Chapter 3
A moan escapes my lips, an involuntary sound like something from a wounded animal.
“No,” I protest. “That’s not true, and you can’t possibly believe it.”
“I didn’t want to believe it, Bree, I swear,” Logan says. “But it seems like it might be credible. You need to look at this letter—it was meant for both of us.”
He tugs a brown leather wallet from his back pocket and withdraws a folded piece of white paper from where the bills are stored.
Once he’s opened the letter, he slides it across the table to me.
I see right away that the letterhead is for a law firm, but not one I recognize, and the date at the top is eight days ago.
I take a ragged breath and start to read.
Dear Ms. Winter and Mr. Chase:
I’m sorry to have to insert myself in your life again, but there’s some information I need to pass along to you.
As you recall, I was the lawyer who represented Calvin Ruck at his trial in Plattsburgh.
He and I had not been in touch in recent years—in fact, I’m no longer with the public defender’s office—but he reached out to me a short time ago.
He informed me that he had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, had only a short time to live, and wanted me to come to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora so that he could pass along critical information.
During my visit to Dannemora, he finally admitted to murdering the two women he’d been convicted of killing in Plattsburgh, Sailor Abbott and Amanda Kline, and he also claimed to have killed two other female college students, one from Ohio and another from Pennsylvania, who both have been missing for close to a decade.
At his request, I immediately shared this information with the authorities in all three states involved, and included where Ruck claimed the remains of the missing women could be found.
He refused to speak to the police directly.
During our meeting, Ruck also stated—vehemently—that though he had been in the Cartersville area at the time of your daughter’s death, he was never in Pebble Creek Park and didn’t murder her.
Since he was forthcoming about the other homicides, it’s possible he was telling the truth in this case, though the police will draw their own conclusions.
I am sorry for whatever pain and upheaval this causes in your life, but I felt it was essential for you to know.
Sincerely,
David Schmidt
By the time I finish reading, I have the bitter taste of bile in my throat. I push the letter away and snicker, another sound that escapes of its own volition.
“Ruck’s a fucking liar,” I exclaim. “He said when he was arrested that he never murdered anyone, but he had. He claimed he wasn’t near Cartersville, but his cell phone showed otherwise. And now he’s treating us to one more appalling lie.”
“That was my first thought, too,” Logan says, “but I called Schmidt as soon as I got this, and I have a bit more information for us to go on. The police in Ohio and Pennsylvania have now uncovered the remains of the two women, using the details Ruck provided. One girl had been a student at the University of Akron, the other at the University of Pittsburgh, and they disappeared within months of each other—during a time, it turns out, Ruck was living in Ohio. The campuses are only a couple of hours apart, but since they’re in two different states, authorities never connected the cases. ”
“Okay, so that part’s true,” I scoff. “That doesn’t mean the rest is.”
“But why would Ruck confess to four murders, including two previously unknown ones, but deny responsibility for one he’d already been accused of?”
I shake my head in disbelief at Logan’s naivete—over a madman who smashed our daughter in the back of the head; ripped her clothes apart, leaving her pants at her ankles; and then strangled her to death.
“Because he’s a sadist, and he probably wanted to have some fun torturing us before he died,” I exclaim. “Remember that horrible way he used to stare at me during the trial?”
The memory alone is enough to sicken me: Ruck, sitting in his rumpled brown suit at the defense table, would sometimes turn his head ever so slightly and try to make eye contact with me and the two other mothers, letting his lips form the hint of a bloodcurdling smile.
“I know. It’s just—”
“And it doesn’t even compute. We’re supposed to accept that a serial killer with the same MO used to kill Mel was staying near Cartersville for over a week, but that he isn’t the one responsible for her death.” Blood rushes to my head. “No, I’m not buying it for a second.”
Logan reaches across the table and lays a hand over mine. My breath catches. It’s been a whole year longer than seven since we were physically intimate, and the feel of his skin is jarring.
“Bree, I’m so sorry to upset you,” he says gently. “But I felt I needed to let you know all this. And that’s the real reason I’ve come. I wasn’t planning to head to BA until after the reception, but I decided to move up the trip and tell you this in person.”
