What Waits in the Woods

by Terri Parlato

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Thrillers

Synopsis

In an atmospheric, propulsive novel of domestic suspense featuring seasoned Boston detective Rita Myers, a young woman finds her past unraveling when the body of a childhood friend is discovered in the woods behind her house. Perfect for fans of Megan Miranda and Shari Lapena.
 
When Esmé Foster left the Boston suburbs to become a professional ballerina, the future shimmered with promise. Eleven years later, her career has been derailed by an injury, and Esme knows it’s time to come back to Graybridge to help her brother care for their ailing father. But her return coincides with an unthinkable crime. Kara Cunningham, one of Esme’s high school friends, is found dead in the woods behind the Fosters’ house.
 
Esmé is shocked and grieving, but also uneasy. In her dreams, she still sees the man who showed up at the scene of the car accident that killed her mother—and told Esmé he was going to kill her too. Family and friends insisted the figure was a product of Esmé’s imagination, that she was concussed after the crash. But she and Kara looked alike, sharing the same petite build, the same hair color. Could Kara’s murder have been a case of mistaken identity? 
 
Detective Rita Myers is familiar with close-knit communities like Graybridge, where, beneath the friendliness, there are whispers and secrets. The town has seen other tragedies too, including the long-ago drowning of a young girl in a pond, deep in the woods. Even within the once-close circle of friends that included Kara and Esmé, Rita discerns a ripple of mistrust.
 
Day by day, Esmé discovers more about the place she left behind—and the friends and family she thought she knew. Soon, shining a light into the darkness to learn what really happened the night Kara died is the only way she can bring the nightmare to an end . . .

Release date: December 26, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

SOMETIMES, THE ONLY THING YOU CAN DO IS LEAVE. THAT WAS MY mindset when I was eighteen. There was no thought of staying put and duking it out, fighting to make things better. I didn’t have the slightest inkling of how to do that.

But eleven years later, teetering on the edge of thirty, the world looks a lot different. So I’m going home. The thruway is gray and damp, and my ancient car thumps along at fifty-five; any faster and it makes a noise that drowns out the radio. I’m not in any hurry to get to Graybridge anyway. I’m sort of liking the road between Syracuse and my Boston suburban hometown. I’m alone with my thoughts, boyfriend—ex, actually—in the rearview mirror, my family, or what’s left of it, at the other end of my journey. Here, on the road, I’m in a dreamland of my own.

It’s early. The weak October sun is just rising, and the dying leaves look gray, their brilliant colors hidden in the morning mist. Kevin is still asleep, most likely. He’ll get up in another hour and find my note on the kitchen table; such a cliché, but I couldn’t face him, see that look in his eyes, the folds in his forehead when something unpleasant and out of his control happens. I need all my strength for my brother and dad and whatever else I have waiting for me at home. I have nothing to spend on Kevin. It’s been over for months, although he’s refused to even consider that our relationship has ended. Six years of fighting and making up is all I had in me. I’m ready for the fighting to be over. That’s why I’m going home. For one last stand maybe, to settle things there. And, besides, I have nowhere else to go.

My coffee has grown cold, sitting in the cup holder, forgotten. I sip, and the taste is bitter in my mouth, and I wonder again why I bothered to sit in the long line at the drive-thru to purchase it. Habit, I guess. Black coffee, and lots of it, has been my mainstay for years. Zero calories and a good jolt of energy. What more can a dancer ask for? I glance at the paper grocery bag sitting in the passenger seat like an old friend, or a relative who fills me with pain and disappointment. But I can’t part with the contents. In some ways, they are my world. Pointe shoes, scuffed and worn, fit only for the dumpster, but their pale pink satin peeks through the grime, belies the hours of work, and I can’t let go.

I’m going home a failure, never an easy prospect. The end of my dance career, which, at one time, had seemed so promising, has left me adrift, my painful hip sending shock waves when I move my foot from the gas to the brake pedal. Ha, it taunts. Thought you could stretch me and plié me to death? I’ll show you!

I wipe a tear from my cheek. I don’t know what home has to offer me. A father who’s desperately ill, a brother whose phone calls have only gotten colder as the years have gone by. A mother in her grave since I was sixteen, and a man who threatened to kill me the night of my mother’s accident. My phantom. Is he still lurking, waiting for my return? Or is he a figment of my imagination, like everyone said?

