The highly anticipated third novel in the award-winning Ellery Hathaway mystery series
FBI agent Reed Markham is haunted by one painful unsolved mystery: who murdered his mother? Camilla was brutally stabbed to death more than forty years ago while baby Reed lay in his crib mere steps away. The trail went so cold that the Las Vegas Police Department had given up hope of solving the case. But then a shattering family secret changes everything Reed knows about his origins, his murdered mother, and his powerful adoptive father, state senator Angus Markham. Now Reed has to wonder if his mother’s killer is uncomfortably close to home.
Unable to trust his family with the details of his personal investigation, Reed enlists his friend, suspended cop Ellery Hathaway, to join his quest in Vegas. Ellery has experience with both troubled families and diabolical murderers, having narrowly escaped from each of them. She’s eager to skip town, too, because her own father, who abandoned her years ago, is suddenly desperate to get back in contact. He also has a secret that could change her life forever, if Ellery will let him close enough to hear it.
Far from home and relying only on each other, Reed and Ellery discover young Camilla had snared the attention of dangerous men, any of whom might have wanted to shut her up for good. They start tracing his twisted family history, knowing the path leads back to a vicious killer?one who has been hiding in plain sight for forty years and isn’t about to give up now.
Release date:
February 11, 2020
Publisher:
St. Martin's Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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The Internal Affairs investigator, a bald man with an egg-shaped head, regarded Reed over the rim of his glasses as he asked the question. “Agent Markham, you were positioned next to the victim when Ms. Hathaway shot him. How far away?”
How close had he been? Close enough that Reed could still taste the gunpowder. They all sat around a conference table in a windowless room in Boston, deep in the middle of frozen February, but the questions put Reed squarely back in the humid farmhouse, splinters like razors in his hands and William Willett dead at his feet.
“I was very close,” he said, sitting up straighter. “Mr. Willett, your victim, had been recently engaged in the act of trying to murder me.”
The police commissioner himself coughed at this, and Reed’s interrogator pursed his lips. “Yes, thanks, we’ve all read your statement.”
“Then why are you asking me these questions?”
“For context. We want to make sure that we fully understand Ms. Hathaway’s actions before we make any judgment.”
Reed glanced at Ellery, who slouched in her chair next to her union rep, looking disaffected and disinterested in the outcome of the proceedings, despite the fact that her career hung in the balance. “The fact that we’re here at all signifies judgment,” Reed said, while Ellery studied her fingernails. She was the only woman in the room, he noticed, taking in the frowning members of the shooting review board and Internal Affairs who ringed the room—men with lines on their faces and stripes on their sleeves. “As for context…” He reached down into his briefcase and pulled out his carefully prepared eight-by-ten glossy photographs from last summer’s crime scenes. The bodies, or what was left of them, spilled out across the table. “Here you are. Have as much as you want.”
“Agent Markham—”
“Context,” Reed cut in sharply. “That’s why I’m here. You don’t encounter these kinds of men very often—in fact probably never before—but I have. I’ve made a career out of it, as I think you’re aware, so please feel the weight of all that experience behind me when I tell you: Willett was a killing machine. He murdered four people and that could have easily been five or even six. I think if that had happened, if the search teams had shown up just a little later, we’d all be looking at a different sort of narrative—one where Officer Hathaway was a victim and a hero, the only one to recognize the work of a serial murderer operating for years under everyone’s noses. She raised the concern repeatedly to her superiors. No one believed her.”
Ellery shifted to look at him, her attention obvious for the first time. She might have even smiled. The IA investigator’s eggshell head stained a vivid shade of pink. “She stopped him,” he allowed tightly, “and we’re all grateful. She also put a bullet in his head at an angle that suggests he was on the ground at the time.”
“I told you, we were tussling.”
“So she could have just as easily shot you.” He rapped out the words like bullets. “That’s the question we’re facing here, Mr. Markham. No one is talking about charges. No one wants to punish Ms. Hathaway for what happened. But we have to be assured that she is fit for duty, that she can be relied upon not to endanger herself or anyone else in future investigations.”
Ellery glared in his direction. Reed opened his mouth to object, but the IA guy held up his hand to forestall him.
“We’re undergoing this review for Ms. Hathaway’s protection,” he said. “Hers and the citizens she would be sworn to safeguard. If she’s unable to handle the demands of the job, then it’s best for her to find more suitable employment elsewhere.”
His pronouncement sat heavy over the room. The men looked to Ellery, who looked steadily at the wall. Reed imagined she was about two minutes away from giving them both her middle fingers and telling them exactly what they could do with the job. This was partly why he was here, to save her from herself. In return, he hoped maybe she’d do the same for him.
He fanned out the photos until he found the pictures of the victims from last summer, photos taken before the murders, back when they’d all had their hands attached. “These people died,” he said slowly, “because the Woodbury Police Department took more than three years to admit they had a serial offender operating in their borders. Ellery sounded the alarm early, when several of these people were still alive.” He plucked their smiling photographs from the pile to show them off to the group. “I’d say she’s handling the job just fine. I’m wondering when you’ll be launching the investigation into the many officers who ignored her. Perhaps they’re the ones who are struggling with the demands of police work.”
