“Is this Fiona Kinsey?” Ben was sorting through the small pile of photos of Peter Beaumont. He spied a snap of Peter’s high school graduation ceremony. It showed a woman with long blond hair and an ultra-mini skirt that was the fashion of the day. The woman was older than Peter, but she looked more like an older sister than a mother. A cigarette dangled from her right hand as she mimed moving the tassel on Peter’s cap with the left. Flipping it over, he saw FEE AND PETER written on it.

“Yes,” said the woman. Her voice was nasal and suspicious.

“My name is Ben Archer,” he said. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” said the woman flatly. “I knew your father.”

“Yes,” he said, caught off-guard by her bluntness. He could hear what sounded like a grandfather clock ticking in the background. “I was wondering if I could come and talk to you about your son?”

There was a long pause. “I’d prefer that you not.”

Ben cleared his throat, trying to buy time to figure out what to say next. “May I ask why?”

“Mr. Archer,” she said, like it was too painful to expend the energy to speak. “Do you know the number of people who have stood on my doorstep asking to talk to me about my son? And do you know what all the talking has gotten me? Nothing. I’m an old woman. I’m blind and I have liver cancer. Terminal. Peter is dead and I will see him soon enough. At this point, there is nothing that you can tell me or that I can tell you. Peter’s gone. Where or why doesn’t matter anymore, at least not to me, so please do me the courtesy of staying away. I liked your father. He did what he could, but he failed my son. We all did. Some things, Mr. Archer, are just too late.”

The weight of her words fell heavy on him. Ben tapped on the photo with his forefinger. From his father’s notes, he could see that he’d tried every angle on the case, but she was correct. His father—and the police department—had failed.

Until now, Peter Beaumont had simply been a name to him—a bookend to Todd Sutton, but this woman’s pain was contagious. It came through the phone lines and wrapped around him like a kudzu vine.

“Can you at least tell me what was he like? I didn’t know him.”

The woman sighed. He could hear the groan of an old chair being pulled across the floor—what he imagined to be a kitchen floor—then the heavy sound of someone settling into it, both bone and breath.