Chapter 4
"Tell him I'll meet wherever he's comfortable.
Coffee shop, parking lot, I don't care. But it has to be soon.
" Noah leaned against the kitchen counter with his phone pressed to his ear, listening to O'Connell run through the details.
A former pit boss at the Ashford Royale Casino had been recently let go, and was now apparently willing to talk about what he'd seen during his time on the floor.
It was the closest thing to a break they'd had in months.
"Just get me a name and a date. I'll be there. "
He ended the call and set the phone down.
The house was quiet. Natalie had taken Mia to drop her off at a friend's for the night, and Ethan was upstairs in his room with the door closed, which was where Ethan spent most of his time when he wasn't being actively pulled out of it.
The remains of Ed's barbecue sat in foil containers on the counter.
Noah covered them and put them in the fridge.
There was a knock at the front door.
He wasn't expecting anyone. He crossed through the living room and opened it to find Callie Thorne on his porch, a manila folder tucked under one arm and her hair still damp from the rain that had started sometime in the last hour.
"Thorne," he said, surprised. “Come on in.”
She stepped inside and looked around the way people do when they haven't been somewhere in a while, checking what's changed. "Place looks good. You look good. Less tired."
"Real sleep will do that instead of pulling fourteen-hour days." He closed the door behind her. "Coffee? Tea?"
"Whatever you're having."
He filled the kettle and set it on the stove. It had been a month, maybe longer, since he'd seen Callie in person. They'd exchanged a few texts here and there but nothing substantial. She looked the same. Alert. Watchful. That quality she had of taking in a room without appearing to.
Noah heard footsteps on the stairs. Ethan appeared in the kitchen doorway, saw Callie, and gave a half wave.
"Hey, Ethan," Callie said.
"Hey." He grabbed a glass of water, nodded at both of them, and headed back up.
Callie watched him go. "How's he doing?"
"He has a girlfriend."
"He does?"
"Yeah. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing."
"Seems to have done wonders for you," Callie said, picking up a woman's top that was draped over the arm of the couch.
Noah took it from her. "Yeah. Nat has been spending a little more time here."
"I heard."
"From?"
"McKenzie."
"Oh, the town crier." Noah shook his head. "I really should be more careful what I share with him. Anyway, how's he doing?"
"You know how McKenzie is. Your son isn't the only one who's dating again."
"You?"
"No, McKenzie." She laughed. "I'm too busy preparing for the detective exam."
"I heard. Good for you."
The kettle whistled and Noah poured two mugs, set one in front of Callie at the kitchen table, and took the chair across from her.
He studied her for a moment. She hadn't just dropped by to catch up.
Callie didn't do that. She was friendly but she wasn't casual, and there was a folder under her arm that she hadn't mentioned yet.
He nursed his mug with both hands.
“So,” he said. “Are you checking in on me to see if I'd drunk myself into an early grave?"
She smiled. She set the folder on the table between them. "No. You remember your brothers, Ray and Luke, working a case about five years ago? It was pretty big. Made national headlines for a while."
His brow knit together. "Kara Ellison."
"That's her."
"You found her?"
"Not exactly." Callie wrapped both hands around her mug. "We had a body turn up in Heaven Hill Trails this morning. Young woman, early twenties. Sliced up badly. Face destroyed beyond recognition."
Noah waited.
"She was wearing an oversized jacket. Not hers. And tucked inside the lining was a SUNY Plattsburgh student ID. Kara Ellison's name and photo."
"But the body isn't Kara."
"No. The M.E. identified her through dental records as Brooke Danvers."
"The missing girl from Saranac Lake? From two weeks ago?"
"You caught the news."
"Saw it in passing. Figured she might just show up, what with being over eighteen."
"Well, she showed up wearing Kara's jacket." Callie pushed the file toward him. "I just came from giving the death notification to the family. Brutal."
Noah opened the folder and flipped through. His gaze drifted over autopsy photos. Scene photos. The jacket laid out on an evidence table. The student ID was in a plastic sleeve.
"But that can't be," he said slowly. "They got the guy. He was put away four years ago."
"That's what I hear. Though Kara's body was never found, right?"
Noah nodded. He closed the file and slid it back across the table. "Sounds like you've got your hands full. I'm sure the state will provide an investigator while I'm on leave."
Callie didn't touch it. "Yeah, see, that's the thing. I was hoping you might know what happened to the case file. Luke worked the case along with Ray. Your father was Sheriff at the time. A lot of the older files aren't where they should be."
"I'm sure they're there."
"But you said a while back that your father pulled some when he retired. And Luke had boxes of case files here at the house when he was looking into corruption in the Sheriff's Office. Do you remember that wall of weird he had going?”
"Deputy Hendrix removed them from the house after Luke died. My father also mentioned that files were placed in storage during the station renovations. You might want to check with Hugh."
He took a sip of his tea.
Callie's phone buzzed on the table. She glanced at the screen and her expression shifted. "Huh. Duty calls." She stood and pushed her chair in. "Well, tell Nat I said hello."
Noah walked her to the door. She was halfway down the porch steps when he spoke.
"Callie. Before you take the detective exam. Remember to count the cost."
