The Vanishing Season Read online

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  To my mother and father, who raised me in a house full of great books

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to the Mystery Writers of America and St. Martin’s Press, for sponsoring the First Crime Novel Award, and for taking a chance on this book. Thanks also to Publishing Director Kelley Ragland, for answering dozens of questions from a clueless newbie, and to my intrepid editor, Elizabeth Lacks, for her sure, guiding hand. Huge thanks as well to my agent, Jill Marsal, for invaluable advice, input, and support.

  It turns out that if I don’t have readers to hold me accountable, the words stay firmly in my head. Thank you to my badass beta team, for making me do the work. I am grateful for your enthusiasm, your thoughtful criticism, and your helpful questions: Julie Kline Benamati, Katie Bradley, Stacie Brooks, Rony Camille, Ethan Cusick, Rayshell Reddick Daniels, Michelle Farley, Jason Grenier, Suzanne Holliday, Shannon Howl, Katie Hull, Jaconda Kearse, Robbie McGraw, Kimberly Moore, Tali Kastner, Michelle Kiefer, Rebecca Gullotti LeBlanc, Jill Svihovec, Dawn Volkart, Michelle Weger, and Paula Woolman. #TeamBump forever.

  My unending gratitude and appreciation to Amanda Wilde, who’s been my friend and partner in imagined crime for nigh on twenty years now, and who is the only person to have edited all versions of this particular story. You are a rare gem, my dear.

  Special thanks to Team Grandparents, who helped me carve out time to write: Brian and Stephanie Schaffhausen, and Larry and Cherry Rooney.

  Lastly, my heartfelt thanks to the good-humored humans who live with me: my rock, my love, and the only one of my readers who can nag me in bed at night, Garrett Rooney, and our precocious, hilarious daughter, Eleanor, who has a greater passion for justice than most grownups I know.

  Fourteen Years Ago

  It’s too dark to go out but too hot to sleep. I hear summer night sounds through my open window: teenagers laughing, a ball slapping against the pavement. Sirens wail far away. I am spread like Jesus on the cross, no body parts touching, but still my skin burns into the sheets. I get up and creep down the stairs, outside into the dead air. The city has stored up the sun all day long, and now heat is radiating back off the concrete.

  I prowl around the neighborhood, but no one I know is out. Fans spin in the windows over my head, and I catch snatches of arguments, of television shows wafting out into the night. Jack and Lindsay Bierenbaum are getting it on. I am standing underneath their window in the shadows when I first see her, the girl on the bike. She’s wearing short shorts, and her long hair flows behind her in a ponytail as she pedals toward the illumination in the park across the street.

  She’s almost there when a car pulls up next to her. They are lit by the streetlamp above as if they were on a stage, and so I become the audience. There’s a man inside the car and he says something I can’t hear. He’s gesturing, asking for directions, maybe. She hops off the bike and points down the road, but he doesn’t drive away. He gets out of the car. I can see he has a cloth in his hand, and I guess it’s a handkerchief to wipe away his sweat.

  I am wrong.

  She struggles briefly when he puts the cloth over her mouth, then goes limp in his arms. He stuffs her into the back of the car so fast I think I must have imagined it. I am wooden, transfixed. He sees me when he loads her bike into his trunk; our eyes meet across the street. Still I cannot move.

  He stares hard at me for a long moment and then raises a finger to his lips.

  The slam of the car door makes me jump. He drives away and I don’t see his face again until much later, on the news, next to faces of more young girls who disappeared.

  Until then, since then, I see his face in my mind, his finger pressed to his lips. I see her rag doll body shoved into his car. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone.

  I never have.

  1

  Present Day

  Ellery Hathaway emerged from the steamy bathroom, toweling her hair dry, dressed again and ready to leave, but Sam still lay sprawled in the motel bed with its squeaky mattress and scratchy sheets. Always he wanted to stay just a little bit longer, kiss her just one more time. It was one of the things she hated about him. “It’s almost midnight,” she said as she laid the damp towel over the back of a cheap motel chair. The room was swimming in shadows, just like always, because she never let him see her all the way naked. It was a practical concern more than a manipulative one, but the more she held back, the more he wanted. She definitely had his attention now.

  He rolled to the nightstand to put his watch back on but made no other move to get dressed. “It’s July already. Seems like we just had Memorial Day.”

  She went to the window and looked out at the oppressive summer night. It was black as pitch and filled with trees. The motel gravel went about ten feet back, and then there was nothing but dense woods and the invisible creatures hiding within them. “He’ll take another one soon,” she said. “Just like last year, and we’ve done nothing to stop it.”

  “Christ, Ellie. Not this again.” He sat up and tugged on his pants. “I thought you agreed to let this go.”

  She rested her forehead against the glass, which vibrated in time to the churning of the antiquated air-conditioning unit below it, and she felt the hum penetrate to her veins. “Three people are dead,” she said, more to herself than to Sam. Lord knew he’d heard the words from her enough times that she need not repeat them now. The last time they’d had this conversation was more than six months ago, back when he was just the chief and she was a junior patrol officer. He had not listened to her then, but maybe now was different, now that she had something he wanted.