I sigh and turn up the radio and let the strains of Tchaikovsky lead me into a mindless numbness as a cold rain begins to fall from the dark sky.

THE BODY IS LYING IN THE WEEDS AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS, THE woman’s red sweater a beacon in the gray day. From the kitchen window, the scene outside looks like a far-off movie. Crime-scene investigators and cops circle the corpse, like wrestlers trying to find a way to wrap their arms around what’s happened here. The ME walks through the crowd, which parts respectfully to let her through.

I look up from my notebook at the young man, dark brown hair feathering his forehead, sweat dotting his stubbled upper lip.

“So, Mr. Foster. You knew the victim?”

“Yes,” he mumbles.

“How did you know Kara Cunningham?”

He heaves a great sigh. “We went to school together. High school.”

“You’ve seen her since?”

He scrubs his hand over his eyes. “Yes. Uh, some. It’s a small town.”

He’s already told me that he works as a nurse, hospital night shift. When he got home at around seven-thirty this morning, his father told him that he’d heard a scream from outside.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Last Saturday, I guess.”

“You know or you guess?”

“I know.”

“Okay. We’ll get back to that. I need to speak with your father. He’s still here?”

Byron Foster blinks his eyes. “He lives here. I moved back in a year ago to take care of him. He doesn’t leave the house.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask, which comes out a little insensitive, but that’s me. I don’t always get the PC phrasing right. Force of habit.

“He’s an alcoholic.”

I nod. Lots of people are alcoholics. My mind drifts unwittingly to my brother Danny, and I have to pull it back. Stay on task, Rita. Think of Danny later.

Byron continues. “He’s in the last stage of cirrhosis.”

“Sorry. Okay.”

“He’s dying, Detective,” he adds matter-of-factly.

“He told you he heard a scream coming from the backyard?”

“Yes. So I went out to look around. I really didn’t think I’d find anything. My father is so out of it, it’s hard to believe anything he says.” Mr. Foster’s gaze shifts to the window, where a stretcher is being pushed through the tall grass. It gets stuck, bogged down in the mud, and two guys drop to their haunches to try to free it. “I think his mind is caught in the past. He hears things, sees things that aren’t there.”

“You can’t get him any help?” I bite my tongue the minute this leaves my mouth. I’ve tried for years to help my brother, but he insists he doesn’t have a problem and, if I push, tells me it’s none of my goddamn business, which has me backing off. Being on the outs with Danny isn’t something I’m willing to live with. He and I are the youngest and the closest siblings in a big family.

Mr. Foster’s eyes find mine, and they’re filled with not grief exactly, anger maybe. “You can’t help people who don’t want help.”

I nod again. Swallow. “Okay. I still need to talk to him.”

We rise from the table, and I follow him down the hall and up a dark and squeaky staircase. As we near the top, a slight sour smell, vomit and alcohol, wafts over me. My partner, Chase, picked a great week to take vacation.

Inside the dim room, a tall man, thin as a skeleton, sits shriveled into a ratty recliner. His breaths come in ragged gasps. Young Mr. Foster flips on the overhead light, and the room is thrown into garish brightness. The old man blinks his eyes like a young pup. He’s wearing a flannel shirt in a cheerful red and blue plaid, unbuttoned at the neck, where white hair peeps over the top of a gray undershirt. His wrinkled hands shake, and the smell of alcohol leaches from his pores.

I glance around for a place to sit. The son moves a yellow plastic and chrome kitchen chair from the corner and places it in front of his father.

“Mr. Foster, I’m Detective Rita Myers, Graybridge Police Department,” I say, settling in the chair. The old man nods, but I’m not sure if he understands what I’ve said. I pull out my notebook and turn to a fresh page.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions.” He looks over at his son, who has seated himself on the edge of the double bed. “You told your son you heard a scream last night.” He nods absently. “What time did you hear the scream?” His dark eyes cloud over like I’ve just asked him to explain nuclear fission. His left hand twitches and digs at a spot on his arm. “Mr. Foster?”

