Page 55 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Five

Rachel

T he letters kept coming. Not with any rhythm or regularity, not with any pattern, but sporadically, even after Rachel installed a Nest security system and a series of not-so-subtle signs on the gates announcing that visitors were being filmed.

At that point the letters, previously dropped off, began to arrive with postage stamps.

This made Rachel uneasy. Clearly they were being watched.

Nobody wants you here. You don’t belong.

Over time the messages grew lengthier and more unhinged.

You and your daughter just Love the attention, don’t you?

Isn’t that why you chose to live in a house Condemned by evil ?

God have mercy on your sinning souls. The day after Rachel attended a contentious town board meeting to discuss the dedication of the new Aquatics pavilion to Jay Steeler, she received a lengthy Bible verse: There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

She thought back to the crowd that packed the small first-floor room at Town Hall.

They were there to agitate for or against the new memorial pavilion.

Was the culprit there? They must have been.

It occurred to her that there might be more than one sender.

She started imagining that people were looking at her strangely.

That the woman who rang up her groceries gave her an odd smile.

That Dale, their mail carrier, avoided meeting her eyes.

That Mrs. Kowalski’s curtains swished whenever Rachel drove by as if she was monitoring her movements from the window.

She took the letters to the police—not because she expected help or sympathy but because she had the sense that she would someday need the complaint on record.

That it might prove important. Just in case.

In case of what , she couldn’t say. But she couldn’t help thinking about the deluge of hate mail that Lydia Faraday had received even after her only child had gone missing—despicable letters accusing her of murder, of deliberately trying to implicate Tommy Swift, of a complex plot to exact revenge against Jay Steeler all because of a lingering obsession that dated back to high school.

Some of the letters had been published online, leaked after Lydia’s death by her family members.

Rachel scoured them, looking for similarities.

She couldn’t help but wonder whether the same person—or people—had selected her as their new target sixteen years later.

The Rockland County Sheriff’s Department was suffering from the aftershocks of several high-profile resignations the morning she drove to the small brick building next to the library.

Two days earlier, Sheriff Cox had abruptly announced his departure.

Several longtime officers quit in solidarity.

The deputies who remained all had the mournful look of dogs abandoned too long in their crates.

In Cox’s old office, Rachel found Rebecca Horne, previously an assistant district attorney in the county prosecutor’s office and the first woman to hold the position, even provisionally, of Rockland County sheriff.

Horne had a permanent squint and a monsoon of paper on her desk.

She looked harassed and underslept, and she barely scanned over the stack of threatening letters that Rachel presented.

“I’ve gotta be honest,” she said. “I’m not seeing the threats.” She returned the letters to Rachel. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Probably just someone who doesn’t like you very much. You said your daughter is fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” Rachel corrected. They had celebrated Lucy’s birthday just the week before with dinner at the Round on the golf course. Rachel had been hoping for one night alone with her daughter. But Lucy insisted that Noah be invited, or Noah had insisted on it. Rachel couldn’t tell.

“Maybe someone your daughter knows from school,” Horne said. “Teenage beef. It happens.”

That was Noah Landry’s theory too. Rachel hadn’t meant for him, or for Lucy, to learn about the letters.

But a few days after the Fourth of July parade, a letter arrived addressed to Lucy.

When are you and your mother going to Sit Down ?

? Put lipstick on a pig and it still sleeps in shit.

You should be ashamed of yourselves. Lucy had confronted her mother, and Rachel had reluctantly told her about the other letters, dating all the way back to October.

Just hours later, Lucy had a theory: it was Reese Steeler-Cox.

According to Noah, Reese had been obsessed with him ever since they’d attended a church camp together.

She was practically a stalker. That’s why she hated Lucy so much, and why she’d tried to steer Lucy away from Noah.

It was in some ways a comforting theory. But Rachel didn’t buy it.

“Teenagers don’t write each other letters,” Rachel pointed out to the sheriff. “They bully each other online.”

Horne acknowledged that point with a tilt of the head.

“You can fill out a report with the desk sergeant,” she said.

“That’s about all we can do right now. We’re stretched thin as it is.

” Then she added abruptly, “Did you know that Rockland County has one of the lowest rates of prosecution in the state?”

Rachel hadn’t known that. But she wasn’t surprised.

No one knew exactly why Sheriff Cox and his dedicated lieutenant had vacated their positions so abruptly.

But she’d heard whispers about an independent investigation by the state’s attorney office and a long history of corruption.

Cases seemed to flounder in Rockland County.

People were arrested. People were released. Investigations dragged.

“Is it true you’re thinking of reopening the investigation into Nina Faraday’s disappearance?” Rachel hadn’t meant to ask about the Faradays—not yet—but Horne had given her an opening.

“Who told you that?” Horne asked sharply.

Rachel shrugged. “It’s just something I read online.” The local theory about the shake-up was that the county was under pressure to do something about the Faraday case now that it was garnering statewide, even national, attention.

“The investigation was never closed,” Horne said. Dimly Rachel was aware of the staccato radio static emanating from the main room. A sudden plaint of phones began to ring, one right after the other. Something was happening.

“What about Lydia Faraday’s death?” Rachel asked. Horne’s attention was drifting.

“I won’t comment,” Horne said impatiently.

“Even to a journalist?” Rachel said.

Horne registered no surprise; Rachel figured she’d heard all about the Vales by now. “ Especially to a journalist.”

Horne stood up, signifying the conversation was over.

Rachel took her time, however, returning the notes to an envelope and the envelope to her bag, all while tracking the rising excitement from the officers on duty.

She heard something about the drought and the Ohio River levels—lower, she’d read, than they’d been in decades.

In certain places the river had curdled into a sludgy brown soup that smelled of wastewater and bacterial bloom.

All summer the water had been relinquishing secrets, wheezing old trash onto its shores, coughing up submerged bikes and refrigerators.

She was just inching out of Horne’s office when a deputy shoved past her, too impatient to wait until she was out of earshot.

“That was McKenzie from the French Island Marina,” he said. “Someone found a body in the river.”