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The rest of Michelle Cross’s autopsy had gone as smoothly as dissecting a once-living person could, but Leigh’s head was still reeling. Not having the toy soldiers recovered from each of the bodies match could be chalked up to a lot of variables. The killer trying to throw off the investigation, loss of the original set, environmental factors. But a difference in the amount of stab wounds between the victims from twenty years ago and now? No. Something was wrong here. The pattern wasn’t lining up, and no amount of assembling Legos would force it to make sense.
Leigh pulled into a short driveway of a cream-sided two-story with perfectly manicured lawn, a three-car garage, and a serene-looking porch complete with outdoor furniture, tulips, and architectural columns. Once upon a time, it’d been the perfect family home. A wall of boulders the size of small cars took up most of the backyard, leading into deep forest and provided endless opportunities for two pre-teen boys to crack open their heads any chance they got. A garden shed ready to fall apart at the slightest gust of wind stood sentinel in one corner of the yard, the perfect hiding place during unending games of hide-and-seek.
That was where Katherine Garrison had found her son.
As though the killer had simply delivered him home.
Boucher stepped directly in front of the car as he crossed from his patrol cruiser parked halfway into the weeds along the side of the house. She shoved her rental into Park as he met her at the driver’s side door and leveraged his weight against the base of her open window. “Took you long enough. I was about to send Highway Patrol out to search for you.”
“I needed to drop off my dry cleaning and take a shower. I got coffee and decomposition all over my clothes this morning.” The smell had soaked into her hair and skin, but the world wouldn’t wait for her to catch her breath. And neither would this investigation. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to face Katherine Garrison again, but from the text message Boucher had sent while she’d gotten acquainted with Michelle Cross’s insides, their victim had interviewed the grieving mother only one day before her death. She shouldered out of the car, forcing Boucher to take a step back.
“Anyone ever tell you, you rub people the wrong way?” The lieutenant swiped his thumb into one corner of his mouth.
“Never. Certainly not an entire town.” She didn’t wait to approach the front door with Boucher at her side. She’d been to this house before, knew the layout and the family inside. She’d always been the one to have to come get Troy from Derek’s house when her brother had conveniently forgotten he should’ve been home by the time the streetlights came on. Her knock punctuated the reality of what waited for her on the other side of the door.
The Garrisons hadn’t been accused of murdering their son. They hadn’t had to take the brunt of this town’s hatred. They were allowed to remain victims—a privilege her family had never been given—and to be supported in their grief with homemade meals from the neighbors, flowers, and a fully paid funeral for their son courtesy of thousands of dollars in donations.
There hadn’t been any money for Troy’s service. Turned out, when the breadwinner of your family was arrested and charged with murder, funeral expenses didn’t garner sympathy. By the time the lawyers had taken their pound of flesh from her father’s failed defense and the funeral director was ready to claim the remains on her family’s behalf, there wasn’t a single dime to the Brody name. Leigh had worked custodial duties in the funeral home to pay off the service until she’d graduated high school.
Movement registered from the other side of the stained-glass window set into the door.
Still, Katherine and Bill Garrison hadn’t asked for any of it. The support they’d received, the love and kindness—Leigh couldn’t imagine they would’ve chosen that over their desire to see Derek alive one more time.
She shifted away from the door, almost into Boucher, as it swung inward.
“Yes?” Katherine Garrison eyed the uniformed officer on her doorstep first before taking in Leigh. A glint of acceptance cemented her expression in place. “May I help you?”
“Katherine Garrison?” Boucher raised his badge into view. “I’m Lieutenant Boucher. This is?—”
“Leigh Brody. I know. I had a feeling you’d find yourself back here.” Katherine Garrison’s outdated, shoulder-length hairstyle accentuated the tension running down her neck. The woman had to be in her late fifties now, as evidenced by the set of her thin lips and the sallowness in her cheeks. Deep smile lines said the past twenty years hadn’t been all bad, but there was still a hardness in her eyes. Katherine stepped deeper into the house, motioning them inside. “Please, come in.”
