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Her blood boiled. “Chris did not leave me.”
“That is not important,” her mother said dismissively. “My daughter was murdered by a man obsessed withyouand you have the audacity to tell me you can’t be bothered to come to a prayer service honoring herlifeon the one-year anniversary of herdeath?” Her mother’s voice rose at the end of each phrase.
“I cannot speak now. I will call you later.”
“Do not hang—”
Catherine disconnected the call. She was shaking. She was forty years old and she still avoided her mother whenever possible.
She put her palm on her forehead; she was clammy. How could her mother still elicit such a strong physical reaction in her?
As a forensic psychiatrist, Catherine understood human psychology better than most people, but when it came to her own life she was a mess. She knew—intellectually—that her physical reaction to her mother was based on her perceptions from childhood, how her mother had treated her compared to how she had treated Beth; how her mother blamed Catherine for events out of Catherine’s control. Consequently, Catherine’s choices in life—from college to career to marriage—had been designed to separate her from her mother. Separate and punish her mother, she supposed, for loving Beth more than her.
Yet Catherine loved her sister with everything she had. Beth had been the best the world had to offer. Beautiful, talented, kind, compassionate, without a mean or vindictive bone in her body. How had she and Catherine come from the same parents? Genetics was a mystery, how the same two parents could create a happy optimist and a brooding pessimist.
Catherine never resented her sister for her joy; instead, she was drawn to her, as if some of Beth’s joy might rub off on her.
Catherine picked up her phone and pulled up a picture of Beth. She was everything Catherine was not. She was bright, happiness etched in every line of her face. Her hair was a few shades lighter than Catherine’s dark brown; her eyes a few shades brighter than Catherine’s dull hazel green. She should be walking on earth instead of lying dead six feet underground.
Catherine scrolled through more photos, remembering her sister, remembering when everything in her life was right. Her daughter, Lizzy, who was named after Beth, adored her aunt. They were so much alike... Lizzy could have been Beth’s daughter.
Her finger scrolled too fast, and she hit a photo of Beth and Matt from years ago, when they had still been in love, when Catherine thought that her best friend would be her brother-in-law and everything in her life would finally be perfect.
Matt ruined it, like he did with every relationship he’d ever had.
She had to find a way to get over this. Knowing the anniversary of Beth’s death was Friday could interfere with Catherine’s ability to do her job.
No, admit it. You agreed to come out here, nearly three thousand miles from your mother in Pennsylvania, because you didn’t want to go to the memorial service. You didn’t want to be working in DC or home in Virginia or anywhere within a hundred miles of Shenandoah National Park, where Beth was murdered. You couldn’t get much further without leaving the continental United States.
Catherine tried not to lie to herself; she recognized that she’d run. Fled from Chris’s affection and attention and his understanding. She didn’t want to be told it would be okay. Her life had been anythingbutokay since Beth was murdered.
Killed because of Catherine.
Killed because Catherine didn’t realize the killer she had profiled was so obsessed with her, that he wanted her attention so badly that he would kidnap her sister to get it.
And then Beth was dead.
The door opened and Catherine put down her phone.
Jim Esteban walked in. She was glad it was Jim, who was comfortable like a favorite uncle or kind mentor. A little overweight, a little too chatty, extremely smart yet a tad clueless about interpersonal situations. The job he worked brilliantly, but Catherine would never have to worry that he might ask how she was feeling, or notice that she was out of sorts.
He grabbed a water bottle and drained half of it, then poured coffee while he spoke. “Except for the captain, who was on the bridge, directly above the bomb, and the Marshalls, who were standing on the bow, everyone else on the boat died of drowning, with a secondary cause of blunt force trauma.”
Catherine shifted gears, relieved to think about the deaths of strangers over the death of her sister.
“They were unconscious from the blast when they hit the water,” stated Catherine, picturing those grisly events.
“Bingo.The Marshalls and Neil took the brunt of the explosion—they would have been dead no matter what. And there were other injuries that would have been life-threatening—broken bones, internal injuries, what you might expect from a violent explosion. But drowning takes five to ten minutes.”
“Were all the bodies recovered?”
“Yes. The drowning victims were all intact; the other three were positively identified. No one on the boat that wasn’t supposed to be there, either.”
That had been one possible scenario: that an unknown suicide bomber had hidden in the hull of the boat until detonation.
“Any word from Agent Harris on the bomb mechanism?”
“Nope. He’s still down in Seattle. Don’t know if he’ll make it up here tonight, at least not before dark. Did you make any progress?”
