle a little.
Garcia picks up the remote and I consent to being recorded. She asks me to describe what happened that day in the woods. As I speak, she sits very still, her arms crossed and her eyes never leaving me. I feel like an insect trapped under a glass dome.
I’ve always thought of myself as good at interviews. So much of it is listening—to what someone is saying and what they’re not, guiding the conversation so you arrive at the destination you always intended, even if the interview subject isn’t sure why or how you got there. But I’m not used to being on the other end. I can’t seem to get comfortable in my chair. My story stutters and then bends back on itself because I’ve forgotten something. God, I really needed that cup of coffee.
With relief, I finally get to the part of the story where the EMTs arrive and take over. Garcia says nothing. The silence stretches out. I want to look at Parker, but I know I’m searching for reassurance and I’m afraid I won’t see it on his face. I haven’t done anything wrong. Why do I feel like I’ve done something wrong?
“Alex,” Garcia says finally, picking up a pen. “Let’s go back for a second. To the minutes right after the scream. Really focus on the scene—tell me what you saw.”
My throat feels scratchy from so much talking. “I’m not sure how much more I can add,” I say. “There wasn’t much to see. The lake. Trees. Snow.”
“Tell me about what you heard, then. The sounds. Close your eyes.”
So I do. But I hate it. I feel vulnerable sitting there with my eyes closed—like a predator might tear out my throat when I’m not looking. Maybe that’s the point.
“Okay, tell me what you hear,” Garcia says.
“The trees creaking.”
“It was windy?”
“Not in the woods but out on the water.”
I hear the pen scratching on paper.
“What else?”
“Something scraping against the rocks.”
The scratches of the pen stop. I open my eyes. “It was the rocks,” I say. “The sound of something dragging over the rocks. When I called out, the sound stopped. Like they heard me.”
In my head, it’s so clear, but my voice wavers. It sounds like uncertainty.
“And what came next?” Detective Garcia asks.
I try to go back there. To that moment after I called out. The intense act of standing in the woods and listening. The feeling that every part of my body was absorbing and sensing everything around me.
“Some thunks. I don’t know how to describe it exactly. Like something hard hitting something wooden—a drum sort of noise.”
Garcia makes a hmm noise and writes something down. Then she lays down her pen and folds her hands together. There’s sympathy on her face. “You’re from New York City, right?” she asks.
I nod, unsure what this has to do with anything.
“How long have you been here? A week?”
“Two,” I say, but it sounds silly. Like a child insisting she’s not five, but five and a quarter.
“You know, it’s very common,” she says. “People who don’t spend a lot of time in the woods don’t understand how noisy they really are. The wind in the branches. Trees creaking. A log floating in the water, smashing against the rocks. Thunk thunk. Then you add in the adren aline of that moment, and it’s completely normal to feel like someone was there.”
She smiles at me, gently. And then I understand. She doesn’t believe there was anyone else in the woods that morning. “They weren’t normal sounds,” I say. “They didn’t fit.”
I don’t know how else to describe it. How the sounds felt different from the creaking of branches or the scurrying of animals. How they were deliberate and foreign as a chainsaw. How I could feel myself being watched.
“There was someone else there,” I say.
The smile falls off Garcia’s face, a discarded mask. She leans forward across the table. “We’ve got a backlog of murders, you know. An eleven-month-old who was strangled by her mother’s boyfriend. Which got put on hold. For this.”
I feel a flash of anger. “I’m not trying—”
“Let’s review the facts, shall we? One set of footprints on fresh snow.” She starts ticking points off on her fingers. “A body discovered within thirty minutes of impact. Cause of death: blunt-force head trauma, likely after an accidental twenty-foot fall.”
“Do you know for sure it was accidental? She could have been pushed—”
“I know that you’re a writer whose career really needs a good story.”
It feels like someone snuck up behind me and dumped a bucket of ice water over my head.
“And I know this will make a much better chapter in your book if it’s a murder instead of an old lady who slipped on the rocks. But there’s no evidence we should be treating this death as suspicious.”
Suddenly, it all makes sense. The simmering hostility. The endless questions about what I heard in the woods. She doesn’t think I’m a hysterical witness jumping at shadows. She thinks I deliberately made up some phantom killer in the woods to sell books.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Kelley,” she says, standing. “If we have any further questions, we’ll be in touch. Officer Parker can show you out.”
