Текст книги "Where They Found Her"

Автор книги: Kimberly McCreight

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Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Dedication

For all the daughters, especially my own.

Epigraph

ONE CAN’T BUILD LITTLE WHITE PICKET FENCES

TO KEEP NIGHTMARES OUT. —Anne Sexton

Contents

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Molly

Sandy

Molly

Barbara

Molly

Sandy

Molly

Barbara

Molly

Sandy

Molly

Barbara

Sandy

Molly

Barbara

Molly

Sandy

Molly

Barbara

Molly

Sandy

Molly

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Kimberly McCreight

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

It isn’t until afterward that I think about the bag or the bloody towels stuffed inside. They’re too big to bury, but I can’t just leave them behind. Maybe I should have been better prepared. Thought more about the details. But it’s hard to be ready for something you never imagined you’d do.

I end up taking them toward Route 17. A dumpster, I figure. Behind a gas station, maybe, or a fast-food restaurant. And then, in the morning, a trash company will come and haul the evidence away. But the gas stations are all still open, and so are the restaurants, cars parked right near the garbage, customers in and out. Too many witnesses. It isn’t until I come to Highlights, the tanning salon, that I find what I’m looking for. It’s closed and backs up to an empty lot, a dumpster tucked in a far dark corner.

My heart is pounding as I go to lift the lid. Relief—that’s what I already feel. Almost over, almost finished, the whole thing. But the top won’t budge. I jerk it once, twice. The second time I do it so hard that I bend my fingernails back. It’s chained shut. Locked tight, so someone like me can’t hide dirty secrets inside.

But I can’t look for someplace else. I don’t have time. Can’t wait one more second. Can’t take one more step. This needs to work. I need this to be over, now.

I race around the edges of the dumpster, yanking up. Looking for a sliver of weakness. Finally, I find an edge that lifts—just a few inches, but enough, maybe. I have to shove hard to get the blood-soaked towels in, even harder to push the canvas bag through the thin crack. I’m afraid for a second it’ll get stuck. But when I push my whole weight against it, it flies through so fast that I almost smash my face against the edge of the dumpster.

When I pull my hands out, they’re covered in blood. For a second I think it’s mine. But it’s not mine. It’s the baby’s blood. All over me again, just like it was an hour ago.

Molly Sanderson, Introductory Session, February 18, 2013

(Audio Transcription, Session Recorded with

Patient Knowledge and Consent)

Q:    If you didn’t want to come see me, I’m wondering why you’re here.

M.S.: It’s nothing personal.

Q:    I didn’t think it was. But even if it were, that would be okay, too.

M.S.: Because everything’s okay in therapy?

Q:    You don’t think much of the process.

M.S.: No, no. I’m sorry. I’m not usually this belligerent. I didn’t used to be, anyway.

Q:    Grief can be a very powerful force.

M.S.: And so this is the person I am now? This is who I’m left with?

Q:    I don’t know. Who are you now?

M.S.: I have another child, you know. A little girl, Ella. She’s three. Anyway, she’s the real reason I came. For two weeks after it happened, I didn’t even get out of bed. I don’t think I touched Ella once that entire time. Didn’t hug her. Didn’t tell her everything would be okay. I wasn’t the only one who’d lost a baby. Ella lost the little sister she was so excited to meet. It was all she’d been talking about– Wait, I need a tissue. Sorry, I’m just . . .

Q:    You don’t have to apologize for being upset. You’ve experienced an incredible tragedy, Molly. Some would say losing a child is the single most traumatic experience a person can have.

M.S.: Is that why I feel this way?

Q:    What way?

M.S.: Like I died that day, too. And there’s nothing that’s going to bring me back.

Q:    Maybe we should start at the beginning. Molly, I think it’s time you told me how you lost the baby.

Molly

The sky through our large bay window was just beginning to brighten when I opened my eyes. Not quite morning. Not the alarm, not yet. When the noise came again, I realized it was my phone vibrating on the nightstand. Erik Schinazy glowed on the screen in the darkness.

“Is everything okay?” I answered without saying hello.

In the five months I’d been working at the tiny but respectable Ridgedale Reader, the paper’s contributing editor in chief had never once called me outside business hours. He’d had no reason to. As the Reader’s arts, lifestyle, and human-interest reporter, I covered stories that were hardly emergencies.

“Sorry to call so early.” Erik sounded tired or distracted. Or something.

