Gravesend Road was narrow and overgrown, a tunnel of trees pushing in on all sides. Pip pulled onto the curb just after number 40 and flicked off her headlights.
Her heart was a stampede, and every hair, every layer of skin, was alive and electric.
She reached down for her phone, which was propped up in the cupholder, and dialed 911.
“Hello, nine-one-one operator, what’s your emergency?”
“My name is Pippa Fitz-Amobi,” she said shakily, “and I’m from Fairview. Please listen carefully. You need to send officers to forty-two Gravesend Road in New Canaan. Inside is a man named Elliot Ward. Five years ago Elliot kidnapped a girl named Andie Bell from Fairview, and he’s been keeping her in this house. He murdered a boy named Sal Singh. You need to contact Detective Richard Hawkins, who led the Andie Bell case, and let him know: I believe Andie is alive and she’s being kept inside. I’m going in now to confront Elliot Ward, and I might be in danger. Please send officers quickly.”
“Hold on, Pippa,” the voice said, “where are you phoning from now?”
“I’m outside the house and I’m about to go in.”
“OK, stay outside. I’m dispatching officers to your location. Pippa, can you—”
“I’m going in now,” Pip said. “Please hurry.”
“Pippa, do not go inside the house.”
“I’m sorry, I have to,” she said.
Pip lowered the phone, the operator’s voice still calling her name, and hung up.
She got out of the car. Following the street down to number 42, she saw Mr. Ward’s car parked in front of the small redbrick house. The two downstairs windows glowed, pushing away the thickening darkness.
As she started toward the house, she triggered a motion sensor floodlight that filled the drive with a blinding white glare. She covered her eyes, a giant shadow stitched to her feet as she walked toward the front door.
She knocked three times.
Something clattered inside. And then nothing.
She knocked again, hitting the door over and over with her fist.
A light flicked on, and through the frosted glass, she saw a blurred figure walking toward her.
A chain scraped from a sliding lock, and the door opened with a damp clacking sound.
Mr. Ward stared at her. Dressed in the same pastel green shirt from earlier, a pair of oven mitts slung over his shoulder.
“Pip?” he said in a voice breathy with fear. “What are you…what are you doing here?”
She looked him straight in the eyes.
“I’m just,” he said, “I’m just…”
Pip shook her head. “The police will be here soon,” she said. “You have until then to explain it to me.” She stepped one foot up over the threshold. “Explain it to me so I can tell Cara and Naomi. So the Singhs can finally know the truth about their son.”
All the blood left Mr. Ward’s face. He staggered back, colliding with the wall. He pressed his fingers into his eyes and blew out all his air. “It’s over,” he said quietly. “It’s finally over.”
“Time’s running out.” Her voice was much braver than she felt.
“OK,” he said. “OK, do you want to come in?”
She hesitated, her stomach recoiling inside. But the police were on their way; she could do this. “We’ll leave the front door open,” she said, then followed him in and down the hall, keeping a three-step distance between them.
He led her right and then into a kitchen. There was no furniture in it, none at all, but the counters were laden with food packets and cooking utensils, even a spice rack. There was a small key glinting on the counter beside a packet of dried pasta. Mr. Ward bent to turn off the stove, and Pip walked to the other side of the room, putting as much space between them as she could.
“Stand away from the knives,” she said.
“Pip, I’m not going to—”
“Move away from them.”
Mr. Ward stepped away, stopping by the wall opposite her.
“She’s here, isn’t she?” Pip said. “Andie’s here and she’s alive?”
“Yes.”
She shivered inside her coat.
“You and Andie Bell were seeing each other in March 2014,” she said. “Start at the beginning.”
“It wasn’t like th-th—” he stuttered. “It…” He moaned and held his head.
“Elliot!”
