Kara was silent, which he took as a positive sign, but quickly continued just to be safe.
“A friend of mine is an investigator, sort of, and he did some digging for me. We found reports of people going missing down in Elkwood and the surrounding area going back twenty, thirty years. That was the mistake the police made. In their statements to the media they played up the part about Doctor Wellman going crazy and cutting people to bits because his wife died a sad and painful death.”
“So?”
“So his wife died in ’92. If he wigged out and went postal after her death, who snatched all those people for the twenty-odd years before that?”
“That was just a theory,” Kara said. “Who’s to say he wasn’t dabbling in a little psychotic surgery from the moment he got his degree? You said he couldn’t speak for himself now that he’s dead, and you’re right. He can’t protest his innocence, but he can’t confess his guilt either. So for all you know, maybe they did get the right man. Maybe that town has been harboring The Demon Barber of Fleet Street for thirty years. We don’t know, and you sure as hell don’t either. ”
“Wrong.”
“Oh?”
“What did Claire tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“How the hell do you know? Were you there?”
“No. I wasn’t. But someone else was.”
She fell silent, but he could hear her breathing. Then she said, “Who?”
“There was a kid. The one who brought Claire to the hospital. He took off as soon as the orderlies tried to talk to him. I called them, got a description, then called the Sheriff down in Elkwood. The kid’s name is Pete Lowell. His father died the same night all this went down. Suicide apparently, and it happened shortly after he sent his boy off to Wellman’s. So explain to me why a father would send his son off to the town lunatic and then kill himself.”
He could hear the shrug in her voice. “Guilt? Maybe he wanted to kill them both but didn’t have the heart to pull the trigger on his boy, so sent him to—”
“C’mon, Kara,” he interrupted. “You don’t buy that shit, do you? If you’re going to kill yourself and you want your kid to die too, are you telling me that instead of giving him sleeping pills or something quick and quiet, you send him off to be tortured and chopped to pieces by a homicidal maniac? You’re reaching and you know it.”
“Reach—” She scoffed. “Reaching for what, Finch? This is a closed case. You can spin all the theories you want and it won’t change what happened down there.”
He frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it doesn’t matter.”
He had his mouth open, ready to tell her what he thought of that, especially coming from someone whose sibling had survived, but she continued as if aware of how he would take what she’d said.
“It doesn’t matter because what happened happened. Claire was raped and beaten and damn near killed. She won’t ever be the same girl she was before. You lost Danny, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am about that. I loved him; you know I did. But he’s gone, Finch. He’s gone and you have to let this go. It doesn’t matter if that doctor did this to them, or some bunch of carnival freaks. Nothing will change the fact that it happened, and now its over.”
Now it’s over. Abruptly, Finch realized he didn’t know who he was talking to, didn’t recognize this woman as anyone he had ever known. He had fully expected a change from the If You’re Going To Hell, I’m Ridin’ Shotgun girl he’d loved, still loved, but this…this was like talking to a stranger.
“Tell me what Claire said,” he told her, his voice flat, and cold.
“No.”
“I have a right to know.”
“She hasn’t told me anything.”
“You’re lying. Kara, I—”
“I don’t want you coming by here again, Finch. I mean it. If I see your car outside or your face at our door, I’ll call the cops and let them in on your little game plan, understand?”
He said nothing for a moment, felt the anger colonize him. He reached up a hand and grabbed the steering wheel until his knuckles were white as bone.
“Look…just listen to me, okay? I need your help with this, if only to let me see her, just to talk, that’s all, just to—”
“Stay away from here. I’m sorry about Danny, you have to believe that. But nothing can come of this but more hurt and grief and we can’t take any more of that. We can’t, Finch, so don’t bring it down on us.”
“The Merrill family,” he said, as he let his gaze rove over the austere facade of the Kaplan house, and dropped his hand to the keys.
“Goodbye, Finch.”
“That’s their name. Merrill. That’s who did this to Claire, and Danny, and Katy, and Stu. That’s who—”
A drone in his ear told him she’d hung up.
“—hurt us,” he finished, then snapped the phone shut so hard it sounded like a bone breaking.
Teeth clenched, he started the car.
-20-
Despite what the boy had said earlier, after talking long into the night, Louise convinced him to stay. The later it got, the less tolerant Wayne seemed to grow. Aware that she had yet to tell him about getting fired from her job, she advised him to go to bed with a promise to follow soon after. Then she cleared the coffee table of their cups and trash and dragged it to the far wall, exposing the stained narrow space of carpet between the sofa and the TV.
All the while, Pete stared at her.
Louise sighed. “I know you’re hurtin’,” she told him. “But I’m not sure this is such a good idea. Do you know how dangerous this is? You’re just a boy. And what if you’re wrong and it really was the doctor? You might just end up hurtin’ innocent folk.”
“It weren’t the doctor,” he replied. “It weren’t. That much I know for sure.”
She shook her head. “Why not just go to the police? Tell them to talk to the girl. Surely if you’re right, she can tell them what she knows and back you up.”
“I’m guessin’ she don’t remember much, not after what they did to her. I’m guessin’ her mind didn’t let her see all of what happened, so she’d be protected, like when you have a real bad dream but soon’s you wake up it starts goin’ away until you can’t remember it no more?”
Louise nodded, and smoothed a hand over the cushions. She felt helpless, as if of a sudden she was being given a chance to do something right but for the life of her couldn’t figure out how to make it happen. All she did know was that she could not let this child go through with what he had in mind. If it turned out he was right, then he would almost certainly get himself hurt, or worse. As bad as it had been to have to live with the guilt of abandoning him, she would not survive long knowing she had let him go to his death. But what could she do?
“I’m goin’ to get you some blankets. I’ll be right back.”
He nodded, and lowered his gaze.
He was not going to stay here just because she begged him to, of that she was certain. He owed her nothing, not after what she’d done to him. So what were the alternatives? She could alert the police, tell them what the boy had told her. But then they’d want to see him, talk to him, find out what he knew. They might take him in and try to control what became of him. Courts might become involved, the social services people. Sure, he was of age, but his slow development might be the trump card the courts used to ensure Louise was not granted guardianship. And if not that, then they would use her unstable past and unreliable present against her. She had no job, no prospects, no way of taking care of him.