I wondered for a second whether he’d been drinking. Erik was supposedly sober these days, but it was widely rumored that his drinking had gotten him fired from the Wall Street Journal. It was hard to imagine fastidious Erik, with his tall, rigid posture, swift military gait, and neat buzz cut, ever being sloppy drunk. But there had to be a better explanation for a reporter of his caliber landing at the Reader, editor in chief or not, than his wife, Nancy—a psychology professor at Ridgedale University—being tired of commuting to Ridgedale from New York City, where they’d lived when Erik was at the Journal.

Not that I was one to judge. I’d gotten the staff position at the Reader thanks to Nancy being on the faculty welcoming committee. I didn’t know how much Nancy had pressured Erik to hire me or how desperate Justin had made my situation sound, but from the exceedingly kind, almost therapeutic way Nancy regarded me, I had my suspicions. And with only a law degree and a decade of legislative public policy experience for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women on my résumé, I was fairly certain that I hadn’t been the most qualified candidate for the staff reporter position.

But Justin—now a tenured English professor, thanks to Ridgedale University—had been right to do whatever it took to get me a fresh start. And writing for the Ridgedale Reader had given me unexpected purpose. I had only recently come to accept—after much grueling therapy—that the grief, flowing from me unchecked since the baby died, would continue until I forcibly turned off the spigot.

“No, no, that’s okay, Erik,” I breathed, trying to get out of bed so I didn’t wake Justin. “Can you just hold on one second?”

It wasn’t until I tried to move that I realized Ella was in our bed, her body latched on to mine like a barnacle. I had a vague recollection of it now: her standing next to the bed—a bad dream, probably. Ella always had the most vivid night terrors, often shrieking into the darkness while dead asleep. I’d been the same as a child, but I’d assumed it was a side effect of life with my mother. More likely, the terrors were genetic, the pediatrician told me. But I could handle them better than my own mother did: earplugs, a lock on her door, her most angry shout. So Ella regularly ended the night tucked between us, something Justin had begun a gentle, but concerted, campaign to stop.

“Okay, sorry, go ahead, Erik,” I said once I’d managed to twist myself out from beneath Ella and made my way into the hallway.

“I was hoping you could help with something,” he began, his tone even more brusque than usual. Nancy was so warm by comparison. I often wondered how they’d ended up together. “I’ve had to leave town for a family emergency, and Elizabeth is on assignment in Trenton, and Richard is in the hospital, so that leaves—”

“Is he okay?” I felt a knee-jerk wave of guilt. I hadn’t wished an actual illness on Richard, but in my darker moments I’d come close.

Elizabeth and Richard, both in their late twenties, covered the actual news for the Reader, though they weren’t trying to compete with the national dailies or the twenty-four-hour online news cycle. Instead, the Ridgedale Reader prided itself on in-depth coverage with lots of local color. Occasionally, I got assignments from Erik—covering the new director of the university’s prestigious Stanton Theatre or the celebrated local spelling bee—but largely, I pitched my own stories, such as my recent profile of Community Outreach Tutoring, a program for local high school dropouts generously run by Ella’s kindergarten teacher, Rhea.

Elizabeth had been polite to me, at least, but Richard had made clear that he saw me as a washed-up mom unjustly handed a seat at the table. That his assessment was largely accurate did not make it more enjoyable.

“Is who okay?” Erik sounded confused.

“You said Richard was in the hospital?”

“Oh yeah, he’s fine,” he scoffed. “Gallbladder operation. You’d think he was having open-heart surgery from the way he’s complained, but he should be back in forty-eight hours. In the meantime, I just got a call. Someone reported a body up by the Essex Bridge.”

“A body?” It came out in a squeak I loathed myself for. “You mean a dead body?”

“That would be the implication.” Erik sounded skeptical of me now. He probably had been from the get-go, but I wasn’t helping matters. “I need someone to head out and see what’s going on. And with Elizabeth at the Governor’s Round Table and Richard out of commission—I’d do it myself, but like I said, I have this family emergency. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Is everything okay? With your family, I mean.”

Why was I getting personal? Erik hated personal. When we’d arrived in town back in August, I’d been sure that Erik and Nancy would be our first friends. Justin and I hadn’t socialized in a long time, and we needed to. Justin already had the professorial connection with Nancy, and I’d been instantly drawn to her warmth, even if it was partly attributable to her view of me as a prospective patient. Erik was a little prickly, yes, but he was also incredibly bright and extremely interesting.

