The Outsider

1

She put back the office phone (which she always brought home with her, although Pete kidded her about it) on its stand next to her home phone, and sat quiet in front of her computer for perhaps thirty seconds. Then she pushed the button on her Fitbit to check her pulse. Seventy-five, eight to ten beats faster than normal. She wasn’t surprised. Pelley’s story of the Maitland affair had excited and engaged her in a way no case had since finishing with the late (and very horrible) Brady Hartsfield.

Except that wasn’t exactly right. The truth was she hadn’t been really excited about anything since Bill had died. Pete Huntley was fine, but he was—here in the silence of her nice apartment, she could admit it—a bit of a plodder. He was happy to chase the deadbeats, bail-jumpers, stolen cars, lost pets, and daddies delinquent on child support. And while Holly had told Alec Pelley nothing but the truth—she really did abhor violence, except in movies; it made her tummy hurt—chasing after Hartsfield had made her feel alive in a way nothing had since. That was also true of Morris Bellamy, a crazy literature buff who had killed his favorite writer.

There would be no Brady Hartsfield or Morris Bellamy waiting for her in Dayton, which was good, because Pete was on vacation in Minnesota, and her young friend Jerome was on vacation with his family in Ireland.

“I’ll kiss the Blarney Stone for ye, darlin,” he had said at the airport, employing an Irish brogue every bit as awful as his Amos ’n Andy accent, which he still put on occasionally, mostly to offend her.

“You better not,” she’d said. “Think of the germs on that thing. Oough.”

Alec Pelley thought I’d be put off by the strangeness, she thought, smiling a little. He thought I’d just say, “This is impossible, people can’t be in two places at the same time, and people can’t disappear from archived news footage. It’s either a practical joke, or a hoax.” Only what Alec Pelley doesn’t know—and I won’t tell him—is that people can be in two places at the same time. Brady Hartsfield did it, and when Brady finally died, he was in another man’s body.

“Anything is possible,” she said to the empty room. “Anything at all. The world is full of strange nooks and crannies.”

She booted up Firefox and found the address of the Tommy and Tuppence Pub. The closest lodging was the Fairview Hotel, on Northwoods Boulevard. Was it the same hotel the Maitland family had stayed in? She would ask Alec Pelley via email, but it seemed likely, bearing in mind what the older Maitland daughter had said. Holly checked Trivago and saw she could get an acceptable room for ninety-two dollars per night. She considered upgrading to a small suite, but only for a moment. That would be padding the expense account, a shoddy business practice and a slippery slope.

She called the Fairview (on the office phone, since this was a legitimate expense), made a reservation for three nights starting tomorrow, then opened Math Cruncher on her computer. In her opinion it was the best program for solving everyday problems. Check-in time at the Fairview was three o’clock, and the turnpike speed at which her Prius got optimum gas mileage was 63 MPH. She figured in one stop to top up the tank and get a no doubt substandard meal at a roadside rest… added forty-five minutes for the inevitable slowdown due to roadwork…

“I’ll leave at ten o’clock,” she said. “No, better make it nine fifty, just to be safe.” And to be even safer, she used her Waze app to suss out an alternate route, should that be necessary.

She showered (so she wouldn’t have to do it in the morning), put on her nightie, brushed her teeth, flossed (the latest studies said flossing was not useful in protecting against dental decay, but it was part of Holly’s routine, and she would be content to floss until she died), took out her hair clips and put them in a line, then went into the spare bedroom, padding in her bare feet.

The room was her film library. The shelves were lined with DVDs, some in colorful store cases, most homemade courtesy of Holly’s state-of-the-art disc burner. There were thousands (4,375, currently), but the one she wanted was easy to find, because the discs were alphabetized. She took it down and placed it on her nightstand, where she would be sure to see it when she packed in the morning.

With that taken care of, she got down on her knees, closed her eyes, and folded her hands. Morning and evening prayers had been her analyst’s idea, and when Holly protested that she did not exactly believe in God, her analyst said that a vocalizing of her concerns and plans to a hypothetical higher power would help even if she didn’t. And that actually seemed to be the case.

“It’s Holly Gibney again, and I am still trying to do my best. If you’re there, please bless Pete while he’s fishing, because only an idiot goes out in a boat when he doesn’t know how to swim. Please bless the Robinsons over there in Ireland, and if Jerome really is thinking about kissing the Blarney Stone, I wish you’d make him think better of it. I am drinking Boost to try and put on a little weight, because Dr. Stonefield says I’m too thin. I don’t like it, but each can has two hundred and forty calories, according to the label. I’m taking my Lexapro, and I’m not smoking. Tomorrow I’m going to Dayton. Please help me to stay safe in my car, obey all traffic rules, and help me to do the best I can with the facts at hand. Which are interesting.” She considered. “I still miss Bill. I guess that’s all for tonight.”

She got into bed and was asleep five minutes later.

2

Holly arrived at the Fairview Hotel at 3:17 PM, not quite optimum but not bad. She reckoned it would have been 3:12, had not every fracking traffic light been against her once she left the turnpike. The room was fine. The bath towels on the shower door had been hung a bit crooked, but she set that situation to rights after using the toilet and washing her hands and face. There was no DVD player attached to the television, but at ninety-two dollars a night, she hadn’t expected one. If she felt a need to watch the film she had brought, her laptop would be perfectly adequate. Made on the cheap, and shot in probably no more than ten days, it wasn’t the sort of movie that required high resolution and Dolby sound.

