Page 67 of Fatal Fame
"Well, I appreciate the consultation," Mia said loudly, playing along with Connor's attempt to provide cover. "It might cost too much right now, but I'll check back in."
Danny Walsh gave her a second glance, his eyes narrowing with recognition. She had taken only a few steps toward her car when he called out.
"Hey. Hold up," he yelled. "You're that cop's kid. Sutherland, right?"
"Um, yeah."
"What are you doing here?"
"Vehicle issues."
"Oh yeah? What kind?"
"She needed a second opinion on her transmission," Connor said quickly, moving to intercept his father. "It's fine, Dad."
"I'm just confused why you'd drive all the way up here when you could have gone to my shop in High Peaks or one of the others." Danny's suspicion was evident in both his tone and posture. "Hold on—weren't you at the town hall meeting with that podcaster?"
"No, I'm?—"
Mia turned and headed quickly toward her car, fishing for her keys while trying to appear casual despite her growing anxiety. She could see Connor trying to pull his father back, their conversation becoming heated as Danny's voice rose.
She had just gotten inside her car when Danny broke away from Connor and approached her vehicle with determinedstrides. He tapped on her window as she started the engine, his expression dark with anger.
She lowered the window just an inch, enough to hear but not enough to feel vulnerable.
"You come back here asking about that case, and you're liable to end up like your podcaster pal, you hear me?"
Mia put the car in reverse, her hands shaking slightly as adrenaline flooded her system.
"You hear me?" Danny shouted again as she backed out of the parking space and accelerated toward the road.
She hadn't made it more than a few miles down Route 9 when her Apple Watch buzzed with an incoming text message. The notification appeared on the small screen just long enough for her to read the sender—Gideon—and the message: "Marcus has been arrested."
The news hit her hard, confirming her worries about the direction of the investigation. If Marcus was in custody, it meant the police had decided he was responsible for Pierce's murder.
She pulled into a rest area beside the road and sat in her car, trying to process everything she'd learned. The dark blue Honda Civic that Connor had seen suggested someone else had been at Rebecca's house the night of the murders. The fact that both the Honda and the black truck had been surveilling Rebecca's home for weeks or months indicated either coordination between multiple stalkers, two separate stalkers, or a single perpetrator using different vehicles.
More troubling was the systematic dismissal of Connor's eyewitness account by investigators who seemed determined to focus on the black truck while ignoring evidence that didn't fit their preferred narrative. Whether that dismissal represented simple tunnel vision or deliberate misdirection remained unclear, but the result had been the same—crucial evidence ignored for a decade.
Danny Walsh's threat felt genuine rather than simply bluster. The reference to Pierce's fate carried unmistakable menace, a warning that asking the wrong questions about the wrong people could have fatal consequences.
As she sat in the fading afternoon light, watching traffic pass on the mountain highway, Mia realized that her amateur investigation had crossed into genuinely dangerous territory. But Connor's account had provided the first new evidence in the case for years, indicating that the truth about the Hale murders remained hidden rather than lost.
24
Darkness had settled over the Adirondack wilderness with the completeness that only came to places far from civilization, where electric lights couldn't compete with the ancient rhythm of sun and stars. Hemlock Hollow Farm sat eight miles northwest of High Peaks, near the base of Debar Mountain, accessed by a dirt road that had once served logging operations.
The abandoned farm represented the kind of optimistic failure that dotted the Adirondack landscape. It was someone's dream of wresting a living from unforgiving soil, only to be abandoned when reality proved more stubborn than hope. What remained were foundations overgrown with brambles, a collapsed barn that served as shelter for deer and small animals, and an infrastructure slowly being reclaimed by a forest that never forgot its boundaries.
Mia's headlights cut through the darkness as she navigated the rutted access road, her car's suspension protesting with each pothole and fallen branch. The isolation felt absolute, no house lights, no traffic sounds, no indication that human beings had any business being in this place after sunset. Her phone showedno signal bars, a reminder that she was beyond the reach of help should something go wrong.
The coordinates Gideon had provided led to a clearing where the farmhouse had once stood. All that remained was a stone foundation partially visible through decades of accumulated leaves and undergrowth. Ancient apple trees, now wild and gnarled, created twisted silhouettes against the star-filled sky.
Gideon's vehicle was already parked beside the ruins, its dark bulk barely visible in the shadows cast by towering hemlocks that gave the place its name. As Mia approached, she could see him waiting beside what appeared to be a well, his flashlight beam dancing across stone walls that had been constructed with the kind of careful craftsmanship that spoke to a time when people built things to last generations.
"You made it," Gideon said. His voice held a nervous energy that matched Mia's own anxiety about meeting in such an isolated location. The mysterious Facebook messages might have made her question whether she could trust anyone completely, even someone Evelyn Cross had vouched for. Yet the two she had received that afternoon were audio messages. The voice was female.
"This better be worth the drive," Mia said, approaching the well with her own flashlight in hand. The structure was ancient, probably built by the original homesteaders who'd cleared this land from wilderness. A wooden cover lay across the opening, held in place by bricks that had been carefully positioned to prevent accidental displacement.
