Rebecca Frost

Bury the Dead: 3

table of contents

Ollie Clark—Friday, June 21, 2019

There wasn’t air conditioning in Eli’s apartment, and usually the U. P. didn’t need it, but he’d acquired a number of fans to keep the air circulating and cool things off when the weather forgot where it was. He got out of bed long enough to turn on two of them, one in the window and the other oscillating on a stand, and then lay back down again so Ollie could snuggle up with her head on his shoulder.

Eli’s hand went to hers on his chest, playing with the ring. The diamond was smaller than he’d really wanted to get, but Ollie put her foot down. It was large enough to be recognizable, small enough to be practical, and did he really want people thinking he was compensating for something? “I’m just saying,” he murmured, kissing her hair, “that there’s probably going to be friction.”

Ollie sighed and closed her eyes in exasperation, biting back a comment about how maybe he thought she was too stupid to come up with that herself. “All that research I did a few years back still holds. I’ve got options.”

“But you love teaching.”

“I love you more.”

He shifted, not enough to dislodge her, but enough to be noticeable. “I think it’s important to be happy with both your occupation and your spouse.”

“Noted.” God, she didn’t want to fight with him over this. To make it look like there was a possibility of walking things back when it was a struggle to even get this far.

Eli took the sort of breath that meant he wanted to say something, but he held it and then let it out slowly, reconsidering. “Okay. Sorry. I just, uh … I just need to be able to say those things, okay? So you can look me in the eye and tell me yes, you’ve already thought of it, and you still haven’t changed your mind.”

Oh. Right. Or maybe he was coming at it from another angle. A more vulnerable angle. Ollie propped herself on her hand, not entirely sitting up but getting enough distance so she could look down at him and meet his eyes. “I could lose my job. You’ve got yours, and with my savings we could make it a year in that apartment even if I don’t find anything. I know it would suck, but worst case scenario, we’d have the spare bedroom at Dad’s. I doubt it’ll come to that, though, because you’ve been working for Nelson for years, so then we’d just move back up here and you’d be in the office instead of remote. Or, if you don’t want to deal with the people around here, we pick somewhere else with internet and become hermits or something. Together. Okay?”

He nodded, reaching up to brush her hair off her face. “Thank you. But your dad’s always going to be pissed you didn’t fall for Jared.”

Ollie rolled her eyes as she lay back down again, looking up at the ceiling. “He’s always going to be pissed Jared isn’t his biological child. He doesn’t just like Jared better than you, you know—he likes him better than me.”

“Olls …”

She waved that away. Now wasn’t the time to talk about Dad’s differing opinions of Eli and his cousin, thanks. They were finally doing it, finally moving in together and moving ahead, and she really didn’t want to cover any of the reasons it was finally and hadn’t happened years ago. The thing she wanted to talk about wasn’t exactly bedroom conversation, but it was more important right now. “How much has Dad been talking to Len Wilcox?”

Eli sighed and sat up. “Pop?”

“Water.”

He nodded and went out into the kitchen, disappearing behind the fridge door for a moment while he got out a can of Sprite and the filtered water pitcher.

Eli always drank filtered water. For him, that Britta pitcher was a sign of success. Even in this tiny apartment where every room could be seen from every other, that pitcher was an important marker of how far he’d come.

He waited to answer until he got back and handed her a glass, sighing and adjusting the pillow so he could lean against the wall. His mattress was on a metal frame, but there was no headboard. “He’s barely said anything to me, but Jared says it’s a lot. Like, I don’t know if Jared’s worried about how Cindy’s taking it, but I am.”

Ollie nodded slowly, sipping at her water. “Cindy’s a saint.”

Eli shook his head. “No, see, she isn’t. She’s a human being, and we all have our limits. Even people with long fuses still get there eventually.” Then, at her look: “I’ve put in the work, remember? Alastair had some gems.” Alastair was the therapist who’d finally clicked, either because he was the right person for Eli or because Eli had grown enough to want it to click.

“Fair,” she mused, frowning.

“Randy likes the idea of Kelly because it means it’s solved, and he likes Len Wilcox because it means he can talk as much as he wants about Wendy and Birdy without anyone asking if he’s really okay or if he needs his own Alastair, and Len Wilcox is the sort of professional listener who isn’t allowed to judge or ask if you need therapy.”

Plus, as much as Dad liked the idea of Kelly, he also meant that Eli was cleared, officially, and there was nothing keeping them from actually getting engaged and publicly being a couple. So.

“Jared doesn’t want to be worried about your dad.”

Jared depended too much on Dad to want to think there was something to worry about.

“You’re going to get Cindy alone at some point, right?”

Ollie nodded. “Maybe not tomorrow, but yeah.” Tomorrow Ollie and Eli were meeting Harper and Brad for lunch just late enough to make sure Ollie wouldn’t be at Dad’s house when the writer looked at the living room for the first time. Then she blinked. “Shit, Harper and Brad.”

Eli closed his eyes. “Roger’s going to have a field day. Maybe they don’t want to be seen in public with me.”

Exactly how many people were on a first-name basis with the local paper’s lead reporter? God, this was depressing. Ollie’s purse was out in the bigger room, on the couch in the section designated living room instead of kitchen or dining room, but Eli waved her away and got up again to go get it for her.

There was already a text from Harper. Eli read it over her shoulder and sighed, looking at his Sprite like maybe he wished it were straight vodka, but Ollie googled first just to be sure. Harper’s Just saw the news. We’re still on for tomorrow if you are didn’t necessarily have to mean …

But it did. Serial Killer Has Alibi, Raises Questions About Guilt. “I think his lawyer’s a genius,” Ollie grumbled, going back to the text and making a unilateral decision. We’re good with it. We’ll get it to go if it’s crowded.

“Why is his lawyer a genius?”

“How long do you think it’s going to take to track down every single random shotgun murder in the Midwest and check for an alibi?” Ollie leaned over Eli to put her phone on the single bedside table. “It’s going to push his trial back and give them that much more time to work on the defense. Hey, can I make a request?”

He almost smiled. “Shoot.”

“Distract me so I can’t think of anything else but you?”

Eli grinned, the real one with the dimple. “I’ll do my best.”

From Len Wilcox’s draft manuscript

On Friday June 19, Eli Chapman spent the night at his cousin Jared’s house. This was a common occurrence. Eli’s home life was in turmoil since his mom fought with her live-in boyfriend who would soon leave her. Jared’s father abandoned the family when he was a toddler, but his mom had a stable job and was, at that time, more emotionally stable as well. Eli spent as much time at his aunt’s house as he could.

The trouble started on Saturday the 20th when Eli told the police that he had been with Jared all night. This conflicted with Jared’s statement that he had woken up around 11 and been alone. Eli hadn’t returned by the time Jared fell back asleep, but he was there again in the morning. This discrepancy in the young men’s stories was the lynchpin in focusing attention on Eli.

Things continued to unravel for the 19-year-old who was left not only without an alibi but trapped in a lie. It was supposed to have been Birdy’s daddy-daughter weekend, a tradition in the Clark family since the girls were in diapers: each weekend Randy took one of the girls on some kind of adventure, and they alternated in a predictable schedule. The 19th should have been Birdy’s time at camp with Randy, but Birdy asked her father to change plans … because, she told Randy, Eli had asked her to.

Although neither Randy nor Olive has ever made a complete statement about the topics they covered that night while star-gazing, one of them was indeed Eli Chapman—specifically whether Olive should marry him. Birdy apparently sided with Eli and asked Randy to convince Olive that marrying her high school sweetheart wouldn’t be a mistake. The theory quickly surfaced that Eli hoped to not only kill the mother and younger sister, but frame Randy for the murders and therefore isolate his childhood sweetheart, forcing her to choose him.

This was the story pieced together by the prosecuting attorney during Eli Chapman’s murder trial, but it did indeed have to be pieced. Randy reported what Birdy told him, although Eli denied saying any such thing. The defense was able to bring out the fact that it was well-known that both Randy and Olive enjoyed stargazing; that Eli himself had known of this for years; and that any plot to frame Randy because of a lack of alibi would have been known to fail.

The prosecution was further hampered when witnesses spoke of the rapport between Eli Chapman and the three women of the Clark family, indicating that he would not, as the prosecution suggested, have to “get them out of the way” to marry Olive. Emails between the sisters further indicated that, from Olive’s perspective, her relationship with Eli was secure. Olive and Birdy even debate over whether the couple should marry between Olive’s sophomore and junior year—“Just make sure I’m back to be the maid of honor,” Birdy wrote sternly—or if they should wait until after Olive graduated from college. After only three hours of deliberation, the jury concluded that the state had not proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. Legally, Eli Chapman was declared not guilty. The community’s reaction was immediate: the jury was wrong.

