From the sofa in the living room of their Upper East Side apartment, Neil Keeney pecked away at a text message. Checking in again. Any news? Let us know how we can help. Amanda sends love too.
He hit the Send button. He could not imagine what Melissa and Charlie were going through.
“Oh, there’s Riley,” Amanda called out from the kitchen, setting down the knife she was using to chop an onion. “Turn on the volume.”
He reached for the remote control on the coffee table and unmuted the television. They had been monitoring NY1 for updates.
On the left side of the screen was a now-familiar photograph of Riley, smiling up at the camera, as the anchor somberly recited the disturbing facts, a missing toddler who had not been seen for more than twenty-four hours. The screen cut to a montage of footage of people wandering in groups, scouring the East End of the South Fork, as the anchor reported, “The search for little Riley Miller has become a united effort across all of Suffolk County. Here, you can see even residents of Shelter Island searching the Mashomack Preserve, all in an increasingly desperate hope of reaching a happy ending to this terrifying story.”
When the coverage shifted to a spree of robberies in Brooklyn, Neil hit the Mute button on the remote control again. “Nancy’s cottage is in Southhampton. I’m no expert on Long Island, but isn’t Shelter Island quite a distance from there? I think it’s literally a separate island.”
“We were there once, remember? That dinner when your brother was dating… oh, what was her name? The publicist. The night ran late and we had to rush to make the last ferry. It’s probably an hour away from Nancy’s new place.”
Her cell phone buzzed on the counter next to the chopping board. She answered right away, using what Neil called her “work voice.” He joked that when she was in police officer mode, he felt like he was in grade school, waiting for his turn in the confessional.
He listened as she nodded and muttered words like okay and I see until he suddenly heard his own name. “Yes, I am aware of that. In fact, when they were missing, my husband, Neil, recognized the perpetrator’s picture on television. It ultimately led the police to the house where they were being held. That’s his original connection to the Eldredge family.”
She extended the phone in his direction. “Detective Hall from Long Island. They’re asking about what happened to Mike and Melissa when they were kids.”
He changed the audio to speaker mode so Amanda could listen in. Neil knew the facts cold, of course. In addition to his personal connection, he’d written a paper about the case during graduate school, focusing on the ways Nancy Eldredge’s first husband had slowly but certainly eroded her self-confidence to the point that she became completely dependent upon him. For his research, he had reached out to Lendon Miles, the psychiatrist whose unorthodox treatment of Nancy had enabled her to recall details of her first marriage that she had suppressed due to the trauma she had experienced in that relationship. The two men had remained in touch as friends and colleagues until his passing five years ago at the age of eighty-nine.
Neil was so familiar with the facts of Carl Harmon’s case that he had been answering all of Detective Hall’s questions with clinical expertise, until her curiosity suddenly took a personal turn. “And as a trained psychiatrist,” Detective Hall asked, “how would you say Melissa and Mike have coped given the trauma they experienced?”
He wondered now why any of this ancient history was relevant to Riley’s disappearance. “Better than anyone could have possibly expected under the circumstances,” he replied. It was an honest answer.
“But is it fair to say the tolls of that kind of victimization linger in the psyche?” Detective Hall asked.
He looked to Amanda, searching for some kind of guidance, but she simply shook her head. She clearly didn’t expect this avenue of questioning either. “Neither Mike nor Melissa has ever been a patient, so it really wouldn’t be fair to speculate. What I can say is that I’ve watched them both with Riley. Melissa gives a hundred percent of herself to anything that matters to her, but I’ve never seen her as committed as she is to that little girl. And Mike is the perfect uncle. If there’s something specific I can help you with—”
“We’re just making sure we have the lay of the land, Dr. Keeney. Thank you for your time.”
When the call ended, he passed Amanda’s phone to her over the kitchen island. “Why are they asking about Carl Harmon?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “At first, I thought it was a courtesy call since I’ve been reaching out to every cop I know in Suffolk County. But they did tell me that Melissa and Charlie hired a defense attorney, her friend Grant Macintosh—the one who’s been helping with her podcast. I don’t think they realize how bad that looks from the perspective of the police.”
“But now the detectives are wasting precious time asking questions about a nightmare from forty years ago. Is there some way to explain that Melissa truly believes that an outside lawyer can actually help the police do their jobs better? That’s been the point of her entire career.”
Amanda stepped around the island, pressed her forehead against his, and gave him a kiss. “I love you for thinking that could work.”
“I guess I sound naive, huh? Spell it out from their perspective.”
“Honestly? If you gave me the raw facts and I didn’t know the parties involved, my gut would tell me someone in the family knows more than they’re saying.”
“But we do know the people involved,” he said. “Maybe not Charlie, but it’s clear he adores his daughter, and you said yesterday the police already confirmed he was on a plane when Riley went missing.”
She returned to the business of chopping the onion, even though it was already thoroughly minced.
“You can’t possibly mean Mike and Melissa. I’ve known them as long as I can remember.”
She set aside the knife, and he could tell that she was choosing her words carefully. “You haven’t been close to Mike since he moved to the Caribbean. You told me yourself you thought he distanced himself from others because of what happened to him as a child. And how many times have you said you worry Melissa puts too much pressure on herself to be perfect to prove that she wasn’t damaged by whatever abuse she suffered?”
“That doesn’t make either of them bad people.”
“Neil, you’re a psychiatrist, and I’m a cop. We both know that the people who do bad things often had something bad done to them. It’s a vicious cycle.”
If someone else had even suggested the possibility, he would be furious, but this was Amanda. “Did that detective tell you something? Do they have evidence?”
She shook her head. “It was nothing specific. But I can tell Hall is good at her job, and she knows I’ve been pulling every last string I can find to make sure they look for Riley. She said something vague about not letting my professional reputation get tied up in a personal friend’s problems. And when she found out you were a psychiatrist and their childhood friend, she suggested the same for you.”
“This is crazy. We’re talking about one of our closest friends.”
“Every single person getting arrested tonight is someone’s childhood friend. That detective was telling me in no uncertain terms, Neil—there’s another side to this story.”