But then my finger caught on something.
A chain.
As I brushed away more dirt, I uncovered a choker. A necklace that would have held close to someone’s neck. It was silver, made of dozens of small loops of chain, interspersed with several links shaped like the letter G.
Gucci.
The choker I’d bought Brie for her birthday. The one I had seen her wearing when we had our FaceTime chat on that Saturday night six years ago, the night before she disappeared.
I let go of the chain, threw my hands out ahead of me to brace my fall, and collapsed over the grave of my darling Brie.
Forty-Seven
It was Tyler himself who gave Detective Hardy the name “Cam.” As they were bringing him down the stairs, Tyler had said to her, “Ask Cam. He’ll tell you. I only went there to talk to her.”
So the detective went looking for him. Tyler had said he worked with Cam, and when Detective Hardy learned that the two of them were employed at Whistler’s Market, she called the manager there and asked where she could find this Cam person.
“He’d be at school,” Whistler said, and he told her which school that was.
She went to the school office, found the principal, who determined Cam was in a chemistry class up on the second floor.
“Let’s go get him,” Hardy said.
They found the classroom. The principal interrupted the teacher mid-lesson, pointed to Cam, and beckoned him with his finger.
Cam, tall and skinny and ravaged by acne, stepped out into the hall and said, “What’s going on?” Then he saw Detective Hardy and said, “Who are you?”
She told him.
“Oh shit,” he said. “Is this about the slashed tires because we didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“What slashed tires?” Hardy asked.
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “So what’s up?”
“You were talking to your buddy Tyler this afternoon. Tell me about it.”
“Why, what’s happened? What’s going on?”
“Why did he go to Candace DiCarlo’s house?”
“Who’s that?”
“Tell me about your conversation.”
“Okay, so, there’s this whole thing going on with Tyler’s sister’s boyfriend, okay? Like, a long time ago, his wife vanished and people, like, you guys, think he killed her.”
“Go on.”
“But a couple of days ago she came back. And Tyler saw her at Whistler’s and followed her home.”
“Why did he do that?”
Cam shrugged. “He wanted to know if it was really her, because all this not knowing one way or another was really fucking things up at home. And he wanted to ask her if she was going to want to stay married to his sister’s boyfriend. Like, if that happens, Tyler doesn’t know what that’s going to mean for him and his sister, whether she’s still going to want him living with her, because he can’t go back with his aunt.”
Hardy blinked, not entirely following. “What about his aunt?”
“That’s some shit that happened back in Providence. She didn’t want to look after him anymore because of her eye.”
Hardy thought following this kid’s line of thought was like trying to track a firefly.
“So Tyler called you, and he’d been to see this woman and asked her all these questions.”
“Not yet.”
“What do you mean, not yet?”
“Okay, so he’d been there once, and this woman wouldn’t talk to him. She went in the house and locked the door and Tyler left. That’s when he called me.”
“Why did he call you?”
“I guess because he comes to me for advice.” He smiled, fancying himself as someone with great wisdom. “He was wondering what he should do. He was all agitated and mixed up and everything. I never heard him like that.”
“Was he angry?”
“Not angry. He was trying to figure out what to do. This lady wouldn’t answer his questions.”
“So what did you tell him?”
Cam shrugged. “I said he should go back there and get her to talk to him.”
“Did you, now?” Hardy said.
“Yeah. Why? That a problem?”
When Detective Hardy got back into her car she took a moment.
While solving DiCarlo’s murder looked like a slam dunk — Tyler admitted being at the house and there was a witness who saw the bloodied kid leaving the scene — there were still plenty of questions. If DiCarlo was, indeed, the woman captured in the surveillance video, why did she want anyone to think she was Brie Mason returning after a six-year absence?
Why pretend to be Brie?
Was it some sort of cruel trick? To make Brie’s family think that she was still alive? What was to be gained by that? Why raise a family’s hopes that way?
The thought had crossed her mind earlier that Andrew was behind this, that he’d hired someone to pretend to be Brie in the hope that it would persuade Hardy he had never killed her. The trouble with that theory was, why now? Brie’s disappearance was effectively a cold case. While it was always in the back of Hardy’s mind, she hadn’t had a fresh lead to follow in years.
Pretend to be Brie.
What had DiCarlo’s next-door neighbor said? Candace was part of a community theater group. So she’d be a natural at playing a role, assuming an identity.
She got out her notebook to see whether she’d written down the name of the theater group. She had. The Stamford Players.
Then she got out her phone, opened up a browser, and Googled the theater company’s name.
Up came a website for the Stamford Players. They had a new production set to open in a couple of weeks, just like the neighbor had said. Something called The Casual Librarian. There was information about ticket sales, who would be appearing in the production — there was a headshot of Candace DiCarlo — and then information about the play itself, that the playwright and the director were one and the same.
Albert McBain.
“Holy shit,” Hardy said under her breath.
Forty-Eight
Andrew
“Well?” Matt said with more than a hint of impatience. “Is it her?”
I needed a minute to pull myself together. I wiped my eyes with the back of my arm to clear away some dirt. My hands were black with moist soil. Slowly, I got to my feet, and used the shovel to help prop me up once I was standing.
Six years of never really knowing. Assuming the worst without confirmation. But here it was. I had no doubt that this was Brie. Admittedly, I was basing my conclusion on the necklace and a few wisps of desiccated fabric that looked like a nightgown she often wore, and someday, maybe, if Detective Hardy were to find Brie’s remains and do a DNA test, we’d have one hundred percent certainty.
But I didn’t need DNA test results. I knew in my heart and in my gut that this was Brie.
I also knew the odds were solidly against Hardy ever having the opportunity to find these bones and conduct any forensic tests. The more likely possibility was that I would be directed to dig a second grave and plant myself in it.
Avoiding that outcome was the current priority. I would have to grieve Brie, confront the trauma of digging up the woman I had loved, at a later date, given the opportunity. So, as I was getting to my feet, I had to consider any possible way to stall, to buy time.