Ellery pulled away with a sigh and sat down on the end of the bed. Reed joined her. “What did she say about Houston?”
“We’ve agreed to talk more about it when I get home.”
Ellery flopped backward on the bed and looked at the ceiling. “Home,” she repeated. “Yes, I suppose you’ll have to get back there soon.”
He lay back with her and studied the cracks in the painted ceiling. Old buildings wore their years like wrinkles on the body, each one a testament to survival.
“Reed?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think we would be together if it weren’t for how we met?”
His logical brain pounced on the inherent fallacy in the question. Of course they couldn’t be together if they hadn’t ever met. But he sensed what she really wanted to know. “If it wasn’t for Coben, you mean.”
She nodded, still looking at the ceiling. “It’s macabre, right? He’s the reason we’re together.”
His spine stiffened at the idea. “Did Sarit say that to you?”
“Not in those words. But I’ve wondered. You know how it looks from the outside, like I’m some unfinished project for you.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
She didn’t reply, and he had to wonder if maybe she believed it. He took her hand, the thing that Coben had most coveted, and kissed her knuckles. “I don’t know if we would have met some other way. There is no way to know it. I do know that if we crossed paths otherwise my assessment of you would be the same. You are vexing and delightful in equal measure. I’ve interviewed a dozen Cobens, and I can promise you this much: I wouldn’t be who I am now if it weren’t for you.”
She gave him a faint smile, as though she didn’t quite believe him, but she didn’t pull her hand from his. “What did you find out from Justin Stone?”
“He doesn’t think much of his father, the esteemed professor. He confirms what I’d discovered in my trip to Philadelphia: the elder Stone has a penchant for young women. This got me thinking about a young woman who might have crossed Ethan Stone’s radar some years ago, Beth Frick. She’s the daughter who died in a car crash some weeks before her mother was murdered in the Stone house along with Trevor Stone.”
“Right, I recall that.”
“I called Baltimore today to speak to the accident investigator who looked into the crash. She said it was a single-vehicle incident, and the signs suggested Beth was driving more than a hundred miles per hour when she lost control of the car on the freeway and ran into a concrete barrier. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was ruled dead at the scene. The investigator said there had been a long dry spell followed by patchy rain, which has the effect of bringing all the built-up oil out of the pavement and making the roads extra slick. There had been a number of fatal crashes the same weekend.”
“Okay, so a teenager drives stupidly on the highway and pays the ultimate price. What’s that got to do with Ethan Stone?”
“Part of the tragedy of Beth’s death was that she was due to start college in the fall on full scholarship. At Penn.”
Ellery yanked her hand away and sat up to look at him. “Where Ethan Stone teaches.”
“Yes. Possibly a coincidence, but it’s also probable she sought out his advice when applying. There’s another thing. Her sister Lisa didn’t mention it, so I am not sure if she even knows. She was quite young when Beth died. The autopsy revealed that Beth was pregnant.”
“Just when you think this story can’t get any sadder.”
“I think it all fits together somehow—the crash, the gun in the Stones’ backyard, the murders. I just can’t make all the pieces come together.”
“If Carol found out Ethan Stone was abusing her daughter, he might have killed her to shut her up.”
“But killed his own son, too?” This was the piece Reed couldn’t make fit with Ethan Stone as the killer. The man’s grief over his dead child struck Reed as genuine, although he supposed the prominent picture displayed in Stone’s office could also be considered performative. Still, it would take a skilled sociopath to pull off this level of deception.
“It does happen. Stone hasn’t remarried, right? He’s enjoyed playing the field. Maybe he saw Trevor as a barrier to his new life.”
“Maybe.” The best way to trap a sociopath was through repeated, probing interviews designed to allow them to spin grandiose lies and then to call them on the lies. Inconvenient truths had a way of slipping past the mask of sanity and revealing the lack of conscience underneath. Reed doubted he could make Ethan Stone sit for a second interview unless he had something concrete to force his hand.
“He has an alibi for the time of Chloe’s disappearance. Whatever else Ethan Stone might be guilty of, he doesn’t have Chloe.”
“I don’t think his son does, either. He’s been in jail for the past few days.”
Reed’s cell phone buzzed in his pants, and he dug it out. The number was not one he recognized. “Agent Markham,” he said as he answered.
“Agent Markham, it’s Lisa Frick,” came a distressed voice on the other end. “Do you remember me?”
“Yes, of course. What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. I didn’t know who else to call. I saw on the news that you’re looking for a man in connection with Chloe Lockhart’s disappearance. They said to call right away if you recognized him because he might be a witness.”
“That’s right. Do you know the man?”
“I think—I think it’s Bobby. My brother.”
27
Sarit stayed with the girls while Reed and Ellery took off for Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where Bobby Frick made his home. I-95 was clear of most civilian traffic at this time of night, leaving Ellery to zigzag around the dozens of big-rig trucks that hauled freight up and down the East Coast corridor. Reed hunched over his laptop, working his networks for any further information on Bobby Frick. “He has a record,” he reported after a time. “Minor assault, public drunkenness, arrested with two other males at the scene. Looks like a bar fight from what I can discern from the aftermath. He was arrested again a year later, this time for assault against a girlfriend. She pressed charges and he did a couple of months before being released early. Most of these charges are old, though. The most recent is three years ago.”
“Nothing with kids?” Ellery’s stomach contracted in on itself like a sea urchin at the thought of what Bobby Frick could be doing to Chloe.
“Not that I see here.”
“So, if he took her, it’s not about sex.”
“I don’t think it ever was.”
“What, then? Revenge?”
“Anger. Pain. His mother was murdered and no one ever paid for it.”
“But then, why Chloe?” Ellery clenched the wheel, feeling trapped by her own futility. “She wasn’t even born back then. If the answer is that he really wants to torture Teresa, that doesn’t make much sense, either. Teresa Lockhart didn’t do it. She was at the hospital at the time of the murders.”