Chapter 4: The Detective at My Kitchen Table
His name was Detective Rourke.
He arrived forty minutes after my call, alone, in an unmarked car, and he didn't look the way I expected.
He was somewhere in his fifties, unhurried, and he sat down at my kitchen table like he had been there before.
He set a small recorder on the table between us.
"Do you mind?"
"No," I said.
Tyler sat across from him with his arms crossed and his jaw set.
He had not spoken to me since the basement.
"Mrs.
Diane," Rourke said, "tell me exactly what you remember about the photographs."
I told him everything.
The four days Lily was missing.
Sitting in Karen's kitchen.
The detective who had come — a younger man, I remembered, with a coffee stain on his collar — and the photographs he had spread across the table.
Eight faces.
Maybe nine.
I had looked at all of them.
"I didn't recognize anyone that day," I said.
"But I looked.
I looked hard, because Karen was sitting right next to me and I wanted to be useful.
I wanted to give her something."
"And Lily came home," Rourke said.
"She did.
She said she'd been with a friend and lost her phone.
The family accepted that.
I never fully did, but it wasn't my place to push."
"But you remembered the faces."
"One of them," I said.
"I remembered one."
Rourke looked at me steadily.
"Why that one?"
I thought about how to answer that.
"Because he was smiling in the photo," I said.
"Everyone else looked like a photograph.
He looked like he was enjoying it."
Something shifted in Rourke's expression.
He didn't move, didn't speak, but something changed behind his eyes.
"Mom." Tyler's voice was tight.
"You're describing a photo you saw for thirty seconds three years ago."
"Tyler," Rourke said, not unkindly, "let her finish."
"I've finished," I said.
"That's what I remember."
Rourke nodded slowly.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and placed a single photograph face-down on the table between us.
"I want you to look at this," he said.
"Take your time.
Tell me if you recognize anyone."
I turned it over.
It was a group photograph.
Six young men, outdoors somewhere, laughing.
Casual.
The kind of photo that could have been taken anywhere.
I found the face in under four seconds.
Second from the left.
Slightly taller than the others.
Smiling in a way that didn't match the rest of his face.
I put my finger on it and didn't say anything.
Rourke looked at where my finger was.
Then he looked at Tyler.
Tyler had gone the color of old paper.
"That's Marcus," Tyler said.
"That's — why do you have a photo of Marcus?"
Rourke picked the photograph up and turned it back over.
"Marcus Hale has been a person of interest in three separate investigations over the past four years," he said.
"Two in this state.
One in Ohio."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"What investigations?" Tyler's voice came out smaller than I had ever heard it.
Rourke looked at him with something close to patience.
"How long have you known him, son?"
"Seven months," Tyler said.
"We met in the fall semester.
He was in my — he was in my study group."
"Did he ever ask you about your family?
Your home address?
Whether your parents lived alone?"
Tyler's arms uncrossed slowly.
His hands came to rest flat on the table.
"He asked about you," Tyler said, looking at me.
"He asked if you lived alone.
I told him you did since Dad passed.
I thought he was just — I thought he was being polite."
I didn't say anything.
There was nothing to say that the silence wasn't already saying better.
Rourke's phone buzzed on the table.
He glanced at it, stood, and picked up his recorder.
"Don't leave town," he said.
"Either of you.
I'll be back in the morning with more questions." He paused at the kitchen doorway.
"Mrs.
Diane.
You did the right thing tonight.
I want you to know that."
He left.
The front door closed.
May you like
Tyler looked at the table for a long time.
Then he said, "He knew where you lived because I told him."
