Chapter 32
The briefing room at High Peaks Police Department had been rearranged to accommodate the press.
Folding chairs in tight rows. Camera tripods lining the back wall.
Microphones clustered on the podium like a bouquet nobody wanted.
The room was full and the noise was the hum of a media pack that smelled blood and closure in equal measure.
Noah stood against the side wall with his arms folded, watching.
McKenzie was beside him. Callie was absent, which was probably for the best. Across the room, Maddie Sutherland sat in the front row with her legal pad, her pen uncapped, ready to intervene if Ray said anything the DA's office would need to walk back.
Ray stepped to the podium. He'd put on a fresh shirt and his badge was polished and he looked, for the first time in days, like a man who believed the worst was behind him.
"Derek Hollis was identified early in this investigation as a person of interest. Through the dedicated efforts of our officers and investigators, he is now in custody.
Evidence recovered at the scene has been processed and formal charges are being prepared.
" He paused and gripped both sides of the podium.
"What matters most is the threat to our community has been removed.
The people of High Peaks can feel safe again. "
The crowd applauded. Not all of them. The reporters didn't. But the civilians who had come, the parents, the neighbors, the people who had been locking their doors and checking their daughters' locations for the past two weeks, they clapped with the desperate relief of people who needed this to be true.
"Any questions?"
The hands went up. The questions came fast. Ray fielded them the way he fielded everything, steady, measured, giving enough without giving too much.
Noah watched him and thought about how good his brother was at this, at standing behind a podium and making order out of chaos, at turning an investigation full of holes into a narrative that held together long enough for the cameras to get their footage and the town to exhale.
Noah was beginning to allow himself to think less about the bodies and more about Ethan.
The evidence against Hollis was substantial.
The college IDs. The rags. The chloroform.
Ruby's body on the same property. Seraphine's identification.
It stacked up. Maybe not perfectly, maybe not without questions, but it stacked up in the way that cases did when the right person was in the room.
And after weeks of chasing suspects who turned out to be predators but not killers, the weight of wanting this to be over was pressing down on him harder than he wanted to admit.
Noah stepped out of the briefing room into the corridor and pulled out his phone. The noise from the press conference faded behind the closed door. He scrolled to Ethan's number and was about to dial when a voice stopped him.
"Mr. Sutherland."
He looked up. Mark Spence stood in the corridor, his hands in his jacket pockets, his face carrying a worn expression.
"Mr. Spence."
"Do you have a moment?"
"Of course," Noah said, pocketing the phone. He made a mental note to call Ethan after. They stepped into an empty office down the hall. Noah closed the door.
"I understand High Peaks believes they have their man," Spence said. "That Hollis is responsible."
"The evidence is being processed."
"But you never found Fiona. Or her college ID."
"No. Hailey Benton hasn't been located either."
Spence shifted his weight. He looked at the floor, then at Noah. "As much as I know that people will lie to protect themselves. And maybe I'm completely wrong here. But..."
"What is it?"
"It's just that I've known Derek for many years. Sure, he's a bit of a womanizer, but I never saw him be anything but respectful toward my daughter. And I never saw Fiona act strange around him."
"What are you trying to say?"
"What if he wasn't responsible for Fiona? What if it was Samuel Bridger? Or what if Fiona is still out there? Or she stepped off the trail and got lost in the forest?"
"Search parties were sent out."
"But they're known to not always be accurate. In the case of Kara Ellison, they never found her either."
Noah exhaled. He didn't want to go there.
There was enough muddying the water with Carter Lyle saying he hadn't killed Kara.
But he couldn't dismiss Spence either. The man was standing in front of him asking the same question Noah couldn't stop asking himself.
Sure, there was a chance Bridger had been behind the disappearance of Hailey and Fiona.
But as a man with nothing left to lose, standing on a bridge with a gun, Noah had a sense that Samuel had been telling the truth about the other girls. Just not about Hailey.
"I mean, when I went through that whole thing with Fiona's mother leaving," Spence continued, "Derek came back early from his work trip to help out."
"His work trip?"
"He was overseas. In Europe. Doing WWOOFing."
"WWOOFing?"
"World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. You live on people's properties and do work for them. Farms, vineyards, that sort of thing. I think that's what attracted him to the Three Pillar Community in the first place. He's always been a bit of a vagabond. Holding down multiple jobs."
Noah felt something shift. The same feeling he got when a thread he hadn't noticed caught the light. "How long was he away? And when?"
"I don't know exactly. Maybe a year? About five years ago."
"So he wasn't here five years ago?"
"No."
Noah's mind was already spinning. The ME had said the bodies in the bog had been killed over a span of four to six years.
If what Spence was saying was true, if they could verify it, that would place Derek Hollis out of the country during the period when at least some of those women were being taken and killed.
"Mr. Spence, do you have any documentation of that? Emails, postcards, anything that shows when he left and when he came back?"
"I might have something at home. He sent me a few photos from over there. I could check."
"I'd appreciate that."
Spence nodded and left. Noah stood in the empty office listening to the muffled sound of the press conference still running down the hall.
Ray was in there telling the town they could sleep safely tonight.