However, Erik and Nancy had politely spurned all our advances: brunch, barbecues, concert tickets. All of which had been outside my comfort zone, anyway. Perhaps it was Erik’s checkered history or Nancy’s fertility problems—ones she talked about with an emotional frankness I envied—that kept them at a distance. Or maybe they just didn’t like us. Regardless, it was as though Nancy and Erik were encased in very fine barbed wire, visible only upon close inspection. And my own skin was far too thin to risk pushing nearer.

“Yes, we’re fine,” Erik said with typical curtness. “Anyway, looks like you’re on this dead-body story for now. Assuming you’re up for it.”

“Of course, I’ll head out right now,” I said, relieved that I sounded so calm and efficient.

But I was already nervous. To everyone’s surprise, including my own, I’d done a pretty good job so far bringing my little corner of Ridgedale to life. Even Erik, once a prizewinning foreign affairs correspondent, had seemed impressed. But I’d never covered anything remotely like a dead body. In Ridgedale, those were a rarity. There hadn’t been a single one since we’d lived there.

“Good,” Erik said. There was still hesitation in his voice. “Have you, um, ever covered a crime scene?” He was being polite. He knew I hadn’t.

“A crime scene? That seems to presuppose a murder. Do we know that?” I asked, pleased that I’d picked up on his jumping of the gun.

“Good point. I suppose we don’t,” Erik said. “Our source in the department was vague. All the more reason to tread lightly. Despite what they seem to think, the local police aren’t entitled to any sort of special treatment from us, but they’ll already be on the defensive with the university to contend with.”

“The university?”

“The wooded area near the Essex Bridge is outside campus proper, but it’s university property,” Erik said. “It’s my understanding that it was a Campus Safety officer who called in the body. As you can imagine, the university will be motivated to keep this quiet. Assuming any of this information is even accurate. There’s always the chance that we’ll find out the whole thing is a false alarm.”

The door creaked as Justin came out into the hallway, squinting his hazel eyes at me. His shaggy brown hair was sticking up in all directions like a little boy’s. Who’s that? he mouthed, pointing to the phone with a furrowed brow as he crossed his arms over the Ridgedale University T-shirt hugging his triathlete’s wiry frame. I held up a finger for him to wait.

“Okay, I’ll be careful.” Now I sounded so effortlessly confident that I was almost convincing myself. “I’ll text you an update once I’ve gotten down to the scene. I assume you’ll want something abbreviated for online, full-length for print tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” Erik said, still hesitant. He was doing his best to buy into my confidence, but he wasn’t all the way there. “Okay, then. Good luck. Call if you need anything.”

“Erik?” Justin asked sleepily after I’d hung up. He scrubbed a hand over his beard, which, despite early resistance, I now felt weirdly attached to. It covered up much of Justin’s angular features, yet it managed to make him look even more handsome. “What did he want in the middle of the night?”

I looked down at my phone. It was a little past six a.m. “It’s not the middle of the night anymore,” I said, as though that were the relevant point. My voice sounded spacey and odd.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Justin pushed off the doorframe and put a concerned hand on my arm. Because I wasn’t allowed to be spacey, not even for a second. Not anymore. That’s what happens when you dove off the deep end: people got alarmed when you dared poke a toe back in the murky waters.

“Nothing’s wrong. Erik just wants me to go out to the Essex Bridge for a story,” I said. “They found a– Someone reported a body.”

“Jesus, a body, really? That’s terrible. Do they know what happened?”

“That’s what I’m supposed to find out. Apparently, I’m the temporary substitute features reporter for the Ridgedale Reader.”

“You? Really?” I watched Justin realize he’d stuck his foot in his mouth. “I mean, great, I guess. That seems weird to say if someone’s dead.”

The bedroom door opened wider behind us, and Ella padded out in her red-and-white-striped pajamas, brown curls twisting out in every direction like a bouquet of springs. She was squinting exactly the way Justin had, with her matching hazel eyes. Apart from her hair—which was a chocolate-hued replica of my own reddish curls—Ella was a miniature version of Justin. From her oversize eyes and full ruddy lips to the way she smiled with her whole face, Ella was living proof of the power of genetics.

“Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to wake you.” I reached down and hoisted a heavier-than-ever Ella up on my hip. “Let me put you back to bed.”

“I don’t want to go to bed.” Ella pouted into my neck. “I want to be ready.”