Tommy and Tuppence was less than a block from the hotel. Holly could see the sign as soon as she stepped from beneath the hotel awning. She walked down and studied the menu posted in the window. In the upper lefthand corner was a pie with steam rising from its crust. Printed below this was STEAK & KIDNEY PIE IS OUR SPECIALTY.

She strolled down another block and came to a parking lot, which was about three-quarters full. CITY PARKING, said the sign out front. 6-HOUR LIMIT. She went in, looking for tickets on windshields or a traffic warden’s chalk marks on tires. She saw neither, which meant that no one was enforcing the six-hour limit. It was strictly honor system. It wouldn’t work in New York, but it probably worked just fine in Ohio. With no monitoring, there was no way to tell how long the van had been here after Merlin Cassidy had abandoned it, but she guessed that with the doors unlocked and the keys dangling invitingly from the ignition, it probably hadn’t lasted too long.

She walked back to Tommy and Tuppence, introduced herself to the hostess, and said she was an investigator working a case that had to do with a man who had stayed nearby last spring. It turned out the hostess was also part-owner, and with the evening rush still an hour away, she was perfectly willing to talk. Holly asked if she happened to remember just when the restaurant had leafleted the area with menus.

“What did the guy do?” the hostess asked. Her name was Mary, not Tuppence, and her accent was New Jersey rather than Newcastle.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” Holly told her. “It’s a legal matter. You understand.”

“Well, I do remember,” Mary said. “It’d be funny if I didn’t.”

“Why is that?”

“When we first opened two years ago, this was Fredo’s Place. You know, like in The Godfather?”

“Yes,” Holly said, “although Fredo is best remembered for Godfather II, especially for the sequence where his brother Michael kisses him and says ‘I know it was you, Fredo, you broke my heart.’”

“I don’t know about that, but I do know that there are about two hundred Italian restaurants in Dayton, and we were getting killed. So we decided to try British food, you can’t exactly call it cuisine—fish and chips, bangers and mash, even beans on toast—and changed the name to Tommy and Tuppence, like in the Agatha Christie books. We figured we had nothing to lose at that point. And you know what, it worked. I was shocked, but in a good way, believe me. We fill this place for lunch, and most nights for dinner.” She leaned forward and Holly could smell gin on her breath, bright and clear. “Want to know a secret?”

“I love secrets,” Holly said truthfully.

“The steak and kidney pie comes frozen from a company in Paramus. We just heat it up in the oven. And you know what? The restaurant critic from the Dayton Daily News loved it. He gave us five stars! I shit you not!” She leaned forward a little more and whispered, “If you tell anyone that, I’d have to kill you.”

Holly zipped a thumb across her thin lips and turned an invisible key, a gesture she’d seen Bill Hodges make on many occasions. “So when you re-opened with the new name and the new menu… or maybe just before…”

“Johnny, he’s my hubby, wanted to paper the neighborhood a week before, but I told him that was no good, people would forget, so we did it the day before. We hired a kid, and printed enough menus for him to cover a nine-block area.”

“Including the parking lot up the street.”

“Yes. Is that important?”

“Would you check your calendar and tell me what day that was?”

“Don’t need to. It’s engraven on my memory.” She tapped her forehead. “April nineteenth. A Thursday. We opened—re-opened, actually—on Friday.”

Holly restrained an urge to correct Mary’s grammar, thanked her, and turned to go.

“Sure you can’t tell me what the guy did?”

“Very sorry, but I’d lose my job.”

“Well, at least come in for dinner, if you’re staying in town.”

“I’ll do that,” Holly said, but she wouldn’t. God knew what else on the menu had been shipped frozen from Paramus.

3

The next step was a visit to the Heisman Memory Unit, and a talk with Terry Maitland’s father, if he was having a good day (presuming he had good days anymore). Even if he was off in the clouds, she might be able to talk to some of the people who worked there. In the meantime, here she was in her pretty-good hotel room. She powered up her laptop and sent Alec Pelley an email titled GIBNEY REPORT #1.

With that taken care of, Holly went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a light meal (she never even considered room service, which was always ridiculously expensive). She found a Mel Gibson film she hadn’t seen on the in-room movie menu, and ordered it—$9.99, which she would deduct from her report of expenses when she filed it. The picture wasn’t great, but Gibson did the best he could with what he had. She noted the title and the running time in her current movie log-book (Holly had already filled over two dozen others), giving it three stars. With that taken care of, she made sure both of the room’s door locks were engaged, said her prayers (finishing, as she always did, by telling God that she missed Bill), and went to bed. Where she slept for eight hours, with no dreams. At least none that she remembered.

4

The next morning, after coffee, a brisk three-mile walk, breakfast at a nearby café, and a hot shower, Holly called the Dayton Police Department and asked for Traffic Division. Following a refreshingly brief interval on hold, an Officer Linden came on the line and asked how he could help her. Holly found this delightful. A polite policeman always brightened her day. Although to be fair, most of them were in the Midwest.

She identified herself, said she was interested in a white Econoline van that had been left in a public parking lot on Northwoods Boulevard in April, and asked if DPD regularly checked the city’s honor lots.