And Noah was standing in a side room with a piece of information that might blow the whole thing apart.
Callie's apartment was on the fourth floor of a new build on the west side of town. Noah climbed the stairs and knocked. No answer. He knocked again.
"Callie. Hey. It's Noah. I know you're in there. Your car is outside."
He heard the lock turn. The door cracked open and Callie walked away without a word, leaving it for him to follow. He stepped inside and looked around.
The place was in a state. Boxes pulled from closets. Clothes draped over furniture. Kitchen drawers open. It looked like someone had turned the apartment over searching for something, except the something was everywhere and nowhere and the searching hadn't produced any answers.
"Were you robbed?" he asked.
Callie sank into a chair in the living room with a glass of wine. He glanced at the bottle on the side table. Nearly empty. She was still in the clothes she'd worn to the scene.
"You know, for the longest time I have wanted to be a detective," she said. "I watched from the sidelines thinking I can do that. And the Adirondack County Sheriff's Office has given me more slack than most would get."
"That's small-town living for you. It's called supply and demand, Thorne," Noah said, sitting down across from her. "And High Peaks has more demand than we can supply."
She took a drink. "But I have to wonder now. Can I do it? Or have I just been deluding myself?"
Noah studied her, then chuckled. "You know that doesn't change even after you've been doing it for years, right?"
She glanced at him. "Seriously?"
"Oh yeah. I mean, maybe others look on and think I just flow with this, but half the time I'm flying by the seat of my pants, hoping to catch a break.
If I get one aha moment, I'm doing well.
The rest is just hard graft. Connecting the dots.
Second-guessing yourself when you stare at a parent and can't guarantee you'll get closure for them. "
"So why do you keep doing it?"
"Beyond the fact that I'm a Sutherland and my father would say it's in our blood?
" He snorted. "Madness? A sucker for punishment?
Or maybe it's an addiction. The thrill of the chase.
A sliver of hope that if I just follow the thread long enough, it'll lead me to the answers I've been searching for.
" He glanced at her and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
Callie nodded slowly. She took another sip and set the glass down. "How did the interview with Seraphine go?"
"She's not psychic. Those sketches she handed in were an attempt to get the cops to take seriously the disappearance of her mother fifteen years earlier.
She drew the sketch figuring the police would investigate.
She said she was a kid inside a community that controlled everything.
She couldn't walk into a police station and say her mother was murdered and her body could be in Bloomingdale Bog.
She didn't have solid proof. But with Kara missing at the time, she thought they might take it seriously if the sketch was connected to a live case.
" Noah rubbed his hands across his lap. "At some point, the same person who told her about the bog also told her that Derek Hollis could be responsible. "
"But her mother's body wasn't there."
"It was sixteen years ago. A lot longer than the other victims. Could have disintegrated."
"So she pointed to Hollis?"
"Yeah. But that's not going to hold up. She was a child when her mother went missing. Without the person who told her, we have nothing."
"She didn't give a name?"
"Can't remember."
"But she can remember the rest."
"Selective memory, I guess. I pushed her but the therapist wouldn’t have it.
Her therapist said it's related to her trauma.
She's blocked out a lot of memories of her time in the Three Pillar Community.
A lot of young women were assaulted." He took a deep breath.
"Anyway, I spoke with Mark Spence. He's known Derek for a long time.
Said Derek wasn't even in the country about five years ago. He was working in Europe for a year."
Callie straightened in her chair. "So he's not responsible for all the bog murders."
"Still verifying that. And Seraphine might have just been trying to get back at Tabitha."
"Right. Being the girlfriend and sister of her mother." Callie frowned. "Does Ray know?"
"Not yet."
"But if Ray has Derek. And all that evidence..."
Noah nodded. "It would create reasonable doubt and potentially get Carter Lyle a stay on his execution."
"And if Derek lied to Spence?"
"Then we might be helping a guilty man." Noah ran a hand over his head. "Regardless, Ray and many others believe Lyle is guilty of the murder of Jenny Walters because of his criminal history."
"And what does Lyle say?"
"He says he didn't do it."
"That's what every inmate says."
"Like I said. Detective work is maddening."
Callie finally cracked a smile. The first one he'd seen from her since the root cellar.
Noah looked across the room at a stack of boxes near the door. Taped shut. Labels written in a man's handwriting. "Those Jake's?"
"Yeah."
"What the hell is in all that?"
"Climbing gear. Hiking equipment. You name it."
"You miss him?"
"Do you miss Lena?" She said it fast, without thinking, and the moment it left her mouth she closed her eyes. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"It's okay."
A few tears ran down her cheek. She wiped them with the back of her hand and then stopped trying to hide them.
Noah reached over to the side table, grabbed a handful of tissues, and handed them to her. "You want me to stay?"
"No. I'm good."
"You sure?"
She nodded.
Noah looked at her closely. Then he got up. "Call me if you need anything."
She walked him to the door and opened it. He stepped into the hallway and turned back.
"For what it's worth, Thorne. You can do this. You already are."
She nodded once and closed the door. Noah stood in the hallway for a moment, then headed down the stairs and out into the evening.