“I got a text from Hagen.”
Trevor stopped reading and looked at her. “What’d it say?”
“He’s following the news like you are, and he’s not happy. It’s going to be more than two days before he can make it up here. He doesn’t want to draw attention by leaving when so much is going on. He told us to stay put and told me to work fast to get the truth from James. He’s not going to wait any longer than he has to. I told him I already started.”
“I wouldn’t call feeding him chicken and talking about laundry detergent working on getting the truth.”
“You can’t just go in with a bunch of questions. He’ll end up confused, and the dementia will kick in. This is a slow process. That’s why we’re here and not back in Verplanck, where everything would be a distraction. If Hagen just wanted him dead, he could’ve walked into the house and shot him or strangled him while he was sleeping. He’s giving me the opportunity to finally learn why James killed my sister and the other kids. I think he wants to know the truth too.”
“So get it.”
“I need to build trust, and then I need to extract the real stories carefully. I’ve been waiting a lifetime to learn why my sister disappeared. I can’t get this close and screw it up. It’s gonna take time.”
Trevor fell back in his seat and covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know how long I can last. I need to know my wife and son are okay. I need to know where they’re being kept. What’s happening to them? Are they in danger? Are they being taken care of? Is my son going to be okay after this? It’s driving me nuts. I need to help them.”
“You help them by doing what we need to do. Once this is all done, you’ll see them again.”
He didn’t reply.
“What are their names?” Cindy asked. “We can talk about them. Maybe that’ll help.”
Trevor pulled his hands away from his face. “You don’t need to know their names,” he snapped. “The less you know about me, the better. All you need to know is that I’ll stop at nothing to get them back. That son of a bitch took my family to force me to join this sick game, and now I’ve already done things that I can never go back and fix. He made me kill people. He broke me; he broke the man that I was. The husband and father that I was. He’s breaking my family as we speak. But I killed those people because my end game is getting my family back. That’s all it is, and they’re all that matter. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Cindy wanted to comfort him, but she knew it would do no good. Having been the left-behind loved one, there was no real comfort she could offer when someone’s family was in danger. All she could do was follow Hagen’s instructions and extract the truth she’d needed to hear for almost forty years. What Trevor was being forced to endure seemed unfair compared to what the rest of them had been promised. But he hadn’t needed anything, so it had come down to exploiting his love for his wife and son. The others needed something, and promises were made in order to get them to join the team. She felt guilty getting what she wanted while he was suffering with worry.
“Did you upload the new podcast?” he asked.
“Goes live at eight. Just a retread of some old news, but at least it’s posting.”
“Make any calls?”
“None to make. Besides, no one’s going to recognize the burner phone’s caller ID. They’d roll me to voice mail anyway.”
“What about the old man?”
“Almost time for bed. I’ll see where his head is at when I go down. I’ll press him if there’s an opportunity.”
“I’ll go,” he said. “I want to get a better look at him now that we don’t have all the other distractions. I want to see what makes him so important.” Trevor turned back to the laptop and clicked to another news story. “And I want to see how easy he’ll be to kill, if it comes to that. I’m guessing it’ll be easier than the cop.”
10
Icy droplets of rain tapped the windshield as Susan tilted her head back on the driver’s-side headrest. The engine of her car hummed in the background, heat streaming through the vents. Her mind churned. By now the trooper’s wife had been informed of what happened. She’d been brought down to the morgue to officially identify her husband’s body and was probably hosting well-wishers who would line the block offering support and a shoulder should she need it. His son was still too young to understand exactly what had happened, and the baby she was pregnant with would never know its father. Tomorrow Mrs. Kincaid would be brought to the funeral home to make arrangements for a service with every honor one could think of. That was standard protocol when a fellow officer went down in the line of duty. Susan wished she could be there but knew finding his killer was much more important than being the hundredth person to offer condolences. There wasn’t a minute to waste.
From what she’d learned so far, she knew there had to have been a link between what happened to the trooper and what happened at James Darville’s place, and Rebecca Hill was that link. But if Rebecca had found what she was looking for in that hole in the floor, why did she take Darville? He was suffering from Alzheimer’s and would be a hindrance if she were on the run. Experience told Susan that he had to still be alive. If he’d been killed in the house, Rebecca and her accomplice would’ve most likely left the body. He’d be tricky to move without being noticed, and there would be no real point in risking transporting a body when the scene they left behind already pointed to foul play. So why take Darville? And what had been in that hole? Too many questions, and the top brass wanted answers.
She shifted her body and listened as the sleet picked up outside. It appeared the old man had no family. No real friends other than some neighbors who looked after him every now and again. He’d arrived in town a decade earlier, but no one in the neighborhood knew where he’d come from. Google searches came up with 459,000 name matches. A needle in a haystack if there ever was one.
She hit the wipers and put the car in gear, carefully pulling out of the parking lot and onto the Post Road. The temperature was still dropping, and the sleet made the pavement slick and navigation tricky in the dark. As Susan drove, she could see the orange halo of salt trucks working just beyond the horizon. It was going to be a long night for those guys, but the overtime would be sweet just before the holidays.
Susan passed the on-ramp for Route 9 that would’ve taken her home, deciding instead to take a ride to Darville’s house. She wanted to walk through it again, alone, without the distraction of a crime scene investigation going on around her or Triston talking in her ear. She wanted to see if anything popped out that they might’ve missed before. She doubted she’d discover anything substantial after the forensics team had done a sweep, but sometimes just feeling the vibe of the place where a crime had happened helped reset her mind.
Traffic was heavy on the back roads of Verplanck. Headlights blinded her as cars passed by in the opposite lane, most of them coming home from the city or picking up passengers who’d just gotten off the train. No one dared drive above twenty-five miles an hour for fear of sliding off the road or rear-ending the person in front of them. Susan took her place in the long line of traffic and listened to the radio until her turnoff came. She pulled away from the commuters and headed toward the outskirts of town, toward the Hudson River and the old man’s house.