He played by the rules. And yet there was something lurking.
I read things off my phone as Rowan drives. “Hartford PD is doing a canvass in his neighborhood. Looking for contacts through his cell records. And they’ve got the plates for the truck. It’s new. Registered two weeks after the move. He traded in a Prius.”
“That’s a 180,” Rowan comments.
“There’s no trace of Brett Emory after that. No transactions. No credit checks, which means no apartment leases.”
“He came here to disappear. And we know he wasn’t using Wade Austin to do it. We already checked that. Probably used a different name before the shooting.”
“And listen to this,” I tell him, getting a new report. “He withdrew his entire savings account and his 401(k). Two hundred grand in total. Withdrawn just after he left Hartford. About a month before the shooting.”
“Shit.”
We both know what this means. Every case we’ve ever worked with a drained 401(k), which incurs hefty penalties and taxes before retirement age, was done for one of two reasons. First, because of financial distress. And second, because the suspect did not plan to return to his former life.
Brett Emory was not in financial distress.
“There’s no profile here,” I say. “Nothing to understand why he didn’t just run away after the shooting. He had all of that money. He could have moved to Mexico, lounged on a beach until we’d forgotten about him. Bought fake documents. Created a new identity. It makes no sense.” I had been overly optimistic. “I don’t understand any of this.”
Rowan gets a curious look on his face—the one he makes when he can’t believe what he’s about to say. I watch and wait until, finally, he says it.
“Landyn.”
ChapterTwenty-Six
Dr. Landyn meets us after his last patient. We’ve told him it’s urgent. That it has to do with the Nichols shooting.
I feel many things returning to his office. The last time I was here, I was counting down the minutes to get cleared for work and escape the numbness that had me in a state of despair. I hadn’t yet followed the blue truck to a back road where I was assaulted, where I’d opened the door for this man, Brett Emory, to infiltrate my life. Now I sit quietly, fighting to keep my new secrets from showing.
Rowan is quiet as well. He doesn’t like shrinks. He says he spent enough time with them after his reentry to civilian life and not every pot should be stirred. Sometimes it just mucks everything up. Rowan keeps his demons at the bottom, like grains of sand that settle in the water. They sit there, perfectly still, letting the water glisten, crystal clear. But one shake, one stir, and they’ll begin to rise.
I know this about Rowan the way he knows things about me, like maybe I need some alone time with Dr. Landyn after we finish our official business.
And he’s probably right. But just like his grains of sand, I have my own pot I don’t want stirred. I know the first thing Landyn will ask if we’re alone is whether I’d found peace with the shooting. I’ve already done too much lying.
We sit in the waiting room while Landyn finishes his last session. He has two doors so the patients leaving don’t see the patients who are coming. Cops don’t need other cops knowing they’re having their heads examined. It erodes confidence, which is absurd, really, if you believe in head shrinking. Theoretically then, every patient, coming or going, would feel safer knowing someone was sorting out their pots. But it doesn’t work that way. Maybe we all just wonder if the person coming or going is crazier than we are.
“You look tired,” Rowan says.
“Didn’t sleep great.” This is the truth, or part of it anyway. I don’t say why I didn’t sleep—that I was watching surveillance feed from four hotels.
“Is Mitch at the house?”
I nod. We’re still tag teaming in the afternoons. I’m usually the one to pick the girls up from school since we stopped letting them take the bus and stay with Kelly, but seeing Landyn is important, so I asked Mitch to do it and he didn’t argue. I don’t know what it means, that we talk only of logistics and the investigation. I don’t know what’s left of our marriage, but I can’t stop to find out. I tell myself I’m giving him space. I tell Mitch the same thing. I’m here if he wants to talk. But I’m not really anywhere but in the mind of Wade Austin—that name still won’t leave me. Everyone else, including Mitch, thinks Wade has moved on.
The door opens, and I take a deep breath when I see Dr. Landyn’s face. I return his smile with the exhale. Wesmall-talkas we settle into his office. I take a different chair than before and remind myself that I am not the patient today.
Rowan manspreads, elbows on splayed knees, fists knotted together beneath his chin. His discomfort is comforting because misery loves company, and that’s what we both are—miserable with anticipation of our pots being stirred.
“So,” Dr. Landyn begins. “Interesting case.”
The file we’ve given him contains a psychiatric evaluation of Brett Emory that the Hartford PD got from his parents. They were as helpful as they could be, as was his sister over the phone from Alaska, but none of them could believe that this gentle, kind son and brother could do any of the things that had been described to them. They agreed to let us monitor their phones, so we’ll know if he tries to make contact. But he won’t.
“What’s your take?” Rowan asks. “What’s wrong with this guy?”
Landyn doesn’t flinch, even though I can tell he wants to.Wrongis not a word he likes to use. There is no right or wrong with mental health.
We haven’t told him anything more. We want his impressions of Brett Emory before he walked into Nichols that day. The lack of context makes him reluctant to weigh in.
