It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He didn’t want to turn on the lights, so he wandered around until he reached the area he knew to be the stairs. Ben ascended slowly, step by step. He reached the top and held his breath when it occurred to him that she might have pulled the latch to the basement door, locking him downstairs. When he turned the knob, though, the door opened freely into the kitchen. When the light shone in, he noticed several large green-and-gray bags stacked nearly three feet high on the basement floor. He left the door open and walked back down the stairs to see an additional four commercial bags of lime sitting against the basement wall.

Lime.

He walked upstairs and headed toward the hall. The long hallway led to the foyer and the staircase. To his surprise, at the foot of the stairs were three suitcases, a matching black set stacked in order from largest to smallest, the canvas giving way like they were packed full. If he hadn’t been sure before, this incriminating detail was evidence enough of the fact that she was going to flee.

Yet he had to be sure. Walking back down the hall, he found the picture frame exactly where he recalled it had been. The subject was the Kerrigan River, at the bend near the old mill where it took its wildest turn, the grainy photo like a time capsule from the 1970s with its overexposed, undersaturated look. Pulling out the photo from Peter Beaumont’s police file, he held the two next to each other. The tree, the hue of the photo—they were a match. These had been snapped minutes apart.

He studied the rest—black-and-whites—all in matted frames. An old photo of a demolition derby stopped him dead in his tracks. Looking closely at the photo, he could see a car with the beginning of a number painted on its door. The car design dated it back to around 1943. Next to it, he held the newspaper file picture of Desmond Bennett’s car. The two scenes matched perfectly. Taken together, this arrangement was assembled like a trophy wall.

As he’d scrutinized the photos of Dez Bennett and Peter Beaumont, what had been similar had not been the men. It had been the photographer.