Page 16 of The Night We Lost Him

That seems off. Because, at least the handful of times when I’ve been here, Clark is always the person who opens the house for my father.

Sam looks at him, confused. “Clark is always informed,” he says.

“Apparently not this time,” O’Brien says.

Then he flips to a different page on his clipboard.

“My team ran out your father’s entire day. A driver picked up your father from the Santa Barbara airport and drove him directly to Windbreak. They keyed into the property at twelve fifteen. Your father was the only one on property from twelve fifteen until the time of his death.”

“Except for the driver,” Sam says.

“The driver keyed out at twelve thirty-two,” he says, his tone tightening. “The limousine company showed us his records for the rest of the day…”

“I wasn’t suggesting it was the driver,” Sam says.

“What are you suggesting?”

“You said my father was the only person on property,” Sam says. “And right away that’s not accurate.”

Detective O’Brien gives Sam a warning look. I put my hand on Sam’s arm, trying to regulate his tone. But I’m feeling heated myself. Even if I don’t want to admit it, these explanations are raising more questions for me than answers.

I look over the palisades, the massive cliffside, the ocean and the sand swirling below, and try to picture his fall. My father would be the first to know how to do it, if he started tipping toward the edge. How to catch himself, steady himself, move quickly to safety.

“I spent a little time looking over property maps last night,” I say. “Am I correct that there are no cameras along the perimeter?”

“Yep, that’s right.” Detective O’Brien nods. “There is an alarm system in the house, linked directly to the precinct. But the only camera is by the front gate.”

“Isn’t that unusual?” I ask. “My experience in working on properties of this size is that most have some sort of security on the grounds themselves. There are over a hundred yards of bluff front, alone…”

“Well, that’s a question for the alarm company. But it’s my understanding that your father refused to even consider a guard by the gate, so the keypad to enter and exit is pretty much all there is in terms of perimeter security.”

I look left, into the distance at the neighboring property—the closest property, which is hard to even see from here. I don’t think I’ve ever met the family who lives there. The only neighbor of my father’s that I’ve met lives farther up the road. Benjamin King. A real estate investor of some kind. He and my father went to college together and he was the reason my father even knew about Windbreak. My father loved telling the story about how he saw Windbreak for the first time when he was sitting on Ben King’s deck, discussing a business proposition.

But I’ve never heard my father say much about his next-door neighbor, one way or the other. There is a stone wall separating the two large plots of land—theirs nearly consumed by a Tudor mansion, large and ponderous, big enough to swallow three of my father’s cottages.

“Did you speak with the family next door?” I ask. “Do they have cameras on their property that we could access?”

“We did access them,” he says. “We watched down the footage for the whole night and unfortunately, the cameras are only pointed so far as the wall that separates the property. We have no sighting of your father at all.” He pauses. “I can confirm that no one scaled the wall.”

“In the footage you saw,” Sam says.

“Again, my team watched the entire evening’s footage.” He turns to his clipboard, starts flipping pages. “Actually, we watched down the afternoon as well.”

“Did you check the day before?” I ask.

“We have no indication of anyone else on the property the day before your father’s arrival.”

“So no,” Sam says.

I scan the rest of the cliffside, eyeing the antique gate leading to the large set of wooden stairs, rickety and old, winding into the cliffside, eighty feet down to the rocky beach below.

“Someone could have entered this way…” I say. “They could have taken the steps from the beach.”

“Only if they knew the code to the door. Which would’ve had to be someone your father knew.”

“So maybe it was someone he knew,” I say.

“Why would someone he knew enter from the beach and climb up dozens of stairs in the dark of night, just to enter the property?”

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