  He came half naked to the window, long limbs moving in easy grace. It was one of the things she loved about him. “We have no proof of any murder,” he said. “You know that as well as I do. We don’t even know these people are dead.”

  “They’re dead.” The first one, nineteen-year-old Bea Nesbit, disappeared three years ago somewhere between Woodbury and Boston, where she went to school. Back then, the State Police had gotten involved in the search, and Ellery had been happy to let them. She’d been on the job only seven months at that point and did not know the Nesbit family. Ten days later, Bea was still missing and Ellery had received the first card in her mailbox.

  Sam touched her hunched shoulder, pushing it back down with gentle fingers. “People leave their lives all the time and don’t look back.”

  She jerked away from his hand. No one needed to explain to her the urge to disappear, not when she hadn’t seen her natural hair color in more than a decade. Lately, she’d been dying it a dark chestnut brown, a no-nonsense shade whose remnants resembled the color of dried blood as it washed down the drain of her white porcelain sink.

  Sam’s hair was an honest salt-and-pepper black. He was twenty-two years older and had worked his way up through the ranks in Boston before taking the small town position in Woodbury as chief of police, where he’d become accusto
med to being the smartest cop in the room. Ellery was the only female officer in the department, not that this was a great accomplishment on a squad of eight people, but it meant that, for all his depth of knowledge, there were certain experiences she had that Sam lacked.

  “Bea Nesbit, Mark Roy, and Shannon Blessing are dead,” she reminded him, turning around so she could look into his eyes as she said it. “In the next two weeks, unless we do something, another name will be added to that list. We’ll have another grieving family and no answers to give them. Is that what you want?”

  “What would you have me do? These cases have already been investigated by our department and others. We have no bodies, no evidence, no suggestion that a crime even took place. I’m not ignoring you, Ellie, but I have to have something to go on here besides your gut feeling.”

  Her cheeks burned hot and she looked away. At least he hadn’t actually called it women’s intuition. The only evidence she had, besides what little was contained in the official files, was locked at home in her bedroom drawer, in an envelope where she didn’t have to see the birthday cards unless she specifically went looking for them. Not that there was much to see. She could picture the baffled expression on Sam’s face if she brought them in and tried to explain what they meant.

  This isn’t evidence of anything but the fact that you’re another year older. Congratulations, Officer Hathaway. You’re aging just like the rest of us.

  Maybe if she told him about her other birthday, the one from years ago, then he would understand. He would have to act. Or maybe he would just look at her with pity and horror. Either way, once she told him, she could never take it back.

  “You could reinvestigate the cases,” she said to Sam, trying to keep her voice steady. “Take a fresh look. If we can figure out what the relationship is between the victims, we might be able to stop him from taking another one.”

  “You’re the only one who thinks there is a relationship.”

  “So then give me the cases.” She raised her chin, challenging him to deny her. They had one detective on the force, and she sure as hell wasn’t it.

  Frustration flashed in Sam’s eyes, and then, worse, sympathy. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Fine. Right. Just don’t blame me when you’ve got another one missing.” She crossed the room to put on her boots.

  “And what will you do if that doesn’t happen? What will you obsess about then?”

  She glanced up.”You’re saying I need this?”

  He eyed her. “Maybe part of you. Face it, Ellery. You get off on drama.”

  “Not me.” She snapped her laces together and stood up. “You’re the one who always wants to make things complicated.”

  He grabbed her arm when she tried to pass him. “Stay,” he said softly, sliding his fingers down past the scars to her narrow wrist. “We can talk about it.”

  She turned her arm so their fingers touched, but did not meet his gaze. “Go home, Sam. Julia will be wondering where you are. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

  Mute, he released her and she pushed out into the night heat. Tree creatures chattered at her from tall pines; white gravel crunched under her feet as she made her way to her truck. The New England humidity melted her T-shirt against her sticky skin. Ellery paused, her hand on the door, and glanced around her into the thin edge of the forest. She had chosen this quiet town because it was so removed from the big cities filled with thousands of people. A few of the guys at the station would sit around during the slow times, which to be fair was most of the time, and talk about what they would do if a major crime ever hit sleepy little Woodbury. A bank robbery, maybe, as if anyone would come to their tiny downtown, with its pharmacy, post office, and handful of shops, thinking he could hit the local bank for a million bucks. The boys in blue were sure they would stop the bad guys red-handed before they ever reached the town limits. Sam, who knew better, smirked at their self-aggrandizing, sometimes tried to catch her eye across the room to share a wink at the guy’s expense, but Ellery always looked away and thought, Be careful what you wish for.

  She climbed into her truck and switched her cell phone back on, its screen casting an eerie glow over the otherwise dark interior. The missed calls and texts showed she had been unusually popular over the past hour. A missed call from her mother, no message. A text from Brady that made her smile: 6 new kittens today. Am covered in miniature but terribly fierce claw marks. Send help! But her smile vanished when she saw the other missed call, this time with a voice message. “They’re fighting again, please come quick,” came the young, frightened whisper on the other end.

