“Me, too. Say bye to Daddy and let’s hit the market.”
“I’ll text you to meet up,” Reed called, and Kimmy waved without a backward glance. He purchased a caprese sandwich for himself and wolfed it down while waiting for his ride share to show up. The driver was an affable white-whiskered man about sixty-five years old, round at the middle and with a lead foot on the gas. He recognized the Chestnut Hill address that Reed had entered when he summoned the car. “You’re not the first person I drove out there. But the new owners, they don’t let people on the property,” he cautioned as he lurched them through city traffic. “There’s a fence and security cameras up now. Too many lookie-loos coming by every time the story was on TV again.”
“Does it get a lot of coverage?”
“Not so much these days. A few years ago, these guys did a podcast about it. Went on for weeks and got tons of attention. That’s when we started seeing lots of folks showing up, wanting to see the house where that boy died. Pretty damn ghoulish if you ask me.” He gave Reed a reproachful look in the rearview mirror.
“It is,” Reed agreed. He had run across the podcast in his internet searches. The hosts’ theory was that Trevor and Carol had been murdered by a man who was later found to have killed four people over a ten-year period, one of whom was a girl just a few years older than Trevor Stone. He had briefly been part of a landscaping crew that worked on a house several doors down from the Stones’ place.
As they reached the Chestnut Hill region of the city, Reed recognized it as similar to the neighborhood where he grew up in Virginia. Formidable brick estate houses, dating back to the late 1800s, sat well back from the street and a good distance apart from one another considering they were still within city limits. A canopy of thick trees as least as old as the houses lined the road on either side. The front lawns were meticulously maintained with carpets of lush grass and blooming summer flowers. One of the multistory brick mansions strongly resembled the house from the movie Home Alone, except it had a spiked iron fence in front. The driver pulled to a stop in front of it. “Here you are,” he said. “Enjoy.” Reed noticed he didn’t even glance at the place as he let Reed out and sped away.
Reed took a stroll down the street and back. He noticed the quiet more than anything. Not a single car passed him. Not one other person appeared from anywhere. It was the middle of a workday, yes, but the effect was rather like an expensive ghost town. Only the eerie sensation of distant eyes on him as he walked gave any indication there might be someone watching. As he walked back to the old Stone house, he considered how an unusual car or pedestrian would be instantly out of place on this desolate street. Well off the main roads of the city, it was a destination unto itself. No one without a good reason to be here would ever cross its path.
He approached the intercom system at the locked gate and pressed the button. When no one replied, he hit it again. Eventually, an irritated male voice came through the transom: “Yes?”
“Hello,” Reed said as he pulled out his FBI credentials and showed them to the camera. “My name is Reed Markham, and I’m an agent with the FBI. I’m in the middle of an active investigation and I wondered if I could talk to you for a few moments.”
“Investigating what?”
Oh, come now, Reed thought. You must know. A hundred amateurs have already shown up at your door. “The murders of Trevor Stone and Carol Frick.”
“We’ve got no part in that.”
“I understand, sir. I just wanted to take a quick look around the property.”
“This is not just my home; it’s where I work. I’m at work now.”
“I completely understand, and I am sorry for this intrusion. But I am also at work, and there are lives on the line here. If that isn’t sufficient motivation for you, perhaps you can try this for size: if I can solve these murders, folks will quit coming around bothering you all the time.”
“Solve them,” the man replied with surprise. “After all these years?”
Reed felt the weight of his skepticism, but he answered with a quick nod. “I certainly aim to try,” he said to the lens of the camera. A moment later, the gate clicked open. Reed was met at the front door by a tall African-American man. He wore a button-down shirt and tie but khaki shorts and sandals. “Amos Duncan,” he said, shaking Reed’s hand. “Please forgive my appearance. I had to videoconference into a meeting this morning.”
“Please forgive my dropping by like this. I’m only in town for today.”
“You have a hot new lead or something?”
“Or something,” Reed replied grimly. “You may have heard on the news that Teresa Lockhart’s daughter has been kidnapped.”
“I did see a headline like that. Poor woman.” He scratched the back of his head. “But, uh, do you really think it’s the same guy who did it?”
“We’re investigating all angles,” Reed said, looking around him at the spacious entryway. The upstairs crossway from one end of the house to the other must be the place where Carol was overthrown. That would put her dead roughly where Reed stood on the checkerboard marble floor.
Mr. Duncan could read his thinking. “Yeah, that’s where she fell, or so I hear. My wife and I didn’t live in Philly at the time, but people have been happy to fill us in on all the details, whether we want to hear them or not.”
“Did you know the history when you bought the place?”
“Of course. That’s how we got it for a steal.” He shrugged. “Tamara and I don’t believe in ghosts, and our kids are grown and gone. Her sister down in Florida won’t come visit, though. Says the place has bad juju, especially since they never caught the guy who did it. I’ve got to tell you, I figured at this point you never would.”
“Never is a long time.” Reed’s mother’s case went unsolved for more than forty years before he’d cracked it last spring. “Would you mind showing me to the room that was Trevor Stone’s?”
“We use it as a guest room now. It’s this way.” He extended his hand to invite Reed to climb the steps. Reed ran his hand along the smooth, sturdy railing. He followed his host to the left; he noted that the positioning of the room was not unlike Chloe’s in the Lockhart home. He paused at the spot where Carol Frick would have been thrown over and peered down below. The drop was probably about twenty-five feet. He patted the banister, which came up past his hip. “They say she died protecting the kid,” Mr. Duncan said, reading his thoughts. “Tragic.”
Reed tried to envision it. Had Carol pursued the intruder up the stairs as they tried to get to Trevor’s room? Or did she encounter them on their way out, the deed already done? This of course presupposed that Trevor was the intended victim. The podcast that pushed the gardener as the perpetrator also believed that Carol was the target. Trevor was killed ostensibly because he would have recognized the man from the neighborhood. But Carol wasn’t supposed to be there that day, Reed told himself. Possibly someone saw her come inside.
He followed Mr. Duncan deeper into the house while his mind worked to try to make the pieces fit. Trevor murdered and Chloe abducted. If there was a connection, who would want to target these children? “Here it is,” Mr. Duncan said, swinging open a wooden door to reveal a sunny bedroom painted cheery yellow with white trim. A patchwork quilt decorated the queen-sized bed, and a vase full of daisies sat on the nightstand. Reed touched one and found it to be a realistic fake. The air smelled pleasant but stale, as though the door hadn’t been opened in some time. He looked out the window into the big backyard. “Did you add the fence back there as well?” he asked.