Page 105 of Coram House

After that night, I’d been briefed and debriefed, questioned first about everything that happened in the hours preceding and then the days and weeks before that. Time was sand inside an hourglass, flowing ever backward. My throat was raw with talking by the time I left the police station and stepped outside, blinking in surprise at the sun.When had it become morning?I’d come back to my apartment, slept. And then gone back the next day and started all over again as they—as we—tried to untangle the knot of what had happened and why. Or maybe I was the only one wrestling with the why. Motive is just a nice-to-have, after all.

Officer Russell Parker had taken a canoe to Rock Point and killed Sister Cecile. He was the one I’d heard in the woods. He’d killed Fred Rooney and had tried to kill Bill Campbell, working his way down the list of anyone who had hurt his mother or profited from what happened at the House. The evidence was there once you knew to look for it. Same story, different angle.

The knock comes again. I pull on my coat and drag the suitcase into the kitchen. Might as well make the trip count. Whoever is outside must have heard me wrestling the suitcase down the stairs because they don’t knock again. For about the hundredth time, I curse the absence of a peephole. Instead, I fling open the door—No commentalready on my lips—but it’s not a reporter.

Detective Garcia stands on the porch. Instead of her usual black suit, she’s in jeans and an emerald-green coat. She has a coffee in each hand.

“Hi, Alex. I hope it’s okay—me coming here like this.”

I nod to the cup. “If one of those is for me, it is.”

She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. I step outside, hoisting the suitcase onto the porch after me. The cup warms my fingers.

“How are you doing?” Garcia asks.

I shrug. “Honestly? I don’t know how to answer that question. You?”

She shakes her head. For a while, we just stand there, not saying anything.

After that night, the police had asked me to stay in town for a fewweeks. It was easy to agree when leaving and staying had seemed equally unimaginable. Lola came, and Kay too.

I’d spent the next week in stasis, lying in bed until hunger forced me out, then burrowing into my blankets as soon as the sun went down. Not that sleep was a refuge. I dreamed of ice and the cold water beneath and whatever lay beneath that. Lola rubbed my back and made me shower, while Kay cooked soup on the only burner that worked. For another week they stayed, until the day I woke up and something felt different.

That morning, I’d gotten out of bed and brewed a pot of coffee. My laptop felt cool under my fingers as I began to type. The words just came. Not as if I was assembling the pieces of an outline, but as if the story had been there all along, whole and waiting for me to begin. Lola had smiled at me.Nice to see you back,she’d said. Guess it’s time for us to go home.I’d held on to her, knowing her friendship has been the tether that anchors me to earth and also thinking how exhausting it is to keep incurring debts I’ll never be able to repay. But maybe that’s what love is—debt.

Garcia takes a long sip of coffee. “The DA isn’t going to press charges against Bill Campbell for the bribery,” she says.

She’s watching me, waiting for a reaction. But I’m not angry. Hell, I’m not even surprised. From a certain viewpoint, he’s a victim of blackmail, who was almost murdered by a serial killer. The optics of going after him for bribery and obstruction wouldn’t be great.

“Is that why you came?” I ask. “To tell me that?”

Garcia sighs. “And because I owe you an apology.”

“I never thought you’d arrest Bill,” I say. “Even I know there’s no case there.”

“No, not for that.” She’s struggling with whatever she came here to say. “I’ve—well, I treated you badly—before. I believed you were involving yourself in the case for attention, to make a better story for your book.” She pauses, clearly deciding whether to go on. “Officer Parker, he—well, he said a few things.”

My teeth grind so hard I feel a sharp pain in my jaw. “Yeah, I’m sure he painted a nice picture.”

Garcia shakes her head. “I was the one that filled in the gaps, Alex. I need to take responsibility for that. For not seeing—for not looking.”

I swallow a lump in my throat. “I gave him everything he needed to know about them. Rooney. Bill Campbell. What they’d done. Jesus, I sent him to Xander’s house to ask about the canoe.”

I bury my face in my hands.

“You didn’t know.”

“Do you think— I mean, none of this started until I got here. Do you think it was me?”

Is this my fault?I can’t quite get the words out. Maybe I don’t want an answer.

Garcia considers this, then she shakes her head once, decisively.

“Maybe your coming sped something up, maybe not. But we searched his house. We found notes, documentation, some of it years old. He moved here for this. I think it was too late long before you got here.”

I’m sure she’s not allowed to tell me any of this, so I smile, grateful, even though it doesn’t make me feel better. The silence stretches out. I try to decide if I’m going to ask it—the thing I want to know but am also afraid to.

“Did you ever suspect?” I ask.

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