Lee Edwards woke up in her bed. The room was dim because her heavy drapes were drawn, and she remembered that she had gone back for a nap sometime earlier in the morning. She had hardly slept the night before. What had begun as a trickle of memories had become a flood, and it felt as if she was stuck on the This Is Your Life channel. Conversations of any kind had turned into a welcome distraction, and as she sat up she wondered who she would find on duty in her living room. She had left Rhonda there earlier, reading her book club paperback.
The poodle looked up when she stood but seemed perfectly content to remain at the bottom of her bed. Ty would have objected, but Lee needed the familiar warm weight of another soul lying next to her in the darkness.
She emerged into the living room and smiled: Ben Taylor was sitting on the sofa where Rhonda had been, reading one of Ty’s historical mysteries.
He looked up.
“There you are,” he said. “How are we feeling?”
“Would you like some tea?”
“That would be lovely.”
“Have a seat, let me do it.”
“You’re a sweetheart.”
Ben busied himself in the kitchen, humming a tune, and a few minutes later he returned carrying a tray with a teapot and mugs.
“You’re going to make someone a wonderful husband one day,” Lee said.
Ben smiled. “Here you go . . .”
The snowfall had made every sound muted, and the neighborhood felt peaceful. They drank the tea in silence because Lee had become accustomed to not having to entertain her guests. They didn’t expect her to—and in fact seemed poised to do the entertaining themselves.
“I really loved the stories you were telling us yesterday,” the man said. “About how Ludlow used to be when you first arrived. I should do a program about the history of the place. What do you think?”
“Sounds good, a lot of old-timers have stories to tell.”
“Maybe,” the man said. “But they wouldn’t be as good as yours. Coming to Ludlow all the way from Massachusetts.”
“A lot of people here have come from other places.”
“Still, a story is a complex thing. Everybody has a story to tell, but not everyone’s story has, you know, the kind of human interest that gets people to tune in, right?”
“Sure.”
“You, for example, you were born in . . . ?”
“Gloucester.”
“That’s right. And it’s a fishing town, a real old-fashioned harbor and all . . . and here you are surrounded by mountains, nowhere near the sea. And if Ludlow is isolated now, I can’t imagine what it would have been like then. No Internet, no cell phones, barely even a newspaper.”
“Lord, no. We had none of that.”
“Not a movie theater or a store that sold more than two brands of coffee.”
Lee chuckled. “It was different, I’ll give you that.”
“Well,” Ben Taylor said, “forgive me, but I’ve got to ask. Why the fuck did you come here, then?”
Lee Edwards smiled and sat forward, because obviously she hadn’t really heard what she thought she’d heard.
“What?” she said.
“I just asked you,” Ben Taylor said, as courteously as if he were addressing a foreign monarch, “why the fuck did you come to Ludlow?”
The profanity was a sharp slap.
“Ben—”
“I find it difficult to believe anything you say, when you already lied to me about the most basic thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m sure you don’t . . . but you will in a minute.”
“I want you to leave,” Lee Edwards said, and stood up.
“Where were you born?” the man said, and he took a sip of tea. “Please don’t say Gloucester because we’re way beyond that.”
Lee Edwards froze.
“Sit,” Ben Taylor said.
The woman hesitated.
“Sit!”
Lee Edwards dropped down onto the sofa. She couldn’t have walked, anyway. There was a swarming in her ears and she felt icy cold, as if life had already left her.
“You were born in Boston,” Ben Taylor said. “Not in Gloucester, no. I don’t know if you were ever in Gloucester at all, but you had to account for your East Coast accent, right?”
Lee didn’t reply.
Ben Taylor’s eyes bore into hers. “You left me a note. You left me three lines to say good-bye forever, and a puppy in a box to take the sting of it away. A puppy. Do you have any idea how long it’s taken me to find you?”
“Years. It’s taken me years,” he said.
The silence outside wasn’t peaceful anymore. It was an oppressing silence that pushed down on her from all sides.
“Aidan?” The woman said finally.
“Yes,” the man sighed.
“I—”
It was all she managed to say because, faster than she could move, Ben Taylor had gripped her wrist. Somehow there was a syringe in his hand and she was struggling and then falling back against the sofa and into darkness.
Ben Taylor put his arms around the woman and lifted her. He was familiar with the house and had been inside it many times since the fake burglary.
He carried Lee Edwards into the bathroom and laid her in the tub. Supporting her head with one hand, he grabbed a towel with the other and bunched it up to give her a pillow against the hard surface. There was snuffling at the door and the dog wagged his tail. Ben scratched him behind the ear and led him by his collar back into the bedroom. He closed the door and returned to the bathroom. Lee Edwards lay still, with her eyes half open.
He watched her for a moment: her chest rose and fell, her face had paled, and her hands were palms up like a bizarre Deposition of Christ, where Lee had taken Christ’s place. Once a Catholic . . .
The song was with him again—a memory, and a light in the shadows. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m half crazy, all for the love of you.
He went to the cabinet, still humming, and there, as he already knew, was Ty Edwards’s razor. So perfect for the suicide of a widow who could not bear to live under the weight of her grief.
Daisy, Daisy . . .
Kevin Brown rang the doorbell. He could still feel the heat of the fire on his face but the fire was somewhere else, together with the noise of the crowd and the emergency vehicles. Where Brown stood there was only silence.
A tall man in jeans and a red fleece jacket opened the door.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Brown. I’d like a word with Mrs. Edwards, if she’s around.”
“She is, but she’s having a little quiet time,” the man said. “I’m Ben Taylor.”
“I think we’ve met. You work at the radio station, right?”
“Right, your colleague recorded the appeal.”
