“Your father was—” Laura seemed to be searching for a word. “He was so believable. He would tell you things that sounded true, but weren’t necessarily accurate.”
“Were you allowed to disagree with him?”
“Of course,” Laura said. “He loved a healthy debate. But you can’t have a logical discussion with someone who makes up their own facts. There was always a statistic or a data set that only he knew about. He was smarter than everyone else, you see. He had it all figured out. In the end, you felt embarrassed for not coming round to his point of view sooner. It takes a tremendous amount of arrogance to honestly believe that everyone else in the world is clueless and you’re the only one who knows the truth.”
Andrea felt herself nodding. That was Wexler, too. “So how do you make them think you believe what they’re saying?”
“Start with skepticism, but make it clear that you’re open to persuasion. After a while, concede some of their points. Expound upon some of their reasoning. Make them believe you’ve been swayed by their genius. The easiest way to make someone trust you is to parrot back everything they say.” Laura stopped, as if she was afraid that she was giving away too much. “People think psychopaths are so clever, but they generally only go after the low-hanging fruit. I wanted to be persuaded. I needed something to believe in.”
“How did you get away from him?”
“What do you mean?” Laura asked. “I told you how I—”
“Not physically.” Andrea was thinking about Star Bonaire. “Mentally, how did you get away from him?”
“You,” Laura said. “I thought I loved him, but I didn’t know love until the first time I held you in my arms. After that, you were all that mattered. And I knew that I had to do everything within my power to keep you safe.”
Andrea had heard her mother make similar declarations many times before, but instead of rolling her eyes or brushing it aside, she said, “I know what you gave up to keep me safe.”
“Sweetheart, I gave up nothing and I gained everything,” Laura said. “Are you sure you don’t need me?”
“I needed to hear your voice.” Andrea didn’t know if it was stress or exhaustion that brought tears to her eyes. “So I’ve heard your voice, and I’m going to go. But I’ll call you this weekend. And—and I really love you, Mom. I love you very much. Okay? I really do love you.”
Laura was silent for a moment. It had been a long while since Andrea had said those words and actually meant them. “All right, my beautiful girl. You’ll call me this weekend. Promise?”
“I promise.”
Andrea rested the phone back in the cradle. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Why she had started crying on the phone with her mother was something to think about another day.
For now, she needed to consider what her mother had told her. Maybe Wexler wasn’t a cheap copy of Clay Morrow after all. He sounded more like an exact duplicate. She picked up her notebook and read through Wexler’s triggers again. Should she avoid them or use them? Should Andrea try to piss him off or should she try to make him think that she was open to his philosophy?
Or maybe she should let herself accept that Bible was a lot better at this than Andrea was. There was no way to predict a psychopath’s behavior. They had to let Wexler take the lead. The strategy would come when they had him talking. All that Andrea could do was mentally prepare herself for the unexpected.
She looked at the clock and let out a sharp, angry curse. Eighty more minutes. She was going to start climbing the walls if she stayed in this room a moment longer. The police station was a ten-minute walk away. Andrea could be waiting on the stairs when the Marshals arrived with Wexler.
She scribbled a note to hang on the door. Andrea was already wearing her only clean clothes, a pair of Cat & Jack pants for active boys and a black T-shirt she had found in the bottom of her duffel bag. Her still-wet sneakers bunched up her socks when she shoved them on. Out of habit, she put her broken iPhone in her back pocket. She closed the door on the edge of the note, hoping it was vague enough but also self-explanatory—
ALREADY AT LOCATION
The motel’s welcome sign flickered off as Andrea crossed the road. There was no sidewalk, but she wanted to be under the streetlights. The scent of the ocean was a bitter salt in her busted nose. Her eyes started to sting. She turned away her head and took a deep breath of cold night air. Her wet hair plastered to the back of her neck. She stuck her hands into her pants pockets as she trudged along the straight yellow line.
The sound of a car made Andrea turn. She stepped onto the graveled shoulder. The forest was to her back. She thought about the surveillance teams again. The strike team from Baltimore. The arrest warrants, search warrants. All the girls at the farm.
Andrea continued her walk toward the police station. She mentally ran through the conversation she’d had with her mother. The main thing Andrea had learned two years ago was that psychopaths were like fire. They needed oxygen to burn. Maybe that was the key with Wexler. Andrea knew how to use silence as a weapon. If she could deprive Wexler of oxygen, he might end up burning himself out.
Another car passed. Andrea stepped aside again. She watched a BMW coast toward downtown. The brake lights didn’t flash. The car drove to the end of Beach Road, then took a left away from the sea. She started to step back into the street, but a flash of motion stopped her.
Andrea’s hand went up to shield her eyes from the streetlights as she looked back in the direction of the motel. She had no memory of walking past an old logging road. She only saw it now because a vehicle was slowly making its way along a narrow dirt path. She heard the low rumble of a muffler. The pops and cracks of tires rolling over tree roots and fallen limbs.
The front end of a blue pick-up truck appeared from the darkness.
Andrea felt her heart freeze at the sight of the old Ford.
The wheels crunched on the gravel shoulder. The headlights were off. Instinctively, Andrea darted across the street so that she could conceal herself in darkness.
The truck idled. Andrea couldn’t make out the driver’s face, only that his head turned left, then right, before the tires slowly bumped onto the asphalt. She had only a split second to see inside the truck as it turned toward downtown. The streetlight hit their faces. The driver. The passenger.
Bernard Fontaine.
Star Bonaire.
NOVEMBER 26, 1981
The bowl slipped from Emily’s hands. Pumpkin seeds scattered across the shed floor.
Clay ripped himself away from Jack. His penis flopped against his jeans as he dragged them up around his hips. He stumbled backward, banging into one of the windows. The glass cracked. Emily could hear the fracture work its way into the next pane, then the next.
“Oh God!” Jack was kneeling on the floor. His hands covered his face in shame. He rocked back and forth. “Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God …”
Clay didn’t say anything. He looked equal parts terrified and enraged.
“I’m—” Emily had no more words. Her brain was dizzy with what she had seen. She shouldn’t be here. This was private. “I’m sorry.”
She turned to leave, but Clay moved so quickly that he slammed the door closed before she reached it.