19
Conor and Joe climbed up the hill, toward the highest point on Bellevigne Island.
In the far distance, Conor saw Watch Hill shimmering across the water, almost like a mirage, a place he had merely imagined.
He felt haunted by love, as if what he and Kate had had moved into another realm, like Grace’s Ghost Girls.
Kate had done the math and said that given their ages, Suzanne could be his daughter.
But when Conor remembered details from the biggest mistake of his life, he knew that there was no way.
Even so, the truth was bad enough—he had been involved with Belinda long after they’d been next-door neighbors, and he hadn’t told Kate.
And now, he was out here with Joe, looking for leads in Belinda’s murder.
Grace was right: There was a mansion on the hill’s crest. Built of gray fieldstone, it had a portico with tall columns that were covered with vines.
Two of the front windows were broken, repaired with squares of plywood.
The steps were overgrown. Birds had built nests in the eaves.
The mortar holding stones in place was cracked.
A storm had sent a branch from a tall tree crashing onto the slate roof, sending slate tiles cascading to the ground next to the chimney.
The house looked as if it hadn’t been occupied for years.
“Is this the right place?” Joe asked doubtfully. Conor didn’t answer.
The two detectives walked around the perimeter.
Untrimmed hedges grew close to the foundation.
Curtains were drawn across most of the windows, but it was possible to look through the French doors, into what appeared to be a living room.
The furniture was covered in white sheets, and so were paintings on the walls—a practice of summer house owners, to protect upholstery and art from being damaged by sunlight and dust.
Conor and Joe continued their circuit, looking for a way in.
After seeing the scene on the boat and having Grace direct them to this mansion, after speaking about girls being “taken,” the detectives realized that timing could be critical.
Conor pictured those blood-smeared handcuffs on the boat and knew that someone could be held prisoner inside.
They rounded the house and came upon stone stairs leading down to a basement door.
Conor tried the knob. It turned, and they were inside.
Daylight slanted in through dirty windows. The cellar was damp and musty, and the air glittered with dust motes. Steep, rough wooden stairs led to the main floor; Conor followed Joe up them and stepped out into a corridor.
“What’s that smell?” Joe asked.
Conor noticed it too. It was sweet, like flowers, but more concentrated, almost oppressive.
“Perfume?” Conor asked.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Or candles?”
They moved quickly through the first floor, clearing each room before entering the next. Kitchen, dining room, living room, library, bathroom. So far, they had observed nothing suspicious, but the sweet smell grew stronger.
A wide staircase in the center hall swept up to the second floor.
Conor and Joe split up, checking rooms on each side of the upstairs hallway.
And this was another world. It didn’t seem to belong to the same house.
Everything was pristine; it felt exclusive.
Conor felt as if he had walked into a private club.
It couldn’t be more different from the dilapidated exterior and the shabby downstairs.
This reminded Conor of other aristocratic homes he’d been in.
Connecticut, where he was a detective, was full of them.
Sordid crimes didn’t care about class. The furniture was solid, antique, with a burnished glow.
An office had a carved wooden desk, red leather armchairs, and green-shaded library lamps.
There was a Windsor chair with the Yale University “Lux et Veritas” gold insignia on the back.
Bookcases were full of rows of matching red leather-bound books—they appeared to be more for show, he thought, than for reading.
The carved keyhole desk held a brass tray full of coins, pens, a tarnished silver money clip, a few loose keys—things that looked as if they’d come out of someone’s pocket. He glanced at the desktop but kept moving down the hall.
There were four bedrooms, each with queen-size beds covered with white comforters.
The last door on the hallway was locked.
Not only that, but the door appeared to be reinforced with steel.
He bent down, to see if there was a space under the door, but there was none: The reinforcement material extended all the way down to the gleaming parquet floor.
He pounded hard on the door. The sound of his hand banging on steel was barely a dull thud.
“Soundproofing,” Conor said. “Like on the boat. Someone’s in there.”
“Could be,” Joe said.
“Let’s get her out.”
They tried ramming the door, kicking it, putting their shoulders into it, but it didn’t budge.
