I wipe my find on my shirt, wipe it and wipe it until it’s as clean as it’s going to get. Then I stick out my tongue and touch just the tip to the surface.
And it sticks.
I yank it away, my stomach rising. I spit and keep spitting—never mind needing to conserve body water.
It could be an animal bone. It must be. I cradle it in my palm. It’s smaller at the top, flares out at the bottom. Both ends are squared off. I hold it next to my fingers.
I think it’s a finger bone.
From the same hand that once held mine, that lifted me high in the air, that surely brushed the hair back from my forehead? Is that what I hold loose in my hand? Is that what I pressed against my mouth?
No. Other animals must have bones like this. I run through the possibilities. Deer have hooves. Skunks are too small. Raccoons’ hands wouldn’t be this big.
Maybe a bear?
And just as I think bear, the birds stop singing.
Something is coming. Crashing through the underbrush.
CHAPTER 39
FRECKLED WITH RED
My heart pounds in my ears. Something big is out here in the woods with me. It’s coming closer. And I’m hurt and can’t run away. Ignoring the pain, I press myself to the ground, still as a rabbit.
But wouldn’t a bear or any other animal be less, I don’t know, less noisy? One with nature? I realize I’m being ridiculous. Whatever is moving through the woods must be a person.
“Help!” I shout. “Can someone help me?” My voice is weak. I feel stupid, like a little kid playing a prank.
“Hello?” a man shouts back, surprise coloring his voice.
“Can you help me? I’m hurt!”
A few seconds later, Stephen Spaulding walks into view. The chief of police who was trying to get everyone to calm down yesterday so they wouldn’t form a lynch mob and go after Benjy.
“Hello! It’s Olivia, isn’t it? What’s wrong?” He’s scanning me from head to toe, and then his gaze sharpens as he sees my unlaced shoe. “Your ankle?”
“I was hiking. I might have broken it.”
He comes closer and drops to his knees. “Okay if I touch it?”
“Yeah.”
As he gently pulls off my shoe and sock, my shoulders relax. Even though his cool fingers leave hot pain trailing behind as he pokes and twists, it’s nothing compared with the fear that was devouring me.
“I was worried you were a bear,” I say. Part of it comes out as a squeak as he moves my foot.
He laughs. “A bear! Bears are usually more scared of you than you are of them.” He starts putting my sock and shoe back on, and even though he’s careful, I suck in my breath. “I’m pretty sure your ankle’s sprained, not broken. Of course, you’ll need to get an X-ray.” He returns his gaze to my face. “Was that your car I saw when I drove in here?”
I nod.
He tilts his head. “Kind of a weird spot to pick to go hiking. There are no marked trails around here, so it’s not easy going.”
“Yeah. I learned that the hard way.”
He’s still looking at me, waiting for an explanation. I have to give him a little more. Better to stick close to the truth.
“After hearing everyone talk about what happened to that Naomi and Terry, I decided to come out here and check it out.”
He frowns. “Don’t you think that’s kind of morbid?” There’s a burst of chatter from a microphone clipped to his shoulder. His eyes never leave my face as he reaches up and turns down the sound.
What can I say? “I don’t know.”
“You should realize after what happened yesterday that it’s not a game to her friends and family.” He shakes his head. “It’s not a human-interest story to them. Two people died in these woods.”
“I’ve just been thinking about them a lot, sir. I wasn’t being disrespectful.” My voice breaks a little.
His face softens, almost imperceptibly. “Okay. And call me Stephen.”
“Are you here because of the case?”
He nods. “We’re going to be conducting a new search because of the jawbone that was recovered in this area. If we find more bones, we might be able to figure out exactly how Terry Weeks was killed. After all these years, though, we’ll be lucky to find any. Animals like to chew on them. They get splintered and pockmarked and scattered.”
I push away the mental images. “I’ve got one for you. I think.”
“Got one what?”
“A bone.”
He jerks his head back. “Are you serious?”
For an answer, I hold it out, pinched between finger and thumb.
His eyes widen in amazement. Then he pulls a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket and puts them on. He holds out his palm, and I let go. I let go of my father’s hand, or at least what I believe is part of it.
