Chương 6
“I said I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“You always ask one more thing.”
He stopped.
That sentence stayed with him.
The search warrant executed at Victor’s farm found the box two days later.
Inside were newspaper clippings about the Hale family dating back more than two decades.
Photographs of Margaret.
Photographs of Thomas.
Printouts from old missing-person websites.
Copies of financial articles.
A faded flyer offering a $500,000 reward for information leading to Anna’s safe return.
And seventeen letters supposedly written by Margaret.
All forged.
Some were addressed to Anna.
Others were addressed to unidentified private investigators.
One stated that the Hale family had “accepted Anna’s death” and would no longer pursue claims regarding her whereabouts.
Another suggested that Anna had been “emotionally difficult” before disappearing and had caused severe strain in the marriage.
Margaret read only three.
Then she vomited in a trash can at the sheriff’s office.
Daniel read all seventeen.
He regretted it.
The language got better over time.
The earliest letters contained errors Victor could not have known mattered.
Margaret never called Thomas “Tom.”
She never signed formal letters “Maggie.”
Later forgeries corrected those details.
Somebody had been learning.
Harris sat across from Daniel in a small interview room.
“You understand what this suggests.”
Daniel looked at the photocopies.
“He had access to information.”
“Public information, certainly.”
“That’s not enough.”
“No.”
One letter referenced a Christmas argument between Margaret and Thomas that had never appeared in the press.
Daniel had vague memories of it.
Anna had disappeared seven months earlier.
Margaret wanted to continue paying a private investigator in Vermont. Thomas wanted to fire him.
They argued in front of family.
Only six people were present.
Thomas.
Margaret.
Daniel, who had been four.
Margaret’s sister Ellen.
Thomas’s brother Raymond.
And Raymond’s wife, Susan.
Daniel looked at Harris.
“So Victor knew someone.”
“That’s one possibility.”
“You have another?”
Harris slid a sheet of paper across the table.
Victor Mercer had worked for Hale Property Services from 1999 to 2005.
Daniel stared at the page.
He did not remember the company name.
Harris explained.
Victor had been employed as a maintenance supervisor at several Hale-owned commercial properties.
Thomas would not necessarily have known him personally.
Margaret might not have either.
But Victor had been inside the orbit of the family long before Anna arrived on his farm.
“When did you find this?”
“This morning.”
“Does my mom know?”
“Not yet.”
Daniel leaned back.
The room felt too small.
“So this wasn’t random.”
“We don’t know that.”
“You think he took her.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then say what you think.”
Harris’s expression remained neutral.
“I think twenty-three years is a long time, and we’re trying not to let the ending rewrite the beginning.”
Daniel hated the sentence because it made sense.
The assumption was obvious: Victor had kidnapped Anna as a child and kept her hidden.
The evidence did not support that.
At least not yet.
Anna’s own fragmented account suggested she had lived in multiple places with multiple people before reaching Victor’s farm.
She remembered a blue apartment.
A woman named June.
A trailer with dogs beneath it.
A church basement.
A man who called himself Ray.
A motel where she cleaned rooms.
A shelter in Tulsa.
A warehouse job under the name Anne Lewis.
Years were missing.
Names changed.
Some memories appeared to belong to childhood and others to adulthood, but Anna could not always place them.
Trauma had not preserved her past in sequence.
It had shattered it.
Margaret struggled with that most.
She wanted chronology.
She wanted the police to draw a line from May 14, 2003, to the chicken coop and tell her exactly who had done what.
Instead, Anna gave them fragments.
A woman cutting her hair short in a bathroom.
A bus ride at night.
Being told Margaret had been arrested.
Sleeping in a room with green walls.
Being called Annie.
Being called Lacey.
Being punished for saying her real last name.
A birthday cake with seven candles, though Anna insisted she had been eight.
A man burning missing-child flyers in a sink.
A foster home.
Or maybe not a foster home.
A school she attended briefly under another name.
An emergency room.
A woman who once tried to help her and then disappeared.
Margaret would sit with a notebook and write things down.
Anna began to hate the notebook.
“You’re doing it again.”
Margaret closed it.
“I’m sorry.”
“You look at me like I’m evidence.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
Margaret set the notebook aside.
For nearly a minute they sat in silence.
Then Anna said, “I used to like strawberries.”
Margaret looked at her.
“You hated strawberries.”
Anna frowned.
“No.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I remember liking them.”
“You called them hairy.”
Anna stared.
Margaret smiled despite herself.
“You would eat strawberry ice cream. But actual strawberries? No.”
Anna’s face tightened.
“Maybe you remember a different kid.”
Margaret’s smile vanished.
There it was.
The danger in every memory.
Correcting Anna could feel like erasing her.
Agreeing with everything could become another lie.
Margaret said, “Maybe we remember it differently.”
Anna looked toward the window.
After a moment she said, “They do have hair.”
Margaret laughed.
Anna did too.
It became one of their safest subjects.
Strawberries.
The first month after Anna was found passed in institutions.
Hospital.
Interview rooms.
A short-term residential trauma program.
Court hearings concerning Victor.
Appointments with investigators.
DNA sampling.
Dental records.
Old missing-person files.
Margaret wanted Anna home.
Anna did not.
That hurt Margaret more than she admitted.
The Hale house outside Boston had seven bedrooms, a heated pool, a garden, and security gates.
To Margaret, it represented safety.
To Anna, it represented a place controlled by people she barely knew.
“I don’t want the big house.”
“You haven’t seen it.”
“I saw pictures online.”
Margaret blinked.
Anna had begun using a smartphone under supervision.
Daniel taught her slowly.
At first she hated it.
Then she discovered weather apps, maps, and cooking videos.
May you like
She checked maps compulsively.
She wanted to know where every door led.
