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“Yes. I got a feeling Michelle was trying to prove the police had it all wrong.” The evenness with which Katherine Garrison had kept her voice cut sharp. Same as everything else in this town. Sharp.
Dread spread black and greasy through Leigh’s chest. The wind kicked up through the window overlooking the driveway. The clouds seemed closer. Darker. Denser. “Do you believe Detective Maynor and Lebanon PD did everything they could to find the truth about what happened to Derek?”
“Brody.” Boucher might believe in the system. Hell, Leigh must’ve agreed with part of it considering the path her life had taken and where it’d led her, but something was wrong in this case. Not only had the detectives arrested the wrong man for two murders but they’d compromised the investigation by handing over the case file to a suspect.
Her heart shoved into her throat. Shit. When had she started believing a suspected killer over evidence?
Patience—and a bit of placating—filtered across Katherine Garrison’s face. She stood, sweeping invisible lines from her blouse and skirt. Her heels tipped her forward a bit, at the ready. “I know how you’re feeling, Leigh. I know you don’t think any of this is fair. I didn’t either. You want someone to blame. For a long time, the hurt was so bad I wasn’t sure if I could keep going. I understood why your mother did what she did, and I’m sorry I couldn’t help her carry that pain, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned since Derek died, it’s that sooner or later, we have to take charge of our own happiness. We have to write our own narrative. Otherwise, we’ll always be stuck, and isn’t that just a waste?”
Leigh’s laugh sounded like an ugly little noise in her head. Immature and desperate.
“I noticed you don’t have any photos of Derek in here. None hung on the wall either, but there are new ones. With a young man I assume is your youngest son.” She circled a pointed finger around the room. “Was that your way of taking charge of your happiness? To pretend Derek never existed? To replace him?”
Boucher shot to his feet. “Brody, you’re out of line.”
“It’s okay, Lieutenant. She’s still angry. I was, too.” But Katherine Garrison didn’t even flinch. “No, Leigh. I don’t pretend my son never existed. I just choose to not let the reminders he’s not here ruin the rest of my life.” Katherine crossed the room to one of the new photos positioned over the fireplace. She took it down from its perch. “That’s why I’ve forgiven the man who did those awful things to my son. All that grief, all that rage—it eats you up inside until you don’t recognize the person in the mirror. It changes you. For the worse. I couldn’t keep doing that to my husband. I couldn’t have even imagined having another boy after Derek if I’d let myself sit in that darkness. Isn’t that sad?” Just as fluidly, she set the photo back. “I trust you’ll get there. Someday.”
Forgiveness. Who in their right mind could forgive the man who’d taken a piece of her family away? A child? How did that help the next victim? How did that garner justice for the boys who’d lost their lives? Troy’s death, her mother’s suicide, her father’s arrest—it’d all given Leigh purpose. Direction. Drive. It’d led her across the country, into the FBI, and now into the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. She’d used that pain to save countless lives and do something good with her life to counter all the bad, all the hate. But the Garrisons, they’d rather hide like the rest of this town. Pretend their small community hadn’t been forced to see how bad the world could really be outside the bubble they’d created. Nothing but pure vitriol percolated on her tongue. Katherine Garrison was accusing her of grieving wrong. Trying to convince her that she should turn the other cheek, let it all go, and she’d be… happy.
That wasn’t how the world worked.
“Just like that?” Boucher’s disbelief cut through her intention. He shoved to his feet, doing that thing where he took in an entire room instead of looking at the person he spoke to as a mountain of tension rolled off him in waves. “A man stabs your son that many times, tortures him for hours, cuts off his lips, and leaves his body in your own backyard, and you forgive him without even knowing his face?”
“I did know his face. He was one of mine and my husband’s closest friends.” Katherine blanched as though she’d been physically struck. “Do you have children, Lieutenant?”
“A boy. Ten.” Boucher’s answer was more growl than anything else. Defensive.
The lieutenant had a son. Leigh hadn’t known that.
Katherine Garrison closed the distance between them and set one hand against Boucher’s chest. Over his heart. “If your son died as horrifically and painfully as mine had, I’d imagine he’d want you to live the rest of your life to the fullest. To find a way to be happy without him.”
