And so no one had ever been arrested, tried, or convicted for the murder of Faye Harrison. Nor had any suspect other than Jake Mosley ever emerged. In addition, no theory of the crime had ever been offered save the one held by Sheriff Gerard, that it was the result of a “botched rape,” Mosley having accosted Faye Harrison in the woods, then panicked and murdered her. He’d had both the motive and the opportunity, according to Sheriff Gerard, while no one else had had either one. “Jake Mosley killed Faye Harrison,” Gerard declared the day following Mosley’s death, “and he has been executed for it.”
But if this were so, why had Mrs. Harrison never been able to believe it?
That was the question Graves most had on his mind when he returned to his cottage later that same afternoon.
Saunders stood at the rear door of the Volvo, now dressed in his casual clothes.
“Ready to go, Mr. Graves?” he asked as Graves approached. He opened the door. “The Waves is just on the other side of Britanny Falls.”
On the way, Saunders spoke briefly of Mrs. Harrison. She’d been an old-fashioned sort of teacher, he said, a “real stickler” for grammar and punctuation. From there, he’d gone on to the history of Riverwood. The estate had taken many years to build, he said, and through it all Warren Davies had remained sternly vigilant. “He kept an eye on the details of that house like he kept one on the details of his business.”
“What was Mr. Davies’ business?” Graves asked.
“Oh, he had a finger in lots of things. Construction. Pharmaceuticals. Loads of real estate. Mines too. Gold. Silver. Diamonds. Mr. Davies had an interest in them all.”
Saunders was still cataloguing the sources of the Davies fortune ten minutes later when they reached The Waves.
The building was considerably grander than Graves expected. A large Victorian house complete with gabled roof and wide wrap-around porch, it had no doubt once been the residence of a wealthy family, inhabited by the wife and children of a prominent local banker or landowner, as Graves conceived of it, and filled with the heavy mahogany furniture common to that era, wood so dark it seemed to pull light from the air around it. Whenever he imagined a ghost, he imagined it in such a house, an airy shape gliding effortlessly among the ponderous chairs and tables, always a girl with long chestnut hair, almost human save for the eerie translucence of her body, almost alive save for the dead look in her eyes.
Now, as he moved up the cement walkway that led to the rest home, Graves wondered if Mrs. Harrison ever saw Faye as he sometimes saw Gwen, a figure moving toward him, her long hair falling loosely over her shoulders, her arms lifted pleadingly, whispering the same words, Oh, please, please, please…
She was sitting in a wooden rocker when he entered her room, facing the window, her back to him. The room was compact, with only a narrow bed, a mirrored bureau, and a chest of drawers. The walls were plain and white. There were no photographs. Instead, a large crucifix hung over the bed, and a print of the Virgin Mary on the opposite wall, so that the room resembled what Graves imagined as a nun’s cell.
“Mrs. Harrison?” Graves said softly as he walked toward the rocker, his eyes now fixed on the gentle curve of the head, a nest of white hair shining softly in the afternoon light.
“Mrs. Harrison?” he repeated.
Her head jerked up and around, a pair of light blue eyes suddenly leveling upon him.
“My name is Paul Graves,” he told her as he continued forward.
Mrs. Harrison’s gaze remained on him with an unearthly stillness. There was an unmistakable anguish in them, so that Graves instantly knew that all the passing years had done nothing to lift the vast weight of her daughter’s violent death from her shoulders.
“Allison Davies arranged for me to see you,” he said.
Mrs. Harrison did not seem pleased to receive him. She pointed to the plain metal chair to her right. “About Faye,” she said, her voice frail, little more than a whisper. She closed her eyes briefly. When they opened again, they seemed fixed in the sort of pain Graves understood too well, the agony of being unjustly bereft, of having someone taken so suddenly and cruelly, they seemed not to have been taken at all, but to linger everywhere, in everything, darkening the very quality of the air.