Bury the Dead 4 – coming April 4

Bury the Dead: 2

catch up on chapter 1

Ollie Clark—Friday, June 21, 2019

Normally when her brain got caught on something, Ollie could blink a couple times and force it on through. She had plenty of experience thinking on her feet—high schoolers came at you with the weirdest stuff out of nowhere sometimes and you had to make split-second decisions to ignore, acknowledge, or redirect. Say, when some of them congratulated her on her engagement after Christmas and added something like “Isn’t it weird that he was on trial for killing your mom?” Well, yes, it was weird, because anyone who knew Eli knew he couldn’t have done it. The problem was that not many people really knew him. They just went on his family’s reputation.

All eyes were on her. They’d had, what, over an hour to digest this information, even if it was an elephant passing through a boa constrictor, but she’d just been hit with it. “How …?” It came out as a croak and Ollie shook her head in case that knocked things back into position enough for the blinking to help. “How did they …?”

Dad shook his head more slowly. “I don’t know. Arnie didn’t say.” He sighed. “I didn’t ask. He just said Kelly’s lawyer came up with an alibi, so he didn’t do it.”

“But …”

“But he confessed?” Dad nodded and raised the bottle to his mouth. “Yeah. Bastard confessed.”

Behind her, Jared snorted. “It’s probably going to call all of his confessions into question.”

Sean Kelly wasn’t the one they had to worry about. When Ollie turned around, slowly, like the air was suddenly thick, it was to look at Eli.

He had his arms crossed and his shoulders jerked in a shrug, but he could barely look at her. “That one school board member thanked you for keeping our relationship a secret until I wasn’t a murderer.”

“Eli …”

His chin lifted to indicate the small diamond on her ring finger. “You’re engaged to a killer again.”

“Not guilty,” Jared protested, because yes, that was the official legal sentence, but the community had never agreed. They scoffed that the prosecuting attorney had failed at a slam dunk.

Ollie shook her head, holding Eli’s eyes. “I’m engaged to you.”

That made him look away again. “Olls …”

“Hey.” She put a hand on his forearm, urging him to unstrap himself enough so she could hold his hand. “This sucks, and it changes a lot of things, but that isn’t one of them. Okay?” She tilted her head to the rest of the room. “Witnesses.” Because, for so long, he’d resisted the idea that anyone else could know. For so long, he’d resisted her entirely.

“Thank God this didn’t come out before,” he quoted, giving each word its own weight.

Yes, and Ollie had never liked that member of the school board, who’d been drinking at the time he said it to her, and whose term was almost up, anyway. “One random dude with a bad mustache doesn’t get to decide my future for me.”

“Take him home,” Jared ordered, and his flash of a grin was exactly the same as it had been in high school when all the girls swooned over the tall, broad-shouldered football player with that lock of dark hair that always fell so charmingly over his forehead. “Actions speak louder than words.”

“Yeah, my dad is right there,” she hissed, suddenly fifteen again with knobby knees and a training bra.

“That’s exactly why I said it.” Jared shrugged, unconcerned that he’d thrown her even more than Arnie’s news had. “Look, it’s not like we’ve figured out anything else to do.”

Cindy put her hand on Dad’s arm, shrugging as she looked at Ollie. “Len’s still coming tomorrow. Dad already called him.”

Uh. Okay. So not only did Jared and Eli find out before she did, but Dad called Len freaking Wilcox?

“He’ll be up tomorrow,” Dad agreed. He grimaced and twisted his head like he had a sudden neck cramp. “All of that’s going to go forward as planned.”

Meaning other things shouldn’t? Or that it was the only part Dad thought he had some say over?

“Go on,” Cindy urged quietly. “If we get any more information, we’ll tell you.”

Dad scoffed at that and drained the rest of his beer. “What more is there? Took them almost ten years to find a new suspect, and then …” He flapped a hand and turned to the fridge. “Go on. All of you.”

Jared shrugged and gestured for the other two to leave first, like he didn’t think any of this had been awkward. Like he was more used to Dad’s emotional thermometer than Ollie was.

The guys slipped into their sandals, identical-looking battered Birkenstock knockoffs, and just like that Ollie was back in the driveway again. Seriously. All that stress and worrying for what, a single sentence? It could’ve been a text.

“Let Cindy handle him,” Jared said in a low voice, ducking his head down because he was six four and their ears were nowhere near the level of his mouth. “He wanted you to know, but …”

But. This wasn’t the first time Dad pushed her away while he processed something. Except, in his mind, he wasn’t pushing. Even after the fight that preceded the reconciliation—which he never called a fight, and Dad also didn’t see why they needed a reconciliation because you only needed to restore something that’d gone missing—he wanted to dump the news on her and immediately push her away. Then he’d be grouchy about the fact that, if he wasn’t going to support her emotionally, of course she’d turn to someone else … and of course that person would be Eli.

Jared looked at his cousin and pointed at Ollie. “You’re marrying her. Full stop. Chaos swirls, people are jerks, but you don’t get to pull your stupid Edward Cullen shit again. You’ve put in the work.”

Eli snorted at that before drawing in a deep breath and letting it out with a sigh and something resembling his usual grin as he looked at Ollie. “Take me home?”

She caught his hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’s what I’m here for.”

Excerpts from the first interrogation of Sean Kelly by Detectives Lana Schoellman and Dirk West, November 18, 2018

SK: The thing is, this isn’t the first time.

DW: It’s not the first time? What the hell do you mean by that?

SK: Just what I said. It’s not the first time. I’ve carried that shotgun with me … oh, the entire time I’ve been driving, I guess. In case I need it.

LS: Need it for what?

SK: You know. Urges.

LS: Urges. Like Donna Sullivan.

SK: If that’s her name, yeah. I don’t know their names. I just … pick a house.

DW: What do you mean you—?

LS: Why don’t you tell us from the beginning?

SK: Beginning? You mean my childhood? My daddy was mean to me and my mommy—

LS: No, just—what happened that night? At the Sullivan’s? A week ago?

SK: Right, okay. That’s really not the beginning, but … I get antsy, you know? When it’s been a while. Like a junkie, I guess, but I’ve never done drugs. Never saw the appeal. Is this what you wanted?

DW: Mr. Kelly—

LS: It’s fine. Please go on.

SK: So I just knew the feeling. It’s nothing new. And when you get an itch, you scratch it. See? So I took my gun, and I went for a walk. And what I’m looking for is a house with someone in it, but the ones on either side don’t have anyone. People leave lights on and there are motion sensors and stuff, but they aren’t actually home. And they aren’t fooling anyone.

DW: Except—

LS: Continue?

SK: Right, so I found the house. That street’s pretty dark. It’s the kind of place you can linger because nobody’s out that late, and nobody’s even peeking through their curtains. They lock the door and figure they’re safe. Right? So you can stand there for a while and watch those curtains, which aren’t opaque. You watch for movement. Even the flickering of the TV. You know? You can see a lot if you just stand there and watch.

LS: Okay. And after you watch?

SK: Well, it was just the one house. Someone still up and moving around. Someone home. So I walk up to the door, not even slow, and start pounding on it. Like an authority. I try not to yell something like “Police!” but sometimes I have to. But you have to be careful—as soon as someone starts opening the door, undoing the locks and stuff, I get the gun up. Sometimes they open it still on a chain, that kind of thing, but that makes no difference. You shoot, say average height for a woman, and either you get her in the face or someone taller in the chest. One shot and you’re done. Turn and leave before the neighbors can get to the windows, and even if they can, so what? It’s dark and they don’t know me. I’m just some person walking down the street.

DW: And you’ve done this how many times?

SK: I don’t know. You kind of lose count. And it’s always dark, so … I never know who it is. And then I’m gone the next day, anyway. That’s the point, isn’t it? I’m there, bam, and gone. The perfect crime.

DW: It wasn’t perfect for Donna Su–

LS: What was different last week?

SK: The cat. The damn cat. Dogs, I’ve dealt with. There’ve been dogs before. But the cat? It tripped her, not me. I didn’t set a foot inside the house. But she opened the door, and I was too slow. She saw me, and the gun, and started to step back, and the damn cat … she tripped over it, but I was already raising the gun through the gap in the door, and she grabbed it. Pulled me forward. Didn’t ruin the shot, because it still went into her, but I banged my head off the door frame. Started bleeding everywhere. The cat was gone by then, so I didn’t bleed on it, but that was enough. My blood on the frame, the porch … and then, what, you just had to check urgent cares, right? For someone who needed sixteen freaking stitches on the right side of his head, yea tall. Then you get my blood type, and now you got me, and whatever her name was—

DW: Donna Sullivan.

SK:—she wasn’t the first. So. I guess you’ve got your work cut out for you.

LS: Mr. Kelly, when you say she’s not the first … how many are we looking for?

SK: I don’t know. Something about stars in the sky?

Bury the Dead 3 – coming April 3

table of contents

Bury the Dead: 1

Ollie Clark—Friday, June 21, 2019

Going home was hard. It wasn’t just the drive, which started with tourist traffic in Traverse City and ended with miles and miles of back roads and pine trees. Ollie wasn’t sure she agreed with Thomas Wolfe about the ability to return, but when they read “The Death of the Hired Man” in class she always stuck at “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.” Poetry was poetry, but home was hard.