Ben Taylor had long hair in a ponytail and a crooked smile. He was holding a book in his hand, as if Brown had interrupted his midday reading.
“Yes, she did.” Brown walked in. “I really need to speak with Mrs. Edwards. Is she sleeping?”
“No, she wanted to take a hot bath, to try and relax. She hasn’t been sleeping at all.”
“I can imagine. Would you mind knocking on the door and telling her I’m here?”
“I’d rather wait a little. She’s only just gone in. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll make some coffee, and in ten minutes or so I’ll knock on the door and she’ll come out.”
“I need to see her right now, I’m afraid.”
Alice Madison scanned the backyard. Every movement and every sound was significant: they needed to get Lee Edwards out of the house as soon as possible. She looked up. The sky was colorless and bright, and the snowfall had almost stopped. The firs around the house were laden with it and the branches trailed on the ground under their burden. A bird flapped its wings somewhere above her and a chunk of white spattered on the lawn.
Without looking, Madison undid the safety strap on her holster just as her cell phone vibrated in her pocket.
“Where’s your partner? Has something happened?” Ben Taylor said.
His manner was pleasant, but Brown was already on edge and was looking behind the man to the bungalow’s corridor, ready to go around him and get Lee Edwards out of her bath himself. The question stopped him cold.
Where’s your partner?
It was an innocent question, delivered with a concerned smile.
Where’s your partner?
“She’s at the station,” Brown replied, not missing a beat.
Taylor had already reached behind him for the revolver in his belt under the fleece.
“Good for her,” he said, and the barrel of the Smith & Wesson was aimed straight at Brown’s chest. His hand was steady and his voice was calm. “You got here too late, Detective. Lee Edwards has already taken her life and in due time she’ll be found by a friend. Me. You, on the other hand, are going to be the Ludlow killer’s next victim. But fear not, I’m sure you’ll get a proper cop funeral. Everyone loves a good cop funeral.”
Madison eased herself through the bedroom window. She had noticed that it was open and it had been easy to push the pane aside and slip behind the drapes. It had been too long since Brown had gone inside, and the question that had brought them there was still pecking at her.
How had the killer known?
The killer had known because he had spoken to Lee Edwards, and she had told him something that had led him to Andrew Howell.
The room Madison found herself in was a bedroom. The blankets on the bed were pulled up, though not quite straight.
Unbidden and unwanted came the memory of Robert Dennen’s body on the morgue’s table, and the steel jaws of the hunting trap. If the man they were after could do that, he could do anything. The adrenaline was acid in her gut and her gun hand felt clammy.
A dark shape on the bed moved, and Madison’s breath caught. The dog shifted and his tail thumped once. Good Tucker, stay where you are.
Voices spoke harshly, somewhere nearby, and Madison listened, flat against the door. Brown’s voice and another man’s.
Where were they?
She peeked into the corridor: a corner hid the men from her line of sight. Across from her the bathroom door was ajar, but the light was on. Madison darted inside.
Lee Edwards was sleeping, fully dressed, in the tub, her head nestled against a towel and her arms crossed. Her breath was barely a sigh. It was not sleep, it was something else. She was holding a black-and-white photograph to her chest, and red stains were spreading on her clothes from the cuts on her wrists.
Madison felt the scream die in her throat as she seized whatever towels she could find. The woman’s hands and arms were slippery and heavy; Madison wrapped them tight, without making a sound, her Glock abandoned in the middle of the bathroom floor.
She shouldn’t leave the woman alone, but she couldn’t stay. And she wanted to stay, but she must go.
Madison reached for her piece. If Lee was going to die because she hadn’t done enough then Madison would have to live with it. She made sure the towels were as tight as they could be and she leaned close to the woman’s ear.
“I beg you,” she whispered. “Hang on, Lee. Just hang on.”
Madison inched forward in the corridor.
When she reached the corner and peeked behind it, a man was holding a gun to Brown’s head.
Fear is uglier than despair, and Brown had been afraid for a long time. For weeks—since a call for backup during a gang shoot-out—he had been waiting for that moment in the Edwards home. Waiting as fear had soured his every day.
Two years earlier he had been shot by a madman. Since then, he had never aimed his piece at another human being and had never looked at the business end of someone else’s gun. On his way to respond to the gang shoot-out a prickling of fear had given him pause: what if his hand shook when it should be still? What if, in the instant when he should act, his mind was going to be clouded by memories of getting shot? What if he froze?
The situation had resolved itself before they’d arrived on the scene, but the fear had stayed with Brown and kept him company on every shift since. He was always first through a door, hoping to face whatever it was that was waiting for him on the other side, always going in first because the idea of letting down his partner was more than he could bear.
When the sniper shot at Madison in the square, Brown had been terrified for her and pissed off in equal measure. And now, he reflected, he finally had his answers. The timing was less than good, for sure, but there he stood, in Lee and Ty Edwards’s living room, and he was still the cop he had always been.
There was fear—as there should be—but he could still think, he could still function.
Ben Taylor’s gaze was like a doll’s—empty and flat. Brown focused on it: he needed to warn Madison, and he needed to get to the widow.
“What the hell did you do all this for?” Brown said.
Ben Taylor was about to answer. The barrel of his revolver wavered a few inches away from Brown’s head . . .
And in that instant three gunshots rang out in the enclosed room, so loud that the sound slammed into Brown’s body and spun him around.
Ben Taylor was on the ground. His eyes were open and all the way gone. There was darker red pooling on his chest, and the force of the shots had sent him halfway onto the sofa.
Madison stood in the doorway. Her face was blank.
When their eyes met, she spoke.
“She’s in the tub. He cut her wrists.”