He shakes his head and glances out the window. “I don’t know,” he says finally in a trembling voice.

“Where were you when you heard it?”

“In the living room, watching TV.” He stretches his mouth wide, and the wrinkles in his cheeks gather. “I heard a scream.” He points to the window. “I heard someone scream out back somewhere.”

“You don’t know what time it was?”

He shakes his head.

“Can you guess?”

He shakes his head again.

“What were you watching?”

“The news was on.”

“The six o’clock news or the ten o’clock news?” I sketch his troubled, rheumy eyes in my notebook, give him time to search through the cobwebs of his brain. Drawing helps me think, slows me down. It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid, and it has followed me into my long career in law enforcement. My notebooks are filled with pictures of suspects and victims and crime scenes. And sometimes the visuals help lead me to answers.

“I don’t know,” he says at last. His voice is stronger than before.

“What time did you go upstairs to bed?” I just get a vacant stare. “You have anything to drink before you went to bed, Mr. Foster?” I hear the son huff out a breath.

The old man nods.

Young Mr. Foster says, “When I got home from work, I went upstairs to check on him, and he was agitated. He told me about the scream, so I went outside to look.”

“Did he say anything to you this morning about when he heard the scream?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I really don’t think he knows. His concept of time is pretty skewed.”

I turn back to the old man. “Did you go outside, look around?”

“No. I stayed right here.”

“Is there anything you can tell me about last night besides the scream? Did you hear any other noises? Did anyone knock on the door? Did you hear any cars stop by the house?”

He cringes in his chair as if my questions were punches. I sigh. This is getting me nowhere. “Okay, Mr. Foster. If you think of anything, please give me a call, or have your son call me,” I say, standing, stashing my notebook under my arm.

We head downstairs and back into the kitchen. The body is still on the ground, the crime-scene investigators still hard at work. When I arrived on scene, I’d had a quick conversation with the first responders before heading inside. But I need to get out there and talk with the ME when I’m through here.

“Mr. Foster, you said you saw Kara on Saturday night, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Where was that?”

“At Hartshorn’s Brewpub. She was having drinks with a friend.”

“So, you weren’t with her?”

“No. I was there with a buddy from work. Kara was at another table.”

“Did you speak with her?”

“No. I don’t think she saw me. We weren’t sitting near each other. I just noticed her on my way out.”

“You didn’t stop to say hello?”

“No.”

“Who was she with?”

“Christy Bowers.”

“Who’s that?”

“She’s a friend of Kara’s.”

“Okay. I’ll need to talk with you again.” I hand Mr. Foster my card. “I’ll be in touch, but don’t hesitate to call me if your father remembers anything.”

IT’S JUST AFTER TEN WHEN I EXIT THE HIGHWAY. I HAVEN’T BEEN BACK to Graybridge in two and a half years. I’m a coward. I know that. I was here last to see my brother’s new baby and stayed just long enough to be able to tell myself that I hadn’t abandoned my family. But that’s exactly what I did. I knew then that my father was in awful shape, but I told myself that Byron was the best person to take care of him. He’s a nurse, and besides, they were closer. I wasn’t close to anyone, not after my mother died. Her death signaled the end of the family as we knew it. Some families draw closer together after a death. But some don’t. Some go the other way. My mother, tall, elegant, beautiful, was the leader, the maypole that we all danced around. When she died, we retreated into ourselves, and all thoughts of family dissipated like a dream.

I turn down Hogsworth Road. The house where I grew up is in the country, at the edge of woods and fields, the outskirts of Graybridge. I follow the curvy road, pass our few neighbors, drawing closer to our house. Past the Grady barn: I see it in the distance.

Cop cars line the road, and my heart hammers. What happened? My thoughts race, and I dig for my phone, which I’d silenced. I glance at the screen. Five missed calls, all from Byron.

I swing my car into the crowded driveway and run for the front door.

The familiar smells hit me as I step over the threshold. Voices buzz in the kitchen, and I nearly run headlong into a slim older woman with a leather bag over her shoulder. She stops short.

“You are?” she asks.

“Esmé Foster,” I manage. “What happened?”

Byron appears behind her. “Ez, what are you doing here?”

“Is Dad okay?”

“He’s fine. Well, you know. I left you a ton of messages.”