See, for example, the text she got already almost five hours into her drive: I’ll be at your dad’s, so go there first. Ollie gave Eli’s message a thumbs-up when she stopped for gas, but exactly how many layers were underneath those nine words? Dad and Eli had never, ever, gotten along, not in the quarter century they’d known each other. They needed Ollie as their buffer, so what would make Eli go over there to wait for her?

“Nothing good,” she murmured, cranking the music up a little louder. Ollie had the windows rolled down even though this car was new—to her, at least—and the air conditioning worked. She just preferred the fresh air, the two-and-fifty-five they’d joked about as teenagers when none of their cars had AC.

Was it just Eli and Dad waiting for her? It was a Friday, so Cindy might have work. And Jared never had any issues being around Dad when it was just the two of them, so maybe he was there, too, but …

This trip was a total seesaw. On the plus side, Eli had time off so that, in two weeks, he’d come back downstate with her, both their cars packed full. On the minus side, Len Wilcox was due to fly in tomorrow and start his onsite interviews. For his book. Ollie and Dad didn’t see eye to eye about either Len Wilcox or his book.

And now she checked her speedometer and eased off the gas to drop back down to five miles an hour over the speed limit. Five was generally safe, as long as you didn’t run into a deer. More than that and there’d be flashing lights in her rearview—less common on the back roads, sure, but not unheard of. She wanted to concentrate on the glass half full stuff, and getting stopped for a ticket wasn’t going to keep that end of the seesaw up top.

The last long drive alone. The last time she and Eli would have what they agreed was the one main perk of a long-distance relationship: reunion sex. The last time she’d drive back downstate alone, but Eli would be coming with her. Thank God, honestly. There were enough reasons for the delay, but come on. There was only so long you could keep part of your life on hold.

The last half hour or so was gorgeous, but Ollie was sweaty and out of sorts all the same. Dad’s first instead of Eli’s. Was there any daughter who could have a proper reunion with her fiancé in front of her dad? So that just meant pushing that back even further, and having to deal with whatever was important enough to get Eli over there, and she was out of water so part of her headache was probably from dehydration. Honestly, the back way cut off time and meant she didn’t have to go through Houghton and hit city traffic—Upper Peninsula city traffic—but South Range was still just so far away from everything.

Harper once told her that the roads going into the U. P. were so much longer than the roads going out, which was why a) it always took so long to come back, and b) nobody wanted to visit you when you lived there and the burden fell on you to go and visit other people. Clearly Dad missed that memo. It was her job to come back, to come home, and his job to stay put.

Turning off M-26 meant she was almost there, since South Range wasn’t exactly huge. 2nd Street was only a few blocks long, so even having to go almost to the top of the hill was nothing. And yep, Jared’s car was in the driveway, so she pulled in next to it. Cindy’s car was in the garage, so at least she wasn’t at work, and Ollie could always move if Cindy needed to get out. It could even be an excuse. Her stepmom was good with those.

Ollie turned off her car and got out, stretching and trying to work out the kinks. She couldn’t do anything about the wrinkles in her dress, but when she put it on this morning she figured she only needed it to get inside at Eli’s. Then it could pick up more wrinkles on the floor. Nobody was outside at either the picnic table or in the gazebo, but the back door opened before she could lean back in and grab her purse, so she waited by the driver’s side because at least the car partially blocked things. The others might be grouped in the mud room and watching.

Eli came out barefoot, in faded jeans and an old plain V-neck t-shirt, and he circled the car to just … give her a hug. Normally he squeezed tightly, thin arms like bands of iron, bending to get her scent and tickling her neck with his breath, but this was gentle. Like she was made of glass and might break.

Or like he was.

“Eli?”

“Come on.” He bent into the car for her purse and then shut the door. “Your dad’s got something to tell you.”

Cancer. It had to be. Cancer or something like it, right before Len Wilcox was set to show up to bleed Dad dry, and right after the tenth anniversary of—

He took her hand, not interlacing their fingers but gently pulling her along.

And wait, if it was cancer, then why did Eli and Jared get to know first? Yes, fine, Dad and Jared went through that whole male bonding thing, but Jared wasn’t actually his kid. She was. The only one left, thank you very much.

There wasn’t really enough room for everyone in the kitchen, but that’s where Dad, Cindy, and Jared were, anyway, Dad holding a beer and the other two with pop. Dad cleared his throat and opened his arms for a hug, folding Ollie tightly into familiar flannel, but his hair was mussed and, unlike the younger guys’, Dad’s hair was never mussed. “Got a call from Arnie, kiddo,” he grunted before she even had time to pull back.

Arnie. That made her blink. Arnie Dubrowski wasn’t a doctor. He was a lawyer. “Arnie?”

“Kelly’s got an alibi.”

Her brain was still back two turns, shifting from some sort of horrific medical diagnosis to Arnie. And yes, of course, Sean Kelly went with Arnie Dubrowski when it came to name association, but …

Dad nodded, light blue eyes already bloodshot. “Kelly didn’t do it, kiddo. He didn’t kill Mom and Birdy.” He tried on a gruesome smile that squeezed out a tear. “It’s not solved, after all.”

From Len Wilcox’s draft manuscript

June 19, 2009, was a Friday. The older Clark daughter, Olive, was home from her freshman year at Northern Michigan University. The younger, Catherine “Birdy,” had just graduated high school. Neither young woman had a summer job—their parents were adamant about that. Neither Randall nor his wife Wendy had gone to college, and they didn’t want their daughters to have to grow up as quickly as they had. “School was their job,” Randy told them so often that even their friends knew the Clark house rule.

Olive had multiple scholarships to cover the cost of her education, but there was tension in the household during Birdy’s senior year because she wanted to attend a college that was out of the family’s financial reach. “Birdy really wanted to go out of state,” her friend Corrie Jameson remembers. And not just to Wisconsin—Birdy was ready to fly the nest all the way to California. Discussions of their younger daughter’s future plans were rampant that June as Birdy complained it wasn’t fair that Olive got to pursue her dream and the parents countered with an offer of exactly how much they were putting toward Olive’s education, challenging Birdy to make up the rest in scholarships.

“Birdy didn’t want a job,” classmate Kendra Heikkinen recalls. “The way she figured, she couldn’t work up enough to pay for her first year, anyway, so someone else had to do it. But you have to remember we were seventeen,” she adds with a bit of surprise in her voice, like she’s forgotten how much time has passed since their senior year.

It seems to have been the common growing pains of parents and a teenager ready to tackle adulthood. Emails saved to Birdy’s computer detail a loving relationship between the sisters, likely encouraged by the fact that, for the first time in their lives, they weren’t living under the same roof. The sisters wrote to each other almost daily, with Birdy complaining about their parents and the current high school drama and Olive reporting back on classes, new friends, and occasional updates on her continued relationship with her high school boyfriend, Eli Chapman. During her own senior year, Birdy started dating Eli’s cousin, Jared.

On the night of June 19th, the Clark family was divided. Birdy and mother Wendy were home in South Range, preparing to have a girly-girl night and, perhaps, to once again rehash why Birdy should pick an in-state school. Randy and Olive were out at the family camp near Covington. This put them out of reach of electricity, indoor plumbing, and even cell phone signals. Father and daughter stayed up late star gazing and talking about the future. It wasn’t until a police car made its way up the long two-track lane on the morning of the 20th that they knew something was wrong.

Neighbors reported a disturbance around 11 p.m. on the night of the 19th, although descriptions were vague. They had heard noises and one man reported seeing someone running away from the house, but it was dark and the figure, by then out of range of the garage’s motion-sensor light, was never positively identified. When the police arrived to do a wellness check, they discovered Birdy just inside the front door and Wendy further inside the living room. Both had been hit with buck shot from a standard 12 gauge shot gun, the daughter in the head and the mother in the chest. Neither was still alive when the police found them.

Even though father and older daughter were only about 50 miles away and both had cell phones, it took hours for the police to track them down because they were in a dead zone. It took further hours to determine that father and daughter were each other’s alibi, and that they could vouch for all the hours in question: Randy is an amateur astronomer, and both he and Olive were up until the wee hours of the morning looking at the constellations. Even without this alibi, Randy and Olive would have quickly been cleared. Suspicion immediately fell on Eli Chapman.

Bury the Dead 2 – coming April 2

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Pending – Chapter Forty-One

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Gran was generally a practical person, but she agreed to come along with Nell all the same when she went to the cemetery. Nell didn’t think Gran had been back since the funeral, either to place flowers or to make sure the graves were kept tidy. “They’re gone,” she’d told Nell gruffly once. “They don’t know if you’re there or not.”

Well, no, but Nell knew.