“Sure,” Officer Linden said, “but not to enforce the six-hour limit. They’re cops, not meter maids.”

“I understand,” Holly said, “but they must keep an eye out for possible dump-offs, don’t they?”

Linden laughed. “Your company must do a lot of repos and retrievals.”

“Along with bail-jumpers, they’re our bread and butter.”

“Then you know how it works. We’re especially interested in expensive cars that have been hanging around those lots for awhile, both in town and in long-term parking at the airport. Your Denalis, your Escalades, your Jags and Beemers. You say this van you’re interested in had New York plates?”

“Correct.”

“A van like that probably wouldn’t have drawn much attention the first day—people from New York do come to Dayton, strange as it may seem—but if it was still there on the second day? Probably.”

Which still would have been a full day before the Maitlands arrived. “Thank you, Officer.”

“I could check the impound yard, if you want.”

“That won’t be necessary. The van next showed up a thousand miles south of here.”

“What’s your interest in it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Not at all,” Holly said. This was a police officer, after all. “It was used to abduct a child who was subsequently murdered.”

5

Now ninety-nine per cent sure the van had been gone well before Terry Maitland arrived in Dayton with his wife and daughters on April 21st, Holly drove her Prius to the Heisman Memory Unit. It was a long, low sandstone building in the middle of at least four acres of well-kept grounds. A grove of trees separated it from Kindred Hospital, which probably owned it, operated it, and made a tidy profit thereby; it certainly didn’t look cheap. Either Peter Maitland had a large nest egg, good insurance, or both, Holly thought approvingly. There were plenty of empty guest spaces at this hour of the morning, but Holly chose one at the far end of the lot. Her Fitbit goal was 12,000 steps a day, and every little bit helped.

She paused for a minute to watch three orderlies walking three residents (one of the latter actually looked as if he might know where he was), then went inside. The lobby was high-ceilinged and pleasant, but beneath the smells of floor wax and furniture polish, Holly could detect a faint odor of pee wafting out from deeper in the building. And something else, something heavier. It would have been foolish and melodramatic to call it the smell of lost hope, but that was what it smelled like to Holly, just the same. Probably because I spent so much of my early life staring at the hole instead of the doughnut, she thought.

The sign on the main desk read ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK IN. The woman behind the desk (Mrs. Kelly, according to the little plaque on the counter) gave Holly a welcoming smile. “Hello, there. How may I help?”

To this point, all was ordinary and unremarkable. Things only went off the rails when Holly asked if she could visit Peter Maitland. Mrs. Kelly’s smile remained on her lips, but disappeared from her eyes. “Are you a member of the family?”

“No,” Holly said. “I’m a friend of the family.”

This, she told herself, was not exactly a lie. She was working for Mrs. Maitland’s lawyer, after all, and the lawyer was working for Mrs. Maitland, and that qualified as a kind of friendship, didn’t it, if she had been hired to clear the name of the widow’s late husband?

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” said Mrs. Kelly. What remained of her smile was now purely perfunctory. “If you’re not family, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave. Mr. Maitland wouldn’t know you, anyway. His condition has deteriorated this summer.”

“Just this summer, or since Terry came to visit him in the spring?”

Now the smile was gone entirely. “Are you a reporter? If you are, you are required by law to tell me, and I will ask you to leave the premises at once. If you refuse, I’ll call security and have you escorted. We’ve had quite enough of your kind.”

This was interesting. It might not have anything to do with the matter she had come here to investigate, but maybe it did. The woman hadn’t gone all poopy, after all, until Holly mentioned Peter Maitland’s name. “I’m not a reporter.”

“I’ll take your word for that, but if you’re not a relative, I still must ask you to leave.”

“All right,” Holly said. She took a step or two away from the desk, then had an idea and turned back. “Suppose I had Mr. Maitland’s son, Terry, call and vouch for me. Would that help?”

“I suppose,” Mrs. Kelly said. She looked grudging about it. “He would have to answer a few questions, though, to satisfy me that it wasn’t one of your colleagues pretending to be Mr. Maitland. That might sound a trifle paranoid to you, Ms. Gibney, but we have been through a lot here, a lot, and I take my responsibilities very seriously.”

“I understand.”

“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, but it wouldn’t do you any good to speak to Peter, in any case. The police found that out. He’s in end-stage Alzheimer’s. If you talk to the younger Mr. Maitland, he’ll tell you.”

The younger Mr. Maitland won’t tell me anything, Mrs. Kelly, because he’s been dead for a week. But you don’t know that, do you?

“When was the last time the police tried to talk to Peter Maitland? I’m asking as a friend of the family.”

Mrs. Kelly considered this, then said: “I don’t believe you, and I’m not answering your questions.”

Bill would have gotten all chummy and confidential at this point, he and Mrs. Kelly might even have ended by exchanging email addresses and promising to stay in touch on Facebook, but although Holly was an excellent deductive thinker, she was still working on what her analyst called “people skills.” She left, a bit disheartened but not discouraged.

This kept getting more interesting.

6

At eleven o’clock on that bright and sunny Tuesday morning, Holly sat on a shady bench in Andrew Dean Park, sipping a latte from a nearby Starbucks and thinking about her queer interview with Mrs. Kelly.