“I didn’t mean to drag it all up again,” she said. “I just wanted to thank Miss Davies for all her family did for us after my husband died. That’s all I said in the letter. And that I sometimes wondered about Faye.” She flinched as if she’d briefly glimpsed her daughter’s last moments in Graves’ eyes. “Some souls won’t ever have any peace. Because they’ve done something terrible.”
Graves knew that the moment had come to confront the issue at hand. Even so, he realized that he didn’t know exactly where to begin, what questions to ask. These were things Slovak would have sensed intuitively, relying on powers Graves had given him but that Graves did not himself possess. And so he decided to start with the only day in Faye’s life that he’d learned anything about. “The morning Faye disappeared,” he began. “What do you remember about it?”
Mrs. Harrison shrugged, and Graves saw her reluctance to return to that painful time. “There’s nothing much to tell. It was warm. There was a nice breeze blowing.”
As if he’d been standing beside the pond that morning, Graves saw the leaves rustle in the trees around her small home, ripple the otherwise tranquil waters of the nearby pond.
“I’d done a wash,” Mrs. Harrison added. “I was outside, pinning it to the line.”
Graves drew the notebook from his pocket, determined to take notes no less detailed than those Slovak took, then studied until dawn.
“That’s when my girl came out the back door.”
Graves envisioned Faye still sleepy as she came through the door, yawning, stretching, rubbing her eyes, her body draped in a white sleeping gown, the breeze of that long-ago morning gently riffling through her still unruly hair.
“I was surprised to see her up so early,” Mrs. Harrison said. “She didn’t work at the main house anymore.”
“Faye worked in the main house?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Harrison answered. “Aftar my husband died, Mr. Davies took a real interest in Faye.” Her eyes took on a sudden tenderness. “He noticed how Faye liked to walk in the flower garden. She was just eight years old. But she seemed curious. I guess Mr. Davies liked that. Anyway, he noticed her.”
In his mind Graves saw a little girl among the flowers, a man approaching her. Tall. Gray. The father she had lost.
“Mr. Davies kept part of the flower garden for himself, Mrs. Harrison continued. “For his studies.”
“Studies?”
“What Mr. Davies was doing. In the garden. Growing new flowers. That’s how Faye described it. Putting one flower with another one, she said. Making a different flower. She was real interested in it.” She seemed to see her daughter as she’d been at that time. A little girl with bright, inquisitive eyes. “And I guess Mr. Davies liked having her around. I don’t think Miss Allison ever took an interest in the work he did. With the flowers, I mean.” She sensed that she’d gotten off track. “Anyway, Mr. Davies asked if my Faye could work with him. He said he’d teach her what he was doing. He’d even pay her a little salary for helping him in the garden. She had a gift, he told me. For understanding things. Scientific things.” A gentle smile played on her lips. “Faye wanted to do it. She was real excited. So I brought her to Mr. Davies’ office. He gave her a piece of candy. He was a real kind man, always real thoughtful. Then they went to the garden. They worked together almost every day after that. Faye would go to his office after school. Then they’d go to the garden and work for an hour or so. She worked with Mr. Davies until she turned sixteen. Then she stopped.”
“A sudden stop?”
“Yes.”
Graves envisioned Warren Davies standing just behind a teenage girl, his eyes fixed upon the delicate slope of her shoulder, the whiteness of her throat, his elegant fingers toying with the strands of her blond hair in a way that was no longer innocent. He saw Faye turn to face him, appalled by what she saw in his eyes, repulsed by his touch.
It was just a story, of course. Something he imagined. Still, Graves wondered if it might be true.
“Did Faye ever tell you why she stopped working for Mr. Davies?”
“She said he’d lost interest in the flowers,” Mrs. Harrison answered. “Just lost interest. One day he told her that he didn’t want to work in the garden anymore. So there was nothing for her to do. That was the end of it.” She was silent for a time. Then she returned to the last day of her daughter’s life. “So that’s why it seemed strange that Faye got up so early that morning. Since she wasn’t working. Had nothing to do.”
As Mrs. Harrison went on to describe her final conversation with her daughter, Graves found that he could hear their voices sounding in his head.
You look tired.
I couldn’t sleep.
How come?
