His voice cracks. He rubs at his eyes.
“I swear everything took a turn after she met Zoe Westman. She started hanging out with Zoe and her people. These cars would come pick her up. I’d hear her coming home at all hours, even after her classes had started up again. Once, I spotted her in the society page of the Lune Bay paper at some fancy party. I didn’t even recognize my own kid in that photo. The whole thing worried me. At one point I even considered installing a hidden camera down here. You know? I figured I’d just spy on her. My wife put a hard stop to that. She said Kendall was just blowing off steam after a few tough years at medical school. But I didn’t like that I couldn’t keep track of the comings and goings from my own house. Kendall was technically an adult, but she could be so naive.”
Clare’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She extracts it to check the message.
It’s Charlotte Westman. I need to talk to you.
Clare writes,
Tell me when and where.
Her response comes.
8 pm Pebble Beach
Clare types a response then slides her phone back in her pocket. She turns to the wall of information in front of her. The photographs are all laminated, the lines between them perfectly straight. Douglas Bentley is fastidious, a man who takes great care in his efforts.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go,” Clare says. “I need to be somewhere and my timing is tight. Can we connect again tomorrow?”
He sighs, looking suddenly exhausted. “You won’t be back.”
“Of course I will be. If you’ll have me, I mean. We can help each other, can’t we? I know we can.”
“Right,” he says, heading back to the stairway. “Sure.”
What petulance, Clare thinks. But at once she softens. This man, accustomed to working on his own, to being dismissed by the authorities. He is searching for his daughter, grieving his wife. All he wants is to be heard. All Clare wants is to be given the benefit of the doubt. The least she can do is offer Douglas Bentley the same.
Clare stands inside the gate of the Roy Mason Correctional Facility. Beyond her, two tall fences snared with barbed wire stretch between the parking lot and the prison yard. A group of men in jumpsuits hover at the far end of the yard. Though they are at quite a distance, Clare is certain they are watching her, that even with these fences between them she is still plainly in their sights. Only thirty minutes inland from Lune Bay, but this might as well be another planet. It’s a regular field trip for me, Austin said of his frequent trips here to see Jack Westman’s business partner, Donovan Hughes.
Somers must have called ahead, because Clare is waved through despite visiting hours being almost over. In the prison’s stark reception area Clare must surrender her bag and empty her pockets, the gun left in the car’s glove compartment. She drops everything into a bin, then slides it through a trapdoor in the plexiglass that separates her from the guard. The woman who pats Clare down is humorless and makes no eye contact. Clare follows a male officer as he advances them through three sets of heavy doors, each one buzzing sharply as it opens. When they reach the waiting room, the guard gestures for Clare to take a seat at a table in the center of the room.
“Hughes?”
“Yes,” Clare says. “Donovan Hughes.”
Clare sits at the tip of the chair, her hands in a tight ball on her lap. After a few minutes the guard returns. The man trailing him wears a beige work shirt and jeans. Donovan Hughes is not much changed from the photographs taken before he was arrested. He may be thinner, his hair grayer, but he stands tall and stoic. He lowers himself to a seat across from Clare slowly to account for the shackles on his ankles and wrists.
“Only my lawyer visits these days,” Donovan Hughes says. “Even my wife has stopped coming.”
He is soft-spoken in a way Clare was not anticipating. He smiles at her, expectant.
“Mr. Hughes,” Clare says. “My name is Clare O’Kearney. I’m a private investigator. I’d offer you a card, but I wasn’t allowed to bring anything to this part of the facility. I’ve been working on a case related to the disappearance of Zoe Westman.”
“You don’t say.” He grins. “Clare. Call me Donovan. Or Don. Whichever you prefer.”
“I appreciate your willingness to see me.”
Donovan laughs. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I imagine a rat could come through those doors, literally vermin, and I’d come out here for the visit. Anything for a break in the day.” He pauses, scrutinizing her. “You look a lot like Zoe.”
“I’ve been told that before,” she says.
“Really. You could be her twin.”
“I’ve never met her. My focus is actually on Malcolm. Zoe’s husband. I’m sure you know him.”
Donovan looks to the guard in the corner and shrugs at him, as if he were part of their conversation too.
“I knew him.”
“Past tense?” Clare asks.
“Well, he’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Clare says. “Gone. But not necessarily dead.”
“Honestly? I never thought much of him. But I understand why Zoe married him.”
“Why’d she marry him?” Clare asks.
Donovan pinches his thumb to his finger and rubs them together in a gesture. Money. Clare knows that Malcolm’s parents were rich, that he was the beneficiary of a vast inheritance once he came of age. She
