The Widow - Carla Neggers [99]
He’d trapped himself along the edge of thirty-foot rock cliffs.
There was nowhere to run. Behind him was the ocean. Ahead of him, a killer.
“Mattie.”
He recognized the voice but refused to look to see if he was right.
He’d had his chances, and now they were done. He had nothing more to do in this life.
He would need a miracle to live out the hour.
“Mattie, what are you doing?”
I’m going to Chris.
I’m going to one of the friends I betrayed.
My best friend.
And he turned to meet his killer.
CHAPTER 30
Abigail stopped at her house to shower, change clothes and clear her head. Owen had agreed to meet her on the steps up to Ellis’s. She needed a few minutes alone—a few minutes to think in the quiet rooms where the man she’d loved and married and lost had lived for most of his short life.
If only the walls could speak, she thought, heading downstairs to the entry, her hair still damp from her shower. She’d pulled on jeans, her good running shoes, a camp shirt and her gun, a .40 caliber Glock. The niceties of jurisdictions and Maine’s gun laws notwithstanding, she doubted Lou Beeler would object.
She spotted Special Agents Ray Capozza and Mary Steele out on her doorstep and yanked open her front door. “What can I do for you?”
“We thought we’d stop by and see how you’re doing,” Capozza said.
“I’m fine. Just washed my hair. I didn’t blow-dry it—”
Steele rolled her eyes. “It’s a courtesy call, Detective Browning. We wanted to let you know that Grace Cooper has withdrawn her name for the State Department job. No reason stated.”
Capozza stared straight at Abigail, his gaze unwavering, hard-ass. She decided she liked him. “Lying to the police in a murder investigation could have something to do with it,” he said. “She told your husband at Ellis Cooper’s party—the day Agent Browning died—that her brother was down here on the water. She believed that was the case. If she’d told the investigators that fact seven years ago—” He shrugged. “Who knows?”
Abigail opened the door wider. “I’m off to meet Owen Garrison in a minute, but would you two care to come inside?”
Steele shook her head. “We have some loose ends we need to tie up.”
“Let us know if we can be of any assistance,” Capozza said. Abigail believed his courtesy had nothing to do with who her father was. The guy just wanted to help. He winked at her. “See you around, Detective.”
“Abigail,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She shut the door after the two federal agents left and headed for the back room, making sure the porch door was locked this time. She stood in the middle of the gutted room and heard the clatter of the tools, as if that summer afternoon so long ago were happening now. She remembered the hit on her head. The split second fear that she was going to die.
And, later, seeing Chris. That awful expression. She remembered the countless times she’d tried to describe it in her journals. He knew who’d smacked her on the head.
Mattie.
Probably, she thought. Almost certainly. But what had happened that day went beyond Mattie Young and his anger at Chris, his drinking, his sense of entitlement.
When he’d gone up to Ellis’s house, Chris had asked about Linc, not because he believed the boy was responsible for the break-in, but because he wanted to make sure Linc was safe. That was all.
“Things are happening on Mt. Desert.”
Her caller. The killer. Why draw her up here? Why now?
Abigail went into the kitchen and dug out her descriptions of the photos that had been left for her and Owen. She’d tried to be as precise as possible.
She read through them, pictured each shot—the people in them, the angles, the shadows, the time of day. Lou would have experts looking at them. They’d have all the right equipment.
Objectivity.
She thought of the photo of her and Owen on the rocks. She could feel his arms around her, his breath on her as he