“What happened?”

“Let’s sit back down in the kitchen,” the woman says. She introduces herself, and we get settled. My heart is pounding as I take in the scene out the window, a clutch of cops circling something on the ground.

Detective Myers pulls out a notebook and looks at me expectantly. “So, Esmé Foster, who are you?”

“His sister.” I glance at Byron. He’s still in his scrubs, his eyes fuzzy with fatigue.

“Do you live here?” Her eyes are a serious, piercing blue, her dark hair pulled up in a messy bun.

“No. I live in Syracuse. I was coming home.” My gaze meets Byron’s. “What happened?”

“We got a call this morning of a body found,” the detective says, her eyes on her notebook.

“I don’t understand.” All I see is a group of cops and an empty stretcher at the edge of the woods.

Byron takes a deep breath, his gaze on his hands, which are folded and tapping nervously against the table.

“We don’t know what happened,” Detective Myers says. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. When did you leave Syracuse?”

“This morning. Early.”

“Why were you coming back?” She glances sidelong at Byron. “Sounds like your brother wasn’t expecting you.”

“No. I didn’t tell anyone.”

“When was the last time you were in Graybridge?”

“A little over two years ago,” I whisper.

“Coming for a visit?”

This twists my stomach. “No,” I say softly. “I was coming home to stay.”

She raises her eyebrows, scribbles in her notebook. “Helluva homecoming.”

Byron clears his throat. “Really, Ez?” He smirks. “When did you decide this?”

I don’t want to fight with him. Not now. Not when I’m so off-kilter. Not when there’s a body in our backyard. “Dad’s okay then?”

“As okay as he can be with barely any liver function.” My brother’s eyes are like two dark stones. “Good thing you’re here. You’ll get to see him before he dies. I wasn’t sure that was going to happen.”

Detective Myers raises her gaze from her notes, like a teacher facing an unruly class. “Okay, then.” She digs a business card out of her satchel and places it in front of me. “I’ll need to talk to you all again.” She and I rise from the table.

“Wait,” I say. “You have no idea why there’s a body in our yard?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Who is it? Do they know?”

Byron stands so suddenly his chair scrapes halfway across the floor. “It’s Kara,” he says, his eyes meeting mine. “Kara Cunningham.”

I drop back down in my chair.

“Do you know her?” Detective Myers asks.

I nod, my chin trembling. I glance out the window and see a flash of light brown hair splayed on the ground between two cops. “She’s my best friend.”

A SHARP CHILL PENETRATES MY LEATHER JACKET AS I TREAD ACROSS the yard through the tall grass to where the victim lies, near the woods. I greet the techs and cops as I make my way to Kara Cunningham’s body. Byron Foster ID’d her before I arrived, and the driver’s license in her purse confirmed it.

She’s lying on her side, a mane of long hair draped over her face. She’s fully clothed in black pants and a red sweater and looks like she could be sleeping. That is, until you walk around behind her and see the dark blood clotted against her skull.

Cops are walking the woods, eyes on the forest floor.

“They find anything?” I ask the ME. Susan Gaines and I are of an age, veterans among the mostly younger cops and techs. She readjusts the sunglasses atop her head, which function more to keep her hair out of her eyes than anything else. There’s no sun out today.

“Just the purse, so far.”

I shiver in the cold and pull up the zipper of my jacket. “No coat?”

“Nope. At least, we haven’t found one.”

I drop down on my haunches, close to the young woman’s head. “Blunt-force trauma?”

“Looks like it, but you know I can’t say until the postmortem.”

“Anything that might be a weapon?” I stand and brush the wrinkles from my pants. There are numerous branches and rocks lying around that could’ve done in Kara Cunningham.

Susan shrugs. “The guys have bagged up a few possibilities.”

I walk slowly around the body but don’t see anything significant. She was a small woman, and I can’t help but think she resembles a bird, tiny and small-boned and forgotten out here near the woods. I inhale deeply of the chill autumn air and close my eyes, trying to get a feel for this young woman’s last moments. What was she doing out here? Who was here with her, and why would they leave her here to die alone? What emotion drove them to end her life? I sigh. My gut isn’t giving me any help.

