VIKING
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Copyright © 2021 by Caitlin Wahrer
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Grateful acknowledgment is made to Claire C. Holland for permission to reprint “Clarice” from I Am Not Your Final Girl by Claire C. Holland. Copyright © 2017 by Claire C. Holland. Originally self-published by GlassPoet Press, Los Angeles, CA, in 2017. Reprinted by permission of the author (www.clairecholland.com).
A Pamela Dorman Book/Viking
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Wahrer, Caitlin, author.
Title: The damage : a novel / Caitlin Wahrer.
Description: New York : Pamela Dorman Books / Viking, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020045748 (print) | LCCN 2020045749 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593296134 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593296141 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction | Suspense fiction
Classification: LCC PS3623.A356495 D36 2021 (print) | LCC PS3623.A356495 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045748
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045749
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Lucy Kim
Cover image: Elle Moss / Arcangel
pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
For Ben
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I. Monsters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
II. Mess
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
III. December
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
IV. Lucky
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Acknowledgments
About the Author
I.
MONSTERS
I have known monsters and I have known men.
I have stood in their long shadows, propped
them up with my own two hands, reached
for their inscrutable faces in the dark. They
are harder to set apart than you know.
Than you will ever know.
Claire C. Holland, I Am Not Your Final Girl
1
Julia Hall, 2019
The dying detective’s house was a tall, dark blue thing with chipping trim and shutters. It loomed against the bright sky, set back from the snowbank lining the street. The house was dusted with last night’s powder, but the black 23 tacked above the front door was brushed clean. There was room in the narrow driveway, but she parked on the street.
Julia Hall shifted in her seat to expose the pocket of her heavy winter coat. She crammed her hand deep inside until her fingers scraped the edges of the folded paper. As she pulled the note free, she willed it to say anything but the address she’d located—anything that would let her drive on, maybe never to find the house. There, on the crumpled sheet, she’d written 23 Maple Drive, Cape Elizabeth, and here it was.
“Just go,” she said aloud, then looked sideways at the house. Windows abutted the front door, and each appeared empty with the blinds drawn. At least he hadn’t seen her talking to herself, then.
The wind blew the door from Julia’s hand as she climbed out of her SUV. This winter had been bitterly cold. As she aged she found the winter a little less pleasant to weather each year. She pulled her hat tighter over her ears, then turned back to the car. Without thinking, she slammed the door hard. She winced as the sound rocked down the neighborhood street. She hadn’t done that in years—she was thinking of her old Subaru, the one that demanded a rougher touch. The one she’d had three years ago, back when she had occasion to talk to the man waiting for her inside that house.
In spite of last night’s flurry, the front walk was freshly shoveled. Had he done that for her? The path and steps to the porch were layered in salt, and she focused on the sound as she crunched her way up to his door. She shook out her hands and rang the bell. Before the chime had subsided inside, the door swung open.
“Julia,” said the figure in the doorway. “How are you, dear?”
She was certainly better than he was, wasn’t she? Because the man standing before her was Detective Rice, or at least the husk of him. His once towering frame seemed to have caved in on itself like a rotting flower stem. His face was sallow, and he had deep bags under his eyes. A Red Sox cap pushed down on his ears, obscuring what appeared to be a completely bald skull.
“I’m good, Detective Rice. I’m good.”
They shook hands awkwardly, as he had leaned in as though to hug her.
“Well, would you like to come in?”
Every day since you called me, I’ve thrown up my b
reakfast was what she wanted to say. Instead, she smiled and lied. “Yes, of course.”
“And please, you can just call me John,” he said as he wobbled backward to make room for her to step inside. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last three, maybe from the cancer. Not that she was doing much better. For most of her life, Julia had looked young for her age. Somewhere in the past few years, that stopped. She looked thirty-nine now.
As Julia pulled off her boots, she surveyed Detective Rice’s mudroom, a little voice in her head pointing out how strange it was to be in Detective Rice’s mudroom. The bench she sat on was sturdy, practical. A few pairs each of work boots and dress shoes butted up against the base. The bench was flanked by a bucket of salt on her right, and a wet shovel leaned against the wall. To her left was the only curious feature: a petite shelf crammed with gardening books. She never would have guessed him to be a gardener when she met him all that time ago. It suggested an earthiness that she had missed.