Boucher locked those unreadable eyes on the last woman who’d seen Michelle Cross alive. The small muscles in his jaw worked to get free. “If my son died as horrifically and painfully as yours had, Mrs. Garrison, I’d tear apart the son of a bitch responsible with everything I had left.” Her partner took a step free of Katherine Garrison’s touch. “Pretty sure that would make me happy.”
ELEVEN
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Friday, March 12
6:00 p.m.
It’d been a mistake setting foot in Katherine Garrison’s home.
Leigh was still vibrating. All those memories of that little boy, shoved into the back of his mother’s mind. Kept secret. Out of sight. What was it about this town that made people think ignoring the hard truths would produce a better life? That if they closed their eyes, the monsters weren’t really there? That they could be happy?
The old family couch that’d gotten more use than any other piece of furniture in the house creaked beneath her weight as she spread Gresham Schmidt’s autopsy report—courtesy of Dr. Jennings—in front of her across the beaten coffee table. There was a corner missing from the family heirloom from when she’d tried to do a handstand in the living room. Her foot had slammed down and taken a chunk out of the antique. Not to mention she’d broken her big toe. There hadn’t been any Xena: Warrior Princess marathons allowed for at least a month after that. She traced the break with the tip of her finger. Funny how random moments could turn into the biggest memories.
Diagrams inside the report sharpened. Gresham Schmidt had been stabbed twenty-two times, just as Dr. Jennings had recalled. Same as Michelle Cross. Physical injuries and identification marks had been noted in the diagram of the adult male outline, right down to his circumcision. Every stab wound, every cut had been accounted for. An entire life detailed in scars, distinguishing characteristics, and final moments.
She read through an inventory of clothing as well as physical attributes and conditions and the weight of each organ, but her attention kept going back to that diagram. Not even the feet had been saved from the killer’s attention.
This kind of torture would’ve taken hours. The killer would’ve had to have known not to stab too deep. Not to cut too many times. At least, not until he was finished. He would’ve listened to hours of screams and pleads and sobs. None of which he’d given into. It took a special kind of evil to do this kind of work. Sociopath wasn’t quite the label she wanted to use. Psychopath fit, possibly with a heavy dose of anti-social personality disorder, but with the slight differences between her brother’s death and these two recent victims, she had the distinct impression this unsub wasn’t ruled by some internal regulator that’d gone bad. This almost felt like an agenda. A to-do list that kept pulling her back to Chris Ellingson. The question was had Ellingson let go of his perfectionism after twenty years of living outside of Lebanon, or were they looking at someone else responsible for these deaths?
Leigh shuffled through the photos taken by the medical examiner. A close-up detailed Gresham Schmidt’s face in all its final horror. Gray hairs peppered through a thick but well-kept beard. Same with the man’s hair. He’d been in good shape for fifty-nine. Most detectives on the job that long didn’t bother trying anymore, but Schmidt did. Because he hadn’t really retired? Or had facing dozens of murderers and criminals over three decades engrained the need to stay prepared? Her attention went to the lips. At least, what was left of them. That’d been the one element of Troy’s case neither police nor psychologists had been able to interpret.
Cut cleanly. The edges of the wounds were smooth, continuous. Like the butcher had challenged himself to remove the flesh in one effort as others tried to remove an orange peel. It was the only thing the killer had taken from the bodies. Everything else—the toy soldiers included—had been left behind. The remnants of the victims’ mouths hadn’t been recovered either, which meant whoever’d done the cutting had either kept them as a trophy or disposed of them. Taking their lips had been important to him. But why?
Michelle Cross had publicly investigated the deaths of the boys from twenty years ago. The victim had been convinced she’d had something new to offer, and that she could find the truth for herself. But what had brought Gresham Schmidt into the equation? Leigh picked up the photo of former detective Schmidt, every cell in her body attuned to the way the remaining tissue clung to the victim’s teeth. She angled it slightly, letting the overhead light block out most of the victim’s face until nothing but his mouth showed through. A sinking sensation pulled at her stomach. “You didn’t want them to be able to tell your secret, did you? Because they knew you.”