“No sign of another person?” I ask Susan.

She shakes her head. “Not that I noticed, but somebody was out here with her.”

“I guess she couldn’t have just fallen?”

The ME smirks. “No.”

“Time of death?”

She gives me that look like, Really, Rita?

“Just a wild guess, Susan. Mr. Foster heard a scream last night but has no idea what time it was.”

“I’ll let you know.” She turns and starts barking out instructions. I trudge back to my van and set off down the road. The nearest neighbor is less than a quarter mile away. It’s a good place to start.

The farmhouse looks like it’s been here at least a hundred years. The clapboards were painted white once. Now they’re a dull, peeling gray. The porch steps sag and sway slightly as I make my way up to the front door. But there’s a shiny new truck in the driveway, so hopefully someone’s home. I rap on the wooden door, and a man opens it right away, as if he’d watched me pull into the driveway.

He’s tall, thirty-something, with long, wavy brown hair and crooked teeth. The smell of weed envelopes him like a cloud.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“I hope so. Detective Rita Myers, Graybridge Police Department.” I show him my identification.

He nods like he’s considering whether to believe me or not.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

He swings the door wide, and I follow him through the hall and into a fairly bare front room. There’s a couch with a stained brown throw cover over it and a big flat-screen against a wall that was painted pink sometime in the distant past. There’s an end table that he pulls around and sits on, leaving me the couch. I sink into its springless depths and pull out my notebook.

“This about all the cop cars over at the Fosters?”

“Yes. What’s your name?” I ask, pencil poised.

“Ray. Raymond Ridley Junior.”

“You live here alone, Mr. Ridley?”

“With my sister.” An image slowly forms in my mind. A little girl with a tangle of white-blond hair. And the name Ridley. I joined the Graybridge PD nearly twenty years ago, after years as a cop in Boston. A few months before I got here, there’d been a drowning in a pond on the Ridley property. There were two little girls in a rowboat. The girls had gotten into an argument, and the older girl had knocked her little sister out of the boat. It was an ugly, tragic story that made the Boston papers. I remember the picture of the girl, the one who died. She was a little thing, almost angelic-looking, and the community was taking it hard, still taking it badly when I moved out here. I remember hearing that the older girl was charged in the case but ultimately went to a psychiatric facility. Since she was convicted as a juvenile and so long ago, she’s probably been released by now. Is she the sister who lives with Ray Ridley?

“What’s your sister’s name?” I ask.

“Cynthia.” He smirks. “I’m sure you know who she is.”

I nod. “Is she home? I’d like to talk with her.”

“No. She’s at a doctor’s appointment.”

“Was she home last night?”

“Yeah.” He stretches his arms over his head, and his T-shirt rises, revealing a slack, white, hairy stomach.

“Will she be back soon?” A worn armchair is squeezed into a corner near the window. A huge orange cat sits in it like a sphinx and eyes me suspiciously. Yarn is heaped in a basket on the floor. Two long knitting needles are thrust into a bright yellow skein.

“Not for a couple hours.”

I’ll need to talk to her another time. “Okay, Ray, you hear anything last evening?”

“No. What happened?” He tips his head in the Fosters’ direction.

“Were you home yesterday?”

“Most of the day.”

“Where did you go?”

“Ran out to the grocery store.”

“Time?”

He shrugs. “Afternoon, I guess.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Somewhere around five, I think.”

“What time did you get home?”

“About six maybe. I’m not sure.”

“When you left or returned home, you see anything strange, out of place? A car parked around here you didn’t recognize?”

“No.” He jumps up from the end table and walks to the window that looks out on the road. The Fosters’ place is visible in the distance.

“What the hell happened?” He chews his bottom lip.

“What time did you go to bed?”

He digs at his nose. “Uh, I can’t remember. Late. I watched some TV and fell asleep on the couch.”

“What time did you wake up?”

He snorts. “A while ago. Don’t remember.”

“So, you slept straight through? Didn’t hear anything?”

“Nope. What happened? Byron’s old man okay?”

“Yes. Mr. Foster is alive and well.” Although well is a stretch.

“What happened then?” Ray bounces on his heels and walks over to the chair in the corner, lifts a knitting needle from its nest, then pushes it back into place. The cat has disappeared, annoyed by my presence maybe.

