Page 33 of What Happened to Nina?

“Sure, Dad. Whatever you want.”

Simon left the room, leaving me alone with Jamie. She was very quiet. She just stared down at what was left of her food. Her brow was furrowed.

“What?” I said. “You think I could have handled that better?”

She shook her head like I was missing the point, then started to clear away the dishes. I hadn’t finished eating.

I WENT AND TOOK a shower. The shower is, in my experience, a good place to think, and I couldn’t get that look on Simon’s face out of my mind. That momentary look of dismay when I’d said that the Frasers were going to search our land. The more I thought about it, the more that bothered me. Simon didn’t want the search, and not just because he thought it might make him look bad. He was afraid of something bigger than that.

I dried off and got dressed and went to my home office. The night before the police had called and asked me for any camera footage we had from the Stowe house. I’d put in a call to Ronnie Garcia. Ronnie was CEO of the security firm I used for all my personal and business matters. Ronnie has an admirable loyalty to the people who pay him, and he understands the importance of discretion. When I bought the Stowe property I’d asked him to install cameras, because our insurers had required them, but I’d never followed up to check if they were in place. Ronnie had called me back later in the afternoon to confirm that yes, the cameras had been installed and they were working fine. He said that he arranged for all the recordings to be available at the same link I use for all of my other properties. He also told me that he’d had a brief look at the recordings from Friday night and that there was nothing untoward. As a result, I had been in no great rush to review the recordings myself. I’d planned on taking a look at some point that evening, before sending them over to the police as requested, but I couldn’t get that look on Simon’s face out of my mind, and now I was afraid that Ronnie had missed something.

I clicked on the link to the security system and entered my password. The system was complicated, with a lot of features, but I’d used it before and it wasn’t difficult to navigate. There was a separate icon for each of the properties I owned. I clicked the newly added icon for the Stowe house, which brought me to the live footage. There was a button at the bottom of that page that linked to prior recordings. I clicked it, and my page filled with a calendar view. Every day where a recording was available was shaded green. Every day without a recording was red. The dates for the Stowe house were green every day from the second of October, which was the day after we’d closed on the property. Ronnie had been as efficient as always.

I clicked on Friday’s date. My screen immediately split into eight rectangles, each showing a different black-and-white view of the grounds around the house. I knew from prior experience that the views were only black and white because it was nighttime. During the day the cameras recorded in full color. It seemed we had external cameras only, nothing inside the house. That made sense. It was consistent with our setup at our home in Waitsfield. The quality of the recording was excellent. Every view was crystal clear. One camera appeared to be at the end of the driveway, pointing at the entrance. One was above the front door. That one showed the steps up to the door, most of the gravel parking area, and some of the driveway. The other six cameras were set around the perimeter of the house, facing outward, completing a ring of security with no gaps in coverage. As I played the video back, I could see footage from all eight cameras playing simultaneously. I hit the fast forward button. All was quiet. The first action came well after dawn.

In the center rectangle, I watched Simon and Nina leave the house. The time stamp on the video told me that it was just after 9:00 A.M. on Friday. They were carrying backpacks with climbing ropes and helmets attached. They went out the front door and walked around to the back of the house. I watched them cross from one camera view to another. They walked across the lawn. When they reached the trees they disappeared from view, down a trailhead that I could just make out at the very limits of the camera’s view. Nothing happened after that for hours. I fast-forwarded through the footage again until it was near dark, and slowed it again as I saw Simon and Nina reemerge from the same trailhead. I checked the time stamp. It was five minutes past six in the evening. This time Simon was carrying both backpacks. Nina was limping. As they approached the house, Simon put his arm around her. They went inside and the cameras were quiet again. I hit the fast-forward button. Nothing happened. I watched right up till midnight, when the video came to an end.