I sit there, frozen, while Detective Garcia turns the recording off and leaves. My eyes sting. I blink a few times. Parker clears his throat, but I can’t look at him.
“I’ll walk you out,” he says.
I nod, numb. Parker lifts my coat off the hook and hands it to me. He leads me down a different hall, toward an emergency exit. Gratitude floods me. I don’t think I can walk back through the station, feeling all those eyes on me. Not now that I know what they think of me.
Parker pushes open the door. A blast of freezing air makes my eyes water. As soon as I step outside the police station, I feel better. To my surprise, he steps out after me. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. It’s better than ours, but it’ll burn your tongue off.”
I follow him over to the school bus, where cold air mixes with the smell of French fries. A man in a white apron leans out the window and Parker holds up two fingers. A second later the man reappears with two steaming cups. “Thanks,” I say as Parker hands me one. I take a sip and wince.
“Told you it was hot,” he says.
We sit on the retaining wall that separates the parking lot from the embankment that plunges down to the frozen harbor, which is dotted with fishing shacks. It all looks so solid and permanent. It’s hard to believe that just on the other side of Rock Point, the lake is open water and freezing waves. Far out, beyond the ice-fishing shacks, I see something twisted and black. “What is that?” I ask, pointing.
Parker squints and then his mouth hitches into a smile. “Your new friend drove his car onto the lake for some ice fishing the other night.”
I frown in confusion and then it clicks. “The drunk guy?”
Parker nods. “When that didn’t work out, he managed to light it on fire and then stumble back to his house and pass out on the dock.” He gestures with his coffee cup out across the water, to the peninsula that’s the mirror image of Rock Point. “And that’s where they picked him up. Peeled him right off the dock and brought him in.” He shakes his head. “The ice is patchy out there at the break. He’s lucky he didn’t fall through.”
I sip my coffee. It’s still too hot. “So who is he?”
“Some rich tech guy. I don’t know much else. I guess if you can afford to trash a hundred-thousand-dollar car, you don’t need to hand out your résumé.”
But I’m only half listening. The truth is, I’m still stinging from the interview with Garcia. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I can’t help it.
“So what’s her problem with me?”
Parker doesn’t ask who I’m talking about. “She’s just—she has other priorities.”
“Yeah,” I say. “She made that part pretty clear. Listen, Parker.” His name slips easily off my tongue. “Do you think I’m making this up for attention?”
Immediately, I want to take it back, not sure I want to know the answer.
Parker says nothing, clearly considering the question. I realize I’m holding my breath. Finally, he shakes his head.
“No. I don’t.”
It wasn’t quite an Of course there was someone in the woods if you say so but it’s something.
“But look, she is right. There’s no evidence. Two sets of footprints in the woods. Yours and those belonging to an elderly lady with poor eyesight who went on daily walks in Rock Point, according to her neighbors.”
I feel momentarily stunned. “You know who she is?”
He nods. “It’s not released yet but the obit will be in the paper tomorrow. Her name is Jeannette Leroy. She was seventy years old and lived alone, just across from the cemetery. No family. No money. No sign of a struggle.”
I shiver. It makes it more real. Giving her a name.
“That last part wasn’t in the paper, so I’d appreciate you keeping it to yourself,” he says.
“Of course.”
“And, Alex?”
I turn to look at him.
“Detective Garcia is right, about adrenaline. Sometimes we don’t see or hear what we think we do.”
Somehow it stings less when he says it. Parker drains his cup and tosses it in the trash. “You want my advice?” he says. “Get some rest. Forget about this case and work on your book. If there’s anything to find, we’ll find it.”
I know it’s the best I’m going to get.
“Work on my book? Three days ago you were ready to ship me back to New York.”
He looks embarrassed. “Sorry about that. I think”—he pauses— “I had your intentions down wrong.”
I nod, feeling absurdly relieved and grateful. He rubs his eyes, like he can erase the dark circles.
“You want my advice?” I say. “Go home. Get some rest. You look like shit.”
He shakes his head, but I see the hint of a smile.
“Here I thought we were getting to be friends.”
