“I know,” Wren said. He shrugged when Ledger looked at him. “It’s a party trick.”
“Did you know he’s got cancer?” Ledger asked. It was probably stupid to be satisfied when Wren shook his head, but he already felt like an idiot. He wanted to feel like he’d worked at least one thing out before everyone else. “Just like Bell. Around the same time as Bell. Because they split the fifty years between them, and now it’s run out.”
CHAPTER15
IT HAD BEENtwenty years since Ledger had left Sutton behind. It had changed. People had died; people had left.
More had died than left. That was small towns for you.
The strange thing was how much had stayed the same, how many people were still here. That was a problem. Nobody blamed Ledger for Bell’s sins… not publicly, anyhow. That didn’t mean they wanted to sit down to spill the town’s tea with the town’s most awkward prodigal son.
Most of Sutton just wanted him to go away and take any uncomfortable memories he’d brought up with him.
Some people in town, though, didn’t have the privilege of not thinking about what Bell had done. Syder might have been using the families of Bell’s victims for his own ends, but he’d been right about what haunted them.
And sad people liked to talk. Ironic since the longer they were sad, the less people wanted to listen.
Ledger had taken advantage of that before. There was no better way to get a good idea of what was going up for auction than lending a listening ear to a widow or an orphan. Friends didn’t always have the same intimate details, but they were usually looser with the good stories, and people’s tolerance for their grief wore out quicker.
“I hope he suffered,” Clemmie Brown said, her voice choked with hatred so thick it stuck like phlegm. “I hope he begged someone to let him go. That he shat himself screaming. It still wouldn’t be good enough. Coffee?”
“Please,” Ledger said. He nudged the empty cup toward her. “It was cancer. I don’t think it’s an easy way to go.”
Clemmie gave him a look.
“It wasn’t hard enough.”
She’d been beautiful as a teenager. They’d never crossed paths then—she was a good five years older than him—but he’d seen the photos.
Framed photos of the head cheerleader next to the trophies she’d won in the school trophy cabinet and scraped from social media selfies of her and her boyfriend, the school quarterback, on news sites after he’d somehow disappeared without a trace on a straight road drive from town to her house.
But by the time they found her boyfriend’s championship ring hidden in Bell’s basement—with his blood and skin in the setting—she’d graduated, dropped out, and found a new boyfriend. That left her a second-stringer to his parents in the news cycle.
“How are Ben’s parents?” Ledger asked.
“Probably not wanting you to know,” Clemmie said tartly. She reached down and tapped a bright silver fingernail on the plastic-covered menu. “Specials today are walnut and gouda salad or a mushroom and walnut soup.”
“All in on the walnuts,” Ledger said.
“It’s a vegetarian restaurant,” Clemmie said drolly. “Nuts are a big part of it. Are you ready to order?”
“I’m waiting for a friend,” Ledger said. “And I wasn’t trying to pry. I just wondered how they were coping. The sheriff told me how much everyone was hoping for some kind of deathbed confession.”
“Oh,” Clemmie said. She sat down hard in the seat opposite Ledger. “I didn’t think of that. Damn. Oh, goddamn.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and she ground them back with the heel of her hand.
Ledger offered her his napkin. She slapped it away.
Guilt chewed at the back of Ledger’s ribs. He got that exploiting people’s suffering was bad enough and that it was worse when that suffering had been at the hands of your family. It was just the only way he could pull together the information he needed.
Last time Ledger had gone in half-cocked, and he’d paid for it with two months locked up with no shoelaces. He didn’t intend to repeat the past.
“Sorry,” he said.
Clemmie sniffed and sat back in the chair. She crossed her arms and clutched her elbows. “Not your fault.” After a sniff, she glanced over the table at him. “I know that. I do. It’s just been… hard.”
“I’m sure.”