He sniffed. “OK,” he said. “It was late February. Andie started…paying attention to me at school. I wasn’t teaching her; she didn’t take history with me. But she’d follow me in the halls and ask me about my day. And, I don’t know, I guess the attention felt…nice. I’d been so lonely since Isobel died. And then Andie started asking to have my phone number. Nothing had happened at this point, nothing at all, but she kept asking. I told her that that would be inappropriate. And yet, soon enough, I found myself in the phone shop, buying another SIM card so I could talk to her without anyone finding out. I don’t know why I did it; I suppose it felt like a distraction from missing Isobel. I just wanted someone to talk to. I only put the SIM in at night, so Naomi would never see anything, and we started texting. She was nice to me; let me talk about Isobel and how I worried about Naomi and Cara.”
“You’re running out of time,” Pip said coldly.
“Yes.” He straightened up. “And then Andie started suggesting we meet somewhere outside of school. Like a hotel. I told her absolutely not. But in a moment of madness, a moment of weakness, I found myself booking one. She could be very persuasive. We agreed on a time and date, but I had to cancel last minute because Cara had chicken pox. I tried to end things, whatever it was we had at this point, but then she asked again. And I booked somewhere for the next week.”
“The Ivy House Inn in Westport,” said Pip.
He nodded. “That’s when it happened the first time.” His voice was quiet with shame. “We didn’t stay the night; I couldn’t leave the girls for a whole night. We stayed just a couple of hours.”
“And you slept with her?”
He didn’t say anything.
“She was seventeen!” Pip said. “The same age as your daughter. You were a teacher! Andie was vulnerable and you took advantage of that. You should have known better.”
“There’s nothing you can say that will make me more disgusted with myself than I already am. I said it couldn’t happen again and tried to call it off. Andie wouldn’t let me. She started threatening to turn me in. She interrupted one of my lessons, came over, and whispered to me that she’d left a picture of herself, naked, hidden in the classroom somewhere and that I should find it before someone else did. Trying to scare me. So I went back to Ivy House the next week, because I didn’t know what she’d do if I didn’t. I thought she would tire of whatever this was soon enough.”
He stopped to rub the back of his neck.
“That was the last time. It only happened twice, and then it was spring break. The girls and I spent a week at Isobel’s parents’ house, and with time away from Fairview, I came to my senses. I messaged Andie, and I said it was over and I didn’t care if she turned me in. She replied, saying that when school started again she was going to ruin me if I didn’t do what she wanted. I didn’t know what she wanted. And then, by complete chance, I had an opportunity to stop her. I found out about Andie cyberbullying that girl, and so I called her dad, as I told you, and said that if her behavior didn’t improve, I would have to report her and she’d be expelled. Of course Andie knew what it really meant: mutually assured destruction. She could have me arrested and jailed for our relationship, but I could have her expelled and ruin her future. We were at a stalemate, and I thought it was over.”
“So why did you kidnap her on Friday, April eighteenth?” Pip said.
“That’s not…,” he said. “It didn’t happen like that at all. I was home alone and Andie turned up—I think around ten-ish. She was irate, just so angry. She screamed at me, telling me I was sad and disgusting, that she’d only touched me because she needed me to get her a place at Yale, like I’d helped Sal. She didn’t want him to leave without her. Screaming that she had to get away from home, away from Fairview because it was killing her. I tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t. And she knew exactly how to hurt me.”
He blinked slowly.
“Andie ran to my study and started tearing those paintings Isobel made when she was dying, my rainbow ones. She smashed up two of them, and I was shouting for her to stop, and then she went for my favorite one. And I…I just pushed her to get her to stop. I wasn’t trying to hurt her. But she fell back and hit her head on my desk. Hard. And,” he sniffed, “she was on the floor and her head was bleeding. She was conscious but confused. I rushed off to get the first-aid kit, and when I came back, Andie had gone and the front door was open. She hadn’t driven to our house—there was no car in the driveway and no sound of one nearby. She walked out and vanished. Her phone was on the floor in the study; she must have dropped it in the scuffle.
