Page 54 of Water's Edge

She waits. I get my voice under control, although my emotions are all over the place. Sadness, panic, anger, rage, self-loathing. I don’t want to be like my biological father. I don’t want to be like my mother. Sometimes I don’t want to be like me.

“I see myself as the bad guy—girl—sometimes. It freaks me out, but I know what I have to do. I know it’s the right thing to do. Yesterday and today have been a jumble of connections to my past. I attended an autopsy on one of these victims. There are three so far over the last two years. The one I went to the autopsy on happened two days ago. At least, that’s when we found her body.”

I can feel the darkness edging its way into my vision and my thoughts. Anger is winning out. Soon it will be full-blown rage.

I keep going. No air. No stopping. Just unloading it all.

“The woman he killed two years ago was gutted. He cut a baby out of her. She was four months pregnant. Sick. Disgusting. And the woman I found yesterday had a baby about a year ago. I think she got pregnant by her father. He’s a suspect now. He’s rich and arrogant and sick in the head. He’s trying to get the sheriff to take me off the case.”

I take a breath and silence fills the empty space.

“But you don’t know if he’s the killer.”

“Yeah,” I say, quickly adding, “I mean, no. I’m not positive he’s even the father. And if he is, it doesn’t necessarily mean he killed her. Or had her killed. He needs to be in prison. Or a loony bin. But I want to see him take responsibility for at least ruining this girl’s life.”

“Like yours was ruined by your biological father.”

“It’s not the same,” I say.

“Isn’t it?”

I continue to bounce my thoughts and feelings off Dr. Albright’s indestructible and nonjudgmental wall of professionalism. I still have one more thing to talk about, but I can’t. It’s the most troubling thing of all and it has nothing to do with these murders. It has to do with my past. More specifically, someone from my past. Someone I can’t identify. Someone who may mean me harm.

I say goodbye, promise to call more often, and hang up.

I lean against the wall of the building, listening to a bell ringing far out in the bay, seagulls screeching and squabbling. The sounds are soothing. The email I received right after I saw Dan the last time wasn’t soothing at all. It was like a slap in the face. Unexpected. Painful. A blur.

I had just finished working several murders in the secluded area above Snow Creek, far from where Leann’s body was found. I was feeling pretty good. Things had turned out well. I had time to check my emails, as I usually do many times a day, hoping there is one from Hayden. There were more than a dozen new emails, none from my brother. I started to delete them when one caught my eye and sent chills down my back.

The subject line said, “It’s you, Rylee.”

Rylee wasn’t a name many people knew I had used. The sender’s name was one I didn’t recognize: “Wallace.” When I opened it, I couldn’t breathe.

Someone knew where I lived. What I did for a living.

More distressingly, I realized, they might know what I haddone.

A voice next to my ear makes me jump. It’s Ronnie. She’s eerily quiet sometimes.

“Megan, the detective from Kitsap called again. Have you made a decision yet?”

“We’ll have lunch in town and then go,” I tell her. “Call him back and see if he’s free later this afternoon.”

Twenty-Eight

The Ajax Cafe sits in a historic building on North Water Street, which separates the town from the southern end of Port Townsend Bay. The seating is a charmingly riotous mishmash of different sizes, colors, and shapes of chairs and tables. Overhead is a centipede-like row of hats for which there seems no restriction, from cowboy to beret to sequins to garden-variety felt. It looks as if someone has gone berserk at dozens of garage sales. Yelp says, and I agree, the food is excellent. I have a Port Hadlock Haddock Burger. Ronnie has a tiny side salad. I have a large Hadlock Vanilla Gorilla Milkshake. Ronnie has water.

My waistline hates her.

We are just getting back on the road when Cass calls from the Nordland General Store on Marrowstone Island.

I answer. “Cass, did you get them?”

“Sure did. What do you want me to do? Anything to put these bastards away.”

“I’ll see if Lonigan can pick them up. Did you touch them?”

“I had to. How do you pick something up without touching it?”

---