The House Across the Lake(52)

She pulls a third page from the folder.

Sue Ellen Stryker.

Shy, as evidenced by the startled smile on her face, as if she’d just realized someone was taking her picture.

Missing, just like the others.

And the same girl Katherine had mentioned while we sat around the fire the other night.

“Sue Ellen was nineteen,” Wilma says. “She went missing last summer. She was a college student spending the season working at a lakeside resort in Fairlee. Left work one night and never came back. Like the others, there was nothing to suggest she packed up and ran away. She was simply . . . gone.”

“I thought she drowned,” Boone says.

“That was one theory, although there’s nothing concrete to suggest that’s what really happened.”

“But you do think she’s dead,” Boone says. “The others, too.”

“Honestly? Yes.”

“And that their deaths are related?”

“I do,” Wilma says. “Recently, we’ve come to believe they’re all victims of the same person. Someone who’s been in the area on a regular basis for at least two years.”

Boone sucks in a breath. “A serial killer.”

The words hang in the stuffy air of the dining room, lingering like a foul stench. I stare at the pictures spread across the table, my gut clenched with both sadness and anger.

Three women.

Girls, really.

Still young, still innocent.

Taken in their prime.

Now lost.

Studying each photograph, I’m struck by how their personalities leap off the page. Megan Keene’s effervescence. Toni Burnett’s mystery. Sue Ellen Stryker’s innocence.

I think of their families and friends and how much they must miss them.

I think of their goals, their dreams, their disappointments and hopes and sorrows.

I think of how they must have felt right before they were killed. Scared and alone, probably. Two of the worst feelings in the world.

A sob rises in my chest, and for a stricken moment, I fear it’s going to burst out of me. But I swallow it down, keep it together, ask the question that needs to be asked.

“What does this have to do with Katherine Royce?”

Wilma removes one more item from the folder. It’s a color photocopy of a postcard. An aerial view of a jagged lake surrounded by forests and mountains. I’ve seen the image a hundred times on racks in local stores and know what it is without needing to read the name printed at the bottom of the card.

Lake Greene.

“Last month, someone sent this postcard to the local police department.” Wilma looks to Boone. “Your old stomping grounds. They passed it on to us. Because of this.”

She flips the page, revealing the photocopied back of the postcard. On the left side, written in all-caps handwriting so shaky it looks like the work of a child, is the address of Boone’s former workplace, located about fifteen minutes from here. On the right side, in that same childlike scrawl, are three names.

Megan Keene.

Toni Burnett.

Sue Ellen Stryker.

Beneath the names are four words.

I think they’re here.

“Holy shit,” Boone says.

I say nothing, too stunned to speak.

“There’s no way to trace who sent it,” Wilma says. “This exact postcard has been sold all over the county for years. As you can see, there’s no return address.”

“Fingerprints?” Boone says.

“Plenty. That card passed through more than a dozen hands before coming to the state police. The stamp was self-stick, so there’s no DNA on the back. A handwriting analysis concluded it was written by someone right-handed using their left hand. That’s why it’s barely legible. Whoever sent it did a very good job of covering their tracks. The only clue we have, really, is the postmark, which tells us it had been dropped into a mailbox on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. That, incidentally, is where Tom and Katherine Royce’s apartment is located. It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it.”

Boone rubs a hand through his stubble, contemplating all this information. “You think one of them sent that postcard?”

“Yes,” Wilma says. “Katherine, in particular. The handwriting analysis suggests it was written by a female.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Why do you think?”

It takes less than a second for it to sink in, with Boone’s expression shifting as he moves from thought to theory to realization. “You really think Tom killed those girls?” he says. “And that Katherine knew about it? Or at least suspected it?”

“That’s one theory,” Wilma says. “That’s why we’re being very careful here. If Katherine sent that postcard as a way to tip off the police about her husband, then it’s also possible she ran away and is in hiding somewhere.”

“Or that Tom found out and silenced her,” Boone says.

“That’s also a possibility, yes. But if she has gone into hiding as a way to protect herself, we want to find her before her husband does. Either way, both of you deserve some credit for this. If you hadn’t called me about Katherine, we never would have thought to tie her and Tom to this postcard. So thank you.”

“What’s the next step?” Boone asks, beaming with pride. Once a cop, always a cop, I guess.