She noticed with a shock that the sun was going down, filling the room with a pink glow.
Her father had loved sunsets. It was one of the things she remembered most about him. He would take her hand and they’d stroll to a special viewing spot on her grandmother’s property. The sun would hover in the sky for so long, she sometimes thought maybe it wasn’t the sun at all, but something he’d convinced her was real. Twisting reality, making her think and see what he wanted her to think and see.
Everybody talked about criminal profiling. She’d taught classes around the country on it. She was supposed to be an expert. She used to be the person they called when a horrendous crime took place. But he’d never fit. A man who loved his family, loved nature, loved sunsets and animals. A man who’d given her the perfect childhood and had adored her. A man who loved and was loved.
And yet he was evil. Maybe the worst kind of evil, because it had hidden right in front of her and tricked her child’s heart. And later, when she began to suspect, when she tried to expose him, her mother didn’t believe her, and Reni began to doubt everything she knew.
But even now she missed him. That was the danger of seeing him again. She missed how he said her name. Reni, an old family name, spoken softly, with the hint of a southern accent. He was in prison and she was here, in the desert, safe from him and his control. But she was afraid that if she saw him she would love him again.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, as if he understood what she was going through. But nobody could understand. She didn’t expect them to. Or want them to.
“This is just another notch in your belt,” she said. “When it’s over, you’ll be the guest speaker at Quantico. But this is my life, my mother’s life. I don’t want it sensationalized. I don’t want to find out you’ve sold the story to some podcaster for a ten-part series. I don’t want press on-site. I don’t want to see the story from your perspective anywhere.”
“I completely agree. I have no plans to achieve fame or fortune from this.”
“Oh, come on. At least fame among your peers. I know how important that can be.”
He shook his head. “Not interested.”
He could deny it all he wanted, but something was driving him. She got the sense he had a little more skin in the game than he was acknowledging.
“Some people actually just want to do the right thing,” he said.
She glanced at the map on the wall and knew there was only one answer. And if her father actually took them to burial sites, maybe it would undo the sense of complicity Daniel had asked her about that day at Quantico. “I’ll do it.”
CHAPTER 4
Three years earlier
Rosalind Fisher’s volunteer work with abused women had conditioned her to expect phone calls in the middle of the night. Physical abuse, often fueled by drink and drugs, tended to happen after dark. So when the ringing phone woke her, she expected to hear the voice of her contact at Safe Home. Someone needing immediate shelter, because Rosalind always had a guest room waiting. Always food and clean sheets and towels. Bandages and ice packs and pain medication, if needed.
This call was from a person in need, but not a stranger.
“Mom? I need your help.”
Nothing was as sharply painful as that jolt of a mother’s fear. It cut deep.
Rosalind turned on a light and sat up in bed while wishing Reni wasn’t so far away. She’d felt the extreme distance had never been a good idea, but she always tried to support her daughter no matter what decisions Reni made, even if they were bad ones.
“Tell me.” Rosalind struggled to keep her voice calm, collected, with no indication of the panic she felt. That would help no one.
“It was dark. My partner and I were working a case . . . and I thought I saw someone who really wasn’t there.” Reni’s voice was thick and a little slurred. Drugs? Alcohol? This wasn’t good.
“Are you okay? That’s what I want to know.”
“Yes.”
Rosalind let out a tight breath. Everything could be fixed. Everybody could be made to feel better if a person used the right words. “Where are you?”
Reni told her. She was calling from a hospital. That was reassuring. She’d admitted herself, medication being the reason for the thick tongue.
Reni had always been a handful. That was the truth. As a newborn she’d cried nonstop for days, and Rosalind had reached a point where intervention had been necessary. She hadn’t been worried about herself or her lack of sleep, but an infant couldn’t continue like that. It was a bad situation. Out of desperation, Ben took Reni to his mother’s cabin in the desert. And, as the story went (although Rosalind doubted the speed of Reni’s turnaround), she stopped crying immediately and began drinking formula and sleeping like a normal baby.
But Reni remained a sober and melancholy child, always watching, thinking, but often keeping her thoughts to herself. A bond between them never really took hold, not the way it should have. Sometimes Rosalind wasn’t sure if Reni liked her at all. It was hard to mother a child who didn’t like you. Ben always said Rosalind was imagining it, but she didn’t think so.
Maybe that was why Rosalind had opened her home to abused women. It partially made up for the strained relationship she had with Reni, and it provided an excuse for Reni to spend more time with Ben. But once he was in prison and Reni’s grandmother died, it was just the two of them, and Rosalind stepped up to take care of her daughter. And for the first time in their relationship, Reni responded.
“I’m sorry, honey. Maybe it’s the stress of your job.” Reni had the softest heart, too soft for her own good.
“I don’t know.”
Rosalind sensed she wasn’t getting the full story. “Things happen in high-stress situations,” she said, trying to reassure her daughter. “And in the dark . . .”
“There’s more.”
She sounded so upset, so unlike her collected self.
“I’ve never drawn my gun on anybody,” Reni said. “I’m good at keeping a level head. But my partner’s face in the dark . . . it changed. I saw somebody else.”
“Who?”
A long pause. “Daddy.”
“Oh, honey.” What words of comfort could she give to that?
Rosalind had been waiting for something like this. For so long she’d started to relax and think it might never happen. She’d studied grief and complex trauma, both in college and later alongside Benjamin. Odd to think he’d been an excellent teacher, but he had.
The day after Ben’s arrest, when the truth came out about what he’d done, Reni retreated into her stoic, quiet self. It wasn’t until later, when detectives questioned her, that her part in the murders was revealed.
“I’m going to catch a plane first thing in the morning,” Rosalind said. “We’ll figure this out together.”
“You’re coming?” Disbelief and relief.
“Of course I’m coming.”
The next morning, Rosalind caught a flight from Palm Springs to Boston. At the hospital, she spoke with the doctor caring for her daughter.
“I don’t think she should go back to work, at least not right now,” he said.