Chapter 40
"Jessie Maddox. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time."
Lydia set the French press on the counter and leaned against the edge, her arms folded, her expression settled into the same calm composure she'd worn during their first conversation.
The kitchen was warm and the radio played softly and the rain streaked down the window above the sink, blurring the view of the barn.
"You said you'd been working at the hospital for a long time. Twenty-seven years, right?"
"That's right."
"So you remember her?"
"I knew Jessie. We worked the same ward for a few years.
Nice woman. Quiet. It was sad what happened to her.
After she got involved with Three Pillars, I didn't see much of her.
The community pulled her away from everyone.
" She shook her head. "No one knows where she went, but a lot of people believe it was related to that community. "
"She got involved through her sister. Tabitha Smith."
"That's right."
"And she gave birth to Seraphine."
"Uh-huh." Lydia lifted her coffee and took a long sip.
"Do you know who Jessie was close to? Any friends from back then?"
Lydia shrugged. "Jessie was friendly with a lot of the nurses. Most of them have moved on or retired. I can't think of anyone who stood out."
Noah nodded. He let a beat of silence sit before changing direction.
"When we spoke last time, you said that when you passed the crash scene on Route 73 there was a police cruiser there."
"An SUV. Not a cruiser."
"That's right. I remember us having an exchange about that." He paused. "Here's the thing. The officer who was first on scene was driving a cruiser."
"I know what they said. But it was an SUV I saw. I've never wavered on that."
Noah nodded. "Were you aware at the time that the High Peaks police chief had been reported driving around town drinking?"
"Who didn't know about that?"
"He wasn't on duty that night."
"So another officer used the SUV."
Noah grimaced. "Yeah, but that's not what's in the official report."
"Seems obvious why," Lydia said. "Because if it was, people would be asking questions about the chief. I expect he made sure that was brushed under the rug."
"Right." Noah shifted in his chair. "The report has you born in the month of March. Is that right?"
"Why do you ask?"
“Oh, just that there were some discrepancies with the timeline and I wanted to make sure there weren't any others."
"Yeah. March 5th. I'm feeling it now." She smiled. The same warm, open expression she'd worn the first time.
Noah reached for his notepad to jot down the date. As he looked down at the pad, his eyes moved past it to the space just below Lydia's collar.
She was wearing a necklace. It had a thin silver chain. A pendant shaped like half a comma with a colored stone set into the center. Light green.
He kept writing. His pen moved across the notepad in shapes that weren't words. His pulse climbed but his hand stayed steady because that was the training, the instinct, the part of the job that took over when the thinking part of the brain went white.
March. March was aquamarine. Pale blue. He knew this because Ethan had sat in the cab of the Bronco two weeks ago and explained it to him. Twelve birthstones. One for each month. Garnet for January. Aquamarine for March. Peridot for August.
The stone around Lydia's neck was not aquamarine. It was not pale blue. It was light green. Peridot. August.
Fiona Spence was born in August.
Noah looked up from his notepad. "Beautiful necklace you have there."
Lydia paused. Her coffee cup stopped halfway to her mouth. Then she completed the motion and took a sip. "Oh, this? A gift from my late husband." She touched the pendant with her free hand. The gesture was casual. Almost.
"That's a birthstone, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'm pretty sure light green is August."
"Huh,” she replied. "My husband was never good at details.”
Noah looked at her. And she looked at him.
And something passed between them in that kitchen, in the space between the radio playing softly and the window framing the barn, something that both of them recognized at the same time.
The moment when a conversation stopped being a conversation and became something else.
“More coffee?”
Lydia set her cup down. Her hand moved to the counter behind her, a motion so natural that it could have been someone steadying themselves or reaching for the sugar bowl or doing any of the hundred things a person does in their own kitchen without thinking.
Noah saw it and didn't see it. His eyes were on the necklace and the green stone that belonged to a missing girl and the woman wearing it who was born in March, not August.
"Let me top you up," Lydia said. She picked up the French press and moved behind him.
The needle went into the side of his neck before he understood what was happening.
A sharp puncture just below the ear. Twenty-seven years of giving injections had taught her exactly where to place it and how deep to go.
