Stay Close

“Just bear with me.”

“Yes,” Cassie said. “I saw him and thought he was dead.”

“So you ran, right? You were scared. You thought you’d be blamed.”

“Or you.”

“Right,” Ray said. “Or me.”

“I don’t understand, Ray. Why am I here? What did you want to tell me?”

He wondered how to make her understand. “Why were you there that night?”

She looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you go to the park that night?”

“What do you mean, why? I got your message. It gave me pretty specific instructions on how to get there.”

Ray shook his head. “I never left you a message.”

“What? Of course you did.”

“No.”

“Then how did you know to go there?”

Ray shrugged. “I followed you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I knew what you’d been going through with Stewart Green. I even asked you to run away with me. I wanted us to start fresh, remember?”

A sad smile crossed her face. “You were dreaming.”

“Maybe. Or maybe if you’d listened to me—”

“Let’s not go down those roads, Ray.”

He nodded. She was right. “I followed you that night. You parked at that lot in the Pine Barrens and started up the trail. I couldn’t imagine why or who you were meeting. I guess I was jealous, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter anymore. You started up the path. I didn’t follow. If you wanted to be with another man, well, really, that had nothing to do with me. We weren’t exclusive. That was part of the fun, right?”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You didn’t leave that message to meet you?”

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that over the last twenty-four hours. The answer is pretty obvious, I guess. It had to be Stewart Green. He was setting you up, trying to get you alone.”

“But when I got up there…”

“Stewart Green was dead,” Ray said.

“At least, that’s what I thought.”

Ray took a deep breath. The blood filled his head. “And you were right.”

She looked confused. “What?”

“Stewart was dead.”

“You already killed him?”

“No. I told you. I wasn’t the one.”

“Then what happened?” she asked.

“You went up that path,” Ray said. “You saw his body. You thought that he was dead, so you ran back down. I saw you. In fact, I was going to stop you, make sure you were okay. Another one of those what-ifs. If I had just stopped you there. If I had asked you what happened…”

His voice drifted off.

She leaned forward. “What happened, Ray?”

“I thought… I don’t know… I thought Stewart had hurt you or something. I was confused and angry, so I hesitated. And then, well, you were gone. So I ran up the path. Toward the ruins.”

Megan studied his face. She was curious, sure, but she also cared. He could see that. He was coming to it now, and maybe, finally, she was starting to see the truth.

“When I got up there, I saw Stewart Green lying there. He was dead. His throat had been slit.” Ray leaned closer, wanted to make sure that she could see his eyes now—see what he had seen that night. “So picture it, Cassie. Picture me running up there and finding Stewart’s throat slit.”

She could see it now. All of it. “You thought… You thought I killed him.”

He didn’t bother nodding. He lowered his head.

“What did you do then, Ray?”

Tears started flowing down his face. “I panicked…”

“What did you do?”

The blood. All that blood.

“…or maybe it was just the opposite. Maybe I suddenly grew too logical. I’d seen you run away. I drew the most obvious conclusion: You’d had enough of his abuse. He was a real citizen. No one would help. So you did what you had to. You arranged to meet him in that remote spot so you could kill him, and then something made you run. Maybe you freaked out. Maybe someone spotted you. I don’t know. But you left clues. There were other cars in that lot. Someone might remember you. They’d find the body and the police would start investigating and they’d trace him back to La Crème, and in the end, well, it would all come back to you.”

She saw it now. He could tell by the expression on her face.

“So I did the only thing I could do to help you. I got rid of the body. No body, no case.”

She started shaking her head.

“Don’t you see? If there was no body, people would assume Stewart ran away. Someone might suspect you, but with no body, I knew you’d be safe.”

“What did you do, Ray?”

“I dragged him deeper in the woods. Then I went home and got a shovel to bury him. But it was February. The ground was too hard. I tried, but the dirt wouldn’t give way. Hours passed. Daylight was coming. I had to get rid of the body. So I went home and got my chain saw.…”

Her hand went to her mouth.

The blood, Ray thought again, his eyes closing. So much blood.

He had wanted to stop, but once the chain saw started, Ray had no choice. He had to finish the job. He didn’t bother telling her the rest, what it felt like to saw through human flesh and bone, to put pieces of a human being, even one as deplorable as Stewart Green, into black plastic garbage bags. The only thing that got him through was the thought he was doing it to save the woman he loved. He took the bags and weighed them down with rocks and drove down to a spot he knew near Cape May. He threw the bags into the water. Then he went home and expected to find Cassie. But she wasn’t there. He called her. She didn’t reply. He spent the night shivering in his own bed, trying to get those images out of his head. They wouldn’t leave. He looked for Cassie the next day and the next. She still wasn’t there. The days turned to weeks, to months, to years. But Cassie was gone.

And all Ray had left was the blood.

ERIN ANDERSON HIT PAY DIRT.

She had spent most of the evening working with the feds on the IDs. It was too early for anything firm, but she had already gathered enough information about clothing and watches and jewelry to get an idea of what bones might belong to what missing man. The rest would be up to DNA. That might take some time.