“We won’t be more than a few minutes, Mrs. Garrison.” Boucher stepped over the threshold, Leigh close on his heels. “Just a few questions about a woman who might’ve come to see you recently. May have been asking about the death of your son.”
Where Leigh had instantly felt cold stepping back into her childhood home, this place cocooned her with a sensation of warmth and closeness. Of family. Photos stared back from the walls, all the occupants smiling. Vacations to an exotic beach, one of Katherine and her husband crossing a rope bridge above a thick forest of green. Another with the two of them, a young man—maybe sixteen or seventeen—between them. The features were distinct, familiar. Like Derek’s. A brother? She’d never known about any other siblings, but Derek had been Troy’s friend. Not hers. Then again… if the photo was recent, that meant the Garrisons had conceived another child after their son’s death.
That they’d moved on.
“Michelle Cross.” Katherine crossed her arms over her chest as she turned to face them just inside the front door. The white flower pattern of her blouse shifted under her grip around herself and contrasted beautifully with the sleeveless cut of the garment. This wasn’t the grieving mother Leigh had kept alive in memory. “I heard about what happened to her. You think her death might have something to do with her visit here?”
“Depends on the reason she came here.” Boucher pointed toward the small sitting room positioned at the front of the house, pen in hand. It looked just as Leigh remembered. A velvet green sofa, a dark oval wooden coffee table, an heirloom record player, even the flower accent chairs. The oversized painting of Jesus above the fireplace hadn’t gone anywhere either. None of it had changed aside from a few new decorative pillows. “May we?”
“Please.” Katherine took a seat in one of the accent chairs and invited them to sit on the sofa. “I’m not sure I can be of much help. Michelle and I didn’t talk long. She had questions about the investigation into my son’s, Derek’s, death. I told her it was all in the papers, but I answered her questions for maybe about half an hour. She asked for a glass of water. When I came back from the kitchen, she was gone.”
“She just left? No warning?” Leigh scanned the room for anything out of place, but despite the same furniture and décor, things changed over time. If Michelle had come here for more than an interview with a victim’s mother, it wasn’t obvious. “Why didn’t you call the station when you heard the news about Michelle’s death?”
“I figured she’d gotten what she came for.” Katherine’s thin shoulders hiked a bit higher with a shrug. “I didn’t think anything of her leaving until I’d heard about what happened from her sister this morning. She said the police would want to talk to me. So I waited for you to show up on my doorstep. You never were one to let anyone tell you who to be, Leigh. I remember you talking about being a cop when you were this high.” Katherine Garrison raised her hand above the floor. “It’s good to see you got what you wanted out of your life.”
What she wanted? Leigh didn’t know what to say to that, what to think. This wasn’t what she wanted. Hunting for her twelve-year-old brother’s killer was not what she wanted out of her life. Trying to prove her father’s innocence was not how she’d imagined spending her high school and college years. No one in their right mind would choose this. She dislodged the knot of tightness in her throat. “I assume you spoke with Michelle in this room. Do you mind if I take a look around? See if anything is missing?”
“I don’t know what would be missing, but be my guest,” Katherine said.
Boucher leaned forward on the couch out of her peripheral vision. “What kinds of questions was Michelle asking?”
“Oh, she wanted to know who was in Derek’s life at the time he died. Teachers, friends, family.” Katherine crossed one leg over the other. “I told her the police had a list from when Derek first went missing, but she didn’t want to use anything that the detective had put together. Said it might taint the investigation.”
“You’re talking about Chief Maynor, the lead detective on your son’s case at the time.” Boucher made another note in that signature notebook he carried. Always trying to work out the next piece of the puzzle, to see the next lead. But if what Chris Ellingson had said about the chief in that investigators had given a murder suspect a copy of the case file was true, Leigh feared Boucher wouldn’t find the answers he wanted. Cops like Boucher fought for their beliefs, a loyalist to the department and the community through and through. If the system he believed in had been corrupted from the inside, what would he do then?
Leigh ran her hands over an old desk clock. No dust. Not even a scratch. Everything in this room had been perfectly preserved as though Derek’s death hadn’t changed a thing.
