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THREE

Greeted by the hush of her tidy house, Rain parked the stroller in the foyer. Lily was sound asleep, head lolling to the side. With another cup of coffee from the carafe, Rain hustled upstairs to the home office.

The keyboard, the screen in front of her, it was her instrument—the right strokes, the right words, she could piece together a symphony of information. She searched the web, scanning the various news sites, a couple of the crime blogs she liked. The Markham story was in circulation, the same few sentences—that Markham, tried and acquitted for the murder of his wife, was found dead in his home early this morning. But there obviously weren’t enough details yet to run a full feature on any of the big networks or major newspapers. She poked around on local news sites—no witnesses, no leads, no suspects at this time.

Or the Feds were withholding information from the media.

There should have been more—a lot more. Images of news vans gathering around the Markham house, interviews with family members, neighbors.

Maybe Markham killed himself, she thought. That was less of a story. An unsatisfyingly abrupt ending to a sad, unjust tale, and the kind of conclusion for which people usually had little sympathy or interest. But it would have been reported. Suicide. End of story.

She picked up her phone, dialed a number she knew by heart and waited.

“Wright.”

“Hey.”

“Rain Winter,” he said. He had a way of saying her name that made it sound like song. “Long time.”

She and Christopher had been friends—sort of friends—since before he and Gillian were a thing. (In fact, Rain had introduced them, and was a little sorry she had. He hadn’t been good to Gillian, and Rain was still pissed about it.) Rain had been a young crime beat reporter at the city paper; she’d been working her first big story about a serial rapist. Chris was the lead detective, one of the few guys—inside the newsroom or out—who didn’t treat her like a pet, didn’t call her “kid,” didn’t wear that snide smirk that some older men wore when young women tried to do what was once upon a time a job held only by men. He never once told her that she was “too pretty to be writing about crime.”

“I thought I’d see you last week at Gillian’s birthday party,” she said, trying to keep it light.

He issued a grunt. “Gillian doesn’t want to see me,” he said. “Even if she thinks she does.”

Gillian’s gathering had been a rare—only—solo night out for Rain, baby and hubby back at home. It wasn’t exactly how she imagined it. She’d been nervous, checked the monitor and home security cameras about a hundred times to see Greg crashed on the couch, Lily sleeping peacefully in her crib. She’d spent most of the evening comforting her friend.

“Just like a man,” Rain said. “To think he knows what a woman wants.”

Silence. She was used to waiting for him to talk. He was king of the awkward pause. “Did you call to talk about Gillian?”

“Markham.”

“Thought so.”

“Well.”

“I’m not your guy anymore,” he said.

Street noise carried over the line, horns and voices, a distant siren. “Feds came in today. The scene is closed. Strict information control. The press conference has been moved to tomorrow, if they give one at all.”

“Why?”

One of the burning questions, the one that always interested her the most. Who? What? When? Where? All important. But “Why?” In news it didn’t matter so much.

But in story—Story with a capital S—it was heart and soul.

“What do you care?” he asked.

Lily stirred downstairs, the sound carrying up to Rain. Ticktock.

“I thought you were out,” he said. “Home with the kid full-time.”

She heard it, the weight of judgment. A little flame of anger lit inside her. Some people judged you for staying home. Others judged you for wanting to work even though you had taken on the all-sacred role of mother. Rain had never been overly concerned with what people thought. But even she felt the trap of it, how nothing was ever quite good enough. Was there always someone waiting to put you down?

“I’m producing a podcast,” she said. Why did she say that? That was the furthest thing from her mind. Impulsive, reactionary. That’s what her dad always said about her. But he meant it as a compliment. “A crime podcast. You know—long-form journalism.”

“Seriously?”

“Why not?”

“Exactly,” he said. “That’s what everyone says these days, why not? Anyone can do it.”

“I’ve made my bones,” she said easily. Ten years investigating, writing and producing news, she had. “Besides—these days—podcasts? That’s the only real journalism left. Everything else is bought and paid for, beholden to advertisers and their agendas. It’s called democracy, remember that old idea? Freedom of speech. Not speech controlled by whoever happens to be paying the bills.”

