Every Last Fear(70)

Enough to show a scar from a cleft lip.





CHAPTER 43


SARAH KELLER

After breakfast, Keller stood outside the diner with Matt. Her mind was racing. The woman in the photo Maggie Pine had sent to Matt was the same woman who’d lured him to the woods, taken his phone. And the man with the cleft lip fit the description of the guy who’d shoved Matt into the street, tried to steal his belongings. Who were they? What did they want? And why had Maggie Pine sent her brother the photograph on her last day alive?

Keller turned to Matt. “You need a ride to the nursing home?” She gestured her chin at her maroon Nissan rental, parked at the curb near the diner.

“Nah, my aunt is picking me up.” Matt glanced down the street. “Shit,” he said.

Keller was going to ask what was wrong when she saw Judy and Ira Adler, the directors of “A Violent Nature,” walking toward them.

Judy Adler nodded hello to Keller, then turned to Matt. Her husband hung back, as if conflicted.

“Matthew,” Judy said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Matt offered a dismissive nod.

“I know this is a terrible time—and I know you wanted nothing to do with us on the last film—but we’re doing a follow-up to the documentary, and we’d love to talk to you. We think it could really help your brother, and—”

“Not interested,” Matt said. He gazed down the road as if looking for his aunt’s car.

“Matthew, you’re a filmmaker. You have to understand we’re just doing our jobs. And you may not have cared for it, but ‘A Violent Nature’ got your brother’s case on the map. No one cared until we—”

“Until you what?” Matt said. “Until you got everyone’s hopes up? Made my father look crazy? Pulled my little sister into this mess? Made my family the most hated people in this town? And for what?”

“Matthew, I’m—”

“I said, not interested.”

Keller was surprised at the emotion—the hurt—in Matt’s voice.

“My brother’s still in jail,” Matt continued. “And my family went to Mexico on some hunt for clues. If it weren’t for this fucking quest—your film—they’d at least be alive. My sister would be leaving for college. My little brother would be finishing first grade.”

Keller saw the glint in Judy Adler’s eyes. Matt had unintentionally given them some new information: the reason his family had gone to Mexico.

Matt seemed to realize it too. He turned to Keller, his eyes apologizing.

Keller gave a look back that said, It’s okay.

“I’m just asking you to hear us out,” Judy said. “We’ve uncovered new evidence. It could really help. I think your dad would want you to just hear what we have to say.”

Keller was about to intercede when Matt’s aunt pulled up. She idled the car in front of the diner.

Matt turned to Keller. “Thanks for the coffee. Keep me posted on things,” he said.

His aunt Cindy gave the Adlers the stink eye out the car window. When they looked over at her, she held out her middle finger.

Keller and the Adlers watched the car disappear, along with the filmmakers’ hopes of interviewing Matt Pine for their sequel to “A Violent Nature.”

“New evidence, eh?” Keller said pointedly to the couple.

Judy said, “Newer than that CODIS and DNA analysis you promised us…”

“I’m calling in every favor I have to get us moved to the front of the line,” Keller said.

Judy frowned.

“I’m supposed to hear tonight. The moment I get the results, I promise, I’ll call. Until then, what’s this new evidence?”

Judy looked at her husband, who gave a tiny shrug as if to say, Why not?

Keller gestured for the diner’s door. Somewhere they could sit and talk.

“No, not in there,” Judy said. “You think they don’t like the Pines? Well, they really don’t like us. We’ve set up base at a farmhouse about ten minutes from here.”

“I’ll follow you there.”



* * *



The farmhouse had seen better days. The paint peeling, porch sagging. Several dogs scattered as the Adlers parked the van on a patch of dirt that passed for a driveway. Keller pulled the Nissan beside them.

Judy got out of the van, a dented Ford. Ira trailed behind his wife, something Keller suspected he’d been doing for as long as the Adlers had been married. Judy waved to Keller to follow them inside.

Keller climbed out of her car and looked around. A barn was about thirty yards away, the door falling off its hinges. Beyond that, just fields, not another soul for miles. She stepped around the mud and muck and mounted the porch steps. The wood was soft from rot. She stopped at the door and looked inside the place. Two men in their twenties sat in front of laptops at a long kitchen table. Stacks of papers and empty soda cans cluttered the work space. Dishes were piled in the sink.

A woman, heavyset and wearing sneakers and sweats, was also at the far end of the kitchen table, talking on her cell phone.

Judy called to Keller from inside. “Come on in. We don’t bite.”

The interior was just as run-down. Cracked linoleum floors, faded wallpaper with bare patches as if someone had started trying to remove it and given up. An avocado-green refrigerator matched the green laminate countertops.