The woman hadn’t known Terry was dead, probably none of the Heisman staff knew, and that didn’t surprise Holly very much. The murders of Frank Peterson and Terry Maitland had happened in a small city hundreds of miles away; if it had made the national news at all during a week when an ISIL sympathizer had shot eight people in a Tennessee shopping mall and a tornado had leveled a small Indiana town, it would only have been as a blip far down on Huffington Post, there and gone. And it wasn’t as if Marcy Maitland would have been in touch with her father-in-law to tell him the sad news—why would she, considering the man’s condition?

Are you a reporter? Mrs. Kelly had asked. We’ve had quite enough of your kind.

All right, reporters had come to call, also the police, and Mrs. Kelly, as the out-front person at the Heisman Memory Unit, had had to put up with them. But their questions hadn’t been about Terry Maitland, or she would have known he was dead. So what had been the great big fracking deal?

Holly set her coffee aside, took her iPad from her shoulder-bag, powered it up, and verified that she had five bars, which would save her from having to go back to the Starbucks. She paid a small fee to access the archives of the local paper (duly noting it for her expense report), and began her search on April 19th, the day Merlin Cassidy had dumped the van. Also the day it had almost certainly been re-stolen. She went through the local news carefully, and found nothing relating to the Memory Unit. That was true for the following five days, as well, although there was plenty of other news: car crashes, two home invasions, a nightclub fire, an explosion at a gas station, an embezzlement scandal involving a school department official, a manhunt for two missing sisters (white) from nearby Trotwood, a police officer accused of shooting an unarmed teenager (black), a synagogue defaced with a swastika.

Then, on April 25th, the front page headline screamed that Amber and Jolene Howard, the missing Trotwood girls, had been found dead and mutilated in a ravine not far from their home. An unnamed police source said “those little girls were subjected to acts of unbelievable savagery.” And yes, both girls had been sexually molested.

Terry Maitland had been in Dayton on April 25th. Of course he had been with his family, but…

There were no new developments on the 26th of April, the day Terry Maitland had visited his father for the last time, and nothing on the 27th, the day the Maitland family had flown home to Flint City. Then, on Saturday the 28th, the police announced that they were questioning “a person of interest.” Two days later, the person of interest was arrested. His name was Heath Holmes. He was thirty-four years of age, a Dayton resident who was employed as an orderly at the Heisman Memory Unit.

Holly picked up her latte, drank half of it in large gulps, then stared off into the shadowy depths of the park with wide eyes. She checked her Fitbit. Her pulse was galloping along at a hundred and ten beats a minute, and it wasn’t just caffeine pushing it.

She went back to the Daily News archives, scrolling through May and into June, following the thread of the story. Unlike Terry Maitland, Heath Holmes had survived his arraignment, but very much like Terry (Jeannie Anderson would have called it a confluence), he would never be tried for the murders of Amber and Jolene Howard. He had committed suicide in Montgomery County Jail on June 7th.

She checked her Fitbit again and saw her pulse was now up to one-twenty. She chugged down the rest of her latte anyway. Living dangerously.

Bill, I wish you were on this with me. I wish that so much. And Jerome, him, too. The three of us would have grabbed the reins and ridden this pony until it stopped running.

But Bill was dead, Jerome was in Ireland, and she wouldn’t get any closer to figuring this out than she already was. At least not on her own. But that didn’t mean she was done in Dayton. No, not quite.

She went back to her hotel room, ordered a sandwich from room service (damn the expense) and opened her laptop. She added what she now knew to the notes she had taken during her telephone conversation with Alec Pelley. She stared at the screen, and as she scrolled back and forth, an old saying of her mother’s popped into her head: Macy’s doesn’t tell Gimbels. The police in Dayton didn’t know about Frank Peterson’s murder, and the police in Flint City didn’t know about the murders of the Howard sisters. Why would they? The killings had taken place in different regions of the country and months apart. No one knew that Terry Maitland had been in both places, and no one knew about the connection to the Heisman Memory Unit. Every case had an information highway running through it, and this one was washed out in at least two places.

“But I know,” Holly said. “At least some of it. I do. Only…”

The knock at the door made her jump. She let in the room service waiter, signed the check, added a ten per cent tip (after making sure a service gratuity was not included), and hustled him out. Then she paced the room, munching away at a BLT she hardly tasted.

What didn’t she know that could be known? She was bothered, almost haunted, by the idea that the puzzle she was trying to work had missing pieces. Not because Alec Pelley had purposely held things back, she didn’t think that at all, but possibly because there was information—vital information—that he considered unimportant.

She supposed she could call Mrs. Maitland, only the woman would cry and be all sad and Holly wouldn’t know how to comfort her, she never did. Once not so long ago she had helped Jerome Robinson’s sister through a bad patch, but as a rule she was terrible at things like that. Plus, the poor woman’s mind would be fogged by her grief, and she also might neglect important facts, those little things that could make a whole picture out of the fragments, like the three or four jigsaw pieces that always seem to fall off the table and onto the floor, and you couldn’t see the whole picture until you hunted around and found them.