She didn’t realize she’d felt so passionately about this. She didn’t. She just didn’t like being marginalized.

“Most of it’s crap.”

“Most of everything is crap.”

He issued a little chuckle, reminding her that he had a grim, serious face. A heavy, deeply lined brow and a searing, pin-you-to-the-wall kryptonite-green gaze. He had a cop voice, granite-cold and just as hard. But when he smiled or laughed, his whole face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. She wished she was sitting across from him somewhere. It was so much easier to get what you wanted in person.

“You got me there,” he said.

Rain walked to the top of the stairs. She could see Lily’s chubby little legs, perfect pink toes kicking. Ticktock. Ticktock. Rain had left Lily’s squishy book in reach, hoping it would buy a little time when Lily woke up. She heard it crinkle as the baby picked it up and made a happy coo. Score. She’d just earned herself about four minutes.

“Come on,” she said. “You must have something.”

He sighed into the phone. He just liked to argue for the sake of arguing. She could relate; a good verbal sparring session was one of the most satisfying encounters you could have with a man—especially when you won. And cops, even though they pretended otherwise, loved to talk—it was downright painful when they couldn’t tell you what they knew.

“All I can say is that it wasn’t a rage killing like you’d expect. It was organized, clean. Someone planned it.”

She already knew that. “That’s what you told Gillian.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And the Feds moved in this morning, took over the investigation.”

Both pieces of information she already had. He was holding back.

“What else?” she pushed.

She heard a car door slam on his end, footfalls. There were voices, another phone ringing. Lily was making noises downstairs, fishing for Rain.

“Okay, look,” he said finally. “All I know is that they think it connects to another case they’re working. An older one.”

“What case?”

Another long pause. This time she thought he’d hung up, which he also did quite a bit. Then, “Google the Boston Boogeyman. That’s it. That’s all I can say.”

A jolt through her system. She knew the name. Knew it well.

She realized that she was gripping the phone so hard it actually was making her hand ache. Release. Breathe. Rule number one of news investigation: just keep asking questions.

“How was Markham killed?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Come on.”

“It’ll be out there soon enough,” he said. “You’ll have to hear it in the news along with all the other civilians.”

Ouch. That hurt.

“Shot?”

“Hey,” he said, his voice going softer. “What I hear—it’s yours, okay? I promise. I’ll call you.”

He always promised that, and he’d never once made good on it. It was just a way to get off the phone.

“So, you just don’t know?” He knew. Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he tell her?

“Goodbye, Winter.”

“Why don’t you give her a call?” Just a hook to keep him on the line. Gillian and Christopher weren’t good for each other and they all knew it.

“Gilly?” he said. No one else on earth called her that. “I’m not sure I’m the man she deserves.”

He sounded a little sadder than she would have expected.

“Maybe you should let her decide.”

“Good luck with your podcast,” he said.

Rain ended the call just seconds before Lily started crying. She sat on the top step for a moment, buzzing with frustration.

Then she got up and went to Lily, unstrapping her and carrying her back up to the nursery.

It was another world. Stars on the ceiling, a white-and-blue ocean mural on the wall. The nightlight projected buttery-yellow sea turtles that languidly circled the room. The gauzy shades were always drawn, casting the room perpetually in a peaceful milky light. Lily was warm and soft in Rain’s arms, smelled like the lavender shampoo Rain used on her every night. The baby’s eyes glittered, smile big and gurgling.

“Hello, sunshine,” Rain said, peering into her daughter’s perfect flushed face.

She sat in the glider, rocking and nursing again. It was hypnotic, the quiet of the room, the warmth of her child, that flood of oxytocin, the low sound of waves from the noise machine. Her frustration eased; the belly of fire cooled.

It was enough, wasn’t it?

Maybe. If this room, pretty and safe, was the whole world.

But it wasn’t.

Laney Markham would have had this. But her husband, a sociopath, brutally ended her life, and the life of their child. Then, he escaped justice, walked free while Laney’s brokenhearted father raged. And Laney’s mother sat stoic, pale and rigid, as though the blood had stopped moving through her veins. Grief had turned her to stone; it was more devastating to see than the father’s fury.

