Kane’s twin killed Ree’s daughter. Darren tried to kill my mother, and she killed him in self-defense. I should have been overwhelmed. I should have had to fight to view the situation with detached eyes. But instead, I felt nothing.
I felt like this—all of it—had happened to someone else.
Lia, who’d been watching with Sloane and Michael from behind the scenes, confirmed that Kane Darby had believed every word he’d said, and I found myself turning toward Agent Sterling. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“Kane will testify against his father,” Sterling replied. “About the drugs, what his father did to Darren, the role he played in covering up the death of Sarah Simon. Given the extenuating circumstances, I think I can convince the district attorney to cut Kane a deal.”
That wasn’t what I’d been asking—not really. I was asking where a person like Kane could go after something like this, how he could possibly move on.
Celine, who’d observed the debrief, cocked her head to the side and raised one manicured hand. “Just to clarify: we’re actually buying the idea that a little kid killed two people and tried to kill a third, causing his parents to chain him up in a basement for twenty-three years, at which point in time he killed someone else, broke out, and got himself axed?”
There was a long pause. After a moment, Sloane answered her. “That seems to be an accurate depiction of the working theory.”
“Just checking,” Celine replied lightly. “On a related note, this is the most effed-up thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Stick around,” Lia told her. “The puppies and rainbows come after the murder and mayhem.”
Agent Sterling snorted. But the moment of levity didn’t last. I could see the FBI agent debating whether to open her mouth again. “I don’t know if I buy Darren’s involvement in the Kyle murders or not. Kane believes his brother killed them—that doesn’t mean he’s correct.”
You showed up, Kane. The Kyles were dead. Mason, who had a history of watching as your brother slaughtered animals, asked you to tell Darren that
he wouldn’t tell. That single sentence had been enough to convict Darren in Kane’s eyes, in his family’s eyes. But that sentence had been spoken by a boy who grew up to become a vicious killer himself.
A boy someone had groomed for great things.
“We have the files from the Kyle murders.” The fact that Dean hadn’t spiraled into his own darkest memories—of being groomed, of watching— told me that even when normal wasn’t an option, going on was. “There must be some way of seeing if the story lines up.”
“The average ten-year-old male is fifty-four-point-five inches tall.” Sloane popped to her feet and began pacing the claustrophobic quarters of the observation room. “As an adult, Darren Darby was only slightly above average height. Allowing for variable growth patterns, I would estimate his height at the time of the Kyle murders to be between fifty-four and fifty-six inches tall.”
“I’m assuming that if we wait, we’ll see where Blondie is going with this?” Celine asked the room at large.
“Anna and Todd Kyle were stabbed to death,” Sloane told Celine, her eyes alight. “They were knocked to the floor prior to the attacks, making it difficult to gauge the height of their attacker. However, Malcolm Lowell put up more of a fight.”
Without another word, Sloane pulled a thick file out of her bag. The Kyle murders. She flipped through the contents at hyperspeed, pulling photos and crime scene descriptions.
“I take it that’s Malcolm Lowell?” Celine asked, staring down at a series of photos, each a close-up of one of Malcolm’s knife wounds. I thought of the scars winding their way in and out of his shirt.
People assumed you stayed quiet for your grandson’s sake—and maybe that’s true. Maybe Mason helped Darren. Maybe he watched and smiled. But everything I knew about Malcolm Lowell told me that he was a proud man. You isolated your family. You tried to control them.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Sloane said, staring at the pictures. “The angle of entry, especially on the torso wounds…it doesn’t make sense.”
“So Malcolm Lowell wasn’t stabbed by a child?” Michael asked, attempting to translate.
“This wound,” Sloane said, zeroing in on one of the pictures. “The knife was wielded from Lowell’s right side, suggesting a left-handed attacker. But the wound is too neat, too clean, and the shape suggests that the knife was held with the blade facing toward the ceiling. It entered the body at an angle of roughly one hundred and seven degrees.”
“So Malcolm was stabbed by a child?” Michael tried again.
“No,” Sloane said. She closed her eyes, every muscle in her body taut. “Sloane,” I said. “What is it?”
“I should have seen it.” Sloane’s words were barely audible. “I should have seen it before, but I wasn’t looking.”
“You weren’t looking for what?” Agent Sterling asked her gently.
“He wasn’t stabbed by a child,” Sloane said. “And he wasn’t stabbed by a left-handed adult.” She opened her eyes. “It’s there, if you’re looking. If you run all possible scenarios.”
“What’s there?” I asked her quietly.
Sloane sat down hard. “I’m ninety-eight percent sure that the old man stabbed himself.”