“This is no good,” Joe said. “We’ll get the team up here.”
Conor stared at the door. Extra security plates had been installed around the door latch, so trying to jimmy the lock would be useless.
Everything Conor had seen in the rooms, and the hardware on the other doors, appeared to be old bronze, from another era.
But the Schlage lock was new and looked to be made of stainless steel or zinc.
He pictured the pile of metal things in that tray in the office.
“Got gloves?” he asked Joe. He usually had some in his jacket pocket, but he hadn’t thought he would need tactical gloves on his wedding weekend. Joe handed him a pair, and he snapped them on.
Conor moved quickly down the hall to the desk in the library.
With a gloved finger, he rummaged through the loose change.
There were several keys in the tray, but only one Schlage.
Conor took it to the locked room, inserted it into the knob, and turned.
He heard the tumblers click, and he pushed the door open.
Conor and Joe stepped inside.
The room felt royal, as if it belonged in a castle.
And it felt lived in: Air was circulating, not stale and musty like downstairs.
There were no windows open. The fresh air came from vents in the ceiling.
They saw the source of the sweet smell they had noticed downstairs: a cut glass diffuser with rods sticking up, spreading the scent of some essential oils through the room. It gave him a headache.
Crystal prisms dangled from a chandelier hanging over the large, canopied bed.
The walnut headboard was ornately carved with flowers and angels.
The white muslin canopy stirred very slightly in the moving air.
A white linen coverlet, embroidered with gold threads, had been pulled back, and the sheets were rumpled.
Conor touched the mattress to feel if it was warm. It wasn’t, but it appeared that someone had lain here recently.
The polished wood floors were covered with blue-and-white Oriental rugs. Conor noticed that they were threadbare in places—they looked very old and valuable, probably made of silk like ones he had seen in Newport with Kate. A pair of pale-blue silk-covered armchairs flanked the marble fireplace.
A large black-and-white photograph over the bed showed a lion lunging over the bed of a young girl. It was shocking and violent, a disturbing tableau. It had a sepia tinge, indicating age. There was a feeling of motion, of stop-action, as if it was a still photo from a black-and-white film.
Conor took a photo on his iPhone. He noticed he had two bars of cell service—being high on the hill gave him some reception—so he texted the picture to Kate.
It was habit, when he came upon artwork in an investigation, to ask her about it.
He stared at the screen, wondering if the picture would go through and if there would be a reply.
He couldn’t stop thinking of how she had looked at him after his confession about Belinda.
He looked at the image above the bed and realized it wasn’t a photo of an actual lion, but of a man wearing an animal disguise.
The man loomed over the sleeping girl, her blanket made of white fur.
The gauzy white canopy curtains softened the scene, illuminated by a candelabra.
The room in which he stood was identical to the room in the photograph, as if a designer had come to the mansion and re-created the old photograph.
But how old was the photo? Maybe it had just been colored to make it look vintage.
“I’ve got to say, maybe that shit is staged, but it looks like a sex crime,” Joe said, standing beside Conor to stare at the photo.
“You think the picture inspires him?” Conor asked and pointed at the unmade bed. “Someone was just here.”
“You think he brought her in on the boat, like Grace said?” Joe asked.
“Maybe,” Conor said.
They were standing by the bed and turned their attention from the photograph to the sheets.
Conor saw traces of blood at the foot of the mattress and roughly halfway down.
It could have come from wounds on someone’s ankles and wrists.
He thought of the handcuffs on the boat.
Had the blood on them come from a current victim or one of the other women Grace had seen arriving on other nights?
Joe had grabbed a Bendix mobile when his team had arrived, and he used it now to call Danica Bouchard, the senior crime scene tech, and tell her to come up to the house as soon as she finished with the boat. Conor’s phone buzzed with a text. It was from Kate. The sight of her name jolted his heart.
The message was straightforward.
The photo is a still from a film by Jean Cocteau.
Conor took the hit. True, she hadn’t ignored him, but considering what she had just typed, her brevity spoke volumes. Conor replied:
Cocteau! Wow, Kate!