“We’ve got a body by the woods behind the Fosters’ house.”

Ray’s eyes glance up and catch mine. “No shit?” He swallows and licks his lips, his eyelids twitch. “Who is it?”

“We can’t say yet.”

He nears the window again. “In Byron’s backyard?”

“Yes. You been out in those woods lately?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. I go for nature walks now and then.”

I suppress a smirk. He doesn’t exactly look the nature-walking type. But who knows? He reminds me of a couple of old hippies who lived in my Boston neighborhood when I was a kid. They’d sit in the park across the street, legs folded, listening to an old radio, communing with nature. Ma warned us to steer clear of them, which only fueled my curiosity. I would sneak into the park with my trusty notebook and spy on them from the bushes, always the nosy Nancy, as my big sisters used to call me.

I clear my throat. “When was the last time you were out there?”

He draws a deep breath, looks at the ceiling. “Yesterday.”

“What time yesterday?”

“Afternoon.”

“See anything unusual?”

“Nope.”

“You know the Fosters?”

“Yeah. I grew up in this house. They grew up over there. I went to school with Esmé. Well, she was two years behind me.”

“What about Byron?”

“He was two years behind Esmé, so I didn’t know him that good. When I graduated, he was still in middle school.” He turns toward the window, interested in the commotion.

“You see much of him these days?”

Mr. Ridley turns back toward me, his hands in the pockets of his dirty jeans. “Not much. He works nights. We were never really friends, you know?”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I used to do construction.” He sucks on his teeth. “But mostly now I take care of my sister.”

Huh. “Why does she need you to take care of her?”

He shrugs. “She’s got a lot of issues. She was in a group home for a while, but she kept running away, coming back here, so my mother told me I could stay in the house and take care of her. She’d pay me to do it.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“In Florida, in a senior apartment place. You can’t live there if you’re not fifty-five, so my mom couldn’t take Cynthia with her.” He snorts. “Not that she wanted to anyway.”

“So, what exactly is wrong with Cynthia?” I need to know what to expect when I question her.

Ray lets go a deep breath. “When she was little, about two years old . . . I was just a baby, so I don’t remember it. Anyway, my dad told me that while he was at work, Mom fell asleep on the couch, and Cynthia fell down the cellar stairs. She hit her head and had brain damage. She was in the hospital in Boston for a long time. She has trouble thinking straight and remembering things. She can’t live on her own.”

Okay. Not exactly a diagnosis, but I guess it’s the best Ray can do. The injury might make Cynthia an unreliable witness. But we’ll see. Maybe she saw or heard something last night, maybe not. Or maybe . . . I’ll need to take a look at her records.

“Who’s with Cynthia now, at the doctor?”

“A lady, a home health aide. She comes once a week to take her.”

“Okay, Ray. Here’s my card if you think of anything, notice anything that might help. And give me a call when your sister’s home. I’ll need to speak with her.”

He takes the card and shoves it in his back pocket. “You can’t tell me whose body they found?”

“Nope.” I walk toward the front door, Ray on my heels.

“Did Byron do it?”

I stand still, look back over my shoulder. “What makes you think he did it?”

Ray reaches his arm past me, grabs the doorknob. “Just wondering. Body was found by his woods, right?”

“It was.”

“Well, then.” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“SO, YOU’RE REALLY MOVING BACK?” BYRON ASKS.

“Yes,” I whisper, my mind awhirl, trying to comprehend that my friend is dead in our backyard. I clutch my brother’s arm. “What happened to Kara?”

“I have no idea. When was the last time you talked to her?”

I walk toward the window. “Not in a long time, years.”

Byron snorts. “And she’s your best friend?”

“She was. You know that.”

“Back in high school. Before you ditched us all for your career.”

I wheel on him. “Is that how you saw it? Me taking off to dance?”

“That’s what you did, didn’t you?”

It’s more complicated than that, and I don’t want to talk about it now. Tears gather in my eyes, and my stomach knots up. Kara and I had been friends since kindergarten. Growing up, we did everything together. And because her single mom worked, I convinced my mom to pick Kara up after school and take her home with us so that she didn’t have to go to day care. We play. . .