Carla Neggers - The Widow

Would she lie awake nights, worrying whether or not the killer no one could catch had killed, would kill, again?

Would she read about murders in the paper, hear about them on television, and wonder if they were the work of her husband’s killer-if she’d done enough, worked hard enough, fought hard enough, prayed hard enough, to find the killer?

Or would she put her husband’s death behind her and try to lead a normal life?

But the couple wandered out of sight, just as Lucas arrived. Lucas was in his late thirties-not particularly handsome. He had a wife in law enforcement, and a young son-a normal life. He sat across from her. “Abigail, what is it?”

“Probably nothing,” she said, and told him about the call.

The next day she burned her journals and made plans to go to Maine.

After she’d burned her journals and scooped their ashes into her coffee can, Abigail drove out to the gold-domed Massachusetts State House and parked in front of a brick townhouse across from Boston Common. She could still smell lighter fluid on her fingers. The elegant house had black shutters and a brass-trimmed glossy burgundy-painted front door, with just enough room on either side of its front steps for a rhododendron and a few evergreen shrubs.

Above the single doorbell was a discreet plaque. The Dorothy Garrison Foundation. Since it was Sunday, the offices were closed.

“Doe,” as her family called her, had drowned in Maine when she was fourteen. Owen Garrison had been just eleven and witnessed his sister’s drowning, helpless to save her when she slipped and fell off the cliffs, not far from where he found Chris’s body eighteen years later.

Abigail eyed the tall, spotless windows with their sheer curtains and heavy drapes, the old-Boston formality of the place a contrast to the physical, unrelenting, unforgiving work that Owen did as a specialist in disaster response. Three years ago, he founded Fast Rescue, a nonprofit organization that fielded highly trained, volunteer search-and-rescue teams prepared and equipped to arrive within twenty-four hours of any disaster, manmade or natural, anywhere in the world.

They weren’t spontaneous volunteers, and they didn’t respond to situations that could be handled by local organizations. They were part of an intricate network of national and international emergency responders. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, fires, tornadoes, mudslides, bombings-if people were missing, trapped, swept away or otherwise in need of being found and rescued, Owen and his teams would be there.

Abigail ran her fingertips along the cool black-iron fence. When Edgar Garrison had bought his Boston dream house a century ago, had he imagined his great-grandson dangling from a helicopter to pluck desperate survivors of massive flooding from rooftops, or digging through the rubble of a collapsed building, working his way to a trapped six-year-old?

Hard to say. The Garrisons were an unpredictable lot, as far as Abigail could tell. But the men were all handsome. Very handsome, in fact. She’d seen pictures of old Edgar, the money-maker, an avid outdoorsman who’d teamed up with the Rockefellers and other wealthy summer residents to turn much of Mt. Desert Island, Maine, into a national park. Quite attractive, if a little stuffy. The good looks of his son, Brennan, were softer, more refined. He’d surprised his family by marrying a boar-shooting Texas beauty twenty years his junior.

Now eighty-two, Polly Garrison still could grab headlines. Their son, also named Edgar, was the quiet one, although just as startlingly handsome, in his own way, as his father and grandfather. He and his wife had established the foundation in their daughter’s memory and donated their Boston house for its headquarters not long after her accidental death. They moved to Texas and raised Owen there.

Owen wasn’t soft or refined or even what Abigail would call traditionally handsome. But he was certainly good-looking.

And he was the only Garrison who still had a presence in Maine.

His family sold their house on Mt. Desert Island to Jason Cooper, who also owned a beautiful estate on Somes Sound. His younger half brother, a prominent Washington consultant, spent five months a year at the old Garrison house. Also a well-known amateur landscaper, Ellis Cooper had converted the yard into impressive gardens. He’d held a party there the day Abigail was attacked and, later that night, Chris was killed. They’d been invited but didn’t go.

After the break-in, when she was on her way to get checked out at the local hospital, Chris had stopped briefly at the party. Abigail knew he was looking for her attacker. But the party had broken up, and somehow-for reasons she still didn’t understand-he’d ended up down on the rockbound waterfront below Ellis’s delphinium and roses, where, early the next morning, Owen Garrison had found his body.

The Garrisons and the Coopers presented a complicated set of problems for Abigail. They’d known Chris and his grandfather far longer than she had. They’d had both a direct and indirect impact on the lives of the two Browning men. Will Browning, Chris’s grandfather, had moved into the former Garrison caretaker cottage after he’d helped stop the fire that had destroyed their original house, the first Edgar’s pride and joy. Police believed Chris’s killer had hidden in its skeletal remains.

And Abigail had long believed that Doe Garrison’s tragic death and the helplessness Chris, only fifteen himself, had felt at the loss of his friend and neighbor had helped propel him into the FBI.

To find out what happened to him and why-who killed him-Abigail had become increasingly convinced that she needed to better understand Chris’s relationship with his wealthy friends and neighbors on Mt. Desert.

Polly Garrison, Owen’s colorful grandmother, seldom turned up there anymore. Five years ago, Abigail had found her way to Polly’s home in Austin, Texas, on a hot July weekend. She remembered her surprise at how simple and classic the house was, and the smell of the shade and the gentle spray of a sprinkler that reached just to her ankles.

Polly answered the door herself, silver-haired, striking.

“Abigail? I didn’t realize you were in Austin.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Garrison. May I have a minute? I’d like to talk to you about your family’s relationship with the Coopers.”

Her lovely gray eyes settled on Abigail. “Why?”

“Curiosity.”

The older woman smiled. “That’s what makes you a good police officer. Your curiosity. You’ll be a detective one day, I do believe.”

“Maybe. It’s hot here. Are you ever tempted to spend the summer in Maine?”

“I’m often tempted, but the memories…” She took a small breath. “I sometimes visit my grandson there. It’s not easy for me, but Owen-he embraces adversity.”

No surprise there. “You’re not from Austin.”

“West Texas. My husband and I moved here after we were married. We kept houses in Maine and Boston for many years. Our son eventually took over the Boston house. But he lives here now, too.”

“Because of your granddaughter.”

Polly Garrison’s eyes misted. “Yes. Because of Doe.”

“The Coopers bought your house on Mt. Desert Island after she drowned.”

“That’s right.”

“But you kept land there, and eventually Owen built his own place there.”

“Owen couldn’t bear for us to leave Maine altogether. It was as if to do so would be to betray Doe. He was only eleven when we lost her.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“None of us can.”