My hand, the one under his, feels an urge to twitch, and I let it. Logan clearly notices and pulls his own hand away. I know he was just being thoughtful, but I don’t want him touching me.
“Thank you, I appreciate your efforts,” I say, softening my tone. I surely can’t blame him for this brand-new nightmare. “And I know it isn’t easy for you, either.”
He lifts a shoulder in a half shrug. “Nope. But I’ve had a few days to process things—and to be honest, the trip here helped.”
Of course. Logan, a medalist in cross-country running during both high school and college, did marathons during most of our marriage, and for him, motion was always a kind of balm when life got crazy.
And he needed it more than ever after Mel died.
At first, we were weirdly in sync, like two people trapped in one of those horrifying bullet rides at a carnival.
But while I soon found myself sucked into a sinkhole of depression, totally immobilized, he became a gushing fire hose of grief and fury—flailing around the apartment, jogging endless miles a day, always desperately trying to stay busy. To say nothing of fucking his employee.
His drive to set up the scholarships in Mel’s name has seemed like the last gasp of all that frantic forward motion.
Resting my elbows on the table, I massage my forehead roughly with my fingertips.
I’m flooded with so many emotions right now—exasperation, rage, sadness, confusion, as well as discombobulation from having my former husband sitting across from me—that I can hardly sort them apart or light on one for long.
I have no clue how to handle any of this.
“What are you going to do?” I ask finally.
Logan lifts both his shoulders this time and then glances quickly at his watch.
“Hit the road, I guess. The hotel I booked is in Punta del Este, which according to GPS, is only forty minutes from here.”
“When do you fly back?”
“Tomorrow tonight around nine. I paid for an extra night at the hotel so I could hang there during the day.”
I make a nearly instant decision, not giving myself time to debate it.
“You should stay here tonight, Logan,” I say. “It’s offseason, which means the roads will be deserted at this hour. If you have any kind of car trouble, you’ll never find anyone to help, and even if you did, they wouldn’t speak any English.”
That’s not an exaggeration. Though I don’t relish the idea of him here in my home for a night—with Bas away, no less—it’s really not wise for him to be driving at this hour.
“Thank you, but it’s too much to expect, Bree,” Logan says. “Really.”
“It’s not a problem. We have a guest room with its own bath at the other end of the house.”
His shoulders sag a little, as if in relief. “If you’re sure it’s okay, I’ll gladly accept. I didn’t sleep well last night, thinking of having to lay all this on you, and I’m pretty fried.”
“Okay, then. But that’s not what I meant before. What are you going to do about the letter?”
“You want to hear tonight?”
“Of course I want to hear,” I snap, then quickly lift my hands, palms forward, as an apology.
He nods and takes another swig of wine before speaking.
“I called the state police right before I came down here. Tim Caputo, the guy we dealt with the most, has retired, but the younger detective, Brian Halligan, is still there, and he’d already spoken to David Schmidt.
And unless he was just blowing smoke at me, the situation has his full attention.
He’s going to meet with me when I’m in Cartersville for the reception. ”
“Will he make an attempt to speak to Ruck, despite the odds?”
Logan’s expression turns even grimmer. “Ruck is dead. He died five days after Schmidt went to see him.”
The news jolts me even more than I would have thought. I suppose I should be elated that the universe is rid of him, but this means Ruck, thirty-eight at the time of his arrest, won’t spend decades rotting in Dannemora.
“So now what?” I ask.
“Halligan plans to comb through the New York State files again and also take a look at the files from Ohio and Pennsylvania. As of now, he’s betting that Ruck was yanking our chain, just like you said, but he wants to review everything and see if something doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t make sense how?”
“He wants to compare Mel’s file to the two new ones and also see if the similarities between her case and the Plattsburgh ones were less remarkable than the cops thought at the time.”
That’s ridiculous, I think. The Plattsburgh college student Ruck killed first, Sailor Abbott, was struck on the head with something hammer-like and repeatedly strangled, just like Mel was, and that was exactly what happened to Amanda Kline, murdered three weeks after Mel.
“Those similarities seemed pretty damn remarkable at the time,” I say. “Are we supposed to now believe it was all a coincidence?”
“Not necessarily.”