Page 78 of In the Bones
Blair nodded. “I think it was all just too much. She didn’t want to admit to herself that Angelica wasn’t coming back. She felt guilty for not protecting her that night. And when she found her in Mikko’s basement, she freaked. They’d gone to the party together. Molly ran because she thought you’d think she killed Angelica.”
“And your dad?” asked Tim. “How is he involved in all of this?” Woody Dunham had caught their attention because Mac and Nicole believed he’d had sex with the victim prior to her death. That had given him a motive.
Blair’s reply was definitive, a judge’s gavel smacking against wood.
“Nothing happened between them,” she said. “Molly was clear about that. At one point she and Angelica went to the bathroom—buddy system, I do that with my friends too—and Molly asked her point blank if she was into him. Angelica said he reminded her of her father. She said he felt safe. Whoever told you they hooked up is lying.”
Safe. Not the word to describe Angelica’s time at the party, though she couldn’t have known how the night would end.
Tim would need to have yet another talk with Stacy Peel.
Tenderly, he said, “Unless you have anything to add, I think we’re done. Thank you, Blair—really. You’ve been hugely helpful, and I know this isn’t easy to talk about.”
“What happened?” She asked it timidly, looking up from her hands, still twined on the table. “Nobody will tell me howAngelica died. Every time I ask my aunt or mom, they say it’s better if I don’t know the details, but I have to. Nash is … was my …” Swiping at her eyes, she shook her head. “Why would he want to hurt a total stranger?”
It had been bizarre, listening to Blair explain it all, especially given what they now knew about Nash. Jeremy Solomon had discovered that the knife found with Molly was a match for the set in Nash’s parents’ kitchen. It had surprised Tim to learn Mikko had taken a shine to the boy last summer, when Nash accompanied Terry Martino to tour Mikko’s house. Maybe it shouldn’t have. According to Eva Ki, Nash was the kind of friend Mikko liked best: young, good looking, game for anything. Nash could pass for an adult, and Mikko swore he had no idea he was an underage high school student when he invited him to the party. Tim wondered if Mikko would have cared.
Tim clasped his hands, and leaned toward Mac’s niece. “Nash is claiming Angelica’s death was accidental, Blair. He admits to hitting on her at the party. Nash says he was showing her the house that night, explaining the plans for the renovation. He took her down to the basement to … well, his intentions weren’t pure.
“She’d been drinking heavily,” Tim went on, watching Blair closely. “She may have taken drugs as well. According to Nash, she fell down the stairs.”
The story was a fit for Angelica’s injuries. The narrow staircase was a century old, made of thick slabs of hardwood tucked against a foundation wall of rough-hewn stone. Tim had managed to squeeze in a call to Art Daisy, and the ME had confirmed that, had she fallen and struck a tread or the rock wall itself, severe traumatic brain injury and intracranial hemorrhage would be likely. With a fall like that, if left untreated, it was feasible that Angelica would have been dead within twenty-four hours.
Tim chose not to expose Blair to what Nash had done next. Instead of going for help, which would have brought out the police and led to Mikko—and eventually, Terry Martino—knowing Nash was responsible for the death in the house, he’dchosen to hide the body. Nash was drunk enough that he’d convinced himself Angelica was already dead, and that her demise would end him too—no high school graduation, no career, no future. The kid, newly eighteen and at a party with his boss, had flipped out. Carried Angelica to the boiler room, where he’d noticed the door in the floor on his tour. He’d even asked Terry about it. Root cellars were common in old farmhouses, a holdover from the days when people needed cold storage. Fall was coming, and Nash knew the house would be sitting empty until work began the next spring. To his panic-addled brain, it was his way out. He’d hidden the body. Sealed Angelica’s clothes and phone in a garbage bag he’d found in the laundry room, to be left upstairs with the trash from the party.
Nash had cleaned away the blood as best he could, and the steps and wall had later been painted as part of the renovation. If the team was lucky, the forensic unit would find evidence of the fall, now that they knew where to look. Nash may not have been sober when Angelica had the accident, but the actions that followed had been carried out with the calculated specificity and clear eyes of a killer.
And though no one could ever be sure, Nash might have been responsible for Angelica regaining consciousness in a dark, cold hole only to bleed out alone.
“Tim?”
He blinked. Tim had invited Blair to call him by his first name, but in her quivering voice, it sent a jolt straight through him. “What’s going to happen to him?” she asked.
Where Angelica Patten was concerned, and provided Nash’s attorney could prove the killing was unintentional, he might get off with charges of involuntary manslaughter, failing to report a death, and concealing a corpse. But Nash had also confessed to attacking Molly Kranz at the Rivermouth.
Fearful that Blair would connect the dots, Nash had skipped his internship and gone to her house. He’d seen Molly leaving the Durhams’. Molly had seen him, too. After watching the video of Molly on Facebook, Nash knew that she was in a fragile mental state. There was only one reason she’d go toWoody’s house, and that was to get answers about her missing friend.
Nash had used himself as a lure, relying on Molly’s distress and guilt to get her to the old Rivermouth. Andthatwas attempted first-degree murder.
Tim didn’t believe that Nash meant for Angelica to die, but he sure as hell intended to kill Molly Kranz in order to protect himself. If he had to guess, Blair’s ex-boyfriend would be celebrating his high school graduation in prison.
Tim hadn’t answered Blair’s question, and wasn’t sure how to. How could he tell this girl who was barely an adult that her first love wasn’t who he’d professed to be? All the time that Blair and Nash had been together, he’d been concealing a heinous crime. Accepting her trust—expecting it, even—while he continued to deceive her. How was he supposed to explain that?
Before he had a chance, Valerie Ott cleared her throat.
“What’s going to happen,” she said, “is that Nash will be punished for his crimes, as he should be. We all have to take responsibility for our actions. What’s going to happen toyou,” Valerie went on, “is that you’re going to leave this all in the past and have an amazing life. There will be some tough days ahead, Blair, but you’re facing them with more knowledge and power than you ever had before. You’re going to be just fine.”
“You sound like my mom,” Blair said with a flicker of a smile.
“Good,” said Val, just as they heard a knock and the door opened to reveal Shana and Sheriff McIntyre. “I don’t know Nicole well,” Valerie added with a fond glance at Mac, “but if she’s anything like your aunt, she’s a total boss.”
Tim had to agree with that. As on edge as he was about what lay ahead for Darcy, one thing was certain.
The kid had role models aplenty.
SIXTY-FIVE
Mac