Gran didn’t even sigh or roll her eyes when Nell stopped at a florist first, picking a bouquet because it was brightly colored. She couldn’t remember Dad ever buying Mom flowers, so it wasn’t like she could easily name a favorite or anything, but she liked the look of the yellows and reds and purples. The double plot didn’t have a vase on the headstone—honestly, it was a little amazing that Gran had gone ahead and gotten the headstone in the first place, all things considered—so Nell had the florist put it in one of those plastic vases with the spike you could drive into the ground and keep everything upright. Gran didn’t cluck her tongue at the extra expense, but Nell figured that was because Gran was humoring her as much as possible, considering everything else she and Kent were dealing with on this first visit back to Michigan.

Donna insisted on calling it their trip home, of course. Kent wasn’t with them right now because he was doing the whole family time thing with Donna and maybe some of his siblings, which Nell had told him was okay because he’d never known her parents, and it didn’t bother her if he didn’t come. Maybe it bothered him more, because he was stuck with his own family instead, but if Gran thought anything about that, she didn’t say it, either. It was unspoken, but out of kindness. Not to hide something, or keep a secret.

Nell pulled the rented car into the cemetery parking lot, close to the gated entrance but not in the handicap spot, and turned off the ignition. At least this car still had an actual key. When she got out and waited for Gran to join her on the path, though, she saw another car pull up, not into a spot but just enough so Kent could get out of the passenger seat and Owen could wave before he drove away again.

Nell blinked, flowers in one hand and Gran at her other side, but Kent shrugged as he came up to them and slipped an arm around her. “It kept feeling like the wrong choice,” he said simply.

Gran smiled and turned to lead the way.

One thing this visit had cemented was how no, they really couldn’t move back to Michigan. If they did, Nell figured they’d drive Kent’s parents to divorce. Donna insisted on using their old names, which just confused her grandchildren. She kept asking about Mart and Ellie’s plans for their own children, and what school districts were the best, and if they’d fallen in love with any of the incredibly ugly houses she bookmarked on the real estate sites. Nell didn’t actually like any of them, thanks, and they weren’t looking at moving yet, anyway. Their apartment had two bedrooms, so even if she got pregnant soon, they’d be fine for a while. She didn’t know if Kent told his mom that they were actually trying, or if Donna just … assumed.

Gran stopped at the foot of the graves, hands clasped, but at least she didn’t have her arms crossed. She looked at the headstone and read the names and dates, nodding like she had to make sure they were still correct, and waited for Nell to place the flowers. The grass had been mowed recently, and the headstone looked clean. Maybe that was a service provided by the cemetery—Nell had never asked.

Kent put his arms around her when she returned to the path, resting his cheek against her head in silence for a while. Nell ran through her small handful of memories of her parents—Dad’s blue armchair, Mom’s comic recitation of Red Fish, Blue Fish—but more and more these days they felt like memories of memories, honestly and truly from someone else’s life. All the same, she couldn’t not come here, especially when it was a choice again. Nell had to remember them, and maybe she needed Gran to know that her own grave wasn’t going to go neglected when the time came.

When she looked over, Gran raised an eyebrow. “I don’t suppose, things being what they are, you can keep any names in the family?”

“I like Elsie,” Kent offered. “Probably as a middle name.”

Gran blinked, because clearly she hadn’t meant her own, but then she grinned. “Well. It’s a good name. If you have a girl.”

That made Kent laugh. “Yeah, I wasn’t thinking Elsie for a boy. But we probably won’t really know until it happens and we have to pick.”

If it happens, Nell added silently, because apparently she was a bit superstitious about that kind of thing.

“Penelope?”

Nell nodded. “Yeah, okay.” Because that was Gran asking if it was time to go.

“We should get brunch,” she decided, leading the way back to the car. “Unless you have to go be civil to your in-laws again.”

“I just told Mom flat-out we’re not moving back to Michigan, so …” Kent looked to Nell. “Brunch sounds like a good option to me.”

“She kicked you out, or …?” Nell clicked the button to unlock the doors and handed him the fob, aiming for the back seat.

Kent shrugged. “She wanted to argue. I told her it wasn’t up for discussion. She started insulting you. I asked Dad if he could drop me off here. We left.”

Good thing they were in Gran’s spare room for the visit, then. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t make me call you ‘Penelope.’ You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

Nell wasn’t entirely sure about that, but she got into the car and put on her seatbelt and smiled when she caught Kent’s look in the mirror, trying her best to do as his eyes urged her: to stop thinking about that and concentrate on something good instead, like brunch with her husband and her grandmother, who both wanted to spend time with her and oh so clearly wanted her to be happy.

She could try. For them, she could certainly try.

THE END

Pending – Chapter Forty

Buy Pending (ebook/paperback)

It was weird to Nell that Owen’s absence was strange. He’d spent Saturday with Kent, but then yesterday he’d left early so he could head home and … well. Nell didn’t really know what. Deal with Donna, maybe. Try to explain to her, not for the first time, why Kent and Nell couldn’t be Mart and Ellie again, or maybe clarify to her why it wouldn’t be smart for them to come back just yet, even for a visit.

Beckett was in Michigan.

He wanted to see Nell, of course. To confess to her, because he kept insisting he wouldn’t confess to anyone else. Maybe his lawyer got to bill double for weekend hours or something, but it wasn’t working. She had the reassuring text from Adam in case she needed to check it again: He has to give something first before they even think about giving him anything, and he’s one stubborn SOB. That meant his lawyer had to give up soon and regroup for another approach, right?

Not that she really wanted to know what the other approach would be. Unless it was an outright confession, it wouldn’t do her any good.

Nell wasn’t really sure what would do her any good, so even though she had today off, she put her energy into expanding the blind date with a book idea. Kent was at work, so really, she might as well. At least if she felt useless about this, it wasn’t going to come back and haunt her for the rest of her life.

It was almost one, and she was trying to goad herself to get up off the couch and actually make something for lunch, when her phone buzzed. It’s me. Don’t freak out. The text was from Kent, which didn’t exactly help her not to freak out, but was maybe explained when she heard footsteps on the stairs and then a key in the lock. She still wanted to demand why he was home and freak out over the reason behind his appearance instead of the suddenness of it, but Kent didn’t pause to take off his shoes or anything, and he looked … what, pale? Pale, but also …?

“He’s dead,” Kent rasped, just standing there on the vague dividing line between kitchen and living room.

Nell slowly set the laptop on the coffee table and blinked a couple times, but that didn’t work. “Who …?”

“Beckett.” He shook his head and ran a hand over his hair, and …

Jubilant. That’s what it was: pale, because of the shock, but almost jubilant.

“Beckett’s dead. Found in his cell this morning. Suicide.”

“But …”

Kent’s shoes sounded loud on the floor, which was only one reason they didn’t wear them inside, and he dropped to one knee in front of her, reaching for her hands like he was going to propose again. “No,” he said firmly. It was almost a whisper, but there was an intensity in his eyes now, and man, she was getting emotional whiplash just from watching him. “There’s no but, Nell.”

Seriously she had to blink again, because there was plenty to but about. Beckett wanted her and wanted her badly enough to spend years of his life chasing her down. Sure, there were a lot of roadblocks in his way—most of them of his own making—but not enough so that someone with such a long-term plan would just give up now.

Kent shook his head slowly, eyes holding hers. “You don’t protest to anyone, Nell. Nobody questions this.”

She tried to swallow but her throat was suddenly dry. “You, uh … you and your dad … on Saturday.” Nell knew she wasn’t making much sense, but she shook her head and tried again. “You told him … all the things we’re …” All the things we’re not doing as long as Beckett’s alive was how she meant to finish, but she saw she didn’t have to. Kent didn’t nod, but yes, that was how that sentence ended.

Saturday. Their male bonding day. They’d probably covered some of the same things she had with Art, but it would be more personal to Owen: no grandkids from his oldest child. No visits home, if they thought it would ever put the others in danger. No relaxing.

No room to breathe.

“It was suicide,” Kent repeated slowly, eyes burning with all the things he was trying to keep tamped down inside. “A pen cap, shaped and sharpened. The sort of cap on the pens his court-appointed lawyer favored.”

“How did he …?” Like it mattered.

Kent took one of his hands back and gestured to his throat.

Suicide. Beckett was caught, backed into a corner, and he had no other way out. It was suicide. Not Owen stepping in to once again protect his son’s future. Not some band of brothers thing going on because of Nathan Hillier, or for the same reason Nathan Hillier made his own choices. Just … suicide.

“They’re, um …” She shook her head a little and laughed, but asked it anyway: “They’re sure he’s dead? And it’s him? It’s … really over?”

“They’re sure. Dad called. There was nothing interfering with immediate identification. No record of anyone else going into his cell. There might be, uh …” He almost wrinkled his nose. “Questions, since Beckett was supposed to be on suicide watch, but I don’t think too many people will kick up a fuss.”