Noah jerked forward, his hand flying to his neck, but the plunger was already depressed and the warmth was already spreading.
He spun in the chair.
Lydia shifted back about three feet behind him with an empty syringe in one hand and a revolver in the other. A gun was pointed at his chest. It was an old weapon, a .38, a gun that lived in farmhouse drawers for decades and never got cleaned but always worked.
"Don't," she said as he went for his gun. The warmth in her voice was gone. What was underneath it wasn’t cold. It was tired.
“What the hell did you just give me?”
Noah's hand was still on his neck. He could feel the puncture site, the tiny bead of blood, the warmth spreading down through his shoulder and into his chest. Not pain. Something softer than pain. Something that was already starting to blur the edges of the room.
“Don’t try to fight it,” Lydia said. "Take out your handcuffs. Set them on the table."
He stared at her. The gun didn't waver.
"Do it."
He reached for the cuffs on his belt and set them on the table. The metal clattered against the wood.
"Now your duty belt. Unbuckle it. Let the whole thing drop. Then kick it toward me."
His fingers found the buckle. The belt came loose and the weight of it pulled it to the floor, his holstered weapon hitting the boards with a heavy thud. He kicked it. It slid across the floor and stopped near her boots.
"Now put the cuffs on. Hands in front."
He picked up the cuffs and closed them around his own wrists. The ratcheting sound filled the kitchen. Click. Click. Click.
She kept the revolver on him.
“Good. Don’t try anything. I will drop you right here if I have to," she said. "But I'd rather not make a mess of my kitchen. Now move."
Noah shifted. The room tilted slightly and then steadied. Whatever she'd injected was working but it wasn't working fast. Not yet. He could still think. He could still move. But the margins were narrowing.
"Where is she? Where is Fiona Spence, Lydia?"
"Walk toward the door."
"That necklace. It’s hers."
“Yeah, I don’t know how you knew that," she said. She gestured with the revolver toward the back door. "Outside. Across the yard."
Noah moved. Through the kitchen. Through the back door and out onto the rear porch.
The rain hit him full in the face, cold and driving, and he squinted against it.
The yard stretched out in front of him, the overgrown grass beaten flat by the downpour, the fence line barely visible, the barn to the left.
And beyond the barn, across a field of scrub and thistle, a grain silo.
Concrete base. Rusted metal dome. Built fifty years ago to store feed and had been empty since the farm stopped running.
Lydia was behind him. Close enough that he could hear her breathing over the rain. The gun pressed into his lower back.
“Keep moving.”
They walked across the yard. Past the barn with its hanging doors.
Into the field where the grass was knee-high and the ground had turned to mud under the rain and Noah's boots sank with every step and his legs felt heavier than the ground could explain.
The drug was settling in now, a warmth that spread through his limbs and made his muscles feel like they belonged to someone else.
The rain ran down his face and into his eyes and he couldn't wipe it away with his wrists cuffed in front of him.
"So your son took those girls," Noah said. "Why?"
"Paul?" Lydia snorted behind him. "No. Come on, even you're smarter than that, Mr. Sutherland." She paused. "Then again, after your brothers put Lyle in prison, maybe you're not."
The field stretched ahead of them. The silo grew larger.
"It was my husband's idea. Earl. Kara Ellison was the first."
"The police SUV?"
"A means of diverting attention away from my husband. He was the first on scene that night. That girl got in without issue. I mean, aren't you going to trust an EMT at a crash site?"
"So Bob Anderson saw EMT lights through the trees.”
"Now you're thinking straight. Though I'm not sure for how long." She shoved him between the shoulder blades. "Keep moving."
Noah stumbled but stayed on his feet. The silo was fifty yards ahead. The rusted dome was dark with rain and the mud sucked at his boots with every step.
"Then the rest followed after that," Lydia said.
Her voice had shifted. Not confessional.
Not boastful. Conversational. She'd thought about this for so long that it had become ordinary.
"Earl knew the roads. Knew the dead spots.
Knew which girls were passing through the deli or the agency or the campus.
He'd often parked at the gas station between calls. He’d spot them.
Place the rag. Follow. And when the car stalled, there he was.
An EMT on a dark road. They'd climb right in. "
“Why?”