“Ready?” I laughed, rubbing a hand over her back as I carried her down the hall toward her room. “Ready for what, Peanut?”

“For the show, Mommy.”

Shit, the show. A kindergarten reenactment of The Very Hungry Caterpillar in which Ella was to be that crucial “one green leaf.” The show was at eleven a.m. There was no telling if I’d make it.

“You’ll be too tired for the show if you stay up, Peanut. It’s way too early,” I said, pushing her door open with my foot. “You’ll need more sleep or you’ll forget all your lines.”

Ella’s eyes were already half closed by the time I was tucking her back under her pink-and-white-checked duvet and her massive, colorful menagerie of stuffed animals. Reading to Ella in that bed had always made me feel like the little girl I’d never been. And on a good day, it could almost convince me that I was the mother I’d always hoped I’d be.

“Mommy?” Ella said as she snuggled up against her huge red frog.

“What, sweetheart?” I smiled hard, trying not to think about how crushed she’d be when she realized that I wouldn’t make her show.

“I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you, too, Peanut.”

Now that I was finally back—not perfect, not by a long shot, but much, much better—I did everything I could to avoid disappointing her. I was about to say something else, to apologize for missing her show, to make promises or offer bribes. But it was already too late to plead for forgiveness: Ella was fast asleep.

Justin was back in bed by the time I returned to our bedroom. I could tell he was not yet asleep despite his best efforts.

“Ella’s show is at eleven today. It won’t take long, fifteen minutes, maybe. Tape it for me, okay?” I headed for my bureau. Nice but practical, that was what I needed to wear. Or maybe professional but unafraid to tramp through the woods was closer to the mark. Yes, that was it: intrepid. “I didn’t get a chance to warn her I was going to miss it. You don’t think I should wake her up to tell her, do you? I hate to think of her being surprised that way.”

I could feel Justin watching me move around the room getting dressed. I pulled on my nicest sweater—the pale blue cashmere that Justin’s mother had bought me, that set off my eyes—then tugged on a pair of my best non-mom jeans.

“I have to teach at ten, babe,” Justin said. When I turned, he was propped up on an elbow. “I can take Ella to school, but I can’t do the performance. I’m sorry, Molly, but you know how the university president has been about professors missing class lately—he’s on a personal crusade.”

“One of us has to be there, Justin,” I said with irrational force. I knew he couldn’t miss a class unless there was a true emergency, and despite how I was feeling, a kindergarten performance didn’t qualify. “I’ll have to stay at the bridge until I have what I need for the story. Assuming I can figure out what that is. This may be an all-day thing.”

“I agree completely,” Justin said. “You need to go out there and report on this story to the best of your ability. This could be a real opportunity, Molly, and you need to seriously nail it. My guess is, Erik’s not big on second chances. Today, you chasing this story is more important than even The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”

Because for me, this wasn’t just a story, of course. Everything I did these days was another plank in the bridge to a better me. I had become what I once would have despised: the living embodiment of a self-help book.

“And what about Ella?” I felt panicky. I couldn’t help it. Letting her down again. Letting her down again. It was playing on a loop in my head.

“Come on, she’ll survive.” Justin laughed, but not unkindly. “No offense, but this isn’t her Broadway debut. And how many shows have you been to this year? Ten?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t been counting.”

Justin pushed himself up in bed and swung his feet to the floor. “You know as well as I do that we’re not doing Ella any favors by giving her the impression that love means never being disappointed.”

“I think she’s already been disappointed plenty, don’t you?”

“Come on, Molly.” Justin stood and beckoned me into a hug. I shuffled over and wrapped my arms around his strong upper back. As he squeezed me tight, he smelled like the menthol he’d been massaging nightly into a torn right hamstring as he lamented the indignities of aging. “You’re a good mom,” he whispered into my ear. “You don’t have to keep trying to prove it.”

But Justin—with his doting parents and idyllic childhood—could afford to live in a world of value judgments and calculated risks. It had been part of what attracted me to him. But it wasn’t easy to be someone’s mother when you’d never really had one of your own. Even before I was depressed, I’d always relied on a single surefire parenting strategy: trying to be perfect.

“Okay, fine,” I said. Because Justin was right. I knew that intellectually, even if I didn’t feel it. “But you’ll explain it to Ella when she wakes up, right? Why I can’t be there? You’ll prepare her that neither of us will be?”

“I’m on it, I promise,” Justin said, kissing me. “Now go kick some writerly ass.”