“I don’t know if I can,” she said as she stood. “I think you’ll always be ‘Detective Rice’ to me.”
He grinned at her and shrugged.
She followed him down a narrow hallway lined with family photos and religious artifacts: there were various portraits of a younger Detective Rice and his deceased wife, Julia assumed, and three children; a crucifix and a dried palm; a picture of a grandchild, probably, next to a picture of Jesus.
Detective Rice said something muffled as he led her down the hallway.
“What?”
He turned and faced her over his shoulder. “Was just saying you got a new car.”
“Oh, yeah.” She pointed her thumb behind her. “Guess I’ve upgraded since I last saw you.”
She studied the change in his height. He was still a tall man, she thought as she followed him, but his illness had stolen several inches.
“I was thinking we’d sit in here.”
He motioned to the first room they came upon. It was decidedly a sitting room: something that Julia only ever saw in the homes of older people. Like others she had seen, Detective Rice’s had a buttoned-up air to it, despite its obvious purpose for hosting company. The room was staged around two big recliners with a small table between them.
Detective Rice motioned for Julia to sit in the chair on the right as he continued down the hallway.
She waited a few seconds, then poked her head out into the hall. Another doorway on the right. Kitchen at the end. She listened but heard nothing.
She turned back into the sitting room. Deep breath, she thought, and inhaled.
She moved toward the picture window across the room. It looked out on Maple Drive and a big house across the street. A steady chill radiated from the pane, and Julia touched a trembling finger to the glass. There were few things as bleak as Maine in February.
The cold months were hard; always had been. Every year, Julia was faced with the reality of Maine’s autumn and winter, neither of which ever matched the nostalgia-tinged versions that lived in her head. The snow usually started in December, lasted through April. And after that winter—after the winter she last laid eyes on Detective Rice—winters carried some kind of existential melancholy that had to be shoveled away with the snow.
“Endless, isn’t it?”
She started when she heard his voice behind her.
He was in the doorway again, smiling at her. In his hands he held two mugs.
He was just getting coffee. She breathed out, probably with obvious relief.
He motioned to the chair again, and this time she sat. She accepted a mug and watched him settle into his own seat. The scent that met her nostrils was not coffee, in fact, but tea. She tasted it and found it heavily sweetened. That was a surprise.
“How are your children?” Detective Rice asked as he sipped at his drink.
“They’re good, thanks.”
“How old are they now?”
“Uh, ten and eight.”
“You’ll never be ready for them to grow up.”
There was something about him that made it easy to forget he had children of his own. Grown children; grandchildren, judging by the pictures in the hallway. It wasn’t his personality that made her forget—it was his profession. There was something about him being a detective that made her forget that he existed outside of that.
Julia nodded and waited for him to ask her how Tony was.
“I suppose you were surprised to hear from me last week.”
That answers that, she thought. Something about his passing over her husband felt like a personal slight, especially given everything that had happened, and she felt herself suppressing a frown.
She had been surprised on Thursday, when she picked up her cell at the end of a long morning in court to find a single voice mail waiting for her. It was the mark of an easy day if she only had one missed call by noon. She shouted goodbye to the marshal at the door and pressed Play as she strode from the courthouse. The voice that had croaked out of her phone halted her midstep; it was slow but unmistakable. A voice she had come to dread. Years ago she had worked herself into a state of near panic any time the phone rang or her voice mail blinked, for fear that his voice would be on the other end.
“I was surprised to hear from you,” Julia said. “And very sorry to hear that you were sick, too.” She leaned toward him slightly, realizing she hadn’t mentioned it since they spoke on the phone last week and he asked her to come to his home.
“What’s your . . . prognosis?” There was no comfortable word, not that she could think of.
“Well, it’s not too hot,” he said in a voice like he was discussing the chance of another flurry. “My doc thinks my ‘quality of life’ is going to get pretty bad over the next couple months, and it might all go pretty quick after that.”