Mother dead. Acquaintances comparing him to Norman Bates. No, whatever guard let his attention slip was probably safe. “Killed himself,” she whispered, but she couldn’t look away from Kent. Not when he needed her to internalize this part of it.

“Killed himself,” he agreed.

Nell bit her lip, but there was another question. “Did you want him to?”

That was enough to make Kent look away but, still on one knee, he brought his eyes back to hers. “No. It didn’t occur to me. I just ran back to my dad like I was a kid and the problem was something he could take out into the garage and fix, but I didn’t think … I didn’t ask him to …” Kent swallowed hard and shook his head a little. “Does it change things? Nell? Between …?”

Between her and Owen, or between her and Kent? Except the answer was the same, and her head shook before he finished his questions. “Not in a bad way.”

“Not …?”

Nell bent her head and kissed the back of his hand. “I mean, it changes a lot, doesn’t it? If we … if we’re …”

Slowly, still holding her hands, Kent got up enough to sit on the couch, simply staring at her. Nell shifted a bit to face him and tried to see if he was going down the list of everything they could do now, everything they wanted to do, tick by tick, or if he was just marveling at the number of items he’d have to consider. All the things that Owen knew, either because Kent said them or didn’t say them, that they’d put on hold for the past five years, and would have had to surrender indefinitely.

Owen, who hadn’t called in any favors five years ago, and Owen, who certainly hadn’t done a single thing now. You probably weren’t supposed to be this relieved and comforted that someone you knew could get away with murder, but there it was.

Kent took a deep, shuddery breath and held it for a good long while before letting it out again. “I think the first thing we’re supposed to do is visit Michigan and let my mom call us by the wrong names.”

Nell wrinkled her nose. “I’ll visit, but I can’t promise I’ll answer her.”

“Fair.” Chuckling a little, he reached up to touch her cheek, a gentle brush that made her shiver. “This, uh … this is going to take a lot of getting used to.” Then he frowned.

“Honey?”

“Just … his book comes out tomorrow. That’s all. I just … it just occurred to me.”

Nell took her own deep breath and shifted again, this time to sit on Kent’s lap and lean against him as she tried to think it all through. This could get them a boost in sales, maybe, but Beckett wouldn’t see a single penny. And, since he didn’t have family or friends … well. It wasn’t up to her where the money would go, but that was something she’d be interested in watching unfold.

The families, maybe. They didn’t get a confession, but either way the book mined their daughters’ deaths … Although that probably wouldn’t include Margaret or Trevor. Their loved ones had trials, and convictions, and probably were grateful they wouldn’t have to go through some sort of attempt to overturn those convictions, and …

Too much. It was too much.

Kent cleared his throat and shifted to wipe his eyes with his sleeve. “You probably figured this part out, but Brandon sent me home.”

“Is it in the news?”

“No, I had to tell him.” He squeezed her a little tighter and then leaned over to grab her phone before she could ask for it. “Art?”

“Yeah.” If they’d let him in, and freaked him out, then he deserved the news ASAP. “Do you think Adam …?” But when her phone screen came on, there was already a text from him: You’ve heard? She sent the agent a quick Yes before trying to figure out what, exactly, she was willing to put in writing to Art. It’s over. Suicide. Tell you more when I see you. And send, because she didn’t really have any other information right now, anyway.

Kent linked his arms around her and tried another deep breath. “So. How are you doing?”

“Hell if I know.” Her voice came out in a tremble that made her aware of exactly how close she was to crying or laughing hysterically or who knew what all. “How am I supposed to feel? Like it’s all coming undone?” Nell shook her head sharply, because that wasn’t quite right. The tight wraps she’d had on herself were coming undone, maybe, but not everything.

Kent buried his face in her neck and had to clear his throat before he said anything. “I know,” he finally choked out, holding her tighter. “I know.”

Chapter Forty-One

Pending – Chapter Thirty-Nine

Part Seven: Release Day

Art looked around when he came in, but the tables were empty. “Nothing?” he asked, almost incredulously.

Nell shrugged. “What did you expect?”

“Him to fold like wet cardboard.” He came around the counter and went right to the espresso machine.

“The guy who played a long game and wrote an entire freaking novel?”

“Dahmer folded,” Art argued. “Bundy folded. There’s a long list of people who murdered for years and then …” He snapped his fingers.

She didn’t think that was the sound of wet cardboard folding.

“Kent and his dad out fishing or something?”

“Fishing?” Was he so distracted that he’d forgotten where they lived?

Art waved that away. “Some sort of male bonding whatever. Two dudes off doing dude stuff.”

“I’m not sure where they are or what they’re doing, but yeah, Owen’s hanging out with him today.” Possibly discussing Donna and how they, as a group, were going to handle everything moving forward.

At least Owen called them Kent and Nell. He’d been thinking of them that way for years, which gave him a head start on the rest of his family, and maybe he’d also tried to explain to Donna why, exactly, they couldn’t just flip back to their old names.

Art sighed. “Sorry. However frustrated I am with all of this …”

“Some of us have been frustrated with the lack of progress for years now.”

He shook his head slowly. “You’re, um … you’re good at keeping secrets.”

“Alternately, you’ve only known me frustrated, so you’ve got nothing to compare it to.”

Art tilted his head, considering. “Fair. Plus, well … you had every reason to keep your secret. Getting close to someone could get them killed.”

She shivered and crossed her arms, shaking her head to forestall his apology. “Like that hasn’t been on my mind this entire time, either. This whole thing is just …” But she didn’t have a way to finish that sentence.

“It’s entirely too unbelievable that it would wrap up?” he suggested.

Nell nodded slowly. “And, even then … God, I just …” She glanced around, but there wasn’t anyone here, and if the place was bugged, it wasn’t like she’d see the mics. “Even prison doesn’t feel sure enough. He could still … someday …”

Art nodded like she wasn’t telling him anything new. “Even having that photo … I’d be worried I wouldn’t recognize him if I saw him on the street.”

“Hard same.”

“But there’s probably, uh …” Art set his cup on the counter and leaned his elbows next to it, eyes on the door. “There’s no proof then, huh? Or else …”

“Michigan doesn’t have the death penalty.”

He sucked air in through his teeth. “A life sentence?”

“Eligible for parole after ten or fifteen years.”

“Damn. And he’s pretty young, right? So ten or fifteen …”

God, she actually felt herself relax at his response. All it took was his frustration and she was validated. Kent felt the same way, sure, and she was pretty sure Owen did, too, but those guys were practically required to feel that way. They were supposed to be protective and ready with teeth and claws. The fact that Art joined in, though … that helped a lot.

“So …” Art picked up his cup and swirled the contents. “What can I do?”

“Sorry?” She looked around like maybe she’d forgotten to wipe down the tables.

“I don’t know, to make this easier, or make time pass faster, or something. Just … what can I do to help? You want more hours to distract you, or less, or just …?”

Nell blinked as something occurred to her. “Hey, so what’s up with the book launch tour, then?”

“The …?” Art blinked, too, and shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything. Haven’t asked, either. Maybe I should, but …” He frowned. “Everyone thinks he’s just been arrested for the assault, right?”

So he was going to get out on bail or something and still be able to do his cross-country tour? Nell pulled out her phone and Googled Bentley Beckett. They had to be speculating about why he assaulted an agent, right? Especially since they were speculating about whether they should really continue to #FindRosie and all the rest. If Rosie were real, and if the real Rosie was wanted for murder, and then Beckett went and beat up an FBI agent badly enough to land him in the hospital …

She didn’t find what she wanted after a quick scroll so she tried Bentley Beckett book tour instead. That search pulled up a list of locations and options for buying tickets, followed by a couple questions about whether the first nights were still on, but …

“Looks like they haven’t canceled anything yet,” Art mused. “They’ve put so much into him, though, so I guess I’m not surprised.”

At some point serial killer had to outweigh massive investment, right?

“I’ll email and cancel anyway, though.”

“Is that going to cost you something?” Had they asked for some sort of down payment?

Art snorted. “He was caught ready to take a standing lamp to an agent in this very state, so I’m pretty sure they’ll just say okay, thanks, and that’ll be it.”

She looked out at the walls, both the pending connections and the pending food, the second emptier than the first. They really could’ve used the free advertising, but …

But. Since You Went Away was about an author who wanted to #FindRosie so he could … well. Nell didn’t think Beckett wanted to kill her, but he’d certainly hurt her, and justify it to himself in the process.

That was really the most insidious part to her: that he could justify it. Could, and did, for five murders, and she’d be damned if she wanted to give him a chance at any more. Honestly, he’d already taken so much from her, and there was damn little left. If Kent hadn’t come with her, just dropped all else and thrown everything into the two of them …

Art nudged her shoulder with his own. “Help me think of some new advertising campaign.”

“Yeah? What’s your budget line read for that?”

“There’s no line. No room for one, either. Our plan’s got to be less than cheap—I’m thinking free.”

“Something that takes up your time and energy isn’t actually free,” she sniffed.

