Chapter 32 #2
“Do you remember the color of his pajamas?” Ariel was on a trail, and Marlowe had no idea where it was going.
Henry shrugged. “Light blue shirt, maybe? He wore the same stuff for years.”
“Just a shirt? Was he sleeping in boxers?”
“I don’t know.” Henry’s right shoulder was rising, inching closer to his ear. An old habit when he was nervous.
“You don’t remember if his legs were bare or not?”
“I think he was wearing flannel pants. Like I said, I can’t be sure, but I think he was.”
“And no shoes?” Ariel asked.
“No, but he put some on,” Henry said. “And a jacket. So we could go search.”
“Right.” Ariel relaxed into her chair. “The thing is, Liam remembers it differently.”
Marlowe didn’t move an inch.
“Liam told us that Enzo opened the door as soon as you knocked. As if he had already been awake. And Liam remembers that Enzo was wearing boots. Liam could tell us the color, size, shape of the boots. And he says Enzo already had on a jacket and pants.”
Henry froze, as if the weight of the moment had physically pinned him to his chair.
Brierley had pressed Liam, hoping for something big that could crack the case wide open. But maybe Liam never had the whole picture. Maybe he had only fragments, a sliver of something that seemed so incidental it didn’t even bear mentioning.
And that tiny detail had just exposed Henry’s lie.
Ariel’s gaze sharpened. “That’s a pretty big inconsistency, Henry.”
Henry leaned back, affecting calm, but his jaw was twitching. He didn’t yell or rant. Instead, he whirled toward Marlowe and held his hands up. “They’re twisting things around. It doesn’t mean anything.”
But Ariel kept her foot on the gas. “It’s not just Liam’s statement.
We went through the old case files again.
Turns out, a piece of evidence wasn’t properly examined.
A bracelet that belonged to Nora.” She let that hang in the air.
“It was collected from her house during the initial investigation for the bloodhounds, but no one thought to DNA test it back then, since it wasn’t found at the crime scene.
So we had it examined with new technology. And guess what?”
Henry’s knuckles whitened on the edge of the counter.
“Enzo’s DNA,” Ariel said, gratified. “On the clasp.”
The bracelet? Marlowe’s mind was racing, trying to make sense of it.
She struggled to picture what it looked like.
And suddenly it came to her: a silver-embossed antique bracelet Nora had picked up at a pawnshop, on credit she’d made from trading in Frank Fisher’s sterling letter opener.
Marlowe vaguely remembered when Nora showed up wearing it the spring before she disappeared.
She remembered Henry looking askance at Nora’s newfound interest in baubles.
But Marlowe just marveled at the piece as Nora spun her wrist and told her in private where it came from.
So it hadn’t all been school supplies and other essentials.
That still didn’t account for why Enzo’s DNA was on it. Nora hadn’t been wearing it that night in June, not if it was found in her bedroom. No memories of Enzo and Nora interacting that spring surfaced. The idea felt impossible, but the words hung in the air.
“That’s …” Henry said, his voice catching. “That’s just not possible.”
“The lab says otherwise,” Ariel said without missing a beat.
Ben spoke up again, low but firm. “It’s enough for probable cause, Henry. Combined with Liam’s statement, Enzo’s odd behavior that night, and the lie you just told us about what he was wearing. That’s a pattern.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore without a lawyer present,” Henry said.
“Fair enough,” Ariel said. “We don’t really have any more questions anyway.”
“Henry.” Marlowe whispered her brother’s name. She would be furious if he’d known something all this time. If he was hiding something from her.
“You’re not talking to them without a lawyer either,” he said.
Instinctively, Marlowe looked over Henry’s shoulder at the two detectives.
“It’s fine, Marlowe, you don’t have to talk to us.” Ariel’s mouth curled up in disdain.
“We need to see him,” Ben said.
“He’s upstairs resting,” Henry snapped.
“We’ll wake him.” Ariel’s voice was cool. “We’re placing him under arrest for suspected involvement in Nora Miller’s abduction.”
Placing a hand over her chest, Marlowe opened her mouth to protest but found no words. The detectives were already moving toward the stairs.
Henry slammed his hand on the granite counter. “How dare you. You have nothing concrete—just scraps and theories!”
“Henry, why was he wearing boots?” Marlowe was ashamed of her plaintive, wailing tone. But she felt her world slipping away from her. “What did Enzo do?”
“Nothing, I swear. He didn’t do anything.” His eyes were wide with manic confidence. “I told them there was a man in the woods, I told them over and over, but they never believed me. Enzo said they never would believe me.”
“That’s just a story, Henry,” Marlowe said. “You believed it when you were young; you can’t still believe it now.”
“There’s an old house in the woods,” Henry said. “I can’t explain now, but I found it with Nate. There was a man living there the night Nora died—that man was living in the woods.”
Marlowe closed her eyes. Her brother didn’t realize how crazy he sounded.
Moments later, the detectives returned with Enzo in between them. He looked dazed but calm. His eyes met Henry’s first.
“They say I must go with them.”
Henry rushed forward. “I’ll be right behind you. It’ll be all right, we’ll get a lawyer. Don’t say a word until then.”
As they led Enzo out, Kat and Dolly burst in from the yard, voices overlapping in a chorus of questions that no one answered.
Marlowe stood frozen, watching Enzo disappear through the front door.
“You believe me, right?” Henry said. “She was here all the time—there are a million ways his DNA could have been on her bracelet. They’re just trying to make this fit. They don’t care about the truth. They only care about their careers.”
She wanted to believe him. Detectives always had a broader agenda, and solving this cold case would be a significant bargaining chip for their next career moves. But Henry didn’t seem interested in the truth anymore either; he was looking to obscure it.
The office door swung open and Stephanie burst into the hallway clutching her phone, her face pale. Constance followed with Frankie in her arms.
“The sheriff’s department showed up in Hartford,” Stephanie said. “They’re bringing in Nate for questioning.”
Marlowe heard the car door slam shut and the detectives’ cruiser idle out of the driveway. And then the room fell silent. It felt like the ground beneath the Gray House had cracked open and sent them all plummeting into endless darkness.