Kin

expect to come up against predators and backstabbers every single day. But you expect to leave it there when you come home. Instead, it becomes everything. You get paranoid and you seek out the only thing you’ve got left. For me, that was my Katy. She resisted every effort Linda made to corrupt her. She stayed loyal to me, and I loved her for that.”

He leaned forward and put down his drink. “Now she’s gone, so what else is there to lose? Money? I can afford to lose it if it means getting that bitch out of my life. The only reason to keep this pretense, this sham, going is dead and buried.”

“And what about you?”

He seemed surprised by the question, but considered it. After a moment he sighed. When he sat back again, the cuffs of his pants rode up a little and Finch noticed something odd. Despite the man’s apparently flawless dress and perfectly manicured appearance, his socks didn’t match. It seemed significant somehow, as if he was being shown the man’s true nature, a glimpse behind the facade at the frightened and slowly crumbling creature that cowered behind the armor.

“I’ll do what I always do,” Kaplan replied. “Persevere.”

Finch imagined this man at night, alone and weeping, his eyes bloodshot from a cocktail of barbiturates and alcohol as he looked down at a picture of his daughter. Even when he’d professed his love for Katy, his voice had retained the same lack of emotion that seemed to characterize him, but Finch was no longer so sure that’s who he really was. The other parents he’d met had all displayed the expected pallor and vulnerability that death leaves in its wake, and he had recognized it as an accurate reflection of his own, but though Kaplan stood out in his apparent callousness and calm, Finch guessed that, even though it might take a year, or ten years, sooner or later the grief would claim him, if it hadn’t already. And the longer he looked, the more he saw in Kaplan’s eyes the defiance, the struggle to remain standing as currents of suffering tried to sweep his legs out from under him.

“So, what’s your plan?” he asked Finch, after a moment of contemplating something beyond the arched window at the far side of the room.

Finch drained his glass. “I’m not letting it go,” he said. “What they did to the kids. I’m not letting it die.”

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

“What are you going to do?”

Finch told him.

* * *

Afterward, Kaplan did not offer to see him out, so Finch left him sitting in a chair that suddenly seemed bigger, as if it had gorged itself on the man’s restrained emotions, and made his way out. Before he exited the lounge, however, Kaplan mumbled something.

Finch hesitated at the doorway and looked back at him. “What?”

“I said you let me know if you need anything.” Then he added, “My vampire bride hasn’t drained me yet. I still have money.”

Finch nodded. And no amount of it is going to buy you back what you’ve lost, he thought, but said, “Thank you,” and left.

As he sat into his car, his cell phone chirped, startling him. He hated the goddamn things and had successfully avoided them all his life, but had realized the need to have one almost as soon as he’d spoken to Beau about the plan. With a sigh, he removed his hand from the car keys, reached into his inside pocket and grabbed the phone, fully expecting to see Beau’s name and number displayed on the small rectangular LCD screen as he flipped it open.

But it wasn’t Beau calling, and Finch felt himself go numb, a not entirely unpleasant tingling capering through him as he studied with feverish interest and a modicum of disbelief the name that flashed on the display.

Gray letters against glowing green.

He told himself to be calm, just be cool hoss, and pressed the small round button to answer the call.

“Hey you,” he said, immediately wincing at how forced the casual tone had sounded.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Kara asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know goddamn well what I mean. I saw you outside our house the other day. Are you stalking me or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then what were you doing there?”

Excuses were appallingly slow to present themselves, so he opted for the truth. “I wanted to see Claire.”

“Why?”

“To see what they’d done to her. To see how she looked.”

“Who are they?”

“The men who did this to her.”

Her sigh sounded like thunder in his ear. “There is no they, Finch. The man who did this to her is dead and buried. Don’t you dare try to make us believe anything different.”

“Who said I was going to?”

She laughed dryly. “Your door-to-door conspiracy meetings. Ted Craddick was here last night and we heard all about your little crusade.”

Finch nodded to himself. He was not at all put out by this, had expected it in fact, and welcomed the word spreading among the families as a means of giving everyone a heads up, so his visits would not come as a cold hard slap across the face when they already had enough to worry about. He hadn’t relished the thought of dispelling the illusion the police had given them, but so far they had greeted the revelation with grim resignation rather than rage. Though they were of course eager to see the true culprits held responsible for the murders, the fact remained that their children were still gone, and no amount of justice would ever return them. There were no hysterics, only silent assent at what he had proposed, or as in Kaplan’s case, offers of financing.

It would work as long as no one decided the police needed to be let in on things. This was his concern now. That Kara had no love for him was painfully obvious, so she might have no bones about calling the cops to thwart him if it meant shielding her sister from further trauma. If nothing else, he had to appeal to the woman he’d known and hoped was still there beneath the hard shell she’d developed in the years since leaving him.

“Listen to me,” he said. “You’re not a fool. We both know that. And I’m no fool either, so don’t pretend Claire hasn’t talked to you about what happened to her down there. As soon as she was able she told the Sheriff they’d blamed the wrong man, that the doctor tried to help her get away from a bunch of lunatics. They didn’t listen to her. I guess they were afraid after all their bluster and mutual glad-handing they’d look like morons. I mean, they’d managed to pin a bunch of unsolved murders on a guy who wasn’t in a position to object, right? They took the easy route, and with no one left alive to corroborate her story, they just baby-talked Claire until she was out of their way. What about forensics? Did you see any reports? Me neither. The cops say anything about DNA extracted from the scene, or Claire’s body? No. Someone did a thorough job of tidying things up. Case closed and the circle-jerk goes on. ”

Kara was silent, which he took as a positive sign, but quickly continued just to be safe.

“A friend of mine is an investigator, sort of, and he did some digging for me. We found reports of people going missing down in Elkwood and the surrounding area going back twenty, thirty years. That was the mistake the police made. In their statements to the media they played up the part about Doctor Wellman going crazy and cutting people to bits because his wife died a sad and painful death.”

“So?”

“So his wife died in ’92. If he wigged out and went postal after her death, who snatched all those people for the twenty-odd years before that?”

“That was just a theory,” Kara said. “Who’s to say he wasn’t dabbling in a little psychotic surgery from the moment he got his degree? You said he couldn’t speak for himself now that he’s dead, and you’re right. He can’t