I clicked back out of Friday and clicked on Saturday’s video. The same grid appeared on my screen. Once again, the recording started a second after midnight, so it was in black and white. I fast-forwarded and saw Simon come out of the house. The time stamp said 1:36 A.M. He was carrying his small backpack and he was alone. He went to his car and drove away, and I let out a long, slow breath of relief.

I have a bar in my office, built into some cabinetry. Jamie had it put in—it’s not really my thing. I rarely drink, and I think having a bar in your office is a little cheesy. Not that I’d say that to my wife. I went to the bar, possibly for the first time since we’d moved into the house, looked for a beer, and found one. I opened it at my desk, took a long drink, then sat down and watched the footage again. I replayed the video. I took a certain pleasure in watching Simon leave the house, just as he’d said he’d done. Entirely innocently. I looked forward to handing the video over to the cops. My email would be polite, up to a point, but I would make it clear that they could shove their suspicions up their collective asses. I clicked the fast-forward button twice and sped through the early hours of Saturday morning, until the sun came up, and beyond. Trees swayed in the breeze. Occasionally a bird or a squirrel appeared in the camera view, but there was no sign of human activity. There was no movement at the house. I kept playing, kept expecting to see a car drive up to pick up Nina, but it didn’t happen. I played the video all the way through to the end, to midnight on Saturday. Nothing. There was no movement at the house. No new arrivals, no departures. I clicked on Sunday’s video and did the same thing. Still nothing. I clicked on Monday’s video and fast forwarded through until finally I saw someone. Leanne Fraser. I slowed the footage down and watched her drive up to the house, walk around back, pick up a rock, and break in. It was all there and there was no pleasure in watching it. There was a look of such naked desperation on her face as she heaved the rock at the window. It left me feeling unsettled. I watched the cops arrive. Watched them take her from the house in handcuffs, put her in the back seat, and drive away.

I sat back. I didn’t understand. Where was Nina? She couldn’t possibly be in the house. Leanne had searched it. The police had searched it. But if she wasn’t inside the house, how had she left without the cameras capturing her departure? It didn’t make sense. I went back over the footage again and saw nothing new. I finished my beer, opened another, and went back over the footage again, slower this time. Still nothing. I stared at the screen. I had to be missing something obvious.

It was another hour before I saw it.

Each video started from one second after midnight, where the previous day’s video left off. I was starting the Saturday video for the fourth or fifth time when I realized that something wasn’t right. The view from one of the cameras had changed from the previous day. The camera view in the middle of my grid still showed lawn and trees, but the trailhead that Simon and Nina had used in the Friday video was now nowhere to be seen. I squinted, zoomed in, fast-forwarded again through the footage until the sun came up. Still, there was no trailhead.

I went back to the Friday night video and flipped back and forth between them until I was a hundred percent sure. I wasn’t imagining it. Someone had shifted the camera’s view at exactly midnight on Friday night. Up to midnight you could see the trailhead. After midnight you couldn’t. Someone had shifted the camera to the left.

Someone.

There could only be one someone.

The system did not allow you to move the cameras remotely. You would have had to have physical access to the camera to adjust its positioning, and whoever had done it made the change at exactly midnight, when the file changed over and it was least likely to be noticed. It had to have been Simon. He was at the house. He must have leaned out of an upper window, maybe, waited until midnight, and then just... moved it.

There was only one reason he would have done that. Something had happened in that house, and Simon had tried to hide it. Christ. My mouth felt dry and tacky and I reached for my beer, but all that was left was a single warm sip at the bottom of the bottle. My hand was shaking when I put the bottle down. Logic told me that Simon could be hiding only one thing, but I had to be missing something. I knew my son, and I knew that what I was thinking, what I was afraid of, simply wasn’t possible.

I checked my watch. It was nearly midnight. I must have been looking at the recordings for hours. And in six hours the Frasers and their extended family and friends, not to mention some cops, would be tramping all over our land. I stood up and paced the room. I had to be sure. Maybe Simon had screwed up, maybe he was covering for someone, or maybe I was putting two and two together and getting a hundred, but I had to run this thing to ground and find out what the hell was going on. Before I left, I used the system to switch off all the cameras at the Stowe house.