She turned. "I already have."
"The cost I'm talking about is learned after the fact."
She held his gaze for a second, snorted, and walked to her car.
Noah was rinsing the mugs when he noticed the folder still sitting on the table. He picked it up, checked his phone, and texted Callie. You left the file. He waited. No response. He set the phone down and stared at the folder for a long moment, then opened it again.
The autopsy photos were hard to look at. Not because of the violence itself but because the girl was young. She was someone you'd see in a coffee shop or a grocery store and not think twice about. Someone with plans. Someone who was supposed to be somewhere else right now.
Ethan appeared in the doorway and saw what Noah was reading.
"You know, I couldn't help overhearing what Callie was talking about," Ethan said.
Noah closed the folder. "You shouldn't be listening to other people's conversations."
"Hard not to when you're having them in the kitchen." Ethan crossed his arms. "Maybe check Grandpa's house. He had boxes in his basement. Told me once he was old-school and refused to burn them when they did the renovations at the station."
Noah looked at his son. "When did he tell you that?"
"Last Thanksgiving. He'd had a few glasses of wine." Ethan shrugged, opened the fridge, grabbed a container of leftover barbecue, and headed back upstairs.
Noah made a mental note. Then he sat down and started going through the folder page by page.
He was so engrossed in the details, he didn't hear the front door open. The first thing he registered was Natalie's voice from the hallway, mid-sentence, something about Mia. Then she was at the kitchen entrance and her eyes went to the table.
Some of the photographs were fanned out across the surface. Crime scene shots. The girl's body. Close-ups of wounds.
"Hey. Mia wants picking up tomorrow at ten. I'll..." Natalie stopped. She looked at the photos, then at Noah. "What the hell?"
Noah gathered the photos and slid them back into the folder. “Sorry. Um. I have to go out."
"Noah."
He stood and grabbed his jacket from the hook near the entrance. Natalie followed him.
"I thought you were taking a break from all of that," she said.
He pulled the door open and stepped into the rain without answering. The evening air was warm and wet, a rain that felt like it could go all night. He climbed into the Bronco, started the engine, and pulled out, his headlights washing over the trees that lined the road as he left.
The drive to the north side of High Peaks Lake took longer than Noah remembered.
The night pressed close, the rain streaking across the windshield in sheets that the wipers barely kept up with.
When he turned into the gravel curve of the old property, the Bronco's headlights swept across the stone fountain and the white columns, throwing everything into sudden brightness before the dark folded back in.
A few lights burned upstairs, warm and shallow against the brick face of the house. The lake behind it was a sheet of black glass, the far shore invisible. Noah cut the engine.
He stepped onto the porch. "Dad?" His voice felt small, swallowed by the open water and the night air. No answer. A light breeze carried the smell of pine and wet earth.
He circled to the side flower bed and found the flat stone where it had always been. Beneath it, the key. Cold and gritty. He slid it into the lock and stepped inside.
The alarm woke immediately. Three soft tones and a blinking red light. Noah moved down the hall and punched the code from memory. The beeping stopped. The house settled.
"Dad?" he tried once more. The word echoed up the staircase. Nothing.
The place smelled of cedar polish and wine. Hugh had filled it with pieces Noah recognized from the old home on Mirror Lake Drive. Same oak table. Same framed photographs. But the arrangement felt off, like someone had rebuilt a room from memory and missed something they couldn't name.
He found the basement stairs and went down. The steps creaked under his boots. The air was cooler, the walls lined in olive green, shelves stocked with bottles Hugh would never finish. For a moment Noah thought Ethan had been wrong. Then he saw the door to the back storage room, half open.
Inside, the air was thick and still. Stacked against the far wall were plain corrugated boxes, ten or twelve of them, each stamped in faded black ink: PROPERTY OF ADIRONDACK COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE.
Noah crouched and pulled the nearest one open. There were folders inside, case files, the paper worn soft at the edges from years of handling. It took him close to twenty minutes before he found it. He read the top labels. K. ELLISON. Then his hand stopped. CARTER LYLE.
He pulled the folder and opened it on the concrete floor.
A mugshot clipped to a police report. Beneath that, photocopies of arrest records dated four years back.
Then photographs, harsh flash images of a knife sealed in an evidence bag, the blade stained a dark brownish-black.
The final pages weren't photographs at all.
One was a charcoal sketch, rough and heavy, the strokes dragged hard across the paper as if the hand behind them had been shaking.
It depicted a wooden bridge, low and crude, sitting over dark water that pooled beneath it like something held open.
The planks were warped and gapped. Beyond the bridge the landscape was flat and empty, the horizon so low it barely registered.
No trees. No landmarks. Just the bridge and the water and a silence that came off the paper like cold from a window.
A flyer beneath the sketch was a missing person poster. Kara Ellison. Twenty-one. Brown hair. Last seen on Route 73.
Noah sat on the basement floor with the folder open across his knees, studying the sketch, then the mugshot, then the knife.
Something felt off. He couldn't say what yet. But the pieces in front of him didn't fit together the way they should have, and the feeling that settled into his chest was one he'd learned never to ignore.