The Shadow Box(55)

Griffin didn’t reply. I watched his face twist.

“It’s called Fingerbone,” I said to my husband. “Can you guess why?”

I knew, even before he lifted his head to look at me, that his green eyes had turned black.

And they had.





SIX DAYS LATER





30





CONOR


The knife was found by two sixth-grade girls walking down Main Street in Black Hall.

Once Conor got to the scene, he learned that after school lots of kids went to the Starfish Sweet Shop. Janie Farrow and Alison Roberts had bought a bag of strawberry and lime jellybeans to share and were sitting on the curb throwing them up in the air and popping them into their mouths.

One dropped and rolled on the pavement and into a storm drain. The girls had crouched down to look inside. It was dark in there, with a small concrete shelf, then a drop-off into who-knew-where. On the shelf were Alison’s green jellybean, some candy wrappers, dry leaves, a weird buoy-looking thing with a key dangling from a chain, and a knife.

Janie stuck her arm inside the opening and pulled the knife out of the drain. She wasn’t sure why; she just thought it looked cool. At first Alison thought Janie had cut herself because there was blood on the blade.

Other kids gathered to look at it; then Nancy Fairchild, the owner of the Starfish, came outside to see what was going on. She told the kids to step back and not touch it again, and she called the town police, who notified Conor.

“Well, we might have some physical evidence,” Ben Markham said when Conor arrived and led him to the sidewalk in front of the candy store. One look at the Sabatier carving knife and Conor knew it was part of his case.

“Could be from the set on the Chases’ kitchen counter,” Conor said.

“I figured,” Markham said. “Last Friday, walking through the house, you pointed out the knife block, the empty space.”

Conor took photos of the knife. He snapped shots of the storm drain. When the techs arrived, they would lift the grate and get better photographs and video, but he wanted some pictures on his phone. He wanted them from this angle, the way the knife had looked when the girls made their discovery.

“But even if it did come from the Chases’ house, any intruder could have gotten hold of it,” Markham said. “The door between the garage and kitchen is never locked. Say someone was waiting for Claire to open the garage door, overpowered her—he could have easily just walked into the kitchen, grabbed this, and finished attacking her.”

“How do you know that door is never locked?” Conor asked.

“I’ve been moonlighting at the Bluff for twenty years now,” Markham said. “I’ve got keys and alarm codes to all four houses—I check the properties when the families go on vacation. And in that amount of time, you get to know people. Griffin is the best they come. The boys are a little spoiled, but they wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

Conor didn’t reply. Markham was close to Griffin Chase, and he certainly seemed adamant about the perpetrator not being a member of the family. Then he saw Chase’s state-issued Chevy Malibu pull up to the curb, and he glared at Markham.

“Seriously? You called him?” Conor asked.

“Out of courtesy,” Markham said. “He deserves to know—his wife is still missing.”

Griffin got out of the car in his perfectly pressed dark suit and starched white shirt, his red tie. His face looked haggard, as if he had aged five years in these last six days.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, staring down at the knife.

Conor watched him. He thought of Claire’s question, whether it was possible for a person’s green eyes to turn black. Chase’s eyes were green.

The forensic truck arrived, and techs began taking photographs, creating a map of the scene. They bagged the knife to send to the lab for fingerprints and DNA testing. The techs printed the drain’s grill, then removed it to examine what else was down below.

Conor watched as they photographed, removed, and bagged leaves, pebbles, and chocolate bar wrappers and the floatable key holder made of white foam, key dangling from the chain.

The tech hooked the chain, held it up for Conor to see. He spun the foam buoy around; the letters SB had been written in black marker. Sallie B?

Conor looked up and down Main Street. He saw green recycling cans at the curb. If someone had dropped a weapon and the key chain down the drain, he could have disposed of additional evidence in other places. He might have split up incriminating items to lessen the chances of getting caught. Garbage collection usually took place on Mondays, recycling on Thursdays. With the holiday, the pickups were delayed by a day.

He was too late to check garbage cans, but the recycling truck had not yet come by. Because the bins were in the street, he knew he was safe to search without a warrant—once trash was out for collection at the curb, it was considered abandoned and thus fair game for the police.

He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and walked down the street opening the hinged lid of each green barrel. A third of the way down the street was the Woodward-Lathrop Gallery. He opened their recycling can. It was full to the top with wine bottles and plastic glasses—probably from Claire’s opening last Friday, but it stank like rotting garbage—odd for recycling.

Shoved down beneath the glass and plastic was a heavy black trash bag, lumpy with whatever it contained. On the outside was a rust-colored streak that might have been dried blood.