Stay Close (15 page)

She swallowed. “This is the part of the park I told you about earlier. The iron-ore ruins.”

“Where you found Stewart Green bleeding?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Do you recognize the man in the photograph?”

There was a man with blond tips and a tight T-shirt in the upper-left-hand corner. Broome probably surmised that Megan had recognized the man and that was what had thrown her. “I really can’t see his face,” she said.

“No idea who it is?”

“No, none.”

“But this is definitely the spot where you last saw Stewart Green?”

She pretended to look again, even though there was no doubt. “Yes.”

Broome put both hands on the table, palms down. “Anything else you can tell me about the picture?”

The fact that Broome had a picture of that path in the Pine Barrens was surprising, yes, but not shocking or stunning. What had stunned her—what was making it hard to move or talk or function—wasn’t the locale or the man with the frosted tips.

It was the photograph itself.

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

“Why?”

She had to be careful here. She shrugged with as much nonchalance as she could muster and told yet another lie. “I was just wondering how you got a photograph of the exact spot I told you about.”

He studied her face. She tried to meet his eye.

“It was mailed to the precinct anonymously. In fact, someone went through quite a bit of trouble to make sure I didn’t know who sent it.”

Megan felt the tremor run straight down her spine. “Why?”

“I don’t know. You have a thought?”

She did. When Megan had first fallen for Ray Levine, she had known nothing of photography. But he taught her. He taught her about light and angle and aperture and composition and focus. He had taken her to his favorite spots to shoot. He constantly took photographs of the woman—her—he purportedly loved.

Over the years, Megan had Googled Ray’s name, hoping to see new photographs by him, but there was only the stuff from before they met, when he was still a big-time photojournalist. Nothing after. But she still remembered his work. She knew what he liked to do with a camera—angles, composition, lighting, aperture, whatever—and so now, even after all these years, there was very little doubt in her mind:

Ray Levine had taken this photograph.

“No,” Megan said to Broome. “No thought.”

Under his breath, she heard Broome say, “Oh, damn, not now.”

She turned, figuring to see Harry Sutton, but no, that wasn’t the case. Two men had just entered the diner. One had older cop written all over him—steel-wool gray hair, badge hanging from his belt, thumbs hitching up his pants as though the task was somehow grand and full of importance. The other man wore a ridiculously bright Hawaiian shirt. The top three buttons were opened, thereby displaying gold chains and medallions enmeshed in ample chest hair. He was probably mid-fifties, maybe older, and looked dazed and disoriented. The older cop grabbed a booth and slid in. Hawaiian Shirt shuffled behind him and collapsed into his seat like a marionette with his strings cut.

Broome kept his head low, near his coffee, clearly trying to hide. It was a no-go. Older Cop’s eyes narrowed. He rose and said something to Hawaiian Shirt. If Hawaiian heard, his face didn’t show it. He just sat there staring at the table as though it held some deep, dark secret.

Older Cop started toward them. Broome quickly put the photograph back into the folder, so his approaching comrade couldn’t see it.

“Broome,” Older said with a curt nod.

“Chief.”

There was a tension there. Goldberg let his eyes walk on over to Megan. “And who might this be?”

“This is Jane,” Broome said. “An old friend.”

“She doesn’t look old,” Goldberg said, leaning into her personal space and giving her the eye.

“What a charmer,” Megan said in pure monotone.

Goldberg didn’t like that. “You a cop?” he asked her.

Man, Megan thought, she really had changed over the years. “Just a friend.”

“Friend, right.” Goldberg smirked and turned back to Broome. “What are you doing here?”

“Having a cup of coffee with an old friend.”

“You see who I’m with?”

Broome nodded.

“What should I tell him?”

“We’re getting closer,” he said.

“Anything more specific?”

“Not right now.”

Goldberg frowned and turned away. When he left, Megan looked a question at him. Broome said, “The man with him is Del Flynn, Carlton’s father.”

Megan turned and looked at him. The father’s gold chain glistened off his exposed chest. His horrible Hawaiian shirt was so orange, so bright—almost in defiance of what he was going through—another
façade, though in this case, a totally pointless one. Even a blind man could see the devastation. It consumed everything around Del Flynn. It made his shoulders slump. His face, badly in need of a shave, sagged. There was the dazed look, the thousand-yard stare.

It is every parent’s nightmare—what had happened to this man. Megan thought now of her own kids, her stupidly cavalier comment about hating that she lived for their smile, and then she looked back at Carlton Flynn’s father.

“Scary, right?” Broome said.

She said nothing.

“You see what I’m trying to do now?”

She still said nothing.

“Stewart Green had parents too,” he went on. “He had a wife and kids. Look at the guy over there. Now imagine his sleepless night. Imagine him waiting to find an answer. Imagine that agony stretching out for a few days. Then weeks. Then months and even years. Imagine that torment.”

“I got it,” Megan said with a snap. “You’re the master of the subtle, Broome.”

“Just trying to make you understand.” He signaled for the check. “Anything else you can tell me about that photograph?”

Ray, she thought, but there was no way she could tell him that. She shook her head. “No, nothing.”

“Anything else about anything?”