Not surprisingly, Reed was dismissed soon after this, banished to the corridor. He hung around anyway, like a schoolboy waiting at her locker. The men exited first, heads down, muttering to one another, and none of them spared a glance at Reed. Ellery, when she appeared, spotted him immediately. She looked up and down the now-empty hallway and approached him slowly. “You know,” she said when she came to stop in front of him. “You could’ve just sent a letter.”
He tilted his head as he considered. “I don’t think a letter would have had the same impact. What was the verdict?”
She shrugged. “This was about fact-finding today. They have to meet again to make a final decision. I think they want to delay as long as possible so people forget what happened last summer.”
“Ah. Well, I wish them luck on that score.”
She shoved her hands into her pockets and looked down at the compact wheeled carry-on he had with him. “You’re getting back on a plane, I take it?”
“Not just yet. I thought you might like to have dinner.”
“With you?” She hesitated just long enough for him to know he’d messed up. He hadn’t replied to her last few texts or emails, and that was partly why he’d made the trip up to Boston to see her—to explain. The problem was he couldn’t find the words to explain it to himself yet, so he had no idea how to start the conversation with her.
“You. Me. That would be the guest list, yes.”
She fixed him with a clear gray stare. “Seems I recall that didn’t work out so well the last time.”
He felt a flush go up the back of his neck at the memory of his hands on her body, at how he’d been so distracted by the instant heat between them that he hadn’t seen the end coming. “This would be different,” he said, and she thinned her lips, looking almost disappointed. He reached out to touch her arm but stopped short when she froze. “I—I could use your advice about something. About a case, actually.”
Wry amusement returned to her gaze. “You’re asking my advice? About work? I don’t know if you were paying attention in there, Reed, but popular wisdom says I’m unfit.”
“I don’t know about that.” He eyed her purposefully, taking in her long legs, full hips, and thick tangle of dark hair. Just because he was here on business didn’t mean he couldn’t admire the scenery a little. “You look plenty fit to me.”
She smacked his arm. “Okay, dinner then. But this time, I’m buying.”
She took him to her apartment, an old foundry building that had been converted to modern-style lofts with high ceilings, big windows, and no closets. Reed had spent a bunch of days camped on her couch a few months ago, so he felt at home the moment they stepped through the door. The sixty pounds of canine that came barreling at him, ears akimbo, was familiar, too. “Yes, hello again,” Reed said, trying to maneuver around the worst of the slobber. Speed Bump the basset hound ran his considerable nose back and forth across Reed’s Italian leather shoes while Ellery looked on with a grin.
“He’s missed you,” she said. “You left a sock here last time and he carried it around with him for three straight weeks.”
“I’d wondered where that sock had got to.”
“I have it around here someplace. You’re welcome to it back.”
Reed made a face. “No, thank you. He—he can keep it.”
She leaned down and clipped on the dog’s leash. “I’m going to take him out for a walk. You can order pizza if you want. The number’s on the fridge.”
Normally, he’d offer to cook, but given his nerves, he’d probably end up slicing off a finger or two. He called in the pizza order and then paced the length of her living room, watching for her out of first one window and then the next. She caught him looking and hunched deeper into her leather jacket, turning away from him. He smiled reflexively and touched his fingertips to the cold glass. Ellery had tried to escape her past by changing her name, dyeing her hair, and moving seventeen hundred miles from home, but she was constitutively unable to be anyone other than herself. He would know her anywhere.
“Boston again,” his ex-wife, Sarit, had observed lightly when Reed dropped off their six-year-old daughter, Tula. “I assume it’s that girl?”
To Sarit, Ellery was still the shattered fourteen-year-old from their bestselling book, the girl he’d rescued from a serial killer’s closet during his first few weeks on the job. “It’s not what you think,” he’d told Sarit.
Sarit, who already had a steady new romantic partner—a sensible single dad of one of Tula’s classmates—had made a tsking noise in reply. “It doesn’t matter what I think, Reed. I realize I no longer have say in what or who you do.”
“But…?” He’d put his hands on his hips and waited for the zinger.
“But whenever you go up there to see her, you end up getting shot at. She’s still suspended, right? They think she’s unstable?”
“Ellery saved my life.”
“Yes, and you saved hers. Perhaps the both of you should quit while you’re ahead.”
Ellery returned twenty minutes later with a burst of wintry air, interrupting his thoughts. Speed Bump’s nails danced across the hardwood floor as he raced over to greet Reed anew, as though they’d been separated for years instead of only minutes. Ellery lingered by the door, steeped in purple shadow, where the leather jacket, boots, and unruly hair combined to make her look like a fallen angel. “I’d give you the tour, but it’s a one-bedroom apartment and you’ve seen it plenty by now.”
“The sofa, at least,” Reed replied, glancing at the place that had been his bed for several days in December when Ellery had decided to take on a serial rapist as a side project during her suspension.
“Yeah? You can keep it as far as I’m concerned. I’m tired of the damn sofa. Bump would lie on it all day, but to me, it’s becoming a prison.”
