It wasn't Finch. Finch's arms were clean.
Noah picked up the photograph and tilted it toward the overhead light. The timestamp in the bottom corner was the day Fiona disappeared.
"That's not Garrett," Callie said, stepping beside him. She was seeing it too. The tattooed arm. A second photographer in the room.
Noah set the photo down and stared at the row of images on the desk. Fiona had made it to a shoot. She'd been there, in some room, on that night. Garrett had lied about her being a no-show. And someone else had been with them.
Someone they hadn't identified yet.
14
Ruby sat in the same plastic chair she'd sat in two days ago when she'd come in with bruises on her arm. The office was quieter now, most of the officers out in the field, the overhead lights casting their pale hum across empty desks and half-finished paperwork. Callie set a series of photographs on the desk in front of her, face down, and pulled a chair around to sit beside her.
"Before I show you these, I need you to understand that what you see stays in this room."
Ruby nodded.
Callie turned the photographs over.
Ruby's face changed. Not shock exactly, but something close to it, a tightening around her eyes and a slow intake of breath that she held longer than was natural. She picked up the first photo and brought it closer. Fiona in lingerie, reclined, the lighting low and warm. The second was more explicit. The third had Garrett Finch in the frame beside her. Ruby set them all down and pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose.
"We also have this one." Callie placed the fourth photograph in front of her. The wider shot. The tattooed arm reaching into the frame.
Ruby stared at it. "You expect me to know who that is any more than you do?"
"You were her friend," Callie said. "Did she tell you about doing this kind of thing?"
"No." Ruby's voice was flat. Controlled. "As far as I knew she had only done a few modeling shoots. Regular ones. Headshots, catalog stuff. But she said she needed the money for college. She figured she could do enough of it to cover her first semester."
She picked up the fourth photograph again and held it at arm's length, tilting it under the overhead light. Her eyes moved past Fiona, past the tattooed arm, to the background. Something in the upper left corner of the frame, partially obscured by the angle and the low light but visible if you knew what you were seeing.
"But one thing is for sure." Ruby tapped the photograph. "This wasn't taken at Finch's studio."
Noah leaned forward from where he stood against the far desk.
"This was taken at the Three Pillar Community farm."
"How do you know?" Callie asked.
"That windmill in the background." Ruby tapped the upper corner of the photo. Noah and Callie both moved closer. It was hard to make out, but through what appeared to be a loft window or opening in a wall, the outline of a windmill was visible against a slightly lighter sky. An old one, wooden-vaned, common on farms across the region but was distinctive enough if you'd seen it before.
"Fiona drove past the place one time and pointed it out to me. Said when she wasn't working at the Deli, she would sometimes hang out there at the barn with the others."
"Did you go there with her?"
"No. I suggested she show me but she just said another time." Ruby paused. "Now I know why."
Noah straightened and caught Callie's eye. She was already standing.
"I'll get a warrant," she said.
The convoy moved northon Route 86 with lights pulsating red and blue against the wet pavement. Three Adirondack County Sheriff cruisers in front, two High Peaks Police Department vehicles behind them, and an unmarked sedan carrying Noah and Callie at the center of the line. A light rain had started falling in the last twenty minutes, a fine steady drizzle that turned windshields into smeared glass and made the night feel closer than it was.
The turnoff came up fast. A gravel road marked by a wooden sign that read Three Pillars Community, All Welcome in hand-carved letters. The driveway was long, a quarter mile at least, bordered on both sides by split-rail fencing and open pasture that disappeared into the dark beyond the reach of the headlights. Horses stood motionless in the field to the left, their coats slick with rain, their heads turned to watch the procession of vehicles pass like a parade.
The property opened up at the end of the drive into a compound of sorts. A large farmhouse with a wraparound porch and lights burning in the downstairs windows. A smaller house behind it, single-story, connected by a covered walkway. Three barns, one red, one gray, one newer with metal siding. Outbuildings scattered around the edges. A chicken coop. A workshop with its rolling door half open. And off to the right,visible against the low clouds, the windmill. Wooden vanes turning slowly in the drizzle.
The cruisers fanned out across the gravel yard and officers began stepping out before the engines had fully stopped. Noah climbed out of the sedan and felt the rain on his face.