Jamie was asleep and the house was quiet. I went to my dressing room and changed into black jeans and a black hoodie, then I went to the garage. Out of habit, I buzzed my car and then realized I couldn’t take it. We had GPS security trackers on our cars. If anyone checked the log later, they’d be able to see that I took my car to Stowe. I swore to myself.

We had one other vehicle. An old four-wheel-drive truck we used to tow the trailer for our snowmobiles during the winter. It wasn’t worth much, and I’d never bothered to have it tagged. The keys were on a hook under a bench at the back of the garage. I found them and unlocked the truck. I found a flashlight and got into the car, hesitated, and went back for a shovel. I put it in the back seat. I took my phone from my back pocket, muted it, and left it on a shelf in the garage.

The roads were dark and quiet. I was pumped up and agitated and driving too fast. I forced myself to slow down. The moon was out, full and bright. When I got to the house, the moon was reflected in the dark water of the lake. The little wooden boat that Jamie had thought was so picturesque bobbed in the water beside the jetty.

I parked in front of the house, got out, taking the shovel with me, and walked around back. I didn’t know the grounds well. I’d inspected the house, of course, before buying it, and Jamie and I had spent a weekend there after we’d settled. I’d read my agent’s report on the land carefully, and I’d seen photographs, but I hadn’t hiked the trails or taken the boat out on the water. I hadn’t bought the place for leisure, but as an investment. I turned on the flashlight and walked across the grass to the trailhead. The grass was long, and soon my sneakers and the bottom of my jeans were wet. Twice I stopped walking. I was filled with doubt. What I was thinking was crazy, wasn’t it? There must be some other explanation. Except that I couldn’t think of one, no matter how hard I tried.

I walked down the trail. The ground underfoot was covered in leaves. We hadn’t had any rain for a week, and it was cold, so the earth was relatively dry and hard underfoot. I walked up the trail for two or three minutes and saw no sign of anything suspicious. I came to a deer track. It led off to the left, uphill, while the main trail continued straight on. I hesitated, shining my flashlight up the deer track, then the main trail, then back again. I chose the deer track. If Simon had come down here needing to hide something, he would have had to go off the main trail. The deer track was harder to navigate. It was narrow and slippery. Branches snagged at my face and clothing. I thought about turning back, but I hadn’t been climbing long when I came to a small clearing. It was hidden under the tree canopy, and very little moonlight made it through the branches overhead, but my flashlight was perfectly effective. It showed me a large patch of dirt. Dirt that had recently been dug up.

It took me some time to decide to take the next step. I stood there in the darkness until I started to shiver. Then I decided that I had to get my shit together. Time was going by. My options were to walk away or to keep going.

I started to dig. The ground was near frozen, but it had been recently broken up, and I had the shovel. I made progress. I hit something soft less than a foot beneath the surface. I cleared more dirt with my hands until I could see what I’d found. A rug, rolled up. It was wrapped around something. Something that was almost certainly human shaped. I sat back in the dirt and pressed my hands to my eyes until I saw stars. The cold damp started to seep through my pants.

“Stop it,” I said. “Fucking stop it.”

I forced myself to open my eyes, to dig away the dirt, to pull the rug-wrapped bundle from the ground. I unwrapped the bundle. I saw her. Nina. Her small body, her little face. She was in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Her eyes were open and cloudy. Her skin was mottled. The left side of her face was a mass of bruises, and there was blood at the corner of her mouth. I closed up the rug again, carefully. I rested my hand on top of it and then found I was patting it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I said it once and then I couldn’t stop saying it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I clenched my teeth and forced myself to stop. I sat there, in the dirt. I started to feel the cold, started to shiver. I stood up and paced the small clearing. What was I going to do? What were my options?

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