Page 92 of Middle of the Night

“No thanks. I won’t be here long. I just wanted to have a quick chat.”

That sounds ominous. I look to the coffee maker, where a thin stream of liquid has started trickling into the carafe.

“I heard you had a nice conversation with Detective Patel yesterday,” she says. “After he picked you up for trespassing on the grounds of the Hawthorne Institute. I guess you’re still convinced they had something to do with Billy’s murder.”

But I’m not. Not anymore. What Fritz told me last night makes sense. He’s a smart man. Smart enough to know not to dispose of a boy’s body on the property he oversaw. Since I also believe his assertion that Ezra Hawthorne was too old and unsteady to do it, the institute and everyone associated with it have been demoted to possible, yet unlikely, suspects.

“I’ve changed my mind about that,” I say.

“Care to tell me why you were there?”

“Looking.”

“Me and my team already did that,” Detective Palmer says. “Technically, we still are. If I wanted to, I could charge you with disturbing a crime scene.”

I turn away from the coffee maker, nervous. Just because Ragesh declined to arrest me doesn’t mean Detective Palmer won’t.

“I didn’t disturb anything. I just want to know who killed Billy.”

“You already do. You were right there when he was taken.”

“But I was asleep.”

Detective Palmer folds her arms across her chest. “Which I find very convenient.”

“I’m not a liar,” I say. “I didn’t see anything.”

“I have no doubt you really believe that. But sometimes people forget things for a reason. Especially little kids who witness something too confusing or traumatic for them to process.”

“You think I saw who did it and blocked it out?”

“Don’t you?” Detective Palmer says.

Of course I’ve considered that possibility, as has every mental health professional I’ve ever talked to. But nothing has ever backed up the idea. Not decades of therapy, hypnosis, and dream analysis, including a child psychologist who showed me endless drawings of tents just in case one of them sparked a memory.

“It’s not as simple as that,” I say as the coffee at last finishes brewing. I grab a mug and prepare to pour.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe this recurring dream you keep having is just that. A dream. Or maybe it’s a repressed memory you have of seeing who took Billy. One that messed you up so much that your brain deleted it.”

I stop mid-pour. “What could possibly be that traumatic?”

“You’d be surprised. Think about who could have taken and killed Billy. Remember what I said the other day about the culprit likely being someone from Hemlock Circle?”

I do. Vividly.

“You told me the reason Billy didn’t make a sound when he was taken is because he could have known who it was,” I say as I resume pouring the coffee, sloshing it into the mug with unsteady hands.

Detective Palmer nods. “If I’m right about this, and I think I am, whoever took and killed Billy not only knew about the falls, which was the most convenient place to dispose of his body, but also who he was,wherehe was. They knew him well enough that he didn’t panic when he saw them, even after they sliced through the side of the tent. Not a whole lot of people fit that bill. And you knew every single one of them.”

“It wasn’t my parents, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“No, not them,” Detective Palmer says. “In my mind, there’s only one person who could be responsible.”

I throw my head back and rub my temples, already knowing where this is heading. Based on all the established facts—that the killer was aware Billy was camping in my yard, that Billy didn’t scream or panic because he knew his abductor, that whoever it was had knowledge of the falls two miles from my backyard—there really is only one viable suspect left.

“Billy’s mother,” I say.

Friday, July 15, 1994

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