That was it. It was the case that did her in. The ugliness of it; she was sick with it, like a flu she couldn’t shake. Gillian’s words knocked around her head for weeks and months.

Bad people win. They win all the time.

When just a few weeks after the crushing acquittal, Greg asked if she would consider staying home with the baby for a while, she agreed, surprising him—and herself. Money would be a bit tight, but whatever. She worked in news; layoffs were always looming. Money was always tight.

She gave it up—the work that had defined her.

Now, Markham was dead. She felt a tickle of relief. A sort of justice had been delivered, something in line with her good-always-triumphs-over-evil belief system. Murder? Suicide? Home invasion robbery gone wrong? Accident?

A federal investigation underway. A connection to the Boston Boogeyman.

Let it go. It’s not your story anymore.

Lily gazed up at Rain and started kicking her legs happily.

Or is it?

FOUR

The rain knocks on the tin roof and the sound of it always makes me think of you. Not because of the name you gave yourself. I never called you Rain.

The sound reminds me of your childhood home. I used to love that old house, how it was deep back in the woods. Rooms dim, with wind chimes on the porch. Your father still lives there, doesn’t he?

Your mother seemed always to be cooking, some black-and-white movie playing on that tiny portable television perched on the kitchen counter. Your father’s study smelled of leather and cigarette smoke.

I’d marvel at his shelves and shelves of dusty books, the typewriter on the rickety wood table by the window. He had a computer, of course. But he’d write on that old thing and give your mother the pages to enter into “the box,” as he liked to call it. His keyboard clatter echoed down the hardwood floor of the hallway. I loved his tall thinness, the way his suit jackets hung off his broad shoulders. He was a writer, a real writer. You were often mad at him because he cared more about the page than he did about you, or so it seemed. I think you were wrong about that. You didn’t see the way he looked at you. As if you were a princess and a unicorn and a rainbow all rolled into one perfect girl.

My house was different, sprawling and frigid, filled with light, professionally decorated, museum white and gray, expensive pieces of modern art chosen by my mother not for love, or because she had any idea what was truly beautiful, but because it “went with the room.” My father only cared about numbers. My mother, I’m not sure what she cared about then, before. Afterward, she had a kind of awakening, became someone else. But then, they worked all week, lay by the pool all weekend. They watched television in bed at night with the lights out. Sometimes I’d wake up and it would still be on, its blue glow flickering through the crack of the door left ajar. There were no books in my house, except in my room. My parents didn’t read. They didn’t have time, they said.

Your parents used to play cards with us. Your mother had an art studio in the garage. We’d all make a big mess out there—drip paint on the floor, get it all over our clothes, the walls, each other. She’d only laugh and tell us that whatever creation wound up on the canvas, that it was beautiful. Your dad gave us a summer reading list. We saw him on the news sometimes, came across articles about him in magazines. You didn’t seem impressed; you were used to his brand of fame. But I was awed by him. Hey—remember that horrible review, written by some former friend of his? He sulked about it for days, muttering, shutting doors too hard. Your mother told us to play outside, not to hang around the house that week. But then the keyboard started clattering again. Because that’s what you do when you’re a writer, I guess. You just keep writing, no matter what they say about you.

I’m rambling.

Does that happen to you? Do you get lost in the memories of who we were before?

Today, the black fingers of despair tug at me. They always do in the days that follow one of my—excursions; there’s a heavy grayness that settles. A sense of loss.

In the planning, there’s so much energy and tension, the intensity raw and alive. And then when it’s done, some engine inside me sputters and dies, gears grinding to a halt. In that silence, I return to that moment right after I called to Mrs. Newman and just before I heard the sound that stopped me in my tracks on that dirt path to the woods. And I wish and wish anything had turned me back toward home.

But, as you have told me more than once, we can’t go back. Everybody knows that.

The rain is heavy, which is odd for this time of year. Maybe if it were cooler, it would be snow. The water sluices down the window as I build a fire in the great room. It’s too hot for a fire. But I haven’t built it for warmth.

Article by article, I burn the clothes I wore last night, the gloves, the balaclava. And soon, everything I brought into Markham’s house with me is gone. The car is hidden. There’s no trace of me.