“The next day,” he continued, “I heard from Naomi that Andie was missing. Andie was bleeding and left my house with a head injury, and now she was missing. And as the weekend passed, I started to panic: I thought I’d killed her. I thought she must have wandered out of my house and then, confused and hurt, got lost somewhere and died from her injuries. That she was lying in a ditch somewhere, and it would only be a matter of time until they found her. And when they did, there might be evidence on her body that would lead back to me: fibers, fingerprints. I knew the only thing I could do was to give them a stronger suspect to protect myself. To protect my girls. If I was taken away for Andie’s murder, I didn’t think Naomi would survive it. And Cara was only twelve at the time. I was the only parent they had left.”
“I don’t care about your excuses,” Pip said. “So then you framed Sal Singh. How did you know about the hit-and-run? Did Naomi write about it in her diaries, the ones her therapist told her to keep?”
“Yes.”
“And you read them?”
“Of course I read them,” he cried. “I had to know my little girl wasn’t thinking of hurting herself.”
“Then you made her and her friends take Sal’s alibi away. And then, on the Tuesday?”
“I called in sick to work and dropped the girls at school. I waited outside, and when I saw Sal alone in the parking lot, I went up to talk to him. He wasn’t coping well with her disappearance. So I suggested that we go back to his house and have a chat about it. I’d planned to do it with a knife from the Singhs’ house. But then I found some sleeping pills in the bathroom, and I decided to take him to the woods; I thought it would be kinder. I didn’t want his family to find him. We had coffee and I gave him the first three pills; said they were for his headache. I convinced him that we should go out in the woods and look for Andie ourselves; that it would help his feeling of helplessness. He trusted me. He didn’t wonder why I hadn’t taken off my leather gloves. I took a plastic bag from their kitchen, and we walked out into the woods. I had a penknife, and when we were far enough in, I held it up to his neck. Made him swallow more pills.”
Mr. Ward’s voice broke. His eyes filled and a lone tear snaked down his cheek. “I said I was helping him, that he wouldn’t be a suspect if it looked like he’d been attacked too. He swallowed a few more, and then he started to struggle. I pinned him down and forced him to take more. When he started to get sleepy, I held him and I talked to him about Yale, about the amazing libraries, how beautiful the campus looks in spring. Just so he would fall asleep thinking about something good. When he lost consciousness, I put the bag around his head and held his hand as he died.”
Pip had no pity for this man before her. Eleven years of memories dissolved, leaving a stranger standing in the room with her.
“Then you sent the confession text from Sal’s phone to his dad.”
Mr. Ward nodded, staunching his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“And Andie’s blood?”
“It had dried under my desk,” he said. “I’d missed some when I first cleaned, so I placed some of it under his nails with tweezers. I put Andie’s phone in his pocket and I left him there. I didn’t want to kill him. I was trying to save my girls; they’d already been through so much pain. He didn’t deserve it, I know, but neither did my girls. It was an impossible choice.”
Pip looked up to force down her tears. There wasn’t time to tell him just how wrong he was.
“And then as more days passed,” he cried, “I realized what a huge mistake I’d made. If Andie had died somewhere from her head injury, they would have found her by then. And then her car turns up and they find blood in the trunk; she must have been well enough to drive somewhere after leaving my house. I’d panicked and thought it was fatal when it wasn’t. But it was too late. Sal was already dead and I’d made him the killer. They closed the case, and everything calmed down.”
“So how do we get from there to you imprisoning Andie in this house?”
He flinched at the anger behind her words.
“It was the end of July. I was driving home and I just saw her. Andie was walking on the side of the main road from Norwalk, heading toward Fairview. I pulled over, and it was obvious she’d got herself messed up in drugs…that she’d been sleeping rough. She was so skinny and disheveled. That’s how it happened. I couldn’t let her return home because if she did, everyone would know Sal had been murdered. Andie was high and disoriented, but I stopped and got her in the car. I explained to her why I couldn’t let her go home, but that I would take care of her. I’d just put this place up for sale, so I brought her here and took it off the market.”
“Where had she been all those months? What happened to her the night she went missing?” Pip pressed, feeling the minutes escaping from her.
