What Lies in the Woods(55)

“And the beard?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Was it Stahl you saw?” I pressed.

“How am I supposed to answer that? I told them what I saw then. Now all I see when I think about his face is Stahl in the courtroom, glaring at us like he wanted to slit our throats.”

I felt numb. There’d never been any chance of a genuine identification. Cass and Olivia might have seen anyone out there, but Dougherty shoving that photo in their faces while they were traumatized and panicking? Of course they’d thought it was Stahl. His face could have imprinted itself over any genuine memories.

The truth had been trampled over before I ever woke up.

“What’s going on, Naomi?” Cass asked. There was an edge of fear in her voice.

I sat back in my chair. I felt that sense of vertigo again—teetering on the edge of a fall. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

She gave me a tired smile. “There’s no chance of that, Naomi. I always worry about you.”





Back at the motel, I stood under the anemic shower, heat turned hot enough to blister. The last shreds of hope I’d had that Stahl was my monster after all had been torn away with Cass’s story. My lie had haunted me all this time, but I’d had Liv and Cass as witnesses to the truth. I’d always been able to hold on to that, and believe that no matter what I’d done, the outcome had been … if not just, then correct.

But now that was gone. It wasn’t just Cass’s testimony that had been contaminated—her memories couldn’t be trusted, either, any more than mine could. We’d ruled out any reason for Stahl to be there. And then there was the fact that his son seemed to have proof he hadn’t been. Or if not proof, something that made him certain.

His son. God. I’d been doing my best not to think about him. I could believe Stahl was a wicked man, whether he was in those woods or not. But his son had done nothing to me, and I’d torn his life to tatters.

I shut off the water and toweled myself off, and didn’t feel clean at all.

I’d kept the letter. Maybe I should have gotten rid of it. Burned it, shredded it. But I’d left it in the bottom of my bag instead, and after I’d pulled on fresh clothes I pulled it out. It was covered in muddy shoe prints, the text nearly illegible, but I didn’t need to read it to know what it said. The words had seared themselves in my mind.

I am trying to understand.

If Ethan was right, Stahl was a murderer. He’d died where he belonged, and whatever my sins, I hadn’t caged an innocent man.

But was he right?

I’d worked hard to avoid learning too much about Stahl’s crimes, my stubborn way of retaining control—some sense of identity beyond what he’d done to me. Now I pulled up article after article, waded through forum threads and blogs with black backgrounds and neon text. I stared at photographs of dead and mutilated women, their swollen faces, the wounds that, unlike mine, had never closed. I examined time lines and transcripts, and piece by piece I mapped the holes that had been there all along, that people before me had found and argued over. Holes that hadn’t mattered, because Stahl wasn’t in prison because of these dead, discarded women. He was there because of me.

I found myself staring at a photograph of a single-story home. The photo was black-and-white, pulled from a newspaper. Uniformed police officers trooped in and out of the front door, carrying boxes, while a woman and a boy—twelve, maybe thirteen—stood off to the side, watching. Her hand was on his shoulder; he stared at the camera. The low quality made his face indistinct, but those eyes seemed to bore through me.

“Police raid Stahl’s home while his wife and son look on,” the caption read. So that was AJ Stahl, watching his world fall apart. I’d done that.

He had to hate me. He must want more than anything to see me hurt the way he hurt. And maybe not just me. I’d been the one to point my finger at Alan Stahl in that courtroom, but Liv and Cass had been part of it, too. If his father wasn’t a killer after all, if he’d been innocent, AJ would hate all of us for what we did to him.

I hammered on Ethan’s door, the letter clutched in my hand. He answered, tousle-haired and startled. He looked down at the letter, then back at me. “Naomi—” he started.

“Why did police think that Stahl was the Quinault Killer?” I asked.

He frowned at me, then started listing off facts. “He was known to be in the area of four of the attacks. He went on long camping trips every summer coinciding with the killings, and—”

“So it could have been a coincidence?” I asked. He sighed and motioned me inside. I stalked past him, still clutching the letter.

“There were also witnesses who saw him near one of the dumping grounds and talking to Hannah Faber at a gas station.”

“Him, or someone matching his general description? White guy, brown hair, stocky build, average height. Not exactly distinct,” I said. No better than the description Cass had given. A description that could have led to anyone. I gripped the paper tight. My hand was shaking. “They told me he killed those women. They told me they were sure. There was no way they were wrong.”

“The police?”

“Everyone,” I said, voice raw as I paced back and forth in the tight space. “Miller and Dougherty. The detectives. The lawyers. They told me it was him, and I could stop him. But this is all they had?”