“Fine, then think of something that takes up someone else’s time and energy.”

Nell shrugged. “We should hook up with the library and do a blind date with a book thing.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You wrap up books and write fun things on the outside to hint at what they are, so people check them out and unwrap them. We could pair them with drink recommendations and then just … I don’t know, people hang out and read here for a while.” She shrugged again. “At least I’m pitching.”

“No, I like it. The …” He pointed to the connections wall. “It fits. Wouldn’t they have to check them out at the library?”

“There has to be an app. If other places have bookmobiles, there’s got to be a way we can do this.”

Art nodded slowly. “I’ll ask Brandon. He owes me. Although …” His grin was a little wry. “Maybe not as much as he did when we all thought C. J. O’Connell was just some author with a much-hyped book.”

“Yeah, I think he’s still working through the stages of grief on that one.”

“There’ll be another moving bestseller to tug at his heartstrings that wasn’t written by a murderer. He’ll get over it.”

Nell laughed. “Still might be a while before you can get him on board with the blind date thing.”

“Brandon’s a romantic who wears rose-colored glasses and his heart on his sleeve. If we call it blind dates, he’s in.” Then, at her raised eyebrow, he laughed. “I’m not romantic in the least, but I’ve made studies.”

“Studies.” She almost didn’t want to know.

Art smiled. “I’m not saying my Google history has a 3 a.m. search for how to convince a romantic of something he doesn’t want to do, but I’m not saying I’ve never looked that up, either. Blind date with a book,” he repeated, nodding slowly. “That’s good. We should make it just one part of a whole …”

“Scheme?” she suggested.

“Marketing plan,” he countered, smile broadening. “Keep thinking on it. I’m sure we’ll get something better than that damn book.”

Nell rolled her eyes. “What, like it’s hard?”

Art grinned. “Oh, good. You’re back.”

Was she? Or was she just back to whatever sort of normal she’d been before he’d ever handed her a copy of Since You Went Away? It wasn’t really possible to go all the way back, was it? Not while Beckett’s sentence was pending and he would, one day, be released.

Maybe Art caught some of this on her face because he hesitated, but he went on back to his office when she shook her head to tell him no, she didn’t want to talk about it just now, thanks.

It wasn’t something she’d ever really want to talk about.

Chapter Forty

Pending – Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ben’s lawyer took off his glasses—rimless, quite thin, possibly worn only for theatrics such as this—and took his time polishing them. Seriously, they didn’t merit all this attention. The flourish with the polishing cloth, the continued circular motions, the squint as he held them up to the light … pointless. Clearly the man needed a prop so he could do his thinking, and Ben didn’t feel all that reassured by a lawyer who needed props.

This wasn’t a courtroom. Surely his own client didn’t merit such a performance. Besides, he was court-appointed, so it wasn’t like he could use his faux-dirty glasses to pad his billable hours.

“Mr. Beckett …” Like he was a paying client with deep pockets. “What, exactly, is your goal here?”

He blinked, but that didn’t seem to work, so he blinked again.

“The assault charges will stick. We might be able to plead the sentence down on that one, but, since they’re after you for the others, I doubt they’ll be cooperative.” He sighed and checked his watch. “They don’t have any evidence tying you to the string of murders, so it’s unlikely they’ll charge you, but …”

But. Why was there a but?

“Your book.”

Ben blinked again, even though that hadn’t helped yet. “My book.”

“Your book doesn’t confess to any of the murders, but it does tie in the two they suspect were committed by the same person, so you’ve put yourself in a tough place there. Because most people would’ve read the newspapers and stopped at three.”

It wasn’t a confession. Obviously it wasn’t a confession. “The agents already suggested that I was just … perceptive. And those two have been solved.”

“By the local police,” his court-appointed shithead agreed, like he was just humoring him. “The FBI wasn’t involved back then, but now they know you’re name, and they really want to know why you beat up one of their own, so …”

“Past crimes—if they actually existed—can’t be brought up as proof of guilt for an alleged crime,” he protested.

“Mr. Beckett, your alleged past crimes form the motive for the one with which you will be charged, because they have plenty of proof for it. So either you and I need to come up with a reason for that attack that is not ‘Why yes, I killed the others for Lida-Rose Dawson and finally found a way to track her down,’ or you capitulate, tell them everything, and at least a chance to talk to her.”

He straightened his shoulders and felt something in his spine crackle. “I don’t think it’s fair to say those are my only options.”

“Oddly enough, the state of Michigan couldn’t care less about what you think is ‘fair.’”

“Now you just—”

He forgot himself. That was the only explanation for it: why he jumped to his feet, tipping the chair over behind him, and leaned across the table, and pointed directly at this shyster lawyer in a gesture that did indeed seem to be threatening.

That was why there was a guard on his feet, yelling something, and pointing a gun at him.

Wasn’t he allowed to speak to his lawyer alone? And, barring that, did the guards really need to have guns in here? Ben was already handcuffed—and raising those cuffed hands, thank you very much—and he wasn’t actually going to do anything to this lawyer, whatever the fuck his name was, who sat there across from him, polishing his glasses and checking his watch instead of helping.

And this, now? While Ben stood here with his hands in the air and a gun directed at his chest? The bastard sighed and checked his watch again. “I’ve got five more minutes for him, Hopkins, but I’m not going to complain if you decide he doesn’t deserve them.”

“Are you going to stay on that side of the table?” the guard more barked than asked.

Ben started to nod, then thought better of moving. “Yes.”

“When you right that chair, it’s not going to come more than one inch off the ground.”

He hesitated, but that seemed to be his cue to ] move, and he made sure the back legs didn’t actually lift at all.

“Now sit.”

He sat.

The guard holstered his weapon and retreated back to his stool in the corner. God, seriously? It was like a bad prison movie where they hadn’t bothered to consult with any actual prisons.

The lawyer raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Beckett? You had an opinion to express?”

Fuck him. The man clearly wanted to bait him and make him jump up again … and for Hopkins to fire this time. How fair could anything be when your own lawyer wanted you bleeding out on the cement floor? “If I say nothing, then all they’ve got me for is the assault charge.”

He nodded once. “Twenty years.”

“Twenty …?”

“Felony assault on a federal officer using a dangerous or deadly weapon, maximum sentence. And you know they’ll go for the maximum sentence.” He shrugged easily, because it wasn’t his neck in the noose. “And they’ll figure out any number of other charges they can heap on that one, just to be sure. Plus you’ll never see her. Ms. Dawson.”

He shook his head. “They can’t keep her away.”

“Ah, well, see …” Instead of polishing them, the man simply resettled his glasses on his nose. “They don’t have to approve her in the first place. Or allow her letters through.”

“They can’t stop me from calling her!” Except—damn it, he’d let it all get to him—he didn’t have her phone number.

The lawyer shrugged. “You put a federal agent in critical condition and you’ve failed to adequately explain the reason behind your actions. You’re clearly a danger to everyone around you. Have they allowed you the newspapers in here, Mr. Beckett?”

“The …?”

“Newspapers. Because you’re being painted as Norman Bates, and public opinion is clearly against you. Honestly, at this point … you’ve got nothing going for you.”

“What, so you think I should just … fake a confession to serial murder?” he snapped, heart pounding in his throat because he’d almost left out the word fake. He’d almost just said confess, and seriously, what was wrong with him? Why was this man getting to him so effectively?

Sighing, he put his legal pad—still virginal, since the idiot hadn’t even taken any notes—back in his briefcase and pushed the catches closed. “I’m saying that plea bargains only happen when you have something they want, so you need to think long and hard about whether you do, and what sort of future you envision for yourself, Mr. Beckett. Hopkins, he’s all yours.”

“Not that we want him,” the guard grumbled just loud enough for him to hear. It was supposed to provoke him—and at least he knew that, but it wasn’t worth going after some nothing guard, anyway. He followed the barked orders and, back in his cell, he lay on his bunk with his hands folded on his stomach, trying to think.

It was going wrong. All of it was going wrong. As soon as he’d come out of that back room with the lamp in his hands and seen the woman’s face, he knew it was going wrong.

Except apparently he hadn’t realized how wrong it was.

The damn lawyer was working against him. Trying to compel a confession. The man was supposed to be on his side, and it was his own damn fault he was a public defender. That wasn’t a position you just accidentally fell into, so it was a choice. Choice meant culpability meant fault. Ipso facto.

God, he had to get it together.

Everything was for her. He couldn’t help her if he was locked up in prison. And that meant …

Shit. It meant the lawyer might know what he was talking about. Plea bargaining meant trying to spend less time in prison, which was certainly Ben’s own personal goal, except the things they were asking him to plea in order to complete the bargain …

Right now, they had him for assault. With a deadly weapon, yes, fine, but that wasn’t serial murder. And he really, seriously doubted they’d get him for either the bus driver or Number 17, because those trials were over. People were already behind bars. Even if Ben came right out and said he did it—and proved it somehow—it wouldn’t be that easy. So maybe they’d be after him for the three, and even then …

Phillips. They’d laid down that photograph of Heidi Phillips and tried to pin that on him. Shit, he’d have to ask the dumbass lawyer about that—if they could really trace cell phone movements that far back. But even then, it wasn’t like she’d carried a GPS in her pocket. They could say she was in the range of whatever towers, but they couldn’t place her in his apartment.