The person most apt to know all the details, the small ones as well as the big ones, was the detective who had done most of the witness interviews and arrested Maitland. After working with Bill Hodges, Holly believed in police detectives. Not all of them were good, to be sure; she’d had little respect for Isabelle Jaynes, Pete Huntley’s partner after Bill had retired from the force, and this one, Ralph Anderson, had made a bad mistake by arresting Maitland in a public place. A bad choice didn’t necessarily make him a bad detective, though, and Pelley had explained the crucial mitigating circumstance: Terry Maitland had been in close contact with Anderson’s son. Certainly the interviews Anderson had done seemed thorough enough. She thought he was the one most likely to have any missing pieces.

It was something to think about. In the meantime, a return visit to the Heisman Memory Unit was in order.

7

She arrived at two thirty, this time driving around to the left side of the building, where signs announced EMPLOYEE PARKING and KEEP AMBULANCE BAY CLEAR. She chose a space at the far end of the lot, backing in so she could watch the building. By two forty-five, cars began to drift in as those working the three-to-eleven shift arrived. Around three, the day shift employees—mostly orderlies, some nurses, a couple of guys in suits, which probably made them doctors—began to leave. One of the suits drove away in a Cadillac, the other in a Porsche. They were doctors, all right. She evaluated the others carefully, and settled on a target. She was a middle-aged nurse wearing a tunic covered with dancing teddy bears. Her car was an old Honda Civic with rust on the sides, a cracked taillight that had been mended with duct tape, and a fading I’M WITH HILLARY sticker on the bumper. Before getting in, she paused to light a cigarette. The car was old and cigarettes were expensive. Better and better.

Holly followed her out of the parking lot, then three miles west, the city giving way first to a pleasant suburb, then to one not so pleasant. Here the woman turned into the driveway of a tract house on a street where others just like it stood almost hip to hip, many with cheap plastic toys marooned on the little patches of lawn. Holly parked at the curb, said a brief prayer for strength, patience, and wisdom, and got out.

“Ma’am? Nurse? Pardon me?”

The woman turned. She had the creased face and prematurely gray hair of a heavy smoker, so it was hard to tell her age. Maybe forty-five, maybe fifty. No wedding ring.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, and I’ll pay for your help,” Holly said. “One hundred dollars in cash, if you’ll talk to me about Heath Holmes, and his connection to Peter Maitland.”

“Did you follow me from my job?”

“Actually, I did.”

The woman’s brows contracted. “Are you a reporter? Mrs. Kelly said there’d been a woman reporter around, and promised to fire anyone who talked to her.”

“I’m the woman she mentioned, but I’m not a reporter. I’m an investigator, and Mrs. Kelly will never find out you talked to me.”

“Let me see some ID.”

Holly handed over her driver’s license and a Finders Keepers bail bondsman’s card. The woman examined them closely, then handed them back. “I’m Candy Wilson.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“Uh-huh, that’s good, but if I’m going to put my job on the line for you, it will cost two hundred.” She paused, then added: “And fifty.”

“All right,” Holly said. She guessed she could talk the woman down to two hundred, maybe even a hundred and fifty, but she wasn’t good at bargaining (which her mother always called haggling). Also, this lady looked like she needed it.

“You better come inside,” Wilson said. “The neighbors on this street have long noses.”

8

The house smelled strongly of cigarettes, which made Holly really crave one for the first time in ages. Wilson plunked down in an easy chair, which, like her taillight, was mended with duct tape. Beside it was a standing ashtray of a type Holly hadn’t seen since her grandfather died (of emphysema). Wilson plucked a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her nylon pants and flicked her Bic. She did not offer the pack to Holly, which was no surprise, given the price of smokes these days, but for which Holly was grateful, anyway. She might have taken one.

“Money first,” Candy Wilson said.

Holly, who had not neglected to stop at an ATM on her second trip to the Memory Unit, took her wallet from her purse and counted out the correct amount. Wilson re-counted it, then put it in her pocket with her cigarettes.

“Hope you’re telling the truth about keeping your mouth shut, Holly. God knows I need this money, my asshole husband cleaned out our bank account when he left, but Mrs. Kelly doesn’t kid around. She’s like one of the dragons on that Thrones show.”

Holly once more zipped a thumbnail across her lips and turned the invisible key. Candy Wilson smiled and seemed to relax. She looked around the living room, which was small and dark and furnished in Early American Yard Sale. “Ugly fucking place, isn’t it? We had a nice house over on the west side. No mansion, but better than this pit. My asshole husband sold it right out from under me before he sailed off into the sunset. You know what they say, there are none so blind as those who will not see. I almost wish we’d had kids, so I could turn them against him.”

Bill would have known how to reply to this, but Holly didn’t, so she took out her notebook and went to the matter at hand. “Heath Holmes worked as an orderly at the Heisman.”

“Yes indeed. Handsome Heath, we used to call him. It was sort of a joke and sort of not. He wasn’t any Chris Pine or Tom Hiddleston, but he wasn’t hard to look at, either. Nice guy, too. Everybody thought so. Which only goes to prove that you never know what’s in a man’s heart. I found that out with my asshole husband, but at least he never raped and mutilated any little girls. Seen their pictures in the paper?”

Holly nodded. Two cute blondes, wearing identical pretty smiles. Twelve and ten, the exact ages of Terry Maitland’s daughters. Another of those things that felt like a connection. Maybe it wasn’t, but the whisper that the two cases were actually one had begun to grow louder in Holly’s mind. A few more facts of the right kind, and it would become a shout.