Who am I? I often wonder the day after. Sometimes there’s even regret. What have I done? What does this make me? In the planning, in the hunt, in the execution, there’s nothing like that. But after, there’s a heaviness I carry. You told me once that the thoughts I harbored, the things I couldn’t let go, that it was wrong, that nothing good had ever come from wanting revenge. But what do you know about right and wrong?

When the clothes are burned, I brew some coffee. I boil water and pour it over the grounds, the liquid trickling into the carafe through the brown filter. The Chemex, it’s elegant, simple. It’s the way your father brewed coffee. I used to admire him. I guess I still do, even after everything.

When your heroes reveal themselves as human, it exposes your own flaws, too. Naivete, mainly, a willingness to believe in someone, something. Do you remember that book signing he did in that tiny store off of Main Street? We were kids then, but we tagged along with your mother. His big bestselling days were behind him. But his fans turned up in droves, repeating back lines to him that he’d long forgotten writing. In print, they referred to him as the father of dystopian fiction. Remember how people stood around the small store, how hot it was, how the line snaked outside and down the street? His flop of white hair, those round specs. I thought he was the coolest man alive.

I drink my coffee and watch as the fire dies to embers, everything reduced to ash. I look at the row of his books on my shelves. All of them signed, first editions. They’re worth quite a bit, I think. Not that I’d ever part with them. Not that I’d ever part with any piece of you, or anything that connects back to the time when we were young together. The last safe place.

Upstairs in my study, I get online, start scrolling through the news headlines. I miss seeing your name in print every day, Rain Winter. All your stories, even when later you started producing and editing instead, had a certain energy to them. A quiet authority. You let the facts tell the tale, never hyping, never proselytizing even in that subtle way that some journalists do. I loved the longer pieces, when you dug in deep to your subject, the characters at its heart. It was personal; I could tell.

You’re still trying to understand, aren’t you, in your way? I am, too.

I scroll through your social media feeds. A picture of your baby. Really? You and Greg, a selfie in the park. Come on. Your professional sites are wastelands of retweets and shares. On Insta there’s an artful shot of one of those smoking martinis, some party, moms’ night out. Christ. How long can you go on like this? I might have predicted it, though. Your retreat into the cocoon of domesticity.

That look on your face when Markham got off. It wasn’t despair, exactly. It was more like a bitter resignation, the look of a child who discovers there’s no Santa. A part of you knew it all along. You shook your head slightly; your mouth dropped open just a little. You folded into yourself. You gave up on justice.

You were back there in the woods with me. Remembering.

Anyway, if I know you, you’re on fire today. That’s not why I did it. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t part of the reason. There was no rush; I could have done it anytime over the next few months. But your social media posts are downright depressing.

Come back to life, Lara.

My phone buzzes and the sound moves through me like electricity. The front gate.

I touch the app to activate the camera and see a black sedan with a young woman sitting in the driver’s seat. There’s someone beside her, but I can’t see a face, just the thick thighs of a large man, a hand with a wedding ring. Interesting. I don’t get many visitors out here.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

She says my name. Her voice is husky, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. She holds her identification up to the camera.

“We have a few questions about a case we’re working on,” she says. “I’m wondering if you can help us.”

I could ask for her to identify her partner. But even through the rain and the grainy camera image, I can see her credentials are legit. There have been other visits from people like her over the years.

I buzz her in and listen to the gate slide open with a squeal.

FIVE

Turkey tenderloin rubbed with herbs and sweet potatoes in the roasting pan, cooling on the stove, a kale salad tossed, wrapped and sitting in a bright red bowl in the fridge. Table set for three. Lily happy nearby with her blocks on the living room carpet—gotta love the open-plan room.

At the kitchen table, laptop open, Rain scrolled through her contacts and paused when she came to the name that had been kicking around in the back of her head.

She took a deep breath and dialed.

“Well, well,” he answered. “I’m surprised, and I’m not surprised.”

“Hey, Henry,” she said, already regretting her choice.

“How’s the weather, Rain Winter?”

“No complaints.” Rain watched Lily contented at play in their pretty living room; she didn’t have any but the most banal complaints. She was happy, mostly. Happier than most, maybe. Just a little restless. Still with that belly of fire.

