That afternoon, mild for a Christmas day, Jake walked down to the shingled cottage. It hadn’t snowed yet, and there were damp, darkened leaves piled all across the yard. The windows were unlit. The cottage had probably been sold to people who wanted to use it only as a summer house.

The next day Jake returned to Amherst, knowing that he would never go back to Menasset. His parents weren’t helping out with any of his college expenses, so there was no reason to ever see them again.

Chapter 24

Now

After spending a good portion of the morning discussing the transportation of Grace’s body with one of the funeral directors back in Ann Arbor, but mainly trying to come up with a way, any way, to meet and talk with Harry Ackerson, Caitlin went back to the police station to see if one of the detectives could help her.

She parked across the street from the station, about five car lengths down from a news van belonging to what Caitlin recognized as a Boston news outlet, and idly crossed the street. A woman who had to be a reporter—shiny blouse, black skirt, streaky blond hair—watched Caitlin as she approached the front doors of the station. Sensing the eyes of the reporter on her, Caitlin walked with neutral purpose. She knew she looked like Grace, the murdered girl, and if she showed any signs of grief the reporter, smelling family member, would pounce.

But she made it into the station unmolested, and was buzzed past the front desk when she identified who she was and said she was looking for Detective Dixon. A uniformed officer met her in the main room of the station house, told her that the detective was currently busy but would be free soon, and could she wait. Caitlin said yes, and she was brought to a chair in front of what was probably Detective Dixon’s desk, which was cluttered but orderly. She wondered if there was information on her sister’s death in one of the neat stacks of manila folders. She waited, checking her phone, texting her mother the details and costs she’d gotten from the transportation company.

When she looked up, she saw that the detective, in a light grey suit, was now standing outside of the same meeting room where he’d shown Caitlin the photograph of Grace the day before. His back was to Caitlin, and he was talking with a young man wearing dark jeans and a green Oxford shirt that was untucked and wrinkled. It had to be Harry Ackerson, even though she’d never seen a picture. He was the right age, couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old, and he looked enough like that picture of Bill Ackerson that Caitlin had seen on the Internet. Dark hair, lanky, narrow faced.