I hide my smile inside the empty cup.
First thing the next morning, I put my jacket on over my sweatpants and dash across to the corner store. A teenager with a fluff of dark peach fuzz lounges behind the register. When I ask where the papers are he blinks at me as if no one’s ever asked him that before. I find them on a rack beside the potato chips. I’m not sure which paper runs obituaries, so I grab one of each.
Back in my apartment, I spread the papers on the table. There’s nothing in the first one, but in the next, I find it. A two-page spread of obituaries, each with a paragraph of text and a small picture. The woman’s photo is grainy and gray, but it’s still startling to see her so alive. Her white hair is cropped close to her face, showing off high cheekbones and delicate elfin features. She’s staring right at the camera with an expression that’s not a smile, but looks expectant somehow. Like someone waiting for whatever comes next.
Beside the photo is a name and a single sentence. Jeannette Leroy, 1946–2016. For anyone wishing to pay their respects, a service will be held at 11 a.m. on January 23 in the Chapel of Saint Joseph. That’s it. Nothing about how she died or how she was beloved by friends and family.
The lines are so bare. I imagine an old lady living alone. Buying groceries, taking a walk, going to bed—each day blending into the next. How scared she must have been when she lay there bleeding in the woods. Or maybe she died instantly.
Who would want to hurt a seventy-year-old woman with no money and no family? No one. One set of footsteps in the snow. Maybe Garcia is right. Maybe it was just adrenaline.
I pull up the calendar on my phone and add a reminder for the service on Saturday. Then I fold the paper up and set it aside. Time to get back to work. First, I call Father Aubry. No answer, so I leave a message asking him to call me back. Then I try Stedsan. No answer either. I text him instead. Looking for the last known address or more info on Sister Cecile. Any ideas? Also would have been good to know she’s still alive. I delete the last sentence and hit send.
My desk is a mess of greasy wrappers and crumpled newspapers, piles of notes on index cards waiting to be entered into my binder. You’re not supposed to be able to smell your own house, but even I can tell it smells stale, like damp laundry and the garbage I haven’t taken out. Something inside me is going to explode if I spend one more hour at my desk. And whatever that thing is, I have to outrun it.
I find my running clothes under the bed. They smell faintly of sweat, but I put them on anyways. It’s barely noon, but the clear blue sky outside has the warm light of afternoon. I start up North Avenue, putting on a burst of speed past the police station. I find my legs and run past the houses, a blur of white clapboard against a sky so blue it’s indigo at the edges. Flashes of color—a red rug over a porch railing, the lush green of a potted plant in the window. Then the houses fall away and the trees grow denser.
The entrance to Rock Point is strung with yellow caution tape, but there’s no one there. What had I expected? An officer guarding the woods? Wind whips strands of hair across my cheeks. I tug my orange hat down over my ears. Lola had bought it for me as a going-away present to keep me safe from hunters. It’s still a city , I’d said, you can’t just walk down the street with your shotgun. Now, I think of the moose in the woods and how she’d laugh.
I feel a pang for her or for my life in New York, I don’t know which. But it’s dull and far away. The way you miss something that doesn’t exist anymore. Like childhood or an imaginary friend. Or a life before you had a dead husband, a dead body in the woods, and were floundering at another failing book.
The sun’s heat beats down on the crown of my head as I run, even as the wind stings my cheeks. I keep going up North Avenue, trying and failing not to look at Coram House as I pass. No sign of Rooney’s truck in the drive, at least.
With every mile, North Avenue narrows—from a busy thoroughfare to a quiet neighborhood street and finally to a dirt road that ends at a muddy beach. A light skin of ice covers the water at the edges. The beach is empty except for a red shack. AUER FAMILY BOATHOUSE , says the peeling paint. Picnic tables are tipped on end, and the boathouse itself is boarded up, for the season or forever, it’s hard to tell.
Nearby, a flock of tufted birds feast noisily on red berries. It’s been a long time since I’ve run this far. Too far probably, based on the twinge in my knee. But I wanted to run to the end of something. Any road. Any place.
By the time I get home, my lungs feel torn and my legs are like jelly. The lukewarm shower feels like it’s burning, my skin no longer able to tell the difference between hot and cold. It’s all just pain.