“Who does that?” Wilson asked, but the question was rhetorical. “A monster, that’s who.”

“How long did you work with him, Ms. Wilson?”

“Call me Candy, why don’t you? I let people call me by my first name when they pay my utilities for the next month. I worked with him for seven years, and never had a clue.”

“The paper said he was on vacation when the girls were killed.”

“Yeah, went up to Regis, about thirty miles north of here. To his mother’s. Who told the cops he was there the whole time.” Wilson rolled her eyes.

“The paper also said he had a record.”

“Well, yeah, but nothing gross, just a joyride in a stolen car when he was seventeen.” She frowned at her cigarette. “Paper wasn’t supposed to have that, you know, he was a juvenile and those records are supposed to be sealed. If they weren’t, he probably wouldn’t have gotten the job at Heisman, even with all his army training and his five years working at Walter Reed. Maybe, but probably not.”

“You speak as if you knew him pretty well.”

“I’m not defending him, don’t get that idea. I had drinks with him, sure, but it wasn’t a date situation, nothing like that. A bunch of us used to go out to the Shamrock sometimes after work—this was back when I still had some money and could buy a round when it was my turn. Those days are gone, honey. Anyway, we used to call ourselves the Forgetful Five, on account of—”

“I think I get it,” Holly said.

“Yeah, I bet you do, and we knew all the Alzheimer’s jokes. Most of them are kind of mean, and lots of our patients are actually pretty nice, but we told them to kind of… I don’t know…”

“Whistle past the graveyard?” Holly suggested.

“Yes, that’s it. You want a beer, Holly?”

“Okay. Thanks.” She didn’t have much of a taste for beer, and it wasn’t really recommended when you were taking Lexapro, but she wanted to keep the conversation rolling.

Wilson brought back a couple of Bud Lights. She offered Holly a glass no more than she had offered one of her cigarettes.

“Yeah, I knew about the joyride bust,” she said, once more sitting in the mended easy chair. It gave a tired woof. “We all did. You know how people talk when they’ve had a few. But it was nothing like what he did in April. I still can’t believe it. I kissed that guy under the mistletoe at last year’s Christmas party.” She either shuddered or pretended to.

“So he was on vacation the week of April 23rd…”

“If you say so. I just know it was in the spring, because of my allergies.” So saying, she lit a fresh cigarette. “Said he was going up to Regis, said he and his mom were going to have a service for his dad, who died a year ago. ‘A memory service,’ he called it. And maybe he did go, but he came back to kill those girls from Trotwood. No question about it, because people saw him and there was surveillance video from a gas station that showed him filling up.”

“Filling what up?” Holly asked. “Was it a van?” This was leading the witness, and Bill wouldn’t have approved, but she couldn’t help herself.

“I don’t know. Not sure the papers said. Probably his truck. He had a Tahoe, all fancied up. Custom tires, lots of chrome. And a camper cap. He could have put them in there. Drugged them, maybe, until he was ready to… you know… use them.”

“Oough,” Holly said. She couldn’t help it.

Candy Wilson nodded. “Yeah. Kind of thing you don’t want to imagine, but you just can’t help it. At least I can’t. They also found his DNA, as I’m sure you know, because that was in the paper, too.”

“Yes.”

“And I saw him that week, because he came in to work one day. ‘Just can’t stay away from this place, can you?’ I asked him. He didn’t say anything, just gave me a creepy smile and kept walking down B Wing. I never saw him smile like that, never. I bet he still had their blood under his fingernails. Maybe even on his cock and balls. Christ, it gives me the willies just thinking about it.”

It gave Holly the willies, too, but she didn’t say so, only took a sip of her beer and asked what day that had been.

“I don’t know off the top of my head, but after those girls disappeared. You know what? I bet I can tell you exactly, because I had a hair appointment that same day after work. To have it colored. Haven’t been to the beauty parlor since, as I’m sure you can plainly see. Just a minute.”

She went to a little desk in the corner of the room, came up with an appointment book, and flipped back through the pages. “Here it is, Debbie’s Hairport. April 26th.”

Holly wrote it down, and added an exclamation point. That was the day of Terry’s last visit to see his father. He and his family had flown home the following day.

“Did Peter Maitland know Mr. Holmes?”

Wilson laughed. “Peter Maitland doesn’t really know anybody, hon. He had some clear days last year, and even early this year he remembered enough to get to the caff on his own and ask for chocolate—the things they really like are the things most of them remember the longest. Now he just sits and stares. If I get that shit, I’m going to take a bunch of pills and die while I still have enough working brain cells to remember what the pills are for. But if you’re asking if Heath knew Maitland, the answer is sure, you bet. Some of the orderlies switch around, but Heath stuck pretty much to the odd-numbered suites on B Wing. He used to say that some part of them knew him, even when most of their brains were gone. And Maitland is in suite B-5.”

“Did he visit Maitland’s room on the day you saw him?”

“Must have. I know something that wasn’t in the paper, but you can bet your ass it would have been a big deal at Heath’s trial, if he’d ever had one.”

“What, Candy? What was it, what?”

