When I arrived at the restaurant, Alice was already seated at a table by the window, still in her coat and studying her phone. It was too dark at this point to see the lake through the glass behind us, but at least we’d be away from the bar noise.
“This is the kind of day when I really miss my husband,”she said, once I’d flopped into a chair. “He’d be giving me a foot rub right now.”
“Want me to make an attempt?”
She snorted and shrugged off her coat. “You’d probably cut your hands on my calluses. Besides, you’ve had an equally tough day, my friend.”
We ordered wine and food at the same time, and as soon as the waitress moved off, I divulged my theory about the other two victims being Amy and Page.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” she said. “Of course, that would mean their bodies have been there for a decade.”
“If you do the math, it works out. Though they stopped doing retreats eleven years ago, the guy in the diner told me they kept the site functional for a while longer, hoping to start back up again. Amy and Page went missing ten years ago. The killer could have left the bodies in the basement at that time, figuring there was little chance of anyone besides him going into the storage space. The furnace must have been turned on that next winter, and the bodies mummified.”
“Those poor things. I didn’t cover that story myself—I think I had a bad case of Lyme disease then—but from what I recall, the cops really bought into the idea that the girls had simply taken off.”
“I bet you they’re not so dismissive now. How fast do autopsies happen in this neck of the woods?”
“The bodies will be sent to Albany Med and that place is pretty efficient. But as you know, these things take a lot more time in real life than they do on TV, so it’s not like we’ll behearing tomorrow. My police source has promised to call me with anything he hears, though.”
I shot her my best smile. “If I pick up the tab tonight, would you be up for sharing?”
“As long as it’s solely for your own edification. I could never even post what he says and attribute it to an unnamed source, because people might suspect it’s him.”
“Got it.”
Alice plucked a piece of bread from the basket and buttered it. “So how does all this make you feel about Cody Blaine?”
“I’d say that for the most part, the idea of him as his wife’s murderer has left the building, but I’m trying to figure out the most expedient way to determine if he was out of the country ten years ago.”
“Let me save you the trouble. I have a pal in the veterans’ office here and he confirmed that Cody was in Afghanistan when the girls disappeared.”
“Ah, so that definitely lets him off the hook.”
“Yup. Like I told you, I don’t love the guy, but I’m feeling pretty bad for him now.”
Our wine arrived, and we each indulged in a long sip.
“Any more ideas about who the killercouldbe?”
“I know you didn’t love my trucker theory, but to me that’s still a possibility, and it explains the ten-year gap. Maybe he’s been killing in different areas all these years.”
I picked up the saltshaker and made circles on the table with it, pulling a thought together.
“But remember, the killer has to be someone—or closely connected to someone—who knew I was asking about Shannon going to church again. And that means a person who’s been in the mix here lately.”
“That’s the kind of thought that makes me want to leave the lights on at night.”
When our meals showed up, we switched gears—I could sense Alice needed a break from the topic as much as I did—and we talked instead about how we’d each broken into the field. Alice, it turned out, had worked in newspapers pretty consistently since college but had tabled her career for seven years when her son, Ben, was young. She showed me a couple of pictures of him. Nice-looking guy, now a college professor, and she clearly adored him.
“You’ve been a reporter for a long time,” I said, taking a break from my crab cakes. “Have you found a way to keep days like today from getting the better of you?”
I wasn’t simply making conversation. Despite how many gruesome stories I’d reported on, I was having a hard time preventing this morning’s experience from weighing on me.
“Well, fortunately we don’t get many as bad as this. But I’ve covered my share of horror shows. Kids abused and then put into foster care, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I find that every so often I have to detach, disengage completely. Or I go nuts.”
“How do you do that?”
“Actually, that’s one of the reasons I fish. I head out onto the lake with a cooler and stay for hours. It’s my form of meditating, I guess.”