“I saw that a-dorable picture you posted on Facebook last night of your little princess covered in sweet potatoes. How cute.”

A little jangle of unease. “Are we friends on Facebook, Henry?”

“Uh, no,” he said. “We’re not.”

He laughed a little into the silence that followed. “Oh, wait! Did you think it was private? Your little personal page under your married name? Come on, Rain. You know better than that, don’t you?”

She didn’t even want to ask. “How do you have access?”

He made a little tsking sound with his mouth.

“I can’t tell you that, Rain. Sorry. Or should I say Laraine? Laraine Mitchell, your suburban mom avatar.”

She smiled despite his obnoxiousness. She knew, of course, that her Facebook account, or really anything she did online, wasn’t secure. There was Firesheep, spyware, cloning software. A keylogger could capture each keystroke you made on your computer, revealing every password and login. Henry, dark web mole, probably had a hundred back alleys around the social media sites. She logged on quickly and scrolled through her friends. There he was, his wide face and glasses, Cheshire cat grin filling the thumbprint photo. She didn’t remember adding him. But maybe she had. He was likely just messing with her.

Most people couldn’t stand Henry. But she kind of liked him. He was out there. He was smart. He said what he meant, right or wrong. He had skills—information, access, contacts.

“Meanwhile,” he went on. “The Twitter feed of Rain Winter, former writer, editor and producer of National News Radio, former crime journalist extraordinaire, daughter of once-lauded-Pulitzer-Prize-winning-now-disgraced-writer Bruce Winter, lies fallow except for the occasional lackluster retweet. Weekly. Friday afternoons usually. Very little on Insta, but you were never great with that. Too cute for you, right? Following your digital footprints, or lack thereof, I’d say you had dropped out completely.”

“Maybe I have,” she said.

“So, this is a social call?” he said. “You want to grab a pumpkin spice latte and trade parenting tips?”

She was pretty damn sure Henry Watt wasn’t married with children. She clicked on his page and it was totally blank except for the ID photo. “This account is private,” read the gray type.

“Wait, let me guess,” he said. “Markham.”

“Know anything?”

She pulled up Henry’s website, started scrolling through. He was a professional news troll, a tipster with varying degrees of accuracy, and the owner, writer and editor of a blog that focused on crime and conspiracy theories, a newsletter that reached hundreds of thousands, and more than one person she knew went to him when all their other leads ran cold. Rain thought of him as a kind of mole, round-bodied and beady-eyed, connected through a network of murky tunnels to other creatures of the dark web. His tips had led her into mazes that came out nowhere, but sometimes he was dead-on.

“Who’s asking?”

“I am.”

“I mean—why? For what organization?”

Guys like Henry were the very reason real journalists didn’t consider indie blogging or podcasting. Because news, real news, was about facts and nothing else. It wasn’t about theories, and maybes, and best guesses. It wasn’t about running a story because you wanted to be the first to tell it and checking your facts later. It wasn’t about having an idea and finding people who agreed with you. You didn’t write and print your ideas. In fact, as a news journalist, you didn’t have ideas at all. You reported the facts, and let the facts tell the story. That simple. Something that had been lost in the fake news, social media information age. Still, sometimes you needed a renegade, especially when legitimate sources had closed to you. Or when you were on the outside looking in, like she was now. “I want to know,” she said. “Just me.”

“It’s personal?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” he said. “I didn’t think the whole stay-at-home-mom thing was going to work for you. You have too much baggage.”

A little jolt of annoyance caused her to act on impulse.

“You know what, Henry? Just forget it.”

She ended the call, heart thumping with frustration. He called her right back. She let it ring and go to voice mail. But when he called again a minute later, she answered.

“Don’t lose your temper,” he said. His voice had lost some of its smugness.

“What do you know, Henry?”

“I might have someone on the inside.”

Henry’s network was invisible, an army comprised of the people who didn’t get noticed. He wouldn’t know the coroner, for example, but he might know the coroner’s assistant, or even the janitor. He might not know the detective working a case, but he’d know the IT guy working at the precinct.

“Who?”

“Let’s just say he’s in cleanup.”

“Okay.”

“Except there wasn’t much to clean up.”