“When the cops found out he’d been in to the Memory Unit after the murders, they searched all the B Wing suites, paying especially close attention to Maitland’s, because Cam Melinsky said he saw Heath coming out of there. Cam’s a janitor. He noticed Heath especially because he—Cam, I mean—was washing the hall floor, and Heath took a slip and went on his ass.”

“You’re sure of this, Candy?”

“I am, and here’s the big thing. My best friend on the nursing staff is a woman named Penny Prudhomme, and she heard one of the cops talking on his phone after they searched B-5. He said they found hair in the room, and it was blond. What do you think of that?”

“I think they must have run a DNA test on it, to see if it belonged to one of the Howard girls.”

“Bet your ass they did. CSI stuff.”

“Those results were never made public,” Holly said. “Were they?”

“No. But you know what the cops found in Mrs. Holmes’s basement, don’t you?”

Holly nodded. That detail had been made public, and reading it must have been like putting an arrow in the parents’ hearts. Someone had talked and the paper had printed it. Probably it had been on TV, too.

“A lot of sex-killers take trophies,” Candy said authoritatively. “I’ve seen it on Forensic Files and Dateline. It’s common behavior with these whackos.”

“Although Heath Holmes never seemed like a whacko to you.”

“They hide it,” Candy Wilson said ominously.

“But he didn’t try very hard to hide this crime, did he? People saw him, and there was even that surveillance video.”

“So what? He went crazy, and crazy people don’t give a shit.”

I’m sure Detective Anderson and the Flint County DA said the exact same thing about Terry Maitland, Holly thought. Even though some serial killers—sex-killers, to use Candy Wilson’s term—keep getting away with it for years. Ted Bundy for one, John Wayne Gacy for another.

Holly got up. “Thank you so much for your time.”

“Thank me by making sure Mrs. Kelly doesn’t find out I talked to you.”

“I’ll do that,” Holly said.

As she was stepping out the door, Candy said, “You know about his mom, right? What she did after Heath offed himself in jail?”

Holly stopped, keys in hand. “No.”

“It was a month later. Guess you didn’t get that far in your researches. She hung herself. Just like him, only in her basement instead of a jail cell.”

“Holy frack! Did she leave a note?”

“That I don’t know,” Candy said, “but the basement was where the cops found those bloody underpants. The ones with Winnie and Tigger and Roo on them. If your only son does a thing like that, who needs to leave a note?”

9

When Holly was unsure about what to do next, she almost always sought out either an International House of Pancakes or a Denny’s. Both served breakfast all day, comfort food that you could eat slowly without being bothered by things like wine lists and pushy waiters. She found an IHOP close to her hotel.

Once seated at a two-top in the corner, she ordered pancakes (a short stack), a single scrambled egg, and hash browns (the IHOP hash browns were always delicious). While she waited for her food to come, she fired up her laptop and searched for Ralph Anderson’s telephone number. She didn’t find it, which was no huge surprise; police officers almost always unlisted their phones. She could almost certainly get it, even so—Bill had taught her all the tricks—and she wanted to talk to him, because she was sure they both had pieces of the puzzle the other lacked.

“He’s Macy’s, I’m Gimbels,” she said.

“What was that, hon?” It was the waitress, with her evening repast.

“I was just saying how hungry I am,” Holly said.

“You better be, because this is a lot of chow.” She set the plates down. “But you could use some feeding up, if you don’t mind me saying so. You’re too skinny.”

“I had a friend who used to tell me that all the time,” Holly said, and suddenly felt like crying. It was that phrase—I had a friend. Time had passed, and time probably did heal all wounds, but God, some of them healed so slowly. And the difference between I have and I had was such a gulf.

She ate slowly, going heavy on the pancake syrup. It wasn’t the real deal, not maple, but it was tasty, just the same, and it was good to eat a meal where you sat down and took your time.

By the time she finished, she had come to a reluctant decision. Calling Detective Anderson without informing Pelley was apt to get her fired when she wanted—it was Bill’s turn of phrase—to chase the case. More importantly, it would be unethical.

The waitress came back to offer more coffee, and Holly agreed. You didn’t get free refills at Starbucks. And the IHOP coffee, while not gourmet, was good enough. Like the syrup. And like me, Holly thought. Her therapist said these moments of self-validation throughout the day were very important. I may not be Sherlock Holmes—or Tommy and Tuppence, for that matter—but I am good enough, and I know what I have to do. Mr. Pelley may argue with me, and I hate arguments, but I’ll argue back if I have to. I’ll channel my inner Bill Hodges.

She held that thought while she made the call. When Pelley answered, she said: “Terry Maitland didn’t kill the Peterson boy.”

“What? Did you just say what I think you—”

“Yes. I’ve discovered some very interesting things here in Dayton, Mr. Pelley, but before I make my report, I need to talk to Detective Anderson. Do you have any objections?”

Pelley didn’t give her the argument she had dreaded. “I’d have to talk to Howie Gold about that, and he’d have to clear it with Marcy. But I think it will be okay with both of them.”

Holly relaxed and sipped her coffee. “That’s good. Clear it with them as fast as you can, please, and get me his number. I’d like to talk to him tonight.”

“But why? What have you found out?”

“Let me ask you a question. Do you know if anything unusual happened at the Heisman Memory Unit on the day Terry Maitland visited his father for the last time?”

“Unusual like what?”

