Friends Like These(16)

“Finch a violent guy?”

“Violent?” Jonathan makes a face. “Wait, you think Finch . . .”

“I’m asking you what you think.”

He looks up for a moment. Seems to be genuinely considering the question. “I— I don’t know what happened, so I guess theoretically anything could have. But I’m sure he’s back in the city by now. He left almost twenty-four hours ago.”

“Okay, so what was happening tonight before Derrick and Keith went missing?”

“We were just here, you know, hanging out,” he says. “Maeve made us dinner. Penne arrabiata. She’s a really good cook.”

“So you were all here the entire night?” I ask. “No one went out?”

He nods, eyes deliberately on mine now. Maybe too deliberate. “I mean, not until Derrick and Keith left to get some cigarettes.”

“What time did they do that?”

Jonathan consults the ceiling again. “Nine thirty or nine thirty-five,” he says. “I’m not sure.”

“Had they been drinking? Using drugs of some kind?”

“Drugs?” he asks. Like he’s never heard of such a thing.

“Listen, I’m not here to bust anyone. At a minimum I’d imagine you were all drinking— this was a bachelor party, right? Some pot would be expected, too. I’m only interested to the extent that alcohol or drugs may have played a role in whatever happened. We have a pretty significant issue with opioids locally.”

“Keith, I’m sure, had several drinks. But Derrick, a beer or two, max. He hardly drinks.”

“Drugs?”

“No,” Jonathan says, then swallows, loudly. So that’s a yes on the drugs. But I’ll leave it for now.

“Did you hear from them after they went out for cigarettes?”

Jonathan shakes his head as he stares down. “They just didn’t come back. We called them again and again for at least an hour. Texted, too.”

“Where did they go to get the cigarettes?”

“Cumberland Farms.”

“And they never responded to any of your calls or texts?”

“No. When they didn’t, we called the police, but they said they needed to be missing for at least twenty-four hours. It was a little while later when you found the car.”

I hear the front door open then. Fields talking to someone.

Jonathan turns to listen, too. “Maybe they found something?”

I rise swiftly. “Could be.”

This is a high-stakes investigation— for Kaaterskill and for me. Unexpected visitors are never good.

I pull up short as I step out into the parlor area. Standing alongside Fields in the entryway is Chief Seldon— new-looking jeans, sparkling clean boots, and carefully tucked navy-blue button-down. In his late sixties, Seldon is still an attractive, capable-looking man with thick silver hair, and that dazzling smile. Not that he’s smiling now. He’s frowning, and the late hour has gathered puffiness around his deep-set eyes.

Seldon doesn’t usually show up on scene. It’s the weekenders being involved that’s gotten him out of bed. He’s also here because I’m in charge. Seldon’s been trying to figure out how to get rid of me ever since the lieutenant died. He doesn’t like that I’m a woman, but it’s my messy history that’s the real issue— the fact that my sixteen-year-old sister Jane and her best friend Bethany were murdered in Kaaterskill when I was eight.

I thought Seldon would flip about The River, the podcast detailing every aspect of my sister’s unsolved murder— it had quite a local following. Turned out he was delighted, at least when it first aired three months ago. That’s because early episodes pointed the finger at an out-of-town killer, even trying to connect Jane and Bethany’s death to other old, unsolved cases, like some Vassar girl who’d disappeared years later and whose death was ruled a suicide. But by episode 4 The River had shifted back to the old familiar suspects in Jane and Bethany’s murders— ones much closer to home. Or so I gather. I haven’t listened and never will. But you can learn a lot from the show notes and listener reviews.

The perfectly nice producers did reach out beforehand and invite me to participate. Two Brooklyn-based artist/writer/directors who’d grown up together in Westchester— Rachel and Rochelle. They cared about the case because Bethany and Jane’s high school friendship reminded them of their own, they said. I’d politely declined to be interviewed. Admittedly, I was less polite when they showed up at the station to press their case. Luckily, Seldon wasn’t there when I told them to go to hell.

They went ahead anyway with their podcast, of course. I knew they would, this wasn’t my first rodeo. Over the years, there’ve been dozens of news shows and true-crime exposés and long-form articles about the murders. People do what they want, no matter what the families say. The case is real edge-of-your-seat stuff, too, even I have to admit— two girls, fifteen and sixteen years old, good kids walking in a high-trafficked river spot; the broad daylight; the brutality. Back then, violent crime in the Catskills was all but nonexistent. It was a shocking, shocking crime.

And, well, people have a goddamn right to be entertained.

Who cares what it feels like for me? Who cares if I worshipped my gorgeous, kind, goofy older sister Jane— that she used to sing me to sleep off-key, and had the ugliest feet, and once got frostbite on her pinkie finger teaching me to spin on ice skates? Who cares that she promised me all the time that I’d never be alone, because I’d always have her.