The guard hollers for the visiting group to gather. They move through the long series of halls and checkpoints. This time, Donovan Hughes is waiting for Clare when the buzzer at the final set of doors signals their arrival to the visitation room. He tracks her with a faint smile as she approaches the table.
“I hoped you would return, Ms. Clare O’Kearney,” he says, frowning. “You look awfully pale.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“It’s barely noon. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’m hoping you’ll share more than you did last time I was here.”
“I thought I was rather generous with my storytelling last time,” Donovan says. “And I’m not entirely sure why you’d presume it’s my job to help you.”
There is no time for this, Clare thinks. She has questions to ask. Her toe taps impatiently under the table.
“It must eat away at you to go down for the crimes that you did.”
“You mean the crimes that I didn’t do.”
No. This won’t work. Start over, Clare tells herself. Get a grip. Keep it curt, professional.
“Right,” Clare says. “I’m sorry. I’m a little overwhelmed. I didn’t mean to get off on the wrong foot.”
“Yes. Thank you. We ended on a good note last time, didn’t we? Even if you wouldn’t tell me much about yourself.”
“I was here in a professional capacity.”
Donovan laughs. “Yes you were. Private investigator. And here you are again. Professionally.”
“If I’ve learned anything in the past few days,” Clare says, “it’s that the Westman family has a lot of collateral damage. People who’ve disappeared into thin air, others who’ve gone to jail, maybe for things they didn’t do. Others murdered, even.”
“Only Jack was murdered,” Donovan says. “And I wouldn’t call him collateral damage.”
“That’s unkind.”
He eyes Clare closely. “I put in a few requests around here. Tapped into my lines to the outside, as they say. I found a few people kind enough to ask around about you. Turns out no one knows a Clare O’Kearney, PI. You’re not exactly in the Yellow Pages. You’re quite the ghost, it seems.”
Clare’s hands feel numb. She grips them together and thinks of the photos on Austin’s phone last night, her history so easily traced all the way back to Jason. The sound of Grace’s voice today, distant yet so familiar. She looked like you, Grace said of Zoe. The last time Clare was here, Donovan revealed his acuity at making connections. He very well could have found someone on the outside to trace the same path that Austin did. Clare is not anonymous anymore. Anyone could have her life story tucked up their sleeve.
“I’m new to this job,” Clare says. “I don’t advertise.”
“You told me that you worked with Malcolm.”
“I did.”
“You said”—Donovan leans back in his chair—“that after he left here, he started looking for missing women. That he became an ‘investigator of sorts’—I believe those were your exact words.”
“Yes.”
Behind them a chair squeals against the floor. Clare turns to watch a woman in tears stand and back away from the prisoner she is visiting. Clare’s brain is fogged. In the stretch since she was last here, she knows that Donovan has likely been dissecting every word they’d exchanged. He has nothing but time to ruminate, while Clare, exhausted and overwhelmed, can’t recall the subtle details of their exchange.
“Malcolm was not a selfless person, from what I could glean,” Donovan says. “I told you that. He was rather glacial. So here’s the trouble I’m having. I can’t quite reconcile why he would choose to search for missing women. To put himself at risk in that way. Why not just go into hiding? Abscond to the other side of the world? He certainly had the money. Enough to buy a tropical island and live out his days as a ghost, breaking open coconuts under a tree.”
“He’s not that type,” Clare says.
“You know him well enough to declare his type?”
“Women go missing,” Clare says. “His wife went missing. I assume he meant to help.”
“Then you assume he wasn’t behind his wife’s disappearance.”
Zoe is not dead, Clare wants to scream. Zoe is alive, tracking me. She pulls her chair closer to the table.
“Do you know Kendall Bentley?” she asks. “Or Stacey Norton? Two young women. Both of them worked at Roland’s. Both went missing. Everyone around here presumes they left of their own volition, but Kendall’s father certainly doesn’t think that’s the case. Malcolm was connected to these women, however indirectly. From what I can gather, both of these women knew Zoe and might have been working for her in some capacity.”
“Some capacity?” Donovan laughs. “Why skirt around it, Clare?”
“Okay. Fine. She was using them. Selling them, I guess? Trafficking them. To men. Businesspeople. Maybe even to cops. She was using these women to entrap men.”
“Or to reward them,” Donovan offers.
“Did you know about this?”
“I have two daughters, Clare. I had no interest in Zoe’s business practices.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
For a long moment Donovan studies her.
“Is that why you’re here, Clare? To grill me on this? Because I’m already in jail. They can’t jail me twice, can they? And we might have three minutes left.”
He is right, Clare knows. She must prioritize. She lays her palms flat on the table.
“I have something I want to show you,” Clare says. “It’s a photograph. I’ll take it out of my pocket now and you can look at it quickly.” She angles her head to the guard. “Before he intervenes.”
“I’m intrigued,” Donovan says.
Clare waits until the guard
