But it sure would look different to the cops. Or anyone else for that matter. The jealous lover would be suspect numero uno, the narrative easy to follow. Someone had caught on to our affair and delivered the notes. David had found out, and I’d intervened to get him out of the way.
Case = open and shut.
That was why I’d considered giving my note to the authorities to potentially aid in finding Rachel and the boys, and just as quickly dismissed the idea. I’d only be pointing the finger at myself while besmirching Rachel’s reputation at the same time.
The note.
It was a splinter in my mind. I couldn’t kid myself its arrival a short time before David’s death was a coincidence. And there was Ryan’s demise to consider as well. Two business partners dead within days. It all felt connected. I just had to figure out how.
On top of that, Dad might’ve seen the killer driving away from the crime scene, but the disease in his mind had replaced his identity with a man fifteen years dead. Or Dad might not have seen anything important. Who knew.
Movement caught my eye across the street. The twitch of a curtain in Mr. Allen Crane’s house.
9
I’d only caught a glimpse of the person rounding the side of Rachel’s house the day she kissed me, but if a gun were to my head （which is what it felt like now）， I’d say that man had been Mr. Allen Crane.
Our quiet neighbor who no one knew other than from polite exchanges if you ran into him on the sidewalk or in the grocery store. The tall, dapper fellow perhaps in his early fifties who didn’t seem to work and doted on his terrier mix, whom he never left home without.
He also appeared to have been the first person on the scene at the Barrens’ home that morning.
I left Dad dozing in his chair midafternoon and crossed the street to home. The day was heating up, summer fully on its way. I needed to think, so I made coffee and took it into the living room before pacing in front of the big windows.
The twitch of the curtains in Crane’s home was all I’d seen of him since that morning outside the Barrens’。 I assumed he was the one who had made the call bringing the police to the Loop. Kel might be able to confirm or deny that he was the caller later this evening. For now I’d operate under that assumption. I’d also assume Crane was the one who had left the note or notes.
The note.
I needed to get rid of it. It was evidence, but mainly evidence incriminating me. I’d hidden it in the bottom drawer of my dresser beneath a pair of work jeans. I took it out and read it again before bringing it into the bathroom, gathering myself to tear it up and flush it.
But was that the smartest thing to do? There was a chance it would come into play later; how, I didn’t know.
I did a weird dance half in, half out of the bathroom. Normally bathroom decisions weren’t this hard. I opted to keep the note, folding it up tightly and burying it in a big jar of white rice in the pantry.
Back in the living room, sipping coffee before the windows. Thinking.
I needed to be careful. As worried and guilt stricken as I was about Rachel and the boys, I had to keep my thoughts collected. I wouldn’t do them any good locked up on suspicion of their disappearances or David’s death.
The Loop looked like an alien landscape. I’d grown up here. I knew every nook and cranny.
This was my first time seeing it.
I couldn’t trust anything now. There were land mines outside my door, inside my head, and I had to be careful where I stepped.
Kel. Wonderful Kel had come through. I knew it the second she walked into Dad’s house that evening with the girls. The glint in her eye. She had something, and she’d give it for something in return. We were twelve and ten again. Her holding my favorite squirt gun hostage while I stood with my hand out.
“What aren’t you telling me, Andy?” she asked when the girls had gone out back with Dad to play and I’d placed a sweating beer on the coaster beside her.
“Nothing.”
“No, that’s what you’re telling me. We grew up too close for my bullshit meter not to go off, so spill it.”
I sat forward, calmly looking into her eyes. “Kel, there’s nothing going on.”
“I have my suspicions. You want me to lay them out?”
“Absolutely not.”
She sipped her beer. “Will you tell me eventually?”
Little sisters. They never give up. “Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll take it. I spoke to Seth, and this is all strictly confidential. He didn’t want to tell me, so I had to beg. He said if his source at the station gets wind of any leaks, he’s done.”