Linda Alcheri in Connecticut. He knew that he couldn’t, of course, but it was the first time he had ever wanted to talk about those events with another person. And because Claire and Linda were on his mind, he suddenly found himself plagued with terrible dreams, conflations of the two murders he’d committed, mixed in with images of chasing Rachael along the beach, a buck knife in his hand. At the end of the two weeks, when both Rachael and he returned to their normal lives, he felt heartsick but relieved.
Two months later, Rachael texted Corbin to tell him she was going to be back at her parents’ house over Columbus Day weekend, and did he want to come up. He told her he’d be away for work—the truth, since he was going on a company retreat to the Cayman Islands. But even if he wasn’t going to be away, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see Rachael again. He remembered the dreams.
When Corbin returned from the retreat, he found out, while watching the local news, that Rachael Chess had been murdered, her body discovered in the dune grass by a beachcomber on Monday morning.
Corbin called in sick to work for a week, not leaving the apartment in Beacon Hill that his father had left to him. His boss had joked that the Caymans had done him in. Corbin didn’t let on that he’d known the girl on the North Shore who’d been killed, even though the police had taken a statement, having found out from one of Rachael’s friends that she and Corbin had been involved. An officer had interviewed him over the phone, then presumably checked his alibi through the Briar-Crane offices. Corbin said they’d had a casual fling and that they’d had minimal contact since.
He didn’t tell them that he knew who had killed Rachael Chess. She’d been killed by Henry, of course, sending Corbin a clear message. He knew this with a certainty, even before the police released the information that Rachael Chess had postmortem wounds. They didn’t specify what they were, but Corbin knew: Rachael had a single, deep cut down her middle, same as Linda Alcheri.
How had Henry even known about Rachael, about Corbin’s relationship with her? Had he been up in New Essex watching Corbin in August? The thought terrified him. He googled Henry Wood and found nothing. The most recent mention he was able to locate was some cross-country track times when Henry had been at Aurelius. He tried Hank Bowman, the name that Henry had used when he’d been dating Linda Alcheri, and found nothing under that name either. He considered, for the first time ever, going to the police and confessing everything, showing them the Polaroid he still had of Henry standing over the body of Claire Brennan in the London graveyard. But what would happen to him? Even if he lied and said he’d only ever been an accomplice in the murders, he’d still go to jail for a long time. He’d still become a public figure, known for his atrocities, and also for his cowardice.
No, he could never confess. Corbin realized that Henry, by killing Rachael Chess, by making himself known to Corbin, had trapped him. He was being watched and he couldn’t see his watcher. He felt a hatred toward Henry deeper than any hatred he’d felt before. Corbin decided on the only option he felt was available to him. He would lay low, and he would never become involved with a woman again. If Henry Wood ever showed himself, or if Corbin was ever able to track him down, he would kill him himself. He’d done it before and he could do it again.
Chapter 17
Soon after the death of Rachael Chess, Audrey Marshall moved into a vacant apartment on Corbin’s hall. 101 Bury Street was mostly occupied by older couples, and it was a shock when he first saw Audrey carrying boxes into Apartment 3C. She was not the type of woman he was naturally attracted to; she was a wispy blonde, fragile looking, with milk-white skin, but seeing her wrestle with her door, her thin arms straining to hold on to the box, Corbin felt a jolt of longing. He offered to carry up some of her things from the moving van parked on the street, and to his surprise she’d happily accepted. It was box after box of books. She told him she’d been working as a literary agent in New York, but had