I don’t know.
Graves felt he was watching the scene from a scant few yards away, a silent observer, scribbling notes, as mother and daughter hung the morning wash, talking companionably as they did so.
Got any plans this morning, honey?
No.
Well, there’s going to be a party when Mrs. Davies’ portrait is finished. You might want to go down to Britanny Falls and get yourself a new dress.
I have my blue dress. I don’t need a new one.
Well, you can be sure that Mona will have a new one.
“Mona?” Graves asked.
“Mona Flagg,” Mrs. Harrison replied. “Edward Davies’ girlfriend.”
Graves wrote the name in his notebook.
“Mona lived at Riverwood that summer,” Mrs. Harrison said. “Pretty girl. Her whole life ahead of her.” She stopped. Graves knew that she was comparing the open future of Mona Flagg with the tragically shortened one of her daughter. “Those two were together all the time. Edward and Mona.”
Graves imagined them in precisely that way, a handsome young couple rowing on the pond or taking long romantic walks in the surrounding woods.
“Faye never had a boyfriend,” Mrs. Harrison said softly. “Never had a chance to marry. To have kids.” She looked at Graves plaintively. “My girl wanted all of that. Husband. Children. She could have had it too. Everything.” The tragedy of her daughter’s death fell upon her with renewed heaviness. “Everyone loved Faye,” she whispered.
Everyone loved Faye. They were the same words Saunders had used. In his mind Graves saw her body sprawled on the floor of the mountain cave. At least one person had not loved her.
“Did Faye mention anything out of the ordinary that morning?” Graves asked.
“No. She didn’t say much of anything. When the clothes were all pinned, she just walked back into the house.”
Graves saw Faye walk away from the clothesline, toward the little house, her blond hair lifted by a scented breeze. She halted suddenly, then turned to ask a question she had not really asked, Why do I have to die?
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Faye?” Graves asked.
A single hand rose shakily to Mrs. Harrison’s throat, replaying, as Graves imagined it, the strangulation of her only child. “No one would want to hurt my girl. I see her all the time. The way she was that morning. Just before she went into the house.”
Graves saw Faye as he thought Mrs. Harrison must see her, a young girl with a haunted face, caught in some dark web. He heard the screen door slap against its frame as she went into the house, a final glimmer of blond hair as she disappeared into its shadows.
“She left about an hour later,” Mrs. Harrison said. “I saw her walking toward the big house. Wearing that blue dress. The one Allison gave her for her fifteenth birthday. All dressed up, like she was going to a party. She looked like she was going to knock at the door. But she didn’t. She just turned and walked back down the stairs.” She turned toward the window, staring out in the slowly falling twilight. “Everyone loved my Faye.” She stiffened slightly, as if struck by an icy wave. “Why?” she blurted out angrily, a buried rage boiling up suddenly, as it sometimes did with Graves when he thought of Gwen, saw the rope snap taut, her feet lift from the floor, bare and bloody as they dangled over the wooden slats.
“I don’t want it all dragged up again,” Mrs. Harrison repeated savagely. “I told that to Portman too. Leave my girl in peace, I told him. But he wouldn’t do it.”
Graves saw the detective trudging wearily down the corridor toward Mrs. Harrison’s shadowed room, his shoulders slumped beneath the plastic raincoat, fat and wheezing, a wrinkled fist rapping softly at her closed door.
“He said Jake didn’t do it,” Mrs. Harrison said exhaustedly.
Graves leaned forward. “Why did he think that?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Harrison answered. “He never said.” She slumped back into her chair. “I see him sometimes. Standing at the end of my bed. Looking down at me. The one who killed Faye.”
Graves realized that Mrs. Harrison wasn’t speaking of any particular person, but of that form of evil that lies forever in wait, eternal and all-powerful, as malignantly skilled in small things as in great ones, the hand that expertly wields the blade and precisely guides the storm. Silently, he pronounced the name he had given it years before: Kessler.
“You imagine him,” Graves told the old woman softly.
Mrs. Harrison closed her eyes. They were still closed when Graves left the room.