Near midnight, the slow roll of Ellery’s tires crunched over the grit and bits of gravel that comprised the parking lot for Marble Arch. Moonlight shone on the wet leaves, the air heavy with humidity. She felt the hair curling at the back of her neck as she got out of the car. “Look at that,” she said, nodding in the direction of a white van at the end of the lot. It sported Rhode Island plates and was the only other vehicle nearby.
She and Reed approached from the rear, crouching to avoid being seen in the mirrors in case anyone was inside. Reed pulled out his phone to run the plates while Ellery slid alongside the van up to the driver’s-side door. “Nothing visible here.” She tried the handle and found it unlocked. The inside smelled like cigarettes and fried food. She found a cheeseburger wrapper on the floor and a soda bottle in the cupholder.
“The van is stolen,” Reed reported from outside. “It was reported two days ago.”
Ellery released the lock on the van’s rear doors and went around to open them. “This is definitely him,” she said, shining her flashlight into the cargo space. “There’s the missing camera.”
“Not to mention a half-dozen burner phones and a roll of duct tape.” Reed trained his light on the inside of the door. “Is that blood?”
Ellery leaned in to inspect the red-brown smear. “Yes, I think so. Already dried.”
Reed turned to look at the vast swath of trees behind them. “We’re going to need a search team.”
“Good, call them.” She started for the path.
“Ellery, wait.” He jogged after her. “There’s ten thousand acres in there, with no light.”
“I have a light.” She waved her flashlight at him and continued heading for the head of the trail. “We can’t wait. You said it yourself—he’s suicidal, and from the looks of things, he wants to take Chloe with him.”
“I know you want to find her, but—”
She halted and whirled on him, aiming the light right in his eyes. “When you found Coben’s farmhouse, did you stop to call for backup?”
He shielded his face with one hand. “You know I didn’t.” A dozen movie and TV reenactments over the years had dramatized the pivotal moment when Reed broke into the old farmhouse and discovered Ellery nailed into a closet.
Satisfied, she turned again and strode toward the black maw of the trail. Behind her, she heard Reed on the phone relaying their location and the latest developments. The heady wet-earth scent of the forest enveloped her as the trees blocked out the moon from overhead. Bugs chattered at her, their electric hum giving the woods their own unique pulse. Lovesick frogs burped out a mating song in the darkness. She slapped at the mosquitos that thrilled to the arrival of fresh flesh, dive-bombing her bare arms with hungry, stinging tongues.
Quickening footsteps behind her made her heart miss a beat, and she whirled to find Reed hurrying up the trail after her. “It will take time to mobilize everyone in the middle of the night,” he whispered to her. “But they’re on the way.”
Ellery reached a branching point in the trail—go higher toward the marble arch or lower down near the water. She cast her light on the ground for some indication of which way to go, but hundreds of hikers had probably passed this spot in the last few days. “We should split up.”
“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.
“She got to start over. Her life wasn’t ruined—it got better. She married an even richer asshole and got a fancy job at a big hospital. Her kid was running off on her. Did you know that? When I grabbed her, she’d ditched her regular phone in the garbage and was heading for the T. Her nanny didn’t have a clue about it, either. No one gave a damn until I made them care.”
“You were making a point. I think it worked.”
“You’re damn right it worked.”
“But you don’t want to hurt Chloe. It’s not her fault who her mother is.”
“She’s better off this way.”
A chill went through Ellery at the finality of his words. “Where is she now?”
Bobby looked down at the swirling water and rocks below. He did not answer.
“Bobby, where is Chloe?” she asked, her voice low and urgent.
A thrashing noise at the tree line jerked Bobby’s attention from the water. Reed appeared, huffing and puffing from having run straight up the steep incline. “Cops are like friggin’ rats,” Bobby muttered. “Where there’s one, there’s dozens more you can’t see.” He turned his fevered gaze to the trees as if searching them out. “Go ahead!” he yelled into the forest, spreading his arms wide. “Shoot me.”
He staggered forward, his bare toes at the precipice of the stone column. A few more millimeters and he’d tumble to the rocks below. “Bobby, listen to me. No one wants to shoot you. We want to help you.”
“It’s too late,” he said, his tone turning mournful. His gun dangled from his right hand, maybe four feet now from Ellery. “Tell Lisa I’m sorry.” The hand with the gun started to rise.
“No!” she shouted, and surged through the water at the same time, closing the gap between them with a single desperate lunge. She knocked the gun free and it sailed over the edge into the ravine. Bobby tried to leap after it. “No!” she cried again, clutching for him as he slipped on the wet rocks and slid down into the waterfall.
He grabbed her arm. She almost went with him. He sputtered as water poured into his face. “Ellery!” Reed screamed her name from the shoreline.
“Hang on. I’ve got you.” Bobby had hold of her, really. She needed all her strength to keep from falling. She panted from the effort required to brace herself on the column, holding both their weight. Her arm felt like it would tear off. Dimly, she heard Reed crashing into the river after them. “Help is coming,” she panted to Bobby. “Hang … on.”
“No,” he gasped around the water that splashed over his face.
The stone scraped her belly, her arm. They slipped farther over the edge. “Where is Chloe?” she said through gritted teeth. “Tell me.”
“She’s gone. In a better place. She’ll be happy.” His wide eyes bored into hers. “So will I.”
He let go and fell straight down onto the rocks. Ellery sobbed and covered her ears instinctively as he hit the ravine. Reed reached her at that moment, pulling her from the edge as they fell backward together into the river. “I couldn’t stop him!” she cried, completely drenched. She felt drowned, half-dead. She tried to sink back down, but Reed held her up.
“I know. I saw.” He clutched her to his chest, and she heard his heart pounding like a hammer. Far overhead, a helicopter arrived with its searchlight. It found them easily and pinned them with the bright white light. “We need to get to shore,” Reed said. “We need to get help.”
Ellery looked to the edge of the dam and the water coursing over it. She didn’t have to see the body below to know that Bobby was right: it was too late.