“Both. Tad was murdered just months after James disappeared.”
“Did you go to the police?”
He sighed and shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
Another heavy sigh. “The Ross family is like… a virus. If you want to preserve your health, you should just stay away. I learned that lesson a long time ago. I have a feeling you might benefit from learning that lesson as well, before it’s too late.”
“An innocent woman might have gone to jail,” said Lydia.
“Let me tell you something: When it comes to the Rosses, there’s not an innocent among them,” he said, turning a joyless smile on her along with those eyes that had seen too much.
“What do you mean by that, Doctor?”
“Just stay away from them, Mrs. Smith. Take my advice.”
She could tell by the firm line of his mouth and the flatness that had come to his eyes that he had said all he was going to say on the subject of the Ross family.
“You can keep the ice pack,” he said, offering her a hand to help her off the table, which she accepted.
Jeffrey paid the bill in cash and they left the office. On the walkway, Lydia turned around and looked at the doctor, who stood in the doorway. The night had grown bitterly cold and Lydia wrapped her coat tightly around her. A harsh wind had crept up and a few stray snowflakes danced around them. The doctor’s large frame filled the doorway.
“He’s here, you know. In Haunted.”
The doctor didn’t seem surprised. “Some people claim he’s been here all along, living in the woods. He’s mythic in his way. Parents use him to warn their children to stay out of the woods at night.”
“Be good or James Ross will get you?”
“That’s right.”
Back in the relative warmth of the Rover, Lydia told Jeff and Dax what the doctor had shared with her. Even with the heat blasting, the cold felt like a fourth presence in the car. Lydia was shivering, cupping her hands against one of the vents. She was grateful when the air grew warmer as the car heated up.
“Should we call Henry Clay?” she wondered aloud.
“And tell him what? That we broke into the Ross home and saw the bogeyman?” asked Jeff, driving carefully down the dark road, slick with the light snowfall.
“And that he kicked our asses,” added Dax from the backseat.
“James Ross is not the bogeyman. He’s a viable suspect for two murders and he’s wandering around Haunted unchecked. He’s dangerous,” said Lydia.
“Sounds to me like he’s only dangerous to his family.”
“I beg to differ,” said Dax. “I’ve got eight bloody stitches to make my argument.”
“We don’t know that,” said Lydia, responding to Jeff. “He’s got to get picked up at some point for questioning at the very least.”
“But we’re not the people to do it at the moment. And I don’t feel like answering to the police about why we broke into the Ross home.”
“So, what? We just leave him out there?”
“No, we’ll call Ford, tell him what we’ve found. He can arrange something with the Haunted police.”
“What if it’s too late by then?”
“Lydia, the guy has been on the run for ten years and he’s still hanging around his own backyard. My guess is he’s not going to go far. In fact, if he’s mentally disturbed, I bet he even goes directly back to his tent in the basement. We’ll get him. Just not tonight.”
For once, Lydia was too tired to argue. Her head was pounding and fatigue made her limbs feel like they were filled with sand. Besides, Jeffrey’s logic, as usual, was irrefutable.
Lydia had wanted to stop at Maura Hodge’s again before leaving Haunted, but she didn’t even bother to broach the subject as Jeffrey pulled onto the highway going back to New York. The air between Lydia and Jeffrey was charged with a million things each of them wanted to say. But neither had the energy to say any of them. So after Jeff put in a call to Ford, letting him know about James Ross, they rode in silence until Lydia fell into an uneasy sleep, jerking awake every few miles, seeing alternately the face of her attacker and Jed McIntyre raging toward her over and over again.
chapter nineteen
WCOU Bar on Second Avenue was slow on Monday nights. That, and the fact that the old bartender mixed a dangerous Manhattan and looked as much like a relic as the antique jukebox and the glowing neon art deco clock on the wall, was the reason Ford chose to stop there with Irma. The room was smoky and narrow, dim, with high tables and stools against the walls. It had atmosphere in that kind of nonchalant way that made it real. If the lights came up, you’d see cigarette butts on the floor, nicks in the wall, that the ceiling was mottled with water stains. But in the glow of low-wattage bulbs beneath glass shades, you felt like you were in a black-and-white movie and any second Humphrey Bogart was going to saunter through the door and bum a smoke.
So far, the forensics team had turned up nothing at the laundry room. He and Irma had stopped up after the interview with the twins to check in with the forensics scientist heading up the team. The Luminol had detected no blood traces. Because so many people had access to the laundry room, no one was optimistic that any of the prints, hairs, or fibers collected at the scene would have any relevance to the case. And no one was happy about how much work it was going to take to determine that.
Ford ordered their drinks from the bartender and then carried them back to the table Irma had chosen at the far back corner of the bar. Shedding his coat, he folded his arms and looked at her.
“So what are your thoughts on the twins?”
Irma sighed lightly and took a sip of her Cosmopolitan. “The children are deeply veiled,” she said, keeping her voice low and her face close to Ford’s. “Someone is exerting a lot of power over them. They’re both very intelligent, especially Lola, so they have an instinct that something is wrong. But they feel powerless. And, of course, they are, in the context of their situation.”
“So who’s exerting this power?”
“Someone who frightens them, someone who in Nathaniel’s mind has taken on the proportions of a monster, his bogeyman.”
Irma took another sip of her cocktail, while Ford drank his Perrier with lime. Technically, he was still on duty, so the Manhattan was going to have to wait for another night.
Ford’s mind jumped from Irma’s comments, to the news Jeffrey had just given him about Julian’s twin, to the picture he’d seen in the gallery, and then to the description of the man Jetty Murphy claimed he saw the night Tad was killed. Was James Ross the bogeyman Nathaniel claimed to have seen? Was he also guilty of the murder of Tad Jenson?
The fact that Julian had a twin brother was another crucial piece of information he hadn’t had when investigating Tad’s murder. The thought made him sick with frustration and anger-anger at himself for not digging deep enough. The knowledge threatened a cornerstone in his self-narrative. In his own mind, the excuse he gave himself for being a shitty father and husband was that he was a good cop. Tonight he didn’t even feel like he was that. His mood was low and getting lower.
Efforts to calm Nathaniel Stratton-Ross had failed and Irma convinced Ford that pressing forward to find out why they were in the laundry that night would be pointless at best, traumatic at worst. So the interview with the twins had ended with both of the children in tears, Nathaniel screaming his head off, and Eleanor threatening Ford’s job. Not that he cared much about that at the moment. The conversation he’d had with Lydia in the car kept coming back to him.
