The Storm King(51)

“Boys grow like weeds. Remember when you shot up that one winter?”

Nate grinned. This could have been the casual remembrance it appeared to be, but was more likely just another halftime substitution for Bad Cop. Either way, a smile was the smart response.

The chief looked at Nate and chewed the side of his cheek. “You think you could identify him?”

“From a picture? I don’t know. Maybe in person.”

The chief pulled a photo from the folder and slid it across his desk.

Like the portrait of the Jeffers girl, it looked like a yearbook photo. The boy in the image had an aquiline nose that seemed familiar. His smile had a mischievous twist to it, and his cheeks were ripe with baby fat. It was hard to imagine a teen as skinny as the one Nate had tussled with owning such a cherubic face. Nate tried to imagine the boy in profile.

“I don’t know,” Nate said.

“Mother says he’s grown about a foot since it was taken. She’s bringing over something more recent. Maybe that’ll ring a bell.”



“Are you saying he’s also—?”

“Only missing for now.” The chief said this casually, as if adolescents were objects routinely mislaid.

Nate’s memories from last night were disjointed. Not surprising, considering the blow to the head. Still, he sifted through every image and sensation he’d retained. His hands had been wet as he pulled back the raincoat’s hood to reveal the girl’s face. Then he’d turned away from the girl and seen the stepladder swinging toward him and—

“Let’s get back to Lucy.” The chief held up one of the Moleskine notebooks. The abrupt transition confirmed that this wasn’t just a cozy chat. “Considering recent developments, would you like to make any addendums to the statements you made fourteen years ago? Fresh impressions are the most reliable, but time can shake some details loose.”

The chief was offering him a purportedly no-strings-attached chance to revise the record.

Nate sighed. “It’s been such a long time. And how many times did you talk to all of us back then?” A subtle reminder that Nate was hardly the only suspect. “I keep thinking, if only that note hadn’t shown up. If we hadn’t thought she’d run away, maybe we’d have found her body sooner and had more evidence to work with.” In point of fact, the chief still hadn’t given him the slightest clue about what Lucy’s remains had revealed, but Nate hoped he was getting closer.

“In Lucy’s case, homicide was always on the table, even with that note left behind,” the chief said. “And don’t forget that she still might have run away, just like the note said. Maybe she just didn’t make it very far.” He took a sip from his mug and looked at Nate over its rim.

“But now we know someone hid her body in the foothills,” Chief Buck continued. “Now we know it was murder, so we’re taking a fresh look at statements, witnesses, everything.”

“You must have learned something from her body,” Nate said, trying again. This is what he most burned to know.



“Fourteen years is a long time. Fourteen years, Nate.” This was nearly verbatim what Tom had told him the day before. It was suspiciously similar. And something about this warned Nate away, nudging him to change the topic.

“So do you want to talk more about Lucy, or about this Jeffers girl? And this other kid.” He pointed at the boy’s photo. “What’s his name?”

“Peter Corso. Pete.” The chief squinted at Nate. “But they’re connected, aren’t they? Lucy, Maura, and Pete. The names in these old notebooks are the same that are showing up at the top of the damage reports from two weeks ago and last night. You might be surprised how many overlaps there are. You saw Maura and Pete about to deface Bea’s house, so they’re likely with the group causing the trouble now. Whatever you boys did years ago is happening again, only this time it’s happening to you.”

In a way, Nate was proud of him.

“Have you talked to Tom about this theory?” The chief was clearly convinced of the journals’ accuracy, but there was zero chance of Nate conceding this.

“Tom.” The chief’s eyes clouded and he leaned back in his chair. He was quiet for several long moments. “Some things become hard to talk about. You’ll understand when your little one gets older.”

Unlike everything else, these lines didn’t seem like a tactic or stratagem on the part of the chief.

“He doesn’t know,” Nate realized. “You didn’t tell him you’ve had her notebooks this whole time.” Tom would have warned Nate if he’d known.

“He wouldn’t understand. And I didn’t want to—” he broke off.

Nate followed Chief Buck’s gaze to the framed photograph hanging on the wall, a picture of Tom at maybe age seven or eight, towheaded, gap-toothed, and holding a fishing rod.

“He wouldn’t understand that you deliberately withheld evidence? Or that you did it because you thought you were protecting him?”



The chief looked weary, and Nate didn’t think it was an act, either. They’d unwittingly put him in an impossible spot, and the man had been treading water there for a very long time.

“He’s my son, Nate.” The chief held his gaze, then touched the topmost of the Moleskine notebooks. “I love Tom more than anything. More than my life. And the truth is, I wish I’d never found these things. They have him as a cruel and needy and weak boy. And reading them it’s hard—” He paused, trying to find the right words. “It’s hard for me not to question everything I thought I knew about him. Sometime I look at him and have to wonder who he is. Who he really is.”