At the sound of his name, the hound nosed his food bowl out into the living room, leaving it pointedly at Reed’s feet. He looked up expectantly and gave a boisterous woof. “I’ve got nothing but airline crackers,” Reed told him as he patted his pockets.
Ellery picked up the bowl. “Well? Are you going to tell me the story now?” she asked over her shoulder as she went to retrieve the kibble. “The one you came all this way to get my advice on?”
The buzzer rang, signaling their pizza arrival. He glanced at his briefcase. The dead woman he had hidden inside had been gone for forty years; she could wait another hour. “Let’s eat first.”
He and Ellery ate on tall stools at her kitchen island, with only the pendant lamps illuminating the whole apartment. The glow created an intimate feeling as the pizza bones piled up between them. “What will you do?” he asked as he refilled their wineglasses with a blackberry merlot. “If they don’t give you your job back?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I’ll move to Saskatchewan and raise otters.”
His brow furrowed. “Do they have a lot of otters in Saskatchewan?”
“They would after I moved in.”
“I think the department will see reason,” he told her. “No need to go rounding up the wildlife.”
She shrugged and sipped her wine. “Maybe then I’ll quit. It’d be nice to tell them where to shove it after all the B.S. they’ve put me through. What about you? Still waiting on that promotion?”
“Ah, no,” he admitted, leaning back. “McGreevy took an early retirement at the start of the year. I’m running the unit now—nothing official yet because they still want to do an outside search for candidates. I’ll be in the unusual position of interviewing for a job I already have.”
“Wow, congratulations. They’ll pick you. Of course they will.”
Reed ducked his head. At one time, he’d been sure of it, too, but he and Ellery had a hand in forcing McGreevy to step down. Then there was his current dilemma. If he was going to act, it had to be soon, before he lost the opportunity. “As head of the unit,” he told her, “I get to pick my cases.”
“Aha,” she said with satisfaction. “That must be where I come in.”
He fetched his briefcase and returned to the island. “I can’t talk to anyone else about this, for reasons that will soon become clear.” His heart rate accelerated as he reached in to retrieve the folder. Right now, the secret was his alone, but once he said the words to her, the whole thing would become real. He couldn’t take it back. He laid out three separate black-and-white photos from an old crime scene, each showing the same bloodied, broken young woman lying on the floor. Her face had been beaten beyond recognition, and there was a knife sticking out of her chest. “This is Camilla Flores,” he said. “On December 11, 1975, someone broke into her Las Vegas apartment and stabbed her to death. Whoever it was, she fought him hard—there was blood all over the apartment, and the coroner counted more than twenty separate wounds to her body.”
Ellery picked up the closest picture and studied it. “How awful,” she murmured.
Reed took out another picture. “Her friend and neighbor, Angela Rivera, called it in. The responding officers found stereo equipment, a jewelry box, and a bunch of albums stacked at the front door. They decided Camilla must have arrived home and surprised a burglar. I don’t think that’s so.”
“Why not?” Ellery was still frowning at the photographs, rearranging them like tarot cards.
“For one thing, she had an unusually expensive watch for someone in her circumstances—see it here on her left wrist? Why didn’t he take it? Also, there’s a pocketbook sitting in plain view on the kitchen counter.” He tapped his finger on the photo to point out the white leather bag, easily missed amid the chaos. Camilla Flores had not been much of a housekeeper. “The purse was quick money. The thief could have grabbed it on his way out the door.”
“Maybe he panicked after the murder and fled without taking any property.”
“That was the theory, yes.” He cleared his throat twice, trying to ease the lump there. “The local detectives pressed that angle hard to no avail. But you see, there was another anomaly at the scene. Camilla’s baby, her four-month-old son, was asleep in his crib in the bedroom at the time of her murder. How did he get there if she’d just walked in to surprise an intruder?”
“Baby,” Ellery said slowly, angling the picture so she could see it better. Her head jerked up, and her eyes went wide. “This is your mother,” she said. “You were the baby.”
He dropped his chin to his chest, acknowledging the truth that he’d told her in the past. His birth mother had been murdered in her own apartment at age nineteen. “After she was killed, the Markhams stepped in and adopted me. Her murder, as you know, is unsolved.”
“And you finally want to take a whack at it,” she guessed. “Now that you’re in charge.” She picked up one of the gruesome photos and studied it a moment. “I don’t blame you. I’d want the truth, too. But Reed … it’s been more than forty years.”
“I’m aware of the math,” he said, his voice hoarse.
She looked him over searchingly, her gaze full of sympathy, and she didn’t yet know the worst of it. “You said you’d looked into it before and the trail had gone too cold.”
His father had presented him with the bare facts on Reed’s eighteenth birthday. When he’d signed on with the FBI, he had enough clout to ask to see the murder book, which appeared complete, if unsatisfying with its lack of conclusion. At the time, he figured there was nothing more to be done. “I know what I said.”
“You’ve had twenty years on the job to investigate this formally and you never did,” Ellery said softly. “Why now?”
Reed clenched and unclenched his fist. “Because I…” He stopped and started again, his heart hammering in his throat. “Because it’s possible my father may have murdered her.”
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