That was the whole point. Nobody had ever been able to place them together. He figured she didn’t want anyone to know—that she was embarrassed to be seen with him—but that didn’t matter, because it got the result he wanted. Heidi suggested that the roommates should keep tabs on each other, which meant he’d known when the apartment was empty so he could check on his bugs. That right there—the whole relationship with Heidi—was the perfect example of doing something you didn’t like because it got you the results you needed.

But, if he did that this time … if he confessed and somehow managed to prove he was telling the truth … that didn’t guarantee him a single second with her. They were holding her up like a carrot, but he didn’t trust silver platters.

Ben frowned slightly, even though he was pretty sure there was a camera watching his every move and he really didn’t want to give them a thing. He was desperate, yes, but couldn’t he say the same thing about them? They’d thrown Phillips at him and flung all those unsubstantiated accusations.

Ever so conscientiously he smoothed out his forehead and let his thoughts continue to explore this new idea.

This is the end of Part Six.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Pending – Chapter Thirty-Seven

Part Six: Rhymes of Yesterday

The number of times they asked Ben if he understood was insulting. Yes, he understood his rights as they read them to him. Yes, he understood that they wanted him to tell them everything. Yes, he understood that they were accusing him of more than the attack on Hillier, which they were hinting was a murder, but they could lie. They were always allowed to lie in the interrogation room, and he would be punished if he tried the same.

]Correction: if he tried the same … and was caught.

Hillier, yes, fine, he’d probably made mistakes there. Although he’d also made mistakes here, because he’d believed the address, and the scripted fight, and he’d been caught red-handed with the standing lamp held like a weapon and two more lamps bugged. Not to mention the crowbar by the door.

They hadn’t missed it. It had in fact been their cue.

The woman wasn’t right at all. He supposed that’s how it was always going to be: people reading the book and imagining their own Rosie, because author’s descriptions always worked best when they left enough spaces for each reader to individualize the characters. Sure, he supposed her hair was blonde, but her build was wrong, and he’d noticed her voice wasn’t right even as he was looking for a weapon to use to defend her.

The irony. The one time he was actually there, the woman in question—not her—didn’t need defending.

He didn’t have access to the news, which bugged him more than the continued attempts to get him to talk. She was still out there, somewhere, and he didn’t know what they were telling her. What she thought she knew. He supposed they might contradict whatever made it into the news, and argue that of course they knew better and were telling the truth, or maybe they simply kept the news from her so she had no idea what was going on. Maybe she didn’t even know that he’d tried.

Maybe she still thought she was alone. Alone, and forgotten.

It was always the same two men, but it wasn’t the two from before. And it could’ve been—Jack and Tyler could’ve squared off against him—because Ben was back in Michigan. The paperwork reason was Hillier, which trumped any sort of breaking and entering in Iowa, but they’d already told him the real reason when they demanded he confess to everything.

These two either hadn’t given their names, or he hadn’t been paying attention when they did. It didn’t matter. None of the words coming out of their mouths mattered. He’d fallen for their trap, gone haring off to finally save her, and she hadn’t been there. They’d played him, and the way to make sure he didn’t get played again was to keep his mouth shut. He’d get what he got for Hillier, but that would be it.

That was the whole point. There was no evidence connecting him to any of those murders—which was a small miracle, considering something they hadn’t even thrown at him as a guess. If they knew that, then maybe there was a problem

He didn’t have a problem. This was a delay, but it wasn’t a problem. Really, he hadn’t lost anything. He didn’t know where she was, but he hadn’t known for years. If they put him in prison, fine, he’d do the time and then get out and start over. But, if they put him in prison for Hillier, that meant the book money would still be there when he got out. They could allege and accuse and cajole, but until they sentenced, it was simply a strange connection. Some deep insight that put all five together when everyone else thought there were only three. Instinct, or author’s creativity.

They brought Ben into the room again, the big, empty one with the obvious camera. He wasn’t handcuffed, but he was in a jumpsuit and little paper booties, and he’d been searched very thoroughly—perhaps even overly intrusively—more than once. The only weapons he had were the ones stored inside his head, and that was behind an unpickable lock.

The two agents came in, and they didn’t say hello this time. It was rude, and it was also worth noticing, because they’d greeted him all the other times. They’d even tried asking him how he was doing—did you sleep well, how are they treating you—but he didn’t answer any of that. No response was the best response, and didn’t they deserve the best?

But today they didn’t talk, and they each looked exhausted. It wasn’t just in the pulled-down ties or the lack of suit jackets with shirt sleeves rolled up, which could all be—and probably was—part of an act. The light in here was stark, and the dark patches under their eyes were real. Neither had a five o’clock shadow, which was probably against regulations, but to his calculating eye they both looked about beaten.

Good. He could keep his mouth shut for as long as necessary, but it was annoying to continually be brought in here and have questions barked at him.

One of them carried a thick folder, probably for show, and started laying out printed sheets of paper in neat columns despite his apparent exhaustion. He dropped his eyes to see if he could make out any of the lines of text from here, but it was too small, and he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of making him lean in. Let them wait in silence until they broke and started to explain, and then—

The last image was a black and white printout of a photo of Heidi Phillips.

That was fine. There were plenty of photos of Heidi Phillips. A big fan of documentation, Heidi Phillips. She hadn’t had the face for selfies, but she’d taken them, anyway. She’d hook an arm around someone’s neck and force them to lean in, nearly cracking skulls, and hold out her phone and order you to look at the camera—not the screen, the camera, because she’d re-take it if your eyes went elsewhere—and click away, baring her teeth the way a chimpanzee did as a warning.

It was fine. She’d kept her phone in the car. He’d insisted. He was a very private person who didn’t want his face out there where anyone could take it and use it, and that hadn’t even been in the era of generative AI. He wasn’t on social media, and he wanted things to stay that way.

This photo was from Facebook. It had been her profile picture when she died. The fact that they had a copy didn’t mean anything, because that particular image had been everywhere. Even in the paper, which he knew, because that was in his own folder of printouts, so …

So. He looked back up at the agents, fighting the thought that maybe he’d been staring at Heidi for too long.

The agent who’d displayed Heidi’s picture reached out to push it just a little closer to Ben. “You know who this is.”

It wasn’t a question, so it definitely didn’t deserve a response.

“You latched onto the two other murders, but you missed something major about this one,” the agent continued. “Which is weird.”

He just looked across the table, breathing easily, blinking when necessary.

“The night she was murdered, she’d told her roommate—your Rosie—that friends were going to pick her up for the weekend.” He tilted his head. “That’s why Lida-Rose Dawson’s boyfriend came down for the weekend. He got there, Dawson left with him to go get dinner, and it was the two of them who found Phillips’s dismembered body.”

Uh. Well. If they said so. Ben tried not to let that thought show on his face or flicker across his eyes. He wanted to tell them that, if it hadn’t made it into the paper, then no, he didn’t know it—and besides, not everything that made it into the paper ended up in the book—but he also didn’t want to tell them anything.

The second agent opened a folder, holding it so Ben couldn’t see what, if anything, was inside. “Dawson’s been told she can’t see you until after you talk to us. She’s not happy about that.”

His heart rate jumped before he could try to stop it. They were probably lying to him. They were certainly allowed, and if they were already trying to poke him with Heidi’s picture …

The first man sighed. “This is basically your shot. You tell us, or she’s off the table.”

He didn’t think they could really do that. Maybe she’d be denied visiting privileges, but she could write to him. She’d know where to find him, after all. If they censored everything … Well, if that happened, he’d get a lawyer. Except that probably wasn’t the best way to approach this, was it? He wasn’t going to talk about Kalamazoo no matter what, and they wouldn’t—shouldn’t—be able to get him on anything else but Hillier, but the law didn’t work well for people who were one step behind and just trying to catch up. It was better to get on top of things if they were already threatening to keep her from him. To not let her see him, even when it was what she wanted. When they knew it was what she wanted.

He took a slow breath, and it was clear they were desperate for anything from him because that was all it took. He didn’t straighten up or move appreciably—it was just the slow breath, and they were both putty in his hands. “I want a lawyer.”

Well. Not quite putty. But he went back to his silence and waited them out and did his best not to smile.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Pending – Chapter Thirty-Six

Nell was almost asleep on the couch in front of the television, head on Kent’s shoulder, when she sat up suddenly. “Oh my God.”

“Nell?” That wasn’t just curiosity. Kent’s voice was overloaded with concern.

“No, I …” She pressed her fingertips to her temples like her skull needed the extra force to keep her brain from exploding it into shards.