It was barely light, the world a muted gray as I drove through the center of Ridgedale. Around the manicured green downtown, the trendy boutiques and expensive coffee shops were locked and dark. The sidewalks were empty, too, apart from an old man walking a tall spotted dog and two women in fluorescent tops and coordinating sneakers, jogging and chatting. To the right was the wide stretch of ivy-covered campus behind a tall iron fence, the sky burning orange at the horizon.

It was all so beautiful in the half-light. It was hard to believe how much I’d resisted moving to town when Justin—whose specialty was nineteenth– and twentieth-century American literature—first mentioned the professorship at Ridgedale University. Twenty-five miles north and a little west of New York City, Ridgedale was a place we probably never would have considered living had it not been for the university. I’d been afraid that leaving the city would make me feel even more isolated and lonely. Not that Ridgedale was some remote farming village. There was a Michelin-starred farm-to-table restaurant and a dozen good ethnic ones, not to mention the world-class Stanton Theatre, an excellent university hospital, and two independent bookstores. The people in town were an eclectic mix, too, with students and faculty from around the world.

Things hadn’t always been so sophisticated, or so I had been told. The Bristol-Myers executive offices, relocated from downtown Manhattan to right outside Ridgedale three years earlier, had notably increased the percentage of the town’s wealthy liberals. Some long-standing Ridgedale residents—in general, less affluent and more conservative—were still bristling at the proliferation of soy lattes and Pilates studios. They longed for the good old days when the university students could shop only at the campus store or Ramsey’s pharmacy and when the dining options in Ridgedale were limited to pizza, chicken wings, or all-night pancakes at Pat’s.

It was a conflict that often played out in the spirited comments section of the newspaper’s online edition. These battles might have little to do with the article they were appended to, but nonetheless they routinely mutated into personal attacks on reporters. At least according to Elizabeth, who had cautioned me never to read the comments on any of my articles posted online, even those that seemed innocuous. It was the one piece of advice she’d given me, and I had listened. I might have been ready to try my hand at this journalism thing, but I wasn’t steady enough to weather being assaulted for it.

I made a left and a quick right, heading past all that majestic stone on the leafy western edge of Ridgedale University. From there, it was a quick shot to the Essex Bridge, which was far enough away that I was surprised it was university property.

When I came around the last bend, the sky had gone from gray to pale blue, the sun hidden behind the high hills in the distance. Even in the dimness, the patrol cars up ahead were impossible to miss. Three were sticking out into the road and a fourth was parked up against the trees, as if it had rolled to a stop there on its own. I had been preparing myself to arrive and find nothing, for it to have been a false alarm, as Erik had warned. But there were the police, and here was the bridge. And down below was Cedar Creek and, apparently, a body.

There wasn’t a person in sight when I got out of the car, just the flashing of the blue and red lights between all those leafless trees. It was quiet, too, the only sound my feet on the pavement. It wasn’t until I’d walked up to the car at the front of the line that I heard some voices floating up from the woods. I paused, noticing for the first time that my fists were clenched.

Tread lightly, like Erik had said, that was all I had to do. And yet that had seemed so much easier to execute before I’d gotten out of the car.

Hello, I’m Molly Sanderson from the Ridgedale Reader. Would someone maybe have a minute to answer a couple questions?

No, much too tentative. Not being obnoxiously overbearing made sense. Presenting my questions as though they were optional? Decidedly ill advised. I didn’t need to be a seasoned reporter to know that.

Hello, I’m Molly Sanderson of the Ridgedale Reader. I’d like to verify some facts.

Much better. A little pushy but not appalling. It was also accurate: I did have the fact of a body I wanted to confirm. Facts, plural, was a bit of an overstatement. But I knew from being a lawyer that feigning a position of strength could be a prerequisite to success.

When I’d inched up close enough to see the water, I could tell right away what all those nervous weathermen had been worried about when they’d talked about late-winter snow followed by early-March rain. Flash flooding wasn’t something you really considered in New York City. They mentioned it, but big dirty puddles were usually how it manifested. As I looked at the creek, though—more like a river as it bounced dark and fast over stones and swept up broken branches—the potential for destruction was clear. Already, a big chunk of the near bank was gone, caved in like the ragged edge of a cliff.

On the far side of the rushing water were half a dozen uniforms near the water’s edge. A handful of others fanned out in the woods beyond, searching for something, though their procedure didn’t seem particularly methodical. They were crisscrossing back and forth, kicking at leaves, poking with sticks, half seeming like they were merely pretending to be doing something useful.

