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He locked that familiar brown gaze on her, and suddenly, she felt she should be grounded for a month. No emotion. No recognition. Had it really been so long that he wouldn’t know her when he saw her?
She smoothed her palms down her slacks. If she’d known she would’ve been this nervous, she wouldn’t have worn all these layers. Seeing as how it wasn’t every day the FBI came to speak with an inmate, she and her father had the room to themselves apart from the guard. “Can you remove the restraints, please?”
“You’ve got fifteen minutes.” The corrections officer unhitched his keys from his utility belt, collected the restraints, and strode to take position by the door they’d come through.
Fifteen minutes. That wasn’t enough time. She had two decades’ worth of conversations in her head. Accomplishments, interests, everything about her first love, her first job, her first everything. They needed more time. Leigh motioned for them to take their seats, and her father followed suit. Pressure built beneath her sternum as the seconds slipped by. “Do you know who I am?”
“You think I wouldn’t recognize my own daughter?” Joel shifted in his seat, rubbing his wrists. The skin where the cuffs had been didn’t look chafed, but she imagined the habit had stuck with him. “I told you not to come here.”
“I remember.” It’d been one of the very last things he’d said to her during his trial. No goodbyes. No sweet words she’d be able to keep with her as they fought his conviction. The moment that guilty verdict had been read, Joel Brody had no longer been her father. He’d become state property. Looking back now, she knew he just hadn’t wanted her to see him like this. Alone. Broken. A victim. “But I’m not here on personal business. I’m with the FBI now. I’m investigating a series of murders. In Lebanon.”
“The FBI?” A hint of wonder—perhaps even pride—brought out a glimmer of the happy-go-lucky man she’d known as he sat straighter. Her father shot a glance at the guard at the door, and within a split second, the glimmer had disappeared. As though it’d never existed. “Not sure what that has to do with me.” He spread his hands, palms up, over the table. “As you can see, my schedule is booked until I die.”
She’d missed his dry humor. Growing up, she’d often taken it as mockery, especially directed at her. Now she understood what his jokes had really meant: his way of taking the horror out of reality. Leigh dragged the case file between them and opened the front cover. A photo consumed her father’s attention, as she’d meant it to. Michelle Cross on the bridge. Steepling her fingers on the photo, she slid it out of the way to expose the next one. Gresham Schmidt found propped against a tree at Poverty Lane Orchards. She moved on to the last photo. Of Dr. Roxanne Jennings’s body deposited against the bandstand in Colburn Park. “Michelle Cross, Gresham Schmidt, and Dr. Roxanne Jennings. They were each stabbed twenty-two times, not counting the dozens of cuts and lacerations leading up to the final blow. The first two were missing for three days, the last one less than twenty-four hours.”
Her father moved to reach for the first photo. Hesitation gripped him to the point she wasn’t sure he’d let himself touch the reflective surface, but she hadn’t known Joel Brody to ever shy away from a challenge. He seemed to study every pixel for a series of breaths then set the photo back in place. Did he see something? Did he recognize Michelle Cross? “There’s a lot of anger in these stab wounds. They don’t seem as smooth or controlled as they were with your brother and Derek. Whoever did this…”
Leigh held her breath, waiting for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Dr. Jennings hadn’t said anything about the shape of the killing blade or the force used to end these victims’ lives. Then again, she hadn’t gotten a chance to finalize the autopsy report at all. That would be left up to whoever took over the case. “What do you mean?”
“What do you want from me, Leigh?” Joel seemed to deflate right in front of her. No longer the strong father who’d survived a life sentence in maximum-security prison, but a withered old man who had nothing left to hope for. “To look at these and have an answer as to who’s cutting up these victims?”
