“No.”
“Yes. We can cover twice as much ground that way. You have your phone and I have mine. Contact me if you find anything.”
“Ellery…” She set her shoulders against further argument, but he merely brushed her arm with his fingertips. “Be careful.”
“You, too.”
Light on the path shrank by half when Reed’s flashlight disappeared onto the lower part of the trail. She could glimpse him at first, a flicker visible through the brush and branches, but then the light winked out for good. She stumbled over an exposed tree root, barely catching her balance. She couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of her. An owl screeched its disdain for human intrusion into the nighttime hours, the sound like nails down her spine. She pressed onward and upward, her calves starting to twinge at the unrelenting climb. She and Bump usually took the trail at a slow pace.
The humidity dampened her T-shirt into a second skin and perspiration condensed on her forehead and upper lip. She paused to listen but heard only her own heightened breathing and the distant sound of rushing water. She was nearing the stone dam, which was itself a work of art comprised of marble bricks stacked more than sixty feet high. A crack of a branch to her left made her freeze. She trained her light into the forest and saw the glowing eyes of a pair of foxes looking back at her. They watched silently, heads turning in unison as she continued onward toward the sound of the water. As she neared the river, the trees thinned and parted to reveal the gleaming water.
Ellery halted. There, in the middle of the river, standing on one of the dam’s low columns, stood Bobby Frick. He was bare chested and staring down into the canyon below. Ellery knew the view was spectacular during the daylight hours—curved rocks carved out like honeycomb by the melting glaciers over thousands of years. The trickling of the river, slowed to a brook by the marble dam, bubbled over the rocks and highlighted their nooks and crannies. Bobby appeared to be unseeing, as if in a trance. Ellery took her phone out and texted Reed:
I FOUND BOBBY. HE’S ON TOP OF THE DAM. NO SIGN OF CHLOE.
She took a careful step from behind the protection of a tree so that she could get a better view of the surroundings. The fast-moving river stretched perhaps eighty feet wide and the other side of it was cast in deep shadow. She did not see any indication that Chloe was nearby, and she had a flash of terror that Bobby might be staring down at her in the ravine. She crept closer, moving in slow motion so as not to draw his attention. The roar of the water felt like it was inside her head. She held her breath as she reached the cliff’s edge. Her vision swam, vertigo seizing her as she forced herself to look at the bottom. She exhaled in a rush when she saw the naked rocks and water below. No Chloe.
She eased backward in relief. “Bobby Frick,” she called sharply, and his head whipped around to look at her. The square column he perched on was only about a foot above the waterline, just at the edge of where it went over the dam.
“Stay back!” He grabbed a gun from the waistband of his jeans and pointed it at her chest.
“Easy,” she said, holding up her hands. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Too late,” he said. Then he screamed it, head back and shouting to the sky, “You’re too fucking late!”
Ellery licked her lips and tried to remember Dorie’s training. Empathy first, no matter what horror they’ve committed. Make them believe you are a friend. “I’m sorry about your mother!” she yelled to him over the rush of the water. He stopped screaming and looked at her. “About Carol,” she continued as she stepped forward. “It’s awful what happened to her. What happened to you.”
“She was the hero. Everyone just forgot about her.”
“They focused on the boy,” Ellery agreed, keeping her tone neutral. She advanced a step closer to the rocky dam. “It wasn’t fair.”
“She tried to save his life. He wasn’t even her son. I was her son!”
“You were younger than him when it happened. Too young to lose a mother.”
He wiped his face on his bare arm, his hand still clutching the gun. “They sent me and Lisa to different homes. Hers was nice, I guess. Mine didn’t have enough food, and guess who got to eat last?”
“I’m sorry. I know how that goes. The empty feeling in your belly could swallow you whole. You can’t think about anything else.” She stepped up onto the edge where the water ran over the top, spreading her arms to keep her balance against the current. The cold river seeped into her boots, rising like the tide.
“What are you doing? I said stay away!” He pointed the gun at her again.
“I want to help you,” she said, standing still.
He gave a bitter laugh. “No one wants to help me. Except maybe Lisa, and she has her own life to worry about. I just drag her down.”
“That’s not true. Lisa loves you. She’s worried about you right now.” She waded in closer to him, water up past her knees now. “I talked to her earlier tonight, and she very much wants to see you.”
“You talked to her?” He sucked in his lower lip, considering. “Is she—is she mad at me?” His voice cracked at the end, like the hurt little boy he’d once been.
“She doesn’t want you to get hurt. She loves you.”
He shook his head resolutely. “No. It’s too late. Why were you talking to her, anyway?”
“We were looking for you.”
His expression darkened again. “No, you were looking for her. The girl. Don’t lie to me and say it isn’t true, because I know how you cops operate.”
“I didn’t say I was a cop.”
“How many cops you think I’ve known? They came by the dozens at first, ripping up every inch of our little house, looking for some answer that they would never find. I heard the talk. They thought maybe my mother brought the murderer to the Stone place, that he was after her. Like they could pin it all on her.”
“It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t Teresa’s fault, either.”
He trembled at the words. “She called her! That was my mother’s whole life, you know, living by someone else’s schedule. It didn’t matter if we had T-ball or felt sick or were on our way to the city pool. You know what my mother was doing when Teresa summoned her that afternoon? She was cleaning out Beth’s room. She had to stop sorting her dead daughter’s clothes to go polish silver for some dinner party. No one ever gave a damn about her and what she wanted. If one of her richie-rich clients called up with a hangnail, she had to go running over to help them. They never had to alter their perfect little lives.”
“You think Teresa’s life has been perfect?”
“She got herself a brand-new family, didn’t she? A kid she barely sees. I know because I watched her for weeks. She was always at home or with the nanny, being trotted off to dance or swimming or piano. She looks happiest at the Y among the poor kids, if you can believe that. Teresa would probably shit a brick if she knew her precious daughter was mixing with the masses. My sister wanted to take dance, you know, back when she was a kid. Mom said too bad, we couldn’t afford it, so Lisa used to twirl around in her bathing suit to the radio.”
“You wanted to teach Teresa a lesson,” Ellery said, wading in farther until she was just ten feet away from him.