His mother tapped him again. “The park,” he replied. “By the boats.”
“The boats?” Lonergan’s tone was disbelieving. “At the marina?”
George turned on Lonergan. “That’s his answer.”
“And the K-pin you were conked out on,” Lonergan said. “Where’d you get that?”
“I don’t do drugs. Somebody must have slipped me something.”
“And we’ll be looking into that, believe me,” Carole said. “Anything could have happened to him. He could have fallen into the river and drowned, been attacked . . .”
Lonergan’s brows lifted. “Or ended up next to a dead girl? And by ‘somebody’ he means . . . one of his friends?”
Beer. Boats. Marina. Foster jotted down the details. “But you don’t remember meeting anyone new? Or walking to the bridge?” She walked the route in her head. Keith could have stumbled away from the marina and gone one of two ways, either along the path south, ending up on Lake Shore Drive, or north and west along the pedestrian path through the tunnel to the Riverwalk. “You had to get back to the dorm. Were you headed to Michigan to catch an Uber or cab?” If that was the case, they could trace that.
There was a blank expression on Keith’s face. It didn’t look like he knew which side was up yet. “I was sitting on the grass and looking out at the boats. We talked about the march. No big deal.”
Lonergan’s brows rose. “The antipolice march?”
Keith straightened, assurance returning. “We’re not antipolice, we’re antidying. Raising our voices so the killing stops.”
Lonergan clenched his teeth. She could tell by the rippling along his jawline as he bore down. “You remembered all that well enough.”
“Names?” Foster asked. “Of the friends you were with.” As Keith came up with them, she wrote them down.
“No blood match, no prints,” George said. “Close by, but no witnesses putting Keith together with the victim. If you had any of that, again, you would have led with it.” George stood, pushing his chair in. “Okay. We’re done. I’m going to make some calls. Meanwhile, not another word, Keith.”
When he swept out of the room in expensive shoes, his wife’s eyes narrowed as she took in Lonergan none too pleasantly; then she turned and stared at Foster, as though she’d chosen the wrong side in a righteous fight.
“I’d like to confer with my client,” Carole snapped, ice in her tone. Foster wondered if the woman ever rattled, ever broke to show any emotion or hint of vulnerability.
Lonergan jabbed back, seemingly still put out by the accusation of wrongdoing on the part of the first officers on scene. “If he’s so innocent, how do you explain the blood?”
“It’s not my job to explain it,” she said. “It’s yours.” She looked over at her boy. “He’s my job. My one and only.”
Foster recognized the stalemate and pushed away from the table. She stood and began gathering her papers and files along with her notebook. George Ainsley was right about one thing: The clock was ticking, only time wasn’t on their side. Never was. Lonergan pushed back from the table, too, scraping the chair legs noisily along the floor. He was out of the room like a bullet without another word. So much for teamwork.
“Get you anything?” she asked Keith. “A cold pop? Water? A snack?”
He lowered his chin to his chest and shook his head, but his mother wasn’t about to let up. “Unnecessary. We won’t be here that long.”
“Right.” Foster headed for the door.
“My son didn’t do this,” Carole called out. “You know he didn’t.”
Foster turned back, her eyes moving from mother to son. Did she know? She couldn’t tell innocence or guilt by looking or feeling; nobody could. She opened the door. “Sit tight.”
Carole Ainsley stood. “I’ll fight like hell for my kid. I won’t allow you to take him from me.”
Foster didn’t bother turning around again. There was nothing she could say that Carole Ainsley would accept. She eased out of the room and closed the door behind her. For a moment she stood at the door, her hand on the knob. “Good.”
CHAPTER 8
Restless, needing to be outside instead of in, Bodie had an Uber drop him off a mile from where he was going. He’d walk the rest of the way, down streets he knew and could likely navigate blindfolded if he had to. He’d grown up here. He knew this town and the secrets it held. They were the same ones he kept now.
His feet kicked up leaves along the sidewalk as he buried his hands in his jacket pockets. He took everything in—what was the same, what was different. Fourteen years had passed since he’d been back. There wasn’t a single thing he’d once thought he needed to see ever again, and yet here he was, kicking up horrors with every step he took. He was curious, trepidatious. Even the chilly fall afternoon couldn’t stop him from sweating under his fleece jacket.
He rounded the corner and saw it sitting there in the middle of the block. The white house on the quiet street. As he stood, his eyes glued to the structure, he couldn’t get his feet to move or his brain to process a single coherent thought. It was as though he had suddenly forgotten everything—how to walk, talk, be.
There it stood. The two-level, white-shingled nightmare with attached garage and asphalt driveway. The American flag flying from a pole on the front porch was new. Tom Morgan hadn’t been the patriotic type as far as Bodie could recall. In fact, Bodie couldn’t remember that he’d been at all fervent about anything, except his compulsion to kill young women with red hair and blue eyes. That was Tom’s sin, but it was his and Am’s blood curse. Their father was a killer. Their basement was his killing field, and they’d known it since the age of twelve, when they’d found the basement door unpadlocked and wandered downstairs to find what remained of someone’s daughter. Bodie had wet himself. Amelia had been brave, stoic. Neither of them had opened their mouths about what they’d seen, not to the police or a school counselor, not to a priest or a neighbor. Tom Morgan’s infection of evil had become their shame, their secret, their family legacy.
Thank God he was dead, Bodie thought. He had to be. Bodie hadn’t heard a single thing from him in almost fifteen years, and he fantasized about a painful death, a true reckoning. The man had deserved no less. One thing was certain: if Tom Morgan were still alive, still here, Bodie wouldn’t be. He couldn’t imagine coming anywhere near this place if Tom Morgan still walked the earth. Even now, though, as he neared the house—as his reluctant feet slapped against the concrete sidewalk, as he stirred up fallen leaves in his path, his eyes boring into the shingles—he had the very eerie sense that his father’s eyes were tracking him.
Staring up at the second-floor windows, one looking out from his old bedroom and the other from Amelia’s, he was back there again, in the basement, staring into the stillest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen. This was where it all started, or was it more accurate to say ended? This was where he could have become something different and had that chance stolen from him. This was where he’d been changed.