Julia could hear the quotes around “quality of life,” and she pictured Detective Rice sitting in his doctor’s office in a dressing gown, saying, “‘Quality of life’? What the fuck does that mean? Just tell me when I’m gonna die.”
She smiled at him warmly. “I’m glad to see that you’re still able to be at home.”
“Oh, well, we’ll see.”
They each took a sip.
“Well,” he said, and laughed lightly. He shrugged.
Was he nervous?
“I appreciate you coming up,” he said. “Like I said, I wanted to talk to you before, well . . .” He shrugged at himself.
“While you still have that ‘quality of life.’”
Detective Rice laughed, let out a wheezing cough, and reached behind his chair. There was the squeaking sound of an ungreased wheel, and he pulled a portable oxygen tank around to his side. He held the mask up to his face and breathed, holding up a One minute finger to her.
Jesus Christ, I better not make him laugh again.
He began to put the mask away.
“Why don’t you keep that on,” Julia said. “I really don’t—”
“No,” Detective Rice said firmly. “Thank you, but no.”
The mask in its place on the tank, Detective Rice sat himself back up. The wind whistled at the window. “I wasn’t sure you’d come, after everything. But I needed to talk to you. Well, to say some things to you. And I think you have some things to say to me, too.”
Julia had to push herself to hold his gaze. His eyes were watery pink, and hers wanted nothing to do with them.
“I really wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said again. “But you always were too nice to say no to anyone.”
The sick ache in her stomach intensified. What was she supposed to say to that?
He didn’t expect a response, it seemed, because he spoke again. “So. Back to the beginning?”
2
John Rice, 2015
The first time John Rice saw Julia Hall, she was standing in her kitchen, barefoot, washi
ng a pile of dishes in the sink.
Rice was about twenty hours into the investigation at the time. Until that moment, it had been twenty hours of ugliness. Nothing but the kind of evil only man knows how to execute.
He’d seen the victim, a young man named Nick Hall, at the hospital the night before. He hesitated to think of him as a man at all. Nick was twenty years old, yes, but he should have been on the last legs of his boyhood. Instead, there was a look in his eye like he’d never feel young again.
Rice didn’t want to overwhelm Nick by interviewing him that first night, when he’d already given statements to a nurse and an officer. Rice just wanted to introduce himself as the lead detective on Nick’s case and ask him to write out a statement. It always felt a little callous to ask victims to write it out, ask them to relive the crime so soon. It was for the best, though, for everyone. Made Rice’s case stronger; made the victim’s memory better. Not to mention, the beginning of the case was usually the easy part. Most of the time, the victim hadn’t grasped what had happened yet. The mind was in shock, the body in survival mode, and there was little to no affect. Nick had been like this: surprised, a bit confused, but mostly flat. Better for him to relive it now.
And he had. Before coming over to the house, Rice had picked up Nick’s two-page statement at the hospital. Nick’s older brother, Tony, was there again. He’d been there the night before, too, and now he had the baggy undereyes of someone who’d tried to sleep in a hospital chair. Tony stepped out of the room and handed Rice the statement. Told him Nick was sleeping. Rice said he’d come back later.
Rice found Tony Hall’s house without trouble. It was a pretty little thing in the rolling outskirts of Orange, unassuming after a drive past some of the other houses in town. Rice’s sister-in-law lived in Orange, too, but closer to the town center. Like many towns in southern Maine, probably like many towns everywhere, it was like two different places entirely depending on where you stood. Town center was where the wealthier inhabitants of Orange collected, either crammed into cul-de-sacs in large, cookie-cutter houses (Rice’s sister-in-law included), or in Maine’s version of mini-mansions on sizable plots of land (these were the very, very wealthy). The greater part of Orange, though, was farmland. Little of it was active. The Hall address was there, two plots down from a giant, ramshackle place overrun with geese, complete with a barn the earth seemed to be taking back. The Hall house, by comparison, was small, old but well-kept, and charming, at least what he could see from the road. The driveway was full, so he parked on the street.