Chapter 30
THIRTY
Seth unpinned the last photo from the board—Eliza Johnson’s yearbook photo—and took a moment to stare at it.
Before all the chaos, it was Eliza who had first brought him to this town, Eliza who he’d first wanted justice for.
It was hard to feel satisfied when the story behind her murder felt like it was still only half-written.
It’d been over a week since he’d first entered this room, fully convinced he’d find someone with a personal grudge against Eliza, working against Haylock’s theory that a drifter killed her.
In the end, they were both right in their own ways.
There had been a personal element to the crime, just not against Eliza herself.
And Trevor Sloane had, in a way, been a drifter.
Then again, maybe Haylock knew who he was looking for all along.
Seth would never know unless Ron Dyer confessed.
And that irked him to his soul.
He’d expected this case would be a new experience, but he hadn’t expected it to affect him the way it did.
He definitely hadn’t expected Claire. Or his feelings for her.
His feelings that now felt so validated, they’d be impossible to ignore moving forward.
He couldn’t imagine it ever being that good with anyone else.
He didn’t want to find out.
As he tucked the photo of Eliza into a case box, a flare of evening light through the blinds created a line across the conference room table, where everything he’d been working on was now neatly put away.
He reminded himself there was no reason to be melancholy; this wasn’t over yet. It was just over for now.
And he’d get to see Claire again before he left. He’d have another chance to convince her to handle this thing with her father another way.
Someone knocked at the door, and Seth looked up to see Chief Wells. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. “That’s the last interview finished up.”
“You talked to Clementine?” He’d tried to visit her earlier, but she’d been asleep. Ron wasn’t there, but Marty was, so he’d interviewed him instead.
“I did,” Wells said. “She’s doing well. Going home today, apparently, providing Ron supplies some at-home care.
She said she was making sweet tea in her kitchen when she heard a sound, and by the time she realized Trevor had broken into the sliding door, it was too late.
She tried to fight him off, but he injected and subdued her.
She doesn’t remember anything concrete after that. ”
“What about Trevor himself? Did she elaborate on the history at all?”
“Her story’s more or less the same as everyone else’s. Trevor used to work on the farm, on and off for years till he went away when he was sixteen. Clementine never heard anything about him after that, but she remembers being friends with him when they were kids.”
“So none of them knew about Belleville. Why would Ron not tell anyone?”
“Maybe they never asked. It doesn’t seem like anyone was particularly fond of Trevor. He was sort of invisible, by the sounds of it. As far as we can see, none of them had any reason to think he’d come back to Fairview or do something like this.”
Which lined up with what the Sloanes had to say too.
Seth had tracked them down earlier and went to visit their house on the countryside.
They were a kind couple in their sixties and were still foster parents.
They were open with as much as they could remember about Trevor.
He was a sensitive, quiet boy who adored Ron’s farm, but suffered from night terrors.
They didn’t foster children over the age of thirteen, so Ron took Trevor in at that age and kept him. They’d lost touch after that.
Everything lined up. Yet Seth still felt it wasn’t over.
He crossed his arms and shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Trevor was convinced Ron knew it was him.”
“Trevor was also convinced he was accomplishing something by senselessly killing three women he didn’t even know.”
True. But: “How could Ron have this kid with him on his farm for so many years, and people barely even knew, let alone questioned it? He never filled out any legal adoption papers. I can’t even figure out where Trevor went to school after the age of thirteen.
It’s like no one was looking for this kid. ”
“It’s a sad story, no one can deny that.
I’ve got some moral quandaries of my own that Ron needs to answer for.
That said, we still can’t verify Trevor’s claims about him.
Especially about Celine. Forensics found blood samples in the van—Eliza and Kelsey’s, no doubt—but it’ll be a few days before they can check the cabin.
I don’t expect to find any evidence Celine’s body was ever there, but if we do, I’ll personally let you know. ”
“All right. Thanks.”
“For what it’s worth, I do think Claire’s claims are worth looking into, but you know as well as I do that if Ron’s been up to no good, he’ll have moved all the evidence. I might be looking at a long game here.”
“If you need help, you know where I’ll be.”
“Thank you. And I do appreciate all your hard work, Detective. But for now, you are released of your burdens here.”
Burden. Claire had used that word last night.
“I don’t want to be in your life as some burden or some victim, Seth.”
Seth’s fingers twitched, and he stretched out his hands. Chief Wells looked at him curiously, like she sensed he had more to say. He bit his tongue.
God, what a mess he’d gotten himself into.
Seth waited until after six p.m. for Claire to text him back, but she never did.
They hadn’t set an exact time to meet, he realized, but she knew he had to leave tonight and they’d agreed to see each other at some point.
When he’d tried calling her, it went to voicemail.
As the evening stretched longer and he’d finished packing at the motel, he couldn’t sit around and wait, so he went looking for her.
First, the hospital. She wasn’t there. Neither was Clementine—as Wells had said, she’d been cleared to go home.
That brought him here, getting out of his car outside Claire’s unit in Sunny Stone Trailer Park.
Dillon’s car was gone. Even closer to seven, when the shadows were long and the sunlight filtered through the trees, the July heat didn’t let up.
Seth’s growing anxiety only made him sweat more beneath his dark gray shirt.
He puffed it out to cool himself as he jogged up the porch to Claire’s trailer and knocked.
He waited.
And waited.
No response.
“Yep, I knew the day would come,” a grainy voice said, and Seth turned to see Claire’s neighbor, the woman in the pink tracksuit he’d talked to last week. Glenda. She leaned her elbows over the white picket fence.
“Sorry?” he asked.
“Oh, I assumed you’d heard! That Dillon finally dropped down on one knee and asked beautiful young Claire to marry ’im. Young love, it’s truly somethin’ else, darlin’.”
His stomach sank. He jogged down and met Glenda by the fence. “I’m sorry… what? You saw this happen?”
“I didn’t see the proposal myself, but Ron was here helpin’ ’em celebrate, and he told me. Never seen ’im happier.” Glenda flashed a gummy smile.
But Seth had gone cold. “Do you know where they are now?”
“No, honey, they drove off. Why, somethin’ the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. I’ve got some lemonade inside if you need some sugar.”
He couldn’t look at her, his thoughts tripping over themselves. “No, thank you, ma’am. I have to go.”
Seth rushed back to his car and trapped himself inside the heat, but didn’t turn it on. Outside, Glenda limped back over to her garden, where she kept tending to her flowers. His hands were shaky as he took out his phone.
He called Claire.
Voicemail.
Then called her again.
This time, it rang and rang and rang, injecting some hope into his rapidly beating heart, but it ended up hitting her voicemail anyway.
“Shit,” he hissed. He clenched his fist and resisted lashing out at the steering wheel. There was only one reason this would happen, and it definitely did not involve Claire getting engaged to Dillon.
No, Ron had something to do with this.
Seth would bet money on it.
He went to turn on the car, to drive straight to Ron Dyer’s house, when his phone buzzed in his hand. A text from Claire.
Dillon asked me to marry him, and I said yes. I’m sorry. This is goodbye. Don’t contact me again.
What. The. Fuck.
No. This was bullshit. Absolute bullshit.
Claire would not do this. Especially after what she’d told him last night. No, her father, Dillon, somebody did something to her.
Take a breath. He had to collect himself, to not make any rash decisions. One wrong move could compromise everything. He had to do this right.
Please forgive me, Claire.
He dialed Chief Wells’s number.