Chapter 2 #2
“He’s an arrogant jerk with an inferiority complex. He acts as if he’s better than everyone—even Beth. But his feelings get hurt if you look at him sideways. Beth decided it was easier to let him have what he wanted. She isn’t someone who likes to fight.”
“But he is?” Reid asked.
“He likes getting his own way,” she said quietly.
Again, Reid thought of the girls’ father.
There were such parallels with Beth and Pete, two generations of secret lives.
Kate and Beth’s mother had had the money and the gallery; she had given her husband a title and the power to run it the way he’d wanted, just like Beth and Pete.
How much did Kate really know about her sister’s marriage?
The sisters had been traumatized by their time in the basement.
He didn’t need a psychology degree to understand they would be deeply affected for the rest of their lives.
For some time now, he had believed Beth’s earlier experience made her vulnerable to a predator—the man she had married.
Some nights, unable to sleep, Reid felt Kate’s small cold hand in his.
He heard Beth’s high, thin animal wail. Twenty-three years ago, the Woodward sisters and their mother had been forced into the gallery’s basement, bound to each other with ropes and duct tape, while upstairs thieves had stolen priceless nineteenth-century landscapes.
Reid had been the resident trooper and first on the scene.
Helen, the girls’ mother, had choked on the gag and died.
Kate and Beth had been thrashing, screaming into the cotton wadded into their mouths behind the duct tape.
Reid had cut them loose. He exhaled slowly now, remembering how Beth had thrown herself at her mother’s body, holding her and sobbing.
Kate had gone silent. She had stood stiff and numb, in total shock, backing away from her mother and sister, eyes like a zombie’s.
That’s when Reid had taken her hand, tried to get her to look at him, to focus on him instead of the horror right in front of her.
He stared at her now, her right hand clenched.
He had to hold himself back from reaching for it.
He felt dishonest, not being straight with her about his involvement—and not just with the previous case.
The day he had pulled the Woodward girls from the basement, he had vowed to protect and keep track of them.
He believed the old rule, that if you rescued someone, you were responsible for them forever.
He had kept an eye on them as much as possible, and it was killing him right now to know that Beth was dead inside the house, to realize how badly he had failed.
After a few moments, Kate seemed to compose herself. She sighed, gave her shoulders a small shake, as if bringing herself out of a trance. Reid was wound tight, forcing himself to breathe, to be right here with Kate and hear what she had to tell him.
“Pete called me, looking for her too,” Kate said.
She hadn’t mentioned that before. Reid had a million questions, but he kept quiet and listened.
“Twice,” Kate said. “Once while I was in the air, and I didn’t get the message till after I landed in Van Nuys.
That time he just asked if I knew whether Beth had plans.
It seemed strange, but I didn’t think much of it.
I didn’t even call him back before he rang again.
He said he’d been trying her, not getting through.
He knew she was tired, thought she might have been catching up on extra sleep.
I told him that was definitely possible, but then I started getting nervous. And I couldn’t get her either.”
“Did you call anyone to go check on her?”
“Our friend Scotty Waterston,” Kate said.
“She had been over very early, gardening with Beth. Then she came back, with muffins or something—they were going to have coffee—and saw that Beth had left a note on the front door for the UPS driver. It said she’d gone out for the morning, that he should leave packages without a signature. ”
“Where’s the note now?” he asked.
“It’s still there. Scotty left it.” Kate pointed at the yellow paper taped to the doorframe.
“Is it Beth’s handwriting?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Were there boxes?” he asked.
“What?” she asked.
“Left by the UPS driver,” he said.
“No,” she said and frowned. “But the note made Scotty feel okay—as if Beth had just stepped out and would be home soon. Her husband is on the trip with Pete.”
Reid stared at the note. The paper looked rumpled, and he figured it was an all-purpose note, one Beth had written at some point to reuse whenever she went out.
Plenty of people did that in towns like Black Hall, where they thought they could trust their neighbors.
But anyone could have stuck it to the door—not necessarily Beth. The killer could have put it there.
“I have to notify Pete, Kate,” Reid said. “Do you have his cell number?”
She scrolled through her phone’s contact list and gave it to him.
Instead of writing it down on his pad, he programmed it directly into his phone. He would make the call shortly.
“What’s the name of the boat?” he asked.
“Huntress,” Kate said.
“Thanks,” Reid said.
“What if I could have saved her?” Kate asked.
Her green eyes glittered with tears, her face marked with despair.
“She was my sister, my little sister. We were so close. Why wasn’t I here for her?
How could I have let this happen? It’s the second time.
” She grabbed his hand, squeezing it tight.
Electricity ran up his arm, into his heart.
“You’re talking about the gallery? When you were kids?”
“No.” She gave him a sharp look as if shocked he’d say that. Then she shook her head.
“Second time for what, then?” he asked.
“I wasn’t there for her. And something terrible happened.”
“What was the first?” he asked.
She didn’t respond, just pulled her hand back a second time.
Back then, in the basement, all emotion had seemingly drained from her—she had turned completely blank.
Now she crackled with rage and grief. He noticed other differences and comparisons.
Physical details: she was five six, slightly taller than she had been at sixteen.
Her dark-brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, just as it had been that day long ago.
Light freckles still dusted her cheeks. She was dressed in jeans and a sleeveless shirt, and her tan arms were toned and showing a serious devotion to working out.
Right now, she seemed barely able to hold herself up.
Reid fought back the urge to comfort her.
“I’m going to ask you to give your statement to Detective Miano,” he said, pointing toward his partner. Jennifer stood next to a pot of white geraniums with her pad open, talking to Officer Hawley. “I’ll send her over to talk to you, and then we’ll make sure you get home.”
“I have to tell Sam,” Kate said. “Before the news gets out.”
“Won’t her father do that?”
“We don’t know where he is, do we?” Kate asked.
“No,” he said.
“You have no idea how much I hate him,” she said.
“Tell me.” He stared at her hard and waited to hear how aware she had been of Pete’s secret life.
But she shook her head and turned away from him.
He gestured for Miano to come over, then glanced back at Kate.
What if I could have saved Beth? she had asked.
How could I have let this happen? Maybe they were just aimless questions, but the second in particular implied power over the situation, as if she believed she could have stopped the murder.
Reid wondered how she thought she might have done that, what the relationship between the sisters had become.
Had those hours when they’d been tied up in the gallery basement pulled them closer or driven them apart?
Did they have any choice, controlling the course their lives took, or had they been programmed, even ruined, from the moment the intruder entered the gallery?
It had certainly controlled him. Standing close to Kate now, he felt his hands shaking and jammed them into his pockets so she wouldn’t see. The Woodward sisters’ pain was his white whale, his torment.
You have no idea how much I hate him, she had said about her brother-in-law.
He actually did have an idea about that.
Keeping an eye on the Woodward sisters meant he saw what the other people in their lives were up to.
He felt uncomfortable, most likely knowing more about her sister’s marriage than Kate did.
“Did Beth and Pete have a good marriage?” he asked, keeping his tone steady because he knew the ugly answer.
“No,” she said flatly.
“Were there other people involved?”
“On his part—yes,” she said.
He waited for her to say the name Nicola, but she began to cry softly, burying her face in her hands.
The muffled sound of a ringing phone came from inside the house.
He hesitated, hating to leave her in tears.
Then he turned away, so she wouldn’t pick up on his fixation on her and her sister and their shared history.
What had happened in that basement had happened to him too.
He walked toward the front door, wondering what was the first time she’d let something bad happen.
It was time to go see Beth.