There was something blue on the far bank, too, a plastic tarp cordoned off with yellow police tape. My breath caught—all that nervous energy sucked into the ether. Because there it was, down in those wet, rotting leaves, between all those skinny, leafless trees: the body. Somebody’s dead body.

“If you ask me, they should flip the switch when they find the bastard,” came a voice next to me. “And I don’t even believe in the death penalty.”

When I turned, I saw a young guy in a snug, bright yellow fleece and fitted black shorts. He had a radio strapped around his chest and a Campus Safety officer emblem on his shoulder. He smoothed a gloved hand over his fluffy blond hair and rested it on the back of his neck. He should have been good-looking. He had all the makings of it—cute face, muscular body. But he looked like an oversize child, as if he had gotten larger without actually maturing. It wasn’t the least bit appealing.

“What happened?” I asked, opting not to identify myself, which probably violated all sorts of reporterly ethics. But then I wasn’t technically interviewing him. He was the one who’d started talking to me.

He looked me up and down, eyes lingering on the expensive brand-new Sorel hiking boots I was wearing. A gift from Justin meant to get me excited for our new life in the “country.” They presented an inaccurate, outdoorsy picture of me, but one that might be helpful in context.

Finally, the man looked back up, his eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

“Molly Sanderson.” I held out a hand. He hesitated before shaking it, squinted eyes locked on mine. “And you are?”

“Deckler,” he said with annoying brevity. “You’re not with the Ridgedale Police. I’ve never seen you.”

“I’m a writer.” It was more neutral than “reporter.” “Someone from the police department contacted us.”

Shit, why had I said that? Erik’s contact was surely not public knowledge. It was probably the only thing more important than treading lightly: not exposing my boss’s critical confidential relationships.

“Someone from the police department contacted you? To come here?”

“Us, I should have said. I don’t personally know the details,” I said, hoping he’d drop it. “You found the body?”

Deckler held up a hand and shook his head. “Don’t think so,” he said. “You want an official comment, you’ll have to talk to Steve.”

“And Steve is?”

“Down there.” Deckler nodded toward the water. Standing in the middle of the creek in thigh-high rubber fishing pants was a huge man in a sharply pressed shirt. He had his muscular arms crossed, strong square jaw set as he stared upstream, glaring at the current as if willing a suspect to float down his way. “It’s in his hands now.”

“His hands?” I asked.

“Ridgedale Chief of Police,” Deckler said, but with an edge. Like he didn’t think much of him. “Campus Safety’s here for support.”

“They just come in and take over?” That had been his implication, and there was no telling what might pop out if I stirred the pot.

His jaw tightened. “Only on something like this.” He exhaled in a puff of disgust. “Most campus crime stays on campus. There’s a whole disciplinary process, with hearings, evidence, all that. We handle it all ourselves, confidentially. You know, to protect the students.”

“To protect the students, right,” I said, trying not to sound snide. Because all I could think was: or protect the perpetrators. “But not with something like this?”

He shook his head and looked back out over the water. “No, I guess not.”

“And what is ‘this,’ exactly?”

Deckler shook his head and huffed again, seeming insulted that I’d asked the same question twice. “Like I said, you want details, you’ll have to talk to Steve.”

“Okay.”

I smiled as I took a step toward the creek, already imagining myself at the edge, waving like an idiot to get Steve’s attention. Even from this distance, he did not look like he’d appreciate that kind of thing.

“Whoa, hold up!” Deckler barked before I’d gotten very far. “You can’t just go down there. I’ll have to call him up.”

“Oh, no, that’s—”

Before I could get my objection out, Deckler had whistled loudly through his fingers, right next to my ear, as if calling a dog. When Steve swiveled his head in our direction, he did not look happy.

“Really, I can wait,” I offered meekly, though it was already too late.

“Not here next to me, you can’t.”

Steve looked even more aggravated as he stalked to the side of the river. Don’t you think we’ve got more important things to do than waste our time talking to reporters? I could already imagine him saying that as I watched him take the time to climb out of the water, put on his police hat, which he’d left on the bank for safekeeping, and start up the hill. It took an excruciatingly long time for Steve to climb in those boots that should have looked ridiculous on him but somehow didn’t. It helped that he moved with a slow, strong surety. Like he already knew how things were going to turn out.