“Meaning?”

“Whoever did the job on Markham laid down tarps, almost as if he was trying not to make a mess, was meticulous about the scene. There was little physical evidence, some blood splatter from the victim. Obviously, they’re still waiting for the trace evidence analysis. But they aren’t hopeful that anything significant will come back.”

She realized suddenly that she was holding her breath. She released it, loosened the grip she had on the phone.

“How did he die?”

She asked but she had a feeling she already knew.

“He died the way Laney Markham died,” he said, his voice low and solemn. “Bound, gagged and stabbed more than twenty times with a serrated hunting knife.”

She stared out the window to the street outside; a blue minivan cruised by, turned into her neighbor’s drive. The branches of the oak swayed, raindrops tapping at her window, and Lily stacked blocks with intent focus.

A toxic brew of disgust, anger, relief bubbled. And, yes, that dark excitement—a feeling that shamed her somewhat. And was there also a not-so-small part of her that was glad Markham got what he deserved?

“Like the Boston Boogeyman,” she said. “Killed the way he killed.”

A pause, the tap, tap, tap of fingers on a keyboard.

“You’ve done your homework,” he said.

“Don’t I always?”

“You do. You always do,” he said. “And just like someone else we know.”

Rain didn’t say anything, braced herself for the sound of his name.

“Eugene Kreskey,” Henry said when she didn’t.

The sound of it sliced her, every time.

There weren’t many people who remembered Rain’s ugly history. It was big news once, but it had faded in the bubbling morass of horrific crimes since then. Greg and, of course, her father knew. Gillian. And somehow, years ago, Henry had unearthed the horrible thing that happened to her when she was a kid. Not that it happened to her, exactly. It should have but it didn’t.

“Is there a connection?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level.

“Feds think so,” he said. “That’s what my guy said.”

“Between all three?”

“There might be others, too,” he said. “Two others, to be precise, that fit the parameters—someone got away with something vile. Then didn’t.”

“A vigilante.”

“Yeah,” said Henry, voice gone soft with admiration. “Exactly.”

“Do you have files?” she asked.

Another pause, that tap, tap, tap again.

“What are you working on, Rain Winter?”

It didn’t do any good to bullshit guys like Henry. They knew the truth when they heard it.

Lies had a vibration, they tingled in the air, electric. A certain kind of person—Rain thought she was one of them—could feel it. That’s why she liked Henry. He might be a little crazy, sometimes wrong, but he was no liar. And he knew how to follow the questionable channels you sometimes had to take to the truth.

“I don’t know yet,” she admitted.

A pause, more tapping. “I’ll send you what I have.”

Lily’s tower of blocks fell, and the baby issued a little cry of frustration, her face crumbling into a comical frown.

“That’s not a monitor, is it?” said Henry. “Tell me you’re not using one of those things. You know anyone can hack into those, right? The audio and the video feed? And those home security cameras. Oh, my god. I’ll send you my blog.”

“Thanks, Henry,” she said. “I’ll look forward to those files.”

“They’re watching,” he said ominously. “Never forget that.”

She sat a moment after ending the call, Henry’s words bouncing around her head. A text from Greg startled her back to the present.

Sorry, babe. I’m running late. Don’t hold dinner.

The words pulsed on the screen in front of her. She wasn’t surprised, of course. But there was a flutter of disappointment; the house felt eerily quiet.

Rain and Lily ate together, Lily’s version of the meal cut into small bites and spread over her tray. The baby had a little plastic fork and spoon, neither of which she could be bothered to use unless to toss one onto the table, or the floor, or, fascinatingly, as a brush for her hair.

“Maybe we’ll go for a ride in the car tomorrow,” she told Lily, wiping the baby’s mouth.

Lily banged her spoon, sending some food flying. “Car! Car!”

Rain was going to take that as a yes.

After dinner, still no sign of Greg. So, she gave Lily a bath, the things Henry said swirling, the story already taking shape the way stories did, arranging themselves into a digestible narrative. Where did she need to go first? Who did she need to see?

As she changed Lily’s diaper, dressed her for bed, she felt the eye of the baby monitor on her and glanced back to look at its glowing red light. She reached over and turned it away.