Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Sunlight beamed through the curtains, catching in Seth’s eyes.
The motel room materialized above him—the yellowing stucco, that wretched wallpaper.
He groaned as the feeling of a hangover settled in, leaving his skull pounding and his mouth as dry as sandpaper.
Feeling filthy, he reached for his reusable water bottle on the nightstand, refilled.
A damp, cool cloth was still clutched to his chest.
Oh, God.
Claire.
If the cloth wasn’t still in his hand, he might have thought he’d dreamt her up. But she’d caught him near the peak of his sickness, partially coherent and mostly nauseous, and he remembered her energy. Her light. Like an angel sitting on the edge of his bed. And she was beautiful.
But he wasn’t.
Embarrassment and shame clawed at his chest, like his skin had been ripped off for her to see all the ugly parts beneath.
His track marks, the truth he kept hidden.
All that stuff about his mom. Fuck. Even his colleagues back in New York—his friends, his partners—didn’t know how he’d felt about his mother when she was alive because he didn’t tell them.
It was his own burden to carry. Only his high school ex knew. And now Claire Dyer did too.
And this, right here, was exactly why he hated alcohol.
A beer or two, the odd glass of scotch, sure. But chugging a bottle of vodka had turned him into a faucet. His drunken brain hadn’t cared, because on some level, he liked Claire and wanted to know her. But it wasn’t supposed to go like that.
Seth swung his legs over the edge of the bed and grabbed his phone. With shaky fingers, he found her name in his texts and sent her a message:
I’m sorry for last night.
To his surprise, she replied right away:
Hey, it’s okay! How are you feeling?
A single text message could never scratch the surface of how awful he felt. He loathed himself. It was bad enough he’d nearly been weak enough to break his sobriety—but for a woman to see it, God, it was awful.
But he’d dumped enough trauma on Claire, so he went with:
Like I nearly committed a felony.
Thank you for helping me. Sorry you had to see it.
Three dots appeared, then disappeared. It happened a few times. He couldn’t tear himself from the screen.
Don’t worry, I destroyed your stash. ??
Feel better, okay?
Seth didn’t know what to say, so he went with nothing. He needed to get to work.
“Jesus, you look rough,” Pereira said.
Seth slumped past Pereira’s desk in the bullpen, the taste of his breakfast stale on his tongue. His go-to egg sandwich doused in hot sauce had never gone down so horribly. “Morning to you too, Pereira.”
“And you stink like a distillery.”
Trying to ignore her, he moved in the direction of the conference room, but Pereira grabbed onto his arm and gently tugged him toward her desk. He reluctantly spun to meet her; he was anything but proud of this.
“I’m only tellin’ you ’cause there’s some FBI chick here,” Pereira whispered, “so you might wanna wipe the look of death off your face.”
“What?”
Before Pereira could answer, Chief Wells poked her head out of her office. “Detective Winslow, there you are. My office?”
Damn it. It wasn’t like he was the first cop to turn up hungover at work, but this was different, because Seth didn’t do this. He wasn’t a drunk. Yet here he was, looking like one, smelling like one.
Too bad—this was the price.
He hadn’t had an encounter with the feds since he worked in New York, so he wasn’t sure what to expect when he dragged himself into Chief Wells’s office. A brunette woman—thirties, at most—with slicked back hair and freckles stood to greet him, wearing an all-navy pantsuit. She held out her hand.
“Detective, good to meet you. I’m Special Agent Erin Maddox.”
“Good to meet you too,” he said, shaking her hand, hoping his palm didn’t feel as clammy as he did. Chief Wells shot him a disapproving look as they all sat down.
Maddox didn’t seem concerned. “I’m sure you can guess why I’m here.”
“The tapes?” Seth answered. He didn’t want to think about them, but he had to.
With a nod, Maddox gave Wells the floor.
“I called the FBI last night,” Wells explained. “I figured this was something bigger than Fairview, but imagine my surprise when Special Agent Maddox contacted me and told me the description of the Ellen Harrison case matched a serial rapist they’ve been hunting for years.”
Seth had only glanced at a few of the tapes, but if each one had a unique victim, then Norman Stanfield must have assaulted at least twenty women. His skin crawled, worms wriggling beneath. Sick fucker.
“Seven years, in fact,” Maddox said. “I’ve been working on this case since I was a rookie.
We picked up on reports of very similar rapes in small towns around the border of Illinois and Iowa.
Women reported being kidnapped and taken to a second location, sometimes hours away.