“You say that as if you haven’t been studying Troy’s case all this time. As if you haven’t been trying to prove your innocence.” She pushed the first photo closer to him. “Someone is killing people the same way they killed my brother and his best friend. Whoever did this, abducted, tortured, and filleted these people to make a point, and I want to know who it is. You say he’s angry? Tell me why. And to answer your question, yes, Dad, I want you to look at these photos and tell me what I might be missing. We both know you didn’t kill those boys, and that you have a pretty good idea who did. I need you to tell me his name.”
She needed him to say it. She needed to have one person in this forsaken town who agreed with her, who was on her side.
“You sound just like her, you know. Look like her, too. Your mom. Could’ve sworn it was her standing there waiting for me when I came in.” His voice softened in love, in loss, and in pride. The same hers did if she ever let herself talk about her mother. “She never could sit still. Always had her hands busy. A new way of cooking, another class or date night idea. Used to drive me crazy. In the end, it drove her crazy, too. If we learned anything in the days after you found Troy, it was that we couldn’t do anything. I think she hated herself for that. That’s why she…” Her father sat back in his seat, arms crossed. “I’m proud of you, kiddo. I’m proud of what you’ve made of yourself. I can’t tell you how much, but this…” He glanced down at the photos. “This will destroy you if you keep going down this path. Just like it did her. None of it is going to bring them back, Leigh. Trust me.” Joel signaled the guard and stood. “We’re done.”
“We’re not done.” Panic infused her bones, and she shoved to her feet. The guard was closing in. He was going to take her father back to his cell. She was going to lose the only chance she had in twenty years to connect with someone who cared about their family as much as she did. “Did Michelle Cross come to see you? Did she interview you for the book she was writing?”
“Let it go, Leigh.” Joel maneuvered his wrists together as the guard approached with the shackles, unable to even look at her. “Won’t change anything.”
She couldn’t let it go. Not yet. Leigh rounded the table but pulled up short as the guard stuck his hand out for her to keep her distance. “She did, didn’t she? She told you she didn’t believe what was written in the original police reports. She must’ve noticed an error or saw something in the case files. Because she believed Chris Ellingson killed Troy and Derek. So she came to you to get the truth. What did you tell her?”
“The same thing I’m telling you.” Joel turned to face her as the corrections officer led him toward the door they’d come through. “Leave it alone.”
SEVENTEEN
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Sunday, March 14
10:00 p.m.
None of it’s going to bring them back, Leigh. Trust me.
Leigh tossed for the hundredth time, trying to get comfortable on her childhood twin-sized bed. The sheets were scratchy and smelled of something damp and alive. Nothing had changed in this room. Her bed creaked if she looked at it wrong. The desk in the corner was still collecting dust, and the dresser had lines of purple nail polish from when she’d tried to make her own set of fake nails from Scotch tape. Her mother had kept everything in its place, but she wasn’t sure it’d been intentional more than purely detached.
She stared up at the ceiling. She’d come back here because it’d seemed easier than living out of a hotel over the duration of the case. For all she’d known at the time, Livingstone was prepared to send her packing the moment she’d arrived at the scene. But staying here hadn’t been the smart choice. Too many memories. Good and bad. Mostly good. Which made it all the more painful. Rolling onto her side, she stared at her brother’s toy soldier now missing the tip of his rifle on the edge of her nightstand.
Bits and pieces of her father’s warning bled into focus then out again. The past few days had worn her from the inside out, but the final hit had been discovering Joel Brody hadn’t requested any legal files, books, or resources to fight his own case. Not a single call to his lawyer. As though he’d simply given up. As hard as he’d tried to dissuade her away from the investigation in the name of protection, he’d let his hope run dry. Just as her mother had.
Now it was her job to bring it back. For all of them.
Heaviness dragged her away from reality, just for a little while. She’d made it a habit to stand on the brink of sleep without falling over the edge for as long as possible.
The smell of something burnt tickled her nose. Sharp and suffocating.
She should’ve washed the sheets before she’d climbed in bed, but that would’ve required hooking up the forty-year-old washer and dryer and hoping an animal hadn’t died inside. Leigh rolled onto her side. “What the hell?”
