Chapter Forty-One
FORTY-ONE
Tim
The house was quiet when Tim got home. Part of him wanted to flop down on the couch and sleep through until morning, but his desire to see Shana and Darcy won out. He found them upstairs in the bathroom, Darcy splashing happily in the tub.
“Hey you.” Shana tipped back her head to accept a kiss; she smelled like baby shampoo and applesauce, the spoils of Darcy’s dessert. “We’re almost done here and then we can figure out something for dinner. Darcy already ate at your mom’s.”
“Hallo Dada,” said the kid, gazing up at him. “I got pigles.”
“Pigles,” Tim repeated, squeezing one eye shut and giving her an appraising look. Shana had shaped Darcy’s lathered hair into two tiny tails, one on each side of her head. “Pigtails!” he said. “You’ve got pigtails. They look great, sweetie.”
Dabbing at the soapy tufts, Darcy grinned up at him. “Tanks.”
“It’s funny,” Shana said fifteen minutes later, when Darcy had been dried off, read to, and bundled into bed.
“All the warnings you hear about the terrible twos and how hard it is to survive the toddler years? That doesn’t scare me half as much as the idea that, one day, she’ll be a woman living in this world. ”
Tim sat down on the edge of the bed and slipped an arm around his wife’s waist. “I can’t stop thinking about her either. I keep picturing her bones curled up in that basement. Her mother told me she hated being alone.”
“Jesus.” Shana pressed the heels of her hands, raw and pink from the bathwater, against her eyes, and Tim realized he’d been ignoring an obstinate low-grade headache for hours.
Accepting Angelica’s death felt like a bridge too far.
She’d come north for the weekend, just like thousands of tourists each year, and had the shit luck of crossing paths with a stranger who’d snuffed out her life like a flame in a draft.
Whatever happened with Woody, however he was involved, the whole family’s lives were about to change in irreparable ways.
And here sat Tim and Shana, whose daughter’s future in a country fraught with danger remained unknown.
Tim dropped his head to look down at his thighs. His eyes had started to burn.
Shana told him about her talk with Mac then, and Woody’s connection to Mikko Helle. The Rivermouth, the partnership, and his investment. Tim caught her up on Helle’s confession about the house party he’d held that Saturday of the holiday weekend.
“It’s where and when Angelica died,” he said.
“Has to be. The timing’s right for the disappearance, and that’s where her remains were found.
Helle said Angelica and Molly look familiar, but claims he can’t place them.
In the same breath, he told me the house was full of strangers.
Woody seems to have been the exception. He was at the party too. Helle referred to Woody as a friend.”
“I don’t like how this is looking for him,” said Shana. “If he regretted sleeping with her, or suspected Nicole might find out, that’s motive. And now we know he had opportunity.”
That was true, and it was sounding more and more like Woody was their man.
Tim wondered what it must have been like for Mac to talk to Shana about her sister and brother-in-law in the context of a murder case.
Airing the Durham family’s dirty laundry for the whole troop to inspect and turn over in their hands.
Woody wasn’t Mac’s blood relative. That didn’t mean she wanted to see him go to prison.
Tim knew Mac would be stressing about her nieces too.
She was close with them, almost like they were her own kids.
It was only recently, right after Darcy was born, that Shana had told Tim about Mac and Nicole’s childhood.
The infidelity, first by Mac’s father, then Nicole’s, and the endless string of boyfriends that followed.
Shana hadn’t wanted to betray her friend’s confidence, figured Mac would have told Tim if she’d wanted him to know, but then it had come time to pick a godmother.
Tim had proposed his sister, who had kids of her own and experience raising them, but Shana had pushed hard for Mac.
“She’ll probably never have kids of her own, but I know she feels the same way Nicole does about the importance of family.
She’s like a second mother to her nieces, and they’ll be leaving for college soon. Plus, she’s done so much for me.”
Shana had stopped talking then, her voice thickening, but Tim had heard enough.
He’d experienced a rush of fondness for Maureen McIntyre, a person for whom he already felt profound love and respect.
What Mac had done for Shana was save her: first from a fiancé who got off on psychological manipulation, then from post-traumatic anxiety that threatened to cripple her.
Mac had taken Shana in, giving her a job and even a home when she found herself in need.
Mac had invested in Shana and her skills when she’d lost all faith in herself.
Of course she should be Darcy’s godmother.
Already, in her own way, Mac was one of the best moms Tim knew.
When Woody’s connection to the crime got out, it was going to splinter Mac’s family like an axe slamming down on a piece of kindling.
Tim’s job was to find out who killed Angelica Patten, and why.
But if in the process of finding Angelica’s killer he could protect Sheriff McIntyre’s kin, he swore he would do all he could.
“Maybe he didn’t do it,” Tim said, meeting Shana’s gaze. “That’s still a possibility, right?”
Shana stretched out her lips. “It is. Forensics could still find DNA evidence that connects someone else to the scene. We know there were dozens of other people in that house.”
“Including Molly Kranz. I don’t like her for the crime,” Tim said, “but she’s still here in the area.
Not only did she return to the scene nine months after the fact, but she stuck around after she fled even at the risk of getting caught.
” Every year, the river towns grew swollen with visitors.
It was happening again right now. But Molly wasn’t like those other tourists.
She had every reason to leave, but she hadn’t.
To Tim, that was a sign of either depraved curiosity or all-out guilt.
Tim watched Shana parse his comment, back rigid and hands on her knees.
Criminal profiling was a subject that his wife knew well, having developed an interest in behavioral analysis back when she worked for the NYPD.
Some criminals returned to the scene of the crime, and the reasons for that varied.
They needed to retrieve something they’d left behind, or wanted to assess how much the police had learned.
They craved the opportunity to relive their violence, that savage, chemical rush.
But it wasn’t just criminals who went back.
Returning to a place of trauma could trigger intense emotions, and there were those who believed it could help you process pain.
Purge the fear you’d experienced from your life once and for all.
Shana said, “If this all went down like we think it did, I could see Molly coming back for her friend. Wanting—needing—to find out what happened to Angelica. Maybe this woman is after the same thing we are: to find the person responsible for Angelica’s death.”
A frisson of hope skipped up Tim’s spine. “The house. It’s the scene of the crime, and maybe Molly knows that. Maybe,” said Tim, “she knows something about Angelica’s murder that we don’t.”
Leaning into him, Shana said, “Do you have any idea how hot you are when you theorize?”
“Funny,” he replied, pulling her onto his lap so that she straddled his hips. “I was about to tell you the same thing.”