“She doesn’t remember all the details; I think she was concussed. She says she just wanted to get away from everything. She went to a friend of hers who was involved in drugs, and he took her to stay with some people he knew. But she didn’t feel safe there, so she ran away to come home. She doesn’t like talking about it.”
“Howie Bowers,” Pip thought aloud. “Where is she, Elliot?”
“In the attic.” He looked over at the small key on the counter. “We made it nice up there for her. I insulated it, put in plywood walls and proper flooring. She picked out the wallpaper. There aren’t any windows, but we put in lots of lamps. I know you must think I’m a monster, Pip, but I’ve never touched her, not since that last time at Ivy House. It’s not like that. And she’s not like she was before. She’s a different person; she’s calm and grateful. She has food up there, but I come to cook for her three times during the week, once at the weekend, and let her down to shower. And then we just sit together in her loft, watching TV for a while. She’s never bored.”
“She’s locked up there and that’s the key?” Pip pointed to it.
He nodded.
And then they heard the sound of wheels crunching on the road outside.
“When the police interrogate you,” Pip said, hurrying now, “do not tell them about the hit-and-run, about taking Sal’s alibi away. He doesn’t need one when you’ve confessed. And Cara does not deserve to lose Naomi as well, to be all alone.”
The sound of car doors slamming.
“Maybe I can understand why you did it,” she said. “But what you did is unforgivable. You took Sal’s life to save your own. You destroyed his family.”
A shout of “Hello, police!” came from the open front door.
“The Bells have grieved for five years. You threatened me and my family; you broke into my house.”
“I’m sorry.”
Heavy footsteps down the hallway.
“You killed Barney.”
His face crumpled. “Pip, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t—”
“Police,” the officer said, stepping into the kitchen, hands tensed against his uniform. His partner walked in behind, her eyes darting from Mr. Ward to Pip and back, her tightly scraped ponytail flipping back and forth.
“Right, what’s going on here?” she said.
Pip looked over at Mr. Ward and their eyes met. He held out his wrists.
“You’re here to arrest me for the abduction and false imprisonment of Andie Bell,” he said, not taking his eyes off her.
“And the murder of Sal Singh,” said Pip.
The officers looked at each other for a long moment, and one of them nodded. The woman started toward Mr. Ward, and the man pressed something on the radio strapped to his shoulder. He moved back out to the hallway to speak into it.
With both their backs turned, Pip darted forward and snatched the key from the counter. She ran out into the hall and bounded up the stairs.
“Hey!” the male officer shouted after her.
There was a small white hatch in the ceiling at the top. A large padlock was fitted through the catch, attached to a metal ring in the surrounding wooden frame. A small two-step ladder was placed beneath it.
Pip stepped up and slotted the key into the padlock, letting it clatter to the floor. The policeman was coming up the stairs after her. She twisted the catch and ducked to let the reinforced hatch swing down and open.
Yellow light filled the hole above her. And sounds: dramatic music, explosions, and people shouting in tinny, panicked voices. Pip grabbed the loft ladder and pulled it down to the floor, just as the officer thundered up the last few steps.
“Wait!” he shouted.
Pip climbed up, her hands clammy on the metal rungs.
She poked her head up through the hatch and looked around. The room was lit by several floor lamps, and the walls were decorated with a white-and-black floral design. On one side of the loft, there was a mini-fridge with an electric kettle and a microwave on top, and shelves of food and books. There was a fluffy pink rug in the middle of the room, and behind it was a large flat-screen TV that was just being paused.
And there she was.
Sitting cross-legged on a single bed piled high with colored cushions. Wearing a pair of blue penguin-patterned pajamas, the same that both Cara and Naomi had. She stared over at Pip, her eyes wide and wild. She looked a little older, a little heavier. Her hair was mousier than it had been before, and her skin much paler. She gaped at Pip, the TV remote in her hand and a pack of Butterfingers on her lap.
“Hi,” Pip said. “I’m Pip.”
“H-hi,” she said, “I’m Andie.”
But she wasn’t.