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She surveyed the vast amount of information in front of her. If Michelle Cross’s body wasn’t the one that’d ended up in the Concord Hospital morgue, she’d say the victim had stalked Chris Ellingson.
Not the other way around.
It was all there. Daily routines, a list of acquaintances and neighbors with interview notes, favored coffee shop and grocery store, car registration details. Even police statements given by Ellingson. The victim had gone the extra mile. All of it seemed to be collected over the past two months according to the dates scribbled in the corners of each page or written on the backs of photos. Hell, the only thing Michelle Cross didn’t have was the man’s fingerprints. Scratch that. There was a piece of tape with traces of black beneath the clear adhesive attached to one of the note pages. Most likely Chris Ellingson’s, but the fine details had been smudged. “A forensic investigator you were not, Michelle. So why go to all this trouble?”
Innocent curiosity as Boucher had claimed? Or something more?
Her phone signaled an incoming message. Hell, she was really starting to hate that sound.
Scooping it off the coffee table, she nearly deleted Elyse’s latest attempt to get her to respond. Only this time, the PA’s five words stopped her cold.
Cancer took everything from me.
A photo slid into the conversation. One of Elyse—at least what Leigh remembered of the woman during their limited face-to-face interaction—and a baby. Cuddled close, wrapped in one of those lavender-colored minky blankets that shed everywhere. A girl based off the color of the bow much too large for her head. But it wasn’t joy the woman in the photo felt while staring down at the infant in her arms. It was pain.
Leigh stared at the screen until the shapes blurred. The screen cleared, turning dark, with Elyse’s incoming call. Hesitation and discomfort at witnessing such a heavy moment hovered Leigh’s thumb over the screen. Until she found herself answering. She pressed the phone to her ear, not knowing what to say.
“We named her Fiona.” Elyse’s voice had lost that legendary cheeriness Leigh imagined a lot of patients relied on. “I was diagnosed with stage III uterine cancer seven months into my pregnancy. We’d tried getting pregnant for so long, I didn’t want to give her up if there was still a chance. So I refused treatments. I pushed through, but in the end, it didn’t matter. The cancer had gotten inside her, too, and she wasn’t strong enough to fight. I delivered her knowing she wouldn’t take a breath or cry or want to be held. That they were going to take her from me. That photo is all I have of her.”
Leigh swiped at her face as she stared off across the conference room Boucher had set up for the team. It was bland. Sterile. Nothing like her childhood living room where she’d found herself crouched at the coffee table doing homework night after night. Where she’d found her father dancing with her mother in front of the ambient glow of the Christmas tree. They’d caught her sneaking out and invited her to join. Soon, Troy had gotten up to see what all the laughter was about, and they’d made a whole night of spinning and dance-offs. She wanted that. She wanted to hold on to those moments—the ones that didn’t hurt. She wanted to recreate them for herself. She deserved that, didn’t she? After all the dead ends and false leads and questions, she needed that hope at the end of the tunnel. Christmases, birthdays, family dinners. She still had a chance. “When you told me you knew what I was going through…”
“I meant it,” Elyse said. “If I could go back, I wouldn’t change a thing. I knew the risks, and I made the choice that gave me memories of what it felt like to carry her instead of raising her. You don’t have that kind of time, Leigh. The cancer won’t wait for you, and if you keep ignoring it, it’s going to cost more than you think.”
“I’m sorry. For what happened to you, to your daughter.” She didn’t really know what else to say as the anger doubled its hold around her heart. “But you don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve been through or what I want. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“Tell me.” Two words had never held so much weight. “You think you’re alone in this, Leigh, but you’re not. I’m right here. I can help you. Please, let me.”
The invitation stabbed through her. She’d accepted it more than once, though not from Elyse. There’d been others over the years. Coworkers. Neighbors in her building. Her last attempt at a relationship. Each time had stoked possibility. Support. Friendship. And each had ended the moment she’d exposed the pain she carried. It’d been too much for them, and now, instead of trying to share that weight, she’d taught herself to shoulder it alone. Leigh’s fingers ached from the grip on her phone. “You can help by not contacting me again.”
She ended the call.
Leigh shoved away from the table and shook out her legs. The team had cleared out a while ago, leaving her alone in the conference room to chase their own assignments. The room vibrated with the low buzz from the overhead projector, giving her just enough ambient noise to focus. Michelle Cross had given up her family, friends, and let her career fall to the wayside to get to the bottom of an injustice that’d taken place in this town.
Leigh’s injustice.
Stepping down to get a better look at the murder board Livingstone had constructed to map out their case, she cherry-picked the victim’s driver’s license photo from among crime scene photos and a light pattern of the car tracks left at the bridge. The ground had frozen that night then been compromised by cyclists, runners, and early morning walkers, leaving them with little impression to match the treads to any particular vehicle. “What made you alter the course of your entire life? What got your attention?”
Michelle’s photo stared back at her. Nothing in the victim’s notes highlighted details prior to Chris Ellingson’s return to Lebanon. The victim had picked up this obsession with the suspect and this investigation recently. She tacked the photo back in place and turned to the garbage haul in front of her.
Everything they’d taken from Michelle Cross’s home had been documented, cross-referenced, and researched. Not even die-hard true crime fans went this far. Streaming the latest forensic files episode or murder documentary on Netflix should’ve satisfied the victim’s urge to witness the inherent darkness of the human condition as millions of watchers could attest. This wasn’t just a curiosity for entertainment or escapism as Boucher had claimed.
This was unhealthy. Obsession.
She flipped through another couple of handwritten pages, one section of notes catching her eye. It’d been crossed out, rewritten, then crossed out again. She hadn’t given it much attention before, but now… Holding it up to the light, she made out a few words at a time. “Memories are like jagged puzzle pieces. The edges won’t align perfectly after twenty years.”
Michelle Cross had written the same arrangement below. Only slightly different in the second sentence. “Memories are like jagged puzzle pieces. After twenty years, the edges don’t align perfectly.”
That’d been crossed out, too. Trying to get the wording just right. Leigh set that page aside on an empty section of table and fished through the stack of handwritten notes. There. Another handwritten page crossed out then rewritten. This one for a different paragraph. A history of Chris Ellingson. Where he’d gone to school, a note about his upbringing in Lebanon. How his mother had neglected and forgotten about him after his father left when Ellingson had only been six years old. His rise from neglected son to the top of his class. His achievements in the mental health field and finally, his downfall.
Michelle Cross had become an expert on a suspected killer.
Leigh held both sheets, one in each hand. Same handwriting. Same manner of speaking. This… This was a story. The victim had been writing an article or manuscript about the case. She discarded the notes and rounded the table to come back to her laptop. That was why the notes were so thorough, why everything had been cross-referenced and double-checked. And why the killer had taken Michelle Cross’s laptop. But there were some things that couldn’t be erased. “All right, Michelle. Show me what you’ve got.”
Boucher and the department would’ve already searched through the victim’s social platforms to try to construct a timeline of her movements leading up to her death, but without knowing what to look for, they could’ve scrolled right through. The journalists and authors and podcasters who’d harassed her all had one thing in common: someone interested in taking the story public. A newspaper editor, a book publisher, a media producer. Those came with contracts and money. She scrolled through the litany of photos Michelle Cross had uploaded and landed on one slightly blurred out. Posted a month ago. A female hand, presumably Michelle’s, poised over a stack of paper. She couldn’t read the header or distinguish the logo, but the photo description told her everything she needed to know. It’s official! All those true crime podcasts have paid off. #amwriting #truecrime #bookdeal
A visceral cold ate through her.
Michelle Cross was writing a book about Leigh’s father. About her brother. About her.