This time Holly didn’t lead her witness. “Like anything. You may not know, but then again you might. If Terry said something to his wife when he got back to their hotel, for instance. Anything?”

“No… unless you mean Terry bumping into an orderly when he went out. The orderly fell down because the floor was wet, but it was just a chance thing. Neither of them was hurt, or anything.”

She clutched her phone so hard her knuckles creaked. “You never said anything like that before.”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“That’s why I need to talk to Detective Anderson. There are missing pieces. You just gave me one. He may have more. Also, he can find things out that I can’t.”

“Are you saying an excuse-me bump as Maitland was going out has relevance? If so, what is it?”

“Let me talk to Detective Anderson first. Please.”

There was a long pause, then Pelley said, “Let me see what I can do.”

The waitress put down the check as Holly pocketed her phone. “That sounded intense.”

Holly gave her a smile. “Thank you for such good service.”

The waitress left. The check came to eighteen dollars and twenty cents. Holly left a five-dollar tip under her plate. This was quite a bit more than the recommended amount, but she was excited.

10

She had barely returned to her room when her cell rang. UNKNOWN CALLER, the screen said. “Hello? You’ve reached Holly Gibney, to whom am I speaking?”

“This is Ralph Anderson. Alec Pelley gave me your number, Ms. Gibney, and told me what you’re doing. My first question is, do you know what you’re doing?”

“Yes.” Holly had many worries, and she was a very doubtful person even after years of therapy, but of this much she was sure.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t, I have no way of telling, do I?”

“No,” Holly agreed. “At least not as of this moment.”

“Alec said you told him Terry Maitland didn’t kill Frank Peterson. He said you seemed very sure of it. I’m curious as to how you can make a statement like that when you’re in Dayton and the Peterson murder happened here in Flint City.”

“Because there was a similar crime here, at the same time Maitland was here. Not a boy killed, but two little girls. Same basic MO: rape and mutilation. The man the police arrested claimed to have been staying with his mother in a town thirty miles away, and she corroborated that, but he was also seen in Trotwood, the suburb where the little girls were abducted. There’s surveillance footage of him. Does this sound familiar?”

“Familiar but not surprising. Most killers toss up some kind of alibi once they’re caught. You might not know that from your work collaring bail-jumpers, Ms. Gibney—Alec told me what your firm mostly does—but surely you know it from TV.”

“This man was an orderly at the Heisman Memory Unit, and although he was supposed to be on vacation, he was there at least once during the same week that Mr. Maitland was there visiting his father. On the occasion of Mr. Maitland’s last visit—April 26th, this would have been—these two supposed killers actually bumped into each other. And I mean that literally.”

“Are you shitting me?” Anderson nearly shouted.

“I am not. This is what my old partner at Finders Keepers would have called an authentic no-shit situation. Is your interest piqued?”

“Did Pelley tell you the orderly scraped Maitland when he fell down? Reached out and grabbed for him and nicked his arm?”

Holly was silent. She was thinking about the movie she had packed in her carry-on. She wasn’t in the habit of self-congratulation—just the opposite—but it now seemed like an act of intuitive genius. Only had she ever doubted there was something far out of the ordinary about the Maitland case? She had not. Mostly because of her association with the monstrous Brady Wilson Hartsfield. A thing like that tended to widen your perspective quite a bit.

“And that wasn’t the only cut.” He sounded like he was talking to himself. “There was another one. But down here. After Frank Peterson was murdered.”

Here was another missing piece.

“Tell me, Detective. Tell me tell me tell me!”

“I think… not over the phone. Can you fly down here? We should sit down and talk. You, me, Alec Pelley, Howie Gold, and a State Police detective who’s also been working the case. And maybe Marcy. Her, too.”

“I think that’s a good idea, but I’ll have to discuss it with my client, Mr. Pelley.”

“Talk to Howie Gold instead. I’ll give you his number.”

“Protocol—”

“Howie employs Alec, so protocol isn’t an issue.”

Holly mulled this over. “Can you get in touch with the Dayton Police Department, and the Montgomery County district attorney? I can’t find out all I want to know about the murders of the Howard girls and about Heath Holmes—that’s the orderly’s name—but I think you could.”

“Is this guy’s trial still pending? If it is, they probably won’t want to give out a whole lot of infor—”

“Mr. Holmes is dead.” She paused. “Just like Terry Maitland.”

“Jesus,” he muttered. “How weird can this get?”

“Weirder,” she said. Another thing of which she had no doubt.

“Weirder,” he repeated. “Maggots in the cantaloupe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. Call Mr. Gold, okay?”

“I still think I had better call Mr. Pelley first. Just to be sure.”

“If you really think so. And Ms. Gibney… I guess maybe you do know your business.”

That made her smile.

11

Holly got the green light from Mr. Pelley and called Howie Gold at once, now pacing a worry-track on the cheap hotel carpet and obsessively punching at her Fitbit to read her pulse. Yes, Mr. Gold thought it would be a good idea if she flew down, and no, she didn’t need to fly coach. “Book business class,” he said. “More legroom.”

“All right.” She felt giddy. “I will.”

“You really don’t believe Terry killed the Peterson boy?”

“No more than I think Heath Holmes killed those two girls,” she said. “I think it was someone else. I think it was an outsider.”