Broome looked at her hard. She had come here prepared to tell him something important. Now she wasn’t so sure if she should. Her head spun. She wanted it to settle, give herself a chance to think it through clearly.

Broome waited.

“A person who shall remain nameless,” Megan began, “maybe—and I stress the word maybe—saw Stewart Green recently.”

Now it was Broome’s turn to be stunned. “Are you serious?”

“No, I just made it up. Of course, I’m serious. But the source wasn’t sure. It could have just been a guy who looked like Stewart. It’s been seventeen years, remember?”

“And you won’t tell me the source’s name?”

“I won’t, no.”

Broome made a face. “You want me to show you that grieving father again?”

“Only if you want me to get up and leave right now.”

“Okay, okay.” He put his hands up in mock surrender. “When did your source see Stewart?”

“In the past few weeks.”

“Where?”

“In town.”

“Where in town?”

“La Crème. And it’s dark in there.” Megan opened her mouth and almost said the word
she
, but she held it back at the last moment. “The source said it was only for a second and it might not have even been him.”

“This source,” he said. “Is he or she reliable?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he or she saw Stewart Green?”

“I don’t know.”

“And again I ask, anything else you can tell me?”

Megan shook her head. “That’s it.”

“Okay, then we’re done here.” Broome rose. “I got to hurry to the crime scene.”

“Wait, hold up.”

He looked down at her.

“What crime scene?”

“The iron-ore ruins, remember?”

She frowned. “Do you really think, what, there might still be blood or fibers or something after all this time?”

“Blood or fibers?” he repeated with a shake of his head. “You watch too much
CSI
.”

“Then what?”

“Sometimes history repeats itself.”

“What do you mean?”

“The man in the photograph I showed you.”

She waited, but she already knew. His eyes drifted back to the booth in the corner.

“It’s Carlton Flynn.”

M
EGAN STAYED WHERE SHE WAS
for a moment. She kept sneaking glances at Flynn’s father, but her mind was firmly in the past. Ray. The photograph proved it beyond a doubt.

Ray was back.

But what did that mean? Why would Ray send in that photograph to Broome—assuming he was the one who did? More to the point, why had he taken it in the first place?

She still had so many questions. The truth was, Megan did believe Lorraine. She wouldn’t be wrong about something that important. So the question was, how could Stewart Green be back? Where had he been for the past seventeen years? What really happened that night? What part did Ray play—and how could it possibly relate to a young guy named Carlton Flynn seventeen years later?

She had no clue.

Part of the reason Megan had never contacted Ray was to protect him—as he had tried to protect her. But now, seventeen years later, with another missing man in the same remote part of the park… it simply didn’t add up.

She took out the business card again. Fester at the Weak Signal.

Megan could still do the smart thing. Yes, she had opened that
closet door, but nothing had really fallen out. She could simply close it again. No real damage done. She had done her part. She could get back in her car and go home and she could make up a new story for Dave, maybe pick up the new Weber grill on the way, tell him that was what she was doing and that she wanted to surprise him with it. She could do that, and it would all be over.

She had turned her back on this world seventeen years ago. She would call Harry Sutton, even though he had never showed for this meeting, and tell him she was done. She owed this city nothing.

And Ray?

An ex-boyfriend. Nothing more.

But that had always been a problem. By definition you break up with an ex. You may do it poorly or well, but one or both of you lose the feeling and you end it. That hadn’t been the case here. She had been crazy about him. He had been crazy about her. They didn’t so much break up as get ripped apart. She hated the term but maybe what they had needed, like every couple, was some kind of closure.

Ray could be in serious trouble.

Ray could
be
serious trouble.

She sneaked another glance at Carlton Flynn’s father in the Hawaiian shirt. He was looking toward her. Their eyes met. Not for long. Not for more than a second or two, but she could feel his grief, his confusion, his rage. Could she just walk away from that? Could she just walk away from Ray again too?

The selfless part of her knew that she couldn’t or at least shouldn’t. The selfish part, too, didn’t want to close that door just yet. Closing the door meant going back to her regular life, one day passing and then the next. She should welcome that, but right now, the thought of that, the idea of simply returning forevermore to the status quo, terrified her.

There was no choice really.

She had to find Ray. She had to ask him about that photograph. She had to ask him about what really happened to Stewart Green seventeen years ago.

Avoiding the eyes of Carlton Flynn’s father, Megan slid out of the booth and started toward the Weak Signal to find Fester.

T
HE BIG BREAK CAME WHEN
Broome arrived at the ruins of the old iron-ore mill.

“Blood,” Samantha Bajraktari said.

The spot was remote. No cars or vehicles of any sort. Explaining the history of the eighteenth-century iron-ore mill, a New Jersey park ranger (a phrase that sounded suspiciously like an oxymoron) had marched them up a rather narrow path. The group consisted of Broome, an old-timer named Cowens, two county uniforms Broome didn’t know, and two crime unit technicians—one of whom was the aforementioned Samantha Bajraktari. The uniforms and crime technicians led the way. Cowens, a lifetime cigar smoker, huffed and puffed until he dropped to the back of the pack.

Broome bent down next to Bajraktari. She had been lead tech for five years now and was without a doubt the best Broome had ever known. “How much blood is that?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Enough to cause death?”