Kent sat up and paused the movie, almost hunching over her protectively but literally biting his lip to keep himself from spewing a torrent of questions.

Her drowsing thoughts drew the connections, but Nell forced them to surface more fully so she could test them. Make sure everything actually did lead into everything else. God, she needed a calendar … their old emails … it might still work without proof, but if they could actually back this up …

Nell fumbled for her phone and checked the time. Still early enough, maybe, that he’d answer, but if he’d been in the car coming back from Des Moines today … she hit dial anyway, and then put the call on speaker as Kent shifted, ready to grab her in a bear hug like it would protect her from whatever she was thinking.

“Hello?” Adam answered, but she couldn’t read him as well as Kent, so she wasn’t sure if she’d woken him up or if he was concerned or annoyed or what.

“I just thought of something where, if it’s true, you need to hit him with it.”

There was a pause, but Nell and Kent waited it out. Then Adam said, “Okay, go.”

“Someone needs to figure out how many weekends Heidi told me she was with her friends back home, and if she actually was with them at any of those times,” she started, forcing herself to speak slowly even though her heart was still jackhammering. Then she waited, in case Adam was taking notes.

After a short pause, he said “Okay” again.

“I don’t think anyone checked that except for the last weekend, but if you have those dates …”

“What are we doing with those dates, Nell?”

“First you have to see if you can prove he was in Kalamazoo all those weekends. O’Connell.” She shook her head a little. “Beckett.”

Kent swore softly under his breath.

“And then—was there anything in our apartment that seemed weird?”

Adam cleared his throat. “Define ‘weird.’”

“Anything that wasn’t from one of us. Anything …”

“From Beckett,” Kent finished. “You think Beckett was secretly dating Heidi.”

“If he was, there doesn’t have to be anything in the apartment,” Nell continued, “because maybe he didn’t come over. Maybe he fed her some sort of story that means she’d hang out with him.”

Over the phone, Adam sighed. “You said she didn’t go out evenings. All your friends came over. Heidi had no social life.”

“Outside of those weekends she told me she went home,” Nell argued. “Did anyone ask her parents if they actually saw her? Because that was more than once a month. And some weekends, when I was gone … I don’t know if she was there or not. She didn’t text me that she’d gone anywhere, but that hardly means anything.” She blinked and shook her head. “Can her phone be traced? After all this time?”

“Nell …”

“Because that’s how you’d need to do it.” Nell took a deep breath. “You’d have to lay out all the evidence and outline the gaps. Prove there are gaps. If her phone says she was in Kalamazoo the whole time … if it pinged the towers where he lived … you could nail him with it.”

“Nail him with the gaps.”

She shook her head a little to keep Kent from saying whatever he’d drawn in a quick breath to say. “I never shared my location with Heidi, but she’s the one who asked me to text her about my plans. She’d know when I was in the apartment and when I wasn’t, and when I had an alibi if something went down and it got connected back to me.” Even though it hadn’t even gotten all connected to itself until after Heidi died. “You’ve got copies of those texts, right? Or maybe you could pull more? Longer, for the whole year …”

“To prove you’d spent senior year keeping your roommate appraised of your whereabouts?”

“And you’re going to tell Beckett you know she only did it because he asked her to. Check her records. See if you can prove she never asked anyone else.” A thought struck. “Sienna. Find Sienna and ask her if Heidi was ever like that when they roomed together.”

“People are allowed to change, Nell.”

“Sure, but if you’ve got that, if you can hit him with it … all of it at once, just laying down the evidence …”

More silence, but this time Kent didn’t try to speak, either. He caught Nell looking at him and nodded slowly, the sort of respectful acknowledgment given to geniuses lucky enough to be recognized in their own time.

“Okay,” Adam finally said again. “I don’t know how much of this we’ll really be able to get, but I’ll pass it on. Off the record, though …”

As though any of this was actually on it.

“You believe it?”

Her half-sleeping subconscious clearly did, but Nell took a moment to truly consider the question. “It’s always bugged me,” she finally said, “that Heidi lied about where she was supposed to be that weekend. That nobody missed her.” Maybe that second part more than the first, because people deserved to be missed. “She told me that her friends were picking her up, the same way she’d told me before, but nobody was there. You guys tracked them down, and they said no, they hadn’t seen Heidi in ages.”

“True, but she wouldn’t be the first person to lie to her roommate.”

Nell sighed. “No, but they never figured out why she was lying. Did they.”

“So now you think it’s Beckett.”

“You’re going to have to do a lot of research before you can convince me it’s not.”

“Fair enough. Except I’m not the one who’ll be doing it, but … I’ll make sure they do. Anything else?”

“That’s not enough?” Kent snapped, unable to hold it back any longer.

Adam actually laughed. “It’s plenty. And creative. I think you were just so adamant back then that she didn’t have a boyfriend … or a social life …”

“Shouldn’t they have looked into it anyway?” Kent countered.

“Lots of things should happen, but don’t. But this one will now. If that’s it, I’ll call them right now.”

“That’s it,” Nell confirmed.

“I’ll keep you updated.” That was Adam’s way of saying goodbye, because the call ended and the screen of her phone lit up momentarily with that news before dimming again.

Kent settled back into the couch, but she could still feel how tense he was. She’d really startled him. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I just …” He tried out a grin. “I’m not really convinced we can relax, so I’ve been even more on edge than before. Which doesn’t make any sense.”

“Makes sense to me.” She tucked herself up against him. “Mammal brains don’t adapt well to change, and just because we like to think humans can reason better than any other species …”

“Are you calling me a monkey?”

“You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals.”

That made him laugh and kiss her hair. “They do it on the Discovery Channel in front of cameras, and I can’t say that’s my thing.”

“But otherwise sure, let’s go again?”

This laugh was more of a chuckle. “I think you wore me out last night. I need some more time to recover.”

“Recover, huh? Are you getting old?” she teased.

“Older every day. You know, a lot of things always bugged me about Heidi,” he said abruptly, making her sigh inwardly and sit up properly again so they could have a serious conversation when she didn’t fall asleep in the middle. “She was weird around you.”

“She was weird around you,” Nell countered. “The very few times she saw you.”

But he shook his head. “You’re the last person in the world who’s going to diss someone in an email and even you had trouble writing about her. You’d say she was weird about chores because you didn’t want to call her ‘controlling.’ And you never admitted how much of yourself you put into a little box around her so that she didn’t explode. That’s classic abuse right there.”

“It was fine.”

“Nell …” Kent shook his head once. “That’s not okay. You were stuck, and that made it worse, but it wasn’t okay. She wasn’t a very nice person, but we definitely couldn’t say that after she was dead, so maybe a lot of that was just … left alone after she died, because we left, and it went cold, and just … even knowing all that, even thinking all that about Heidi, I wouldn’t have jumped ahead to ‘she was actually helping the killer.’”

“I don’t think she knew she was,” Nell countered. “Especially not her own killer. And she would’ve been pissed if she was with someone who would rather talk about me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So she dated Beckett, but he …?”

“Hid it. Serial killers are great at hiding things. That’s totally the definition: they go back to normal life between the murders, and everyone’s like oh, no, he was such a nice neighbor.”

Kent suddenly straightened, holding up a wait a minute finger as he got to his feet. He came back with the laptop and set it on the coffee table, waiting impatiently for it to wake up so he could go to Google and type in Bentley Beckett’s name.

Nell shook her head a little, because she hadn’t thought of doing this before, and leaned in when he let out a low whistle.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s going the ‘such a nice neighbor’ route,” Kent observed as she read the headline: Man accused of assaulting federal officer described by acquaintances as ‘Norman Bates.’

“Acquaintances,” she murmured.

“Huh?”

“Not friends.” Nell reached over to search for that word, instead, and read the sentence with the highlight: “I don’t think he ever had any friends,” Halliday continued.

Kent wrinkled his nose. “So we’re feeling bad for the poor friendless man who beat the crap out of a guy he thought was my dad?”

“Oh, I’m not feeling bad for him,” she protested. “I think they’re more painting him as the sort of guy who’d totally do this, and if they let him off with a slap on the wrist, he’d totally do it again.” That was, of course, the sort of man he’d always been to her, even before he had a name: the kind who wouldn’t stop. The one who’d just keep being a threat.

Her husband cleared his throat. “It’s up to twenty years. Assaulting a federal agent with a deadly weapon.”

Up to, but not a certainty. And that came with the risk of getting out early, didn’t it? And even then … In twenty years, Beckett would be about fifty. According to her Nell Green birth certificate, she’d be forty-three. If they had kids, not all of them would be adults by then.

His arms held her tight. “I think you need to dose up on melatonin and try to sleep.”

“I’m not sure melatonin’s going to cut it tonight.” But she got up all the same when he let go, reaching back for his hand to make sure that he came with her, because having Kent nearby was worth more than a whole bottle of sleep gummies.

This is the end of Part Five.

Chapter Thirty-Seven