KATE FOUND A LOCAL news station on her car radio. “Multiple law enforcement agencies have joined the search for Professor William Stigler, who is wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Dr. Bram Wolfe, also from Blunt River. Police have put out a BOLO for the missing vehicle, a black BMW X5 SUV. It is unknown at this time what exactly happened inside the professor’s house on Lakeview Drive, but our sources indicate foul play. Dr. Wolfe’s daughter, Savannah, was murdered sixteen years ago—the man convicted of the crime was executed last week…”
Someone in a charcoal-gray Jeep Renegade was following her. It freaked her out a little, because the windshield was tinted and she couldn’t make out the driver’s face. He dogged her for a couple of miles before she lost him in heavy traffic outside Sanford. Maybe it was nothing. She told herself to calm down. Classic paranoia, believing someone was following you. Next she’d be hearing voices.
In the distance, she could see the mountains with their snow-powdered peaks. She turned up the radio.
“Authorities are scouring the nearby woods with cadaver dogs and a Forensics team is using ground-penetrating radar in the backyard of the property to identify any abnormalities in the soil that might point to a clandestine gravesite…”
Kate shot forward in her seat. Gravesite?
“Police officers have been seen taking dozens of evidence boxes out of Professor Stigler’s home… sources tell us… police have found photographs going back several decades… a pattern of missing and murdered girls in and around the area… we’ve just learned that some of these children and their families participated in research projects run by Professor Stigler…”
Kate’s head spun. If they found human remains on Stigler’s property, that would mean Palmer had been right all along. And if Stigler was a serial killer, then Kate’s father was most likely dead.
But why would he bury victims in his own backyard?
What if Stigler had been set up to take the fall, just like Henry Blackwood? What if the real killer buried one or more bodies on Stigler’s property to implicate him? Whose blood was really inside the lake house? What if Stigler was dead and her father was alive? What if he’d only made it look like the opposite was true? What if Bram had staged his own death?
By the time she’d reached the village of Four Oaks, Maine, an hour later, it was beginning to snow. The downtown area consisted of a post office, a grocery store, three churches, and a feed store. Her grandparents’ farm was way out in the boonies, nestled in a landscape of ice forests and frozen lakes. She recognized the battered mailbox and pulled over.
Dead grape arbors lined the entranceway to Wolfe’s Dairy. The old sign was falling down. She let the engine idle. It was obvious nobody had been out here in quite some time. She couldn’t detect any tire tracks in the snow, just virginal drifts where a driveway should be. There was a back entrance, but you had to take a series of dirt roads to get there.
She tried calling Chief Dunmeyer via the police station, but he wasn’t taking any phone calls. She left a message with the desk sergeant and hung up. There was very little traffic out this way. Snowflakes swirled down from the sky with gentle, sinuous movements. She got out of her car, zipped up her parka, and headed for the farm through the knee-deep drifts. By the time she’d reached the broken picket fence, she was drenched in sweat.
The farmhouse sat on twenty abandoned acres, surrounded by dilapidated outbuildings. The snowy yard was etched with deer prints, like her grandmother’s pie crust poked with a fork. This used to be a working dairy. Now everything was buried under the merciless Maine winter.
A sudden flurry of snow hit her, and Kate ran for cover up the old porch steps. A rusty cowbell hung by a length of rope from the doorknob. She crossed the sagging porch boards and fished the keys out of her pocket. The cowbell jangled as the front door popped open.
An eerie chill surrounded her as she stood in the front hall, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. A bad odor filled her nostrils, and she spotted a dead squirrel in the hallway. She turned a corner into the living room, where the moth-eaten furniture, once upholstered in soft blues and ginghams, was covered with mold and dust. The kitchen smelled of decay. Various creatures had left their fetid aroma behind. She tested the faucets, but no water came out. She opened the cupboards and found her grandmother’s pie plates and Mother Goose cookie cutters blooming with rust.
The dining room was separated from the rest of the house by an arthritic pocket door Kate could barely shove open. She stood clapping the dust off her hands and listening to it echo off the walls. She remembered dinners with Gran and Gramps, their stories about farting cows and charismatic men who could make it rain for a price. She went upstairs, recalling the thrill of staying up late at night with Savannah, playing word games in the dark and listening to the newborn calves mewling in the barn. Now every corner contained dead insects stuck in cobwebs. The floors were slanted and the doorways were crooked. She could hear the blustery wind outside. The weather was becoming increasingly rough.
There were no signs of foul play. No serial-killer souvenirs, clothing or jewelry lying around. No scalps. No chainsaws. Her father wasn’t a serial killer. She’d been wrong. Palmer was right. Case closed.
She went downstairs and wandered through the back of the house—the mud room, rodent-infested pantry, her grandfather’s study. She poked through the dusty books and papers on Gramps’ desk and found an old class photo of her father and his schoolmates. Bram Wolfe had to have been the tallest ten-year-old in Four Oaks Elementary. He stood in the back row, hunching his shoulders like a fairytale goose trying to fit in with the ducklings. He’d grown up in a village full of rowdy farm boys who wanted to be hockey stars. No doubt they had wanted to knock him down a few pegs.
Kate felt an excruciating sadness. Her father had lived a life of self-imposed isolation. He was a difficult person to love—but that didn’t make him a monster. He’d loved Julia with all his heart. He loved his daughters, too. His only sin was marrying a woman who couldn’t be faithful.
Gray shafts of light filtered in through the dusty windows. She put the picture down and turned to leave. Then she saw it. A jar of Planters Roasted Peanuts perched on top of her grandfather’s bookcase, covered in a light sheen of dust. Her heart began to race.
The cowbell jangled on the front door.
Kate spun around.
Someone was inside the house.