  Ellery tossed the phone down and yanked the truck into gear, gravel spitting from beneath the tires as she tore out of the motel parking lot. She did not even stop to call it in because the time stamp on the call said that she was already twenty-three minutes late. Thanks to the late hour, there was zero traffic and she made it across town in record time. The neighborhood was quiet as she pulled off the main road, the houses dark and set in some distance from the street. The average family in Woodbury was poor in cash but rich in land. The result was large, overgrown yards separating small, run-down houses that had been built en masse after World War II and had mostly sat untouched since, with their identical striped front awnings faded and warped by the passing of time. As she slowed near her destination, Ellery’s headlights caught the peeling white paint on the picket fence and an overturned child’s bicycle lying in the front yard.

  Yellow light spilled out from the open windows but Ellery saw no one moving around inside. She killed the engine, and in the silence, her heart beat faster as she imagined the confrontation to come. Domestic disputes were the most unpredictable part of her otherwise routine work. As much as she was fixed on her campaign to Sam about their missing persons problem, Woodbury’s last official murder had been in 1983, when Tom Pickney shot his brother Terrance after Tom found out Terrance had been carrying on with his wife.

  Despite the humid summer night, Ellery retrieved her Woodbury PD jacket from the floor of the passenger seat and removed her police-issue revolver from the locked glove compartment before approaching the house. She knocked sharply on the screen door, and the heavy inside door swung open almost at once, like someone had been waiting for her. Darryl Franklin filled the entire doorway with his massive frame, blocking out the light and anyone who might have been standing behind him. “Whad’you want?” He sneered down to where she stood on the stoop.

  “We got a call about a disturbance at your residence, Mr. Franklin.”

  “What? Who called you?” He peered up and down at his neighbors, but the street was quiet and dark. “I don’t see nobody out.”

  “Never mind who called. I want to see Rosalie and Anna.”

  He stank like sweat and alcohol, his face puffy and his dark eyes unfocused. He considered her request for a moment, and then broke into a toothy but malevolent grin. “There isn’t no disturbance happening here,” he said, and he paused to take a sip from the can of Bud he held in his beefy hand. “Go home, Ellie. It’s late for a girl like you to be runnin’ around all by her lonesome. Somethin’ could happen to you.”

  Ellery squared her shoulders, her hand resting lightly on her holster. “It’s an official call, Mr. Franklin. You know how this works. I can’t leave until I see Rosalie and Anna.”

  “It’s my house. I know the law. I don’t have to let you into my house unless you got a warrant.” He swayed a little as he said it, sloshing beer onto the pavement between them.

  “Then we can all go down to the station and visit with the chief. He’ll be real cranky if we have to wake him up at this hour.” The truth be told, Sam probably was slinking in the back door of his house right about now, but Ellery forced that thought out of her mind.

  Franklin muttered a string of curse words at her, but he stood aside just enough to allow a narrow opening for her to pass through into the house. She brushed the sweat-st
ained cotton covering his rotund stomach as she stepped over the threshold and into the family home. The place held a heavy, forceful quiet that Ellie recognized as the aftermath of sudden violence. She took a few more steps over the threadbare carpet. The living room TV was on but muted. The scent of cigarettes and leftover dinner, something involving grease and peppers and onions, hung in the close, thick air. Ellie let her eyes travel over the overstuffed brown microfiber sofa, its cushions lopsided from years of use, to the burned-out hole in the arm of the old La-Z-Boy recliner and the fist-size dent in the wall behind it. The dent had been there the last time Ellie showed up in the middle of the night like this.

  “Rosalie? Anna? Are you in here? It’s Ellie Hathaway.” Her skin tingled because she still had no proof of life and now Franklin stood between her and the door. She made sure to keep her body angled so she could see him in her peripheral vision, where he was drinking his beer and feigning disinterest.

  After several tense moments, Rosalie Franklin and ten-year-old Anna shuffled around the corner, Rosa’s arms around her daughter’s shoulders and her eyes downcast. Even from fifteen feet away, Ellie could see the welt swelling on Rosalie’s left cheek. “Officer Hathaway, you didn’t need to come out here so late.”

  “Are you okay?” Ellery asked her, closing the gap between them so that she could get a better look at the other woman’s injuries.

  “I’m fine.” Rosalie turned her face away from Ellery, hiding behind her dark curtain of hair. “You should go.”

  Franklin pushed open the screen door so hard that it slapped against the outside railing, making the women jump. “Yeah, you should go now. They’re fine, as you can see.”

  “In a minute,” Ellery said, more to Rosa and Anna than to Darryl. “Why don’t we step outside? You, me, and Anna.”

  She herded them toward the door, knowing that Rosalie would allow herself to be pushed along despite her fear because this was how she lived every day, following orders that went against her own self-interest. Ellery felt a twinge of regret at capitalizing on Rosalie’s indoctrination, but there was no way she was going to convince her to press charges with Franklin just six feet away, pawing at the floor like a bull in the pasture.