Page 23 of The Sister's Curse

“We’re not sure, but it’s clear someone with hostile intent went by your house last night.”

I inhaled, knowing I’d have to probe delicately now. “Mr.Sumner, have you ever been around any kind of violent crime?”

He tore his gaze away from the photo to stare at me. “Are you saying that something violent happened to him?”

“There were some marks on Mason’s body that are troubling. We need to determine if this happened to him in the pond or—”

He froze behind his desk. “What are you getting at?”

Before I could continue, the door swung open. A man in a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase swept into the room. I knew this guy—Steve Cortland was the most expensive defense attorney in the county, one of the three sibling attorneys from Cortland, Cortland, and Cortland. Their firm logo was a stylized Cerberus, Hades’s three-headed guard dog.

Cortland nodded to us. “There will be no further interrogation of my client. You’ve got my number.”

We certainly did. Monica and I climbed to our feet and left. I glanced at Miri, who studiously avoided my gaze. She must have had Cortland waiting in the wings, protecting her boss like any good right-hand woman would.

“I suppose we’ll show ourselves out.”

She nodded curtly.

Monica and I headed back down the hallway, and the security guard approached at a swift clip.

“I don’t think we’re going to get invited back,” I said. I was used to pissing people off, but this felt particularly gross.

“Well, we tend to let all the air out of the room,” Monica acknowledged.

—

I cruised down the two-lane road, chewing on that disastrous meeting with Sumner. I had some sympathy for him, being exiled from the hospital by his wife. He seemed truly upset about his son’s condition, but I couldn’t forget that he had been a suspect in the disappearance of a young woman many years ago. I didn’t think people changed that much over time.

I slowed as I pulled up behind a car being driven erratically. The late-model Civic crossed the center line, then entered the shoulder. I couldn’t see more than the silhouette of the driver.

I frowned and radioed in the plates. They came back to meth-cooker Rod Matthews’s brother, Timmy.

The car lurched off the road and onto a gravel side road without warning. I swept past, pulled a U-turn at the nearest stand of rural mailboxes, and crept down the gravel road. This road led to an out-of-the-way state park, Flint Rock Park. This place wasn’t friendly to newbie hikers, so it tended to be sparsely visited. Might be a great place for drug deals, and if I could snag Timmy behaving badly, then Vice would be pleased, and they’d owe me a favor.

I wound up a hill to park in a small gravel parking lot at the trailhead. The car registered to Timmy was parked there, but there were no other cars.

I popped my door and advanced on the car. It was empty but locked. I saw no drug paraphernalia on the seats.

I frowned. Maybe he was here to meet someone. Rod and Timmy didn’t strike me as the kind of guys who went into the woods to find inner peace and marvel at nature.

I turned my attention to the trail. A dirt track descended, crowded by wild dog roses and trillium. Mosquitoes were thick here. The temperature dropped by a good ten degrees as I wound my way to the bottom of a ravine. Sandstone walls rose around me, worn smooth by centuries of rain and river water. Layers of rock, like annual rings in a tree, were eroded and open to the air now.

By the time I reached the bowl-shaped depression in the bottom, I could hear water. The Copperhead River took a detour here, one that curved around in an oxbow, leaving an island covered by cedar trees at its center. In the distance, I could make out geese in their nests moving their black, snaky necks as one to watch me.

An outcropping of flint loomed above—a structure that geologists called a “geological anomaly.” If one gazed straight north, one saw a gray striated stone that resembled the profile of a woman. The locals called her the Hag Stone.

The local legend was that, long ago, a witch saved a young man from drowning here. They fell in love, and made plans to run away and get married at this spot at midnight on Midsummer Eve. But the man never showed up. The witch’s body was found drowned. The rock took on her countenance, gazing out upon the land for her love, her murderer, or whoever else crossed her path.

Predictably, teenagers loved to sneak off to this place. Bits of spray paint defaced the stone below the unreachable profile. I scanned the graffiti, seeing the usual artistic expressions, initials, and vows of anarchy. The witch seemed above it, glowering down. Among the graffiti, I spied an old, faded mark that looked familiar—a black ouroboros. It wasn’t fresh, buried beneath a declaration of love in green spray paint. Maybe this place was sacred to someone else, someone connected to my case.

I gazed up at the Hag, feeling the coolness of her shadow.

—

Green light eroded my vision.

Mom was taking in the wash. She stood before the line, her hands on her hips. An hour before, she’d put the whites out to dry in the sunshine, but something had happened to them.