Admittedly, we should’ve looked harder at Missouri too, but Ellen Harrison’s case slipped by us.
” Maddox shifted her weight. “I’m not sure what prompted Stanfield to risk attacking a woman from his own hometown, but it was obviously a mistake he never made again.
We think she might have been his first. This is the kind of evidence you can only dream of finding. Really, really good work, Detective.”
The praise made him uncomfortable, especially after how hard he’d spiraled last night. “It was luck, mostly. Chief Wells got me into the house and told me about the basement. Stanfield reacted badly—gave us reasons to arrest him. Made it easy to get warrants before he could destroy the evidence.”
“Like I said, good work. We are about to get justice for a lot of women.”
He exchanged a look with Wells. She remained quiet, clasping her hands on her desk. This wouldn’t be an easy blow for her to recover from, both personally and professionally.
“Anyway, as for Stanfield’s connection to your homicide case,” Maddox went on, “we’ll be taking him into federal custody.
We’ve identified several victims we already knew about.
One thing I’ll say is, they’re all still alive.
It can’t be ruled out until we establish an alibi for the nights of your murders, but…
killing doesn’t seem to be this guy’s MO.
He likes leaving his victims with the memories of what he’s done to them. ”
“There were a lot of things about Stanfield that didn’t line up,” Seth said. “Still, I’m glad we looked into him.”
“I’m glad you did too. Trust me, he’ll never see the light of day again.”
It was hard to relish in the glow of justice when a headache threatened to split his skull in two. But this was the best outcome. Stanfield would rot. And Seth could refocus on the man who actually killed Eliza Johnson and Kelsey Campbell.
Whoever he might be, he thought grimly. Stanfield had been his strongest lead yet, and now he was back to nothing.
Maddox stood up, so Seth did too, shaking her hand once more. “I’ll need to collect official statements from both of you before we can take Stanfield, so I’ll go get the paperwork in order.”
She shook hands with Wells before leaving the office. Seth stayed behind. Once they were alone, Wells’s fingers found her necklace again.
“You all right?” he asked.
She snapped to him, dazed. “I will be. It’s a lot to sit with. My own friend, my own town… hard not to feel like I let this happen.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I appreciate that, Detective, but you and I both know that’s not true. It makes me wonder what else I’ve turned a blind eye to over the years. Once this thing with this damn killer is solved, I’ll be stepping down as chief. It’s high time I took that retirement.”
Cheering people up wasn’t his specialty, and besides, if he were in her position, he’d blame himself too.
It made him think about last night again, when he’d told Claire about his mom, about the guilt he carried over her death.
If he had known then what he knew now, he could’ve sniffed it out. He could’ve warned her.
The thought was illogical, but that didn’t stop it from feeling real.
It reminded him about another part of last night, the reason Claire went to his room in the first place. They hadn’t just talked about his mother—they’d talked about hers too. She’d wanted to tell him something. Which meant she must have found something out.
So when he left Chief Wells’s office, he opened his text messages with Claire again.
You wanted to tell me something about your mom, right? What was it?
She read it. But this time, she didn’t reply.
The Dyer farm was massive—two barns, a stable, a cornfield that stretched deep into the horizon, still leaving room for the two-story farmhouse at the front, equipped with clapboard siding and a wrap-around porch made of natural wood.
So, this was where Claire had grown up. It couldn’t be more different from Seth’s tiny apartment in Brooklyn.
He’d passed off enough weird things since he first got the call on the tip line. Claire hadn’t answered him yet, but he didn’t want to wait anymore.
That brought him here.
In the backyard, bathed in afternoon light, he found Ron crouched beside the wall of a barn with a padlock on it, wearing overalls. Seth had met Claire’s sister on the porch, and she’d told him to head around back to see her dad. His massive body blocked whatever he was doing.
“Hey, Ron,” Seth said.
“Detective.” Ron barely looked back at him. “Gimme a sec here.”
There was a mewing sound. Ron tossed something small and furry onto the grass beside him, limp. Seth dared a step closer. He recoiled, his fear confirmed.
Kittens. And they weren’t moving.
“Tell me you didn’t kill those,” Seth said.
Ron laughed over his shoulder. “You look at dead bodies all day and this is too much for ya?”
Seth loomed over Ron as he dug his hand into a pit beneath the wall of the barn. More mewing sounds. Seth watched in horror as Ron yanked another furry kitten out from beneath the barn.
“Found another one,” he muttered.