have gone out with him in high school. But after all these years? I can’t believe he’s been carrying a torch for me-”
“It’s not impossible,” he said quietly, staring out at the water. “Not by any means.”
“Kit…” she said, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“It’s not impossible,” he said again, a little more firmly, “but in his case, I think it has more to do with anger over a rebuff than a broken heart.”
“Let’s say you’re right. Is he still angry that you wouldn’t kiss his ass in high school?”
“I guess so. He sent Cameron to Colorado to kill my dog.”
“What? Cameron killed Molly?”
“I saw him get in his car and drive away from my place in the mountains. I almost think he waited for me to notice him.”
“My God,” she said, shaken.
“There are other ways they’ve issued challenges to me. The way the victims of their crimes have been found.”
“What do you mean?”
He glanced back at the photo album, then looked at her. “Meghan,” he said, and swallowed hard. “Meghan, from the day I first met you, I’ve hoped…and hoped…and prayed to God that I’d never have to tell you…”
He stared out toward the sea again, clenching his fist around the stone tortoise.
“And all that same while,” she said, “I’ve waited for you to trust me, even a little.”
He turned to her in surprise.
“And if,” she said, “it’s still too soon, then take the photo album. I can keep waiting.”
He pushed away from the rail and shoved his hands into his pockets. “No-no, go ahead. Look at it.” He started to pace.
Seven steps in each direction. She noticed this, and despite the tension between them, she had to hide a smile.
“It isn’t a matter of not trusting you,” he said. “I do trust you.”
“To care about you no matter what?”
He stopped. “I know you would want to. You would try. But it would change everything.”
“Everything changes anyway, Kit.”
He sat down, holding his head in his hands. She took the seat next to him.
After what seemed to her a long while, he picked up the album and turned to a page near the end. He handed the album to her.
33
Malibu, California
Wednesday, May 21, 4:50 P.M.
The page had two photos on it. Meghan’s eyes were drawn first to the one of Kit, smiling softly, looking up from a book. Meghan thought he must have been about ten. He was seated in front of a fireplace-the one in this house.
“My grandmother took that one. I had been living with her for a little while. She gave these photos to Moriarty when she hired him to search for us. The woman in the other photo is my mother.”
Meghan was speechless. It did not seem possible that Serenity Logan, the beautiful girl in the photos at the front of the book, the lively teenager with a spark of mischief in her eye, could have become the dissipated, rail- thin hag in this one. Her dark hair was uncombed and unwashed. Her formerly creamy complexion was mottled, her perfect nose appeared to have been broken and healed crooked. The once alluring eyes had a bloodshot, glassy look. The skin beneath them was darkly shadowed. One side of her mouth was puffy, as if she had been given a fat lip. She didn’t look as if she had smiled much for a long time. She was flipping the photographer the bird.
“That’s the last photo I have of her,” he said dispassionately. “She would sometimes clean up for a month or two, and she’d look better than that. She looked worse before she died.”
“How old is she here?”
“About twenty-nine, I think.”
“Twenty-nine!”
He shrugged. “My grandmother told me she took that picture when my mother came to take me to live with her and Jerome.”
“Jerome?”
“The man she married.” He hurried on. “She had just turned eighteen when she got pregnant with me. I was her second pregnancy, as far as I know. She got rid of the first one. She was sixteen that time. She thought about getting rid of me, but she decided it might be nice to have a kid to keep her company.” He paused. “That’s what she told me, anyway.”
Meghan turned the page, unable to look another moment at Serenity.
The photograph on this page was larger. “Moriarty took that one when he found me. I was fourteen.”
She stared at the boy in the picture, so much more like the Kit she had first met, and yet so utterly unlike him. This boy was bruised, and both his skin and ragged clothing were covered with dirt and what looked like bloodstains. His large gray eyes were lifeless, the eyes of a person in shock. He was holding fast to a skinny mongrel that was mostly yellow Lab.
“It was taken just a few hours after I had killed Jerome. I’m not sure how much time had passed-some of that part of my life is still hazy in my mind.”
She looked across at him. He looked away.
“I guess everyone who went to Sedgewick heard that I was a murderer. Part of what Freddy the snoop uncovered. Gabe probably told you that much, although you never asked me about it.”
“Gabe also told me your stepfather had killed your mother.”
“Yes. But that was about two years before the photo was taken.”
Kit watched her closely, but she didn’t say anything or give any sign of disapproval. He could tell it was news to her that there had been so much time between the two events. He felt an urge to try to shock her, to explain that he had struck Jerome Naughton again and again with a shovel, and continued to strike him long after he was dead. But he thought it would be cruel to give her those images to carry around in her head, and there was so much more to give her a disgust of him that he would not need to make any real effort to alienate her. It would happen anyway.
“This is Molly, isn’t it?” she said.
He nodded. It wasn’t the question he had been expecting. “Jerome tried to hit me, and she bit him. So he kicked her. I don’t know why, exactly, but I snapped. I killed him.”
She held her head to one side, considering him. “How did Moriarty find you?”
“Like I said, he had already been looking for me. My grandmother was frustrated with the police, so she hired him. He’s one of the best at what he does, I think. That night-he wasn’t all that far away from me, as it turned out.”
He paused, then said, “My stepfather had…he had done things and said things that made me terrified of trying to contact my grandmother before that night. I thought of Jerome as someone who was all-powerful, and he had made it seem possible that he would kill her if I called her. I believed that-I had absolutely no doubt that it was true. So, that night, after he was dead and I…I don’t know how to describe this, exactly, except to say that somehow, as I stumbled around in a daze, I realized that I could finally call my grandmother. So I called collect, and she told me she would send someone to help me, and she stayed on the line with me until Moriarty reached me. Then I remembered to tell them about the woman.”
“The woman?”
This would be it. Their last conversation would be about this. “The woman Jerome had been torturing. He left