He catches his breath as he regards it. “Where did you find that?”
When I point, I find myself noticing my own finger, thinking about the bones beneath my flesh.
He squints, then looks back down at his palm. “It does look like a human knucklebone. Although you would be surprised how much animal bones can resemble human bones.” With his free hand, he carefully takes the glove off by turning it inside out, leaving the bone trapped within. He knots the glove and then slips the makeshift holder into the front pocket of his uniform. Then he gets to his feet and walks to where I was pointing. “Is this the spot?”
“I think so.”
He crouches and inspects the ground, pushing aside ferns, but finally stands up. “At least now I know where to center the search.” He pulls what looks like a roll of orange tape from his pocket. But when he tears off a strip and ties it to a branch, it doesn’t stick to anything, just flutters in the light breeze. He turns back. “Okay, now we need to get you to a hospital. Put your backpack on your lap. I’m going to carry you.”
My face gets hot. “Maybe I could just put my arm around your shoulders and hop.”
“That would take too long, and you’d probably just hurt your other ankle in the process.” He’s already squatting, lifting my arm and putting it around his neck, threading his own arm under my bent legs. When he stands up, I hear him trying not to grunt. I’m guessing I weigh more than he thought, but he’ll never admit it.
“I swear I’m a pretty good hopper.” I’m babbling, trying to ignore the fact that I am now clasped to this cop’s chest. “And this time I would pay attention to where I’m going.” His face seems to be getting red. “Are you sure this is okay?”
“I used to hunt around here when I was growing up. Back then I could field-dress a deer and carry it out myself on my back. Pretty sure you weigh less than a deer.”
The last time I was carried through the woods, it was probably a lot easier. I would have weighed about a fifth of what I do now.
And it’s now that I have a flash of memory. Of the last time I was carried through these same woods.
Only it’s not my dad who’s carrying me. It’s not my mom.
It’s someone who is holding me tight and muttering under their breath. Pressing the back of my head with the flat of a hand. My face so tight against their shoulder that I can barely breathe.
All I can see is a pair of dark boots hurrying through the snow.
Snow churned pink, freckled with red.
CHAPTER 40
LET ME GO
I freak out. Thrashing, kicking, arching my back, grunting the word no—doing all the things I was too afraid to do fourteen years ago. But I feel as if I’m three years old again.
Stephen sets me down in a hurry. I’m flat on my back on the ground, a rock digging painfully into my spine. But underneath me there’s dirt, not snow.
“Olivia? Are you all right? Can you hear me?”
He kneels over me, running his fingertips over my scalp, his fingers snagging in my hair. He looks scared.
I roll onto my side and throw up. In my mind, I again see the scarlet blood spotting the snow, fe
el the rough fabric of a coat scraping my cheek, hear the voice muttering above me. My stomach convulses again, but all that comes out is strings of bitter yellow bile.
“What just happened?” I say, more to myself than to him.
“I think you just had a grand mal seizure. All of a sudden you went stiff, and then your arms and legs started jerking. I’m just lucky I was able to set you down before I dropped you.”
I push myself up to my elbows and then sit up.
He presses his lips together. “Your eyes were moving, but they were unfocused. Have you ever had a seizure before?”
I’m not going to tell him it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all. “No, sir—I mean, Stephen.”
His mouth twists as he regards me. “I can’t feel any injuries to your skull, but you must have hit your head when you fell. We need to get you to the hospital ASAP.” He pronounces it ay-sap, and he’s already gathering me back up, getting to his feet with a grunt. He starts walking much faster than he did before, fast enough that I’m bouncing against his torso.
“I’m already feeling better,” I tell him, pushing back my memories. “I don’t think anything’s really wrong. It was probably just, like, shock. From finding that bone.”
“Right now I don’t think it’s up to you or me to decide what’s wrong with you,” he says as we move into the open. “I’ll feel a lot better after you’ve had an MRI or a CT scan or something.”
Past his shoulder I see my car, with his cop car parked right behind. “I’m pretty sure I can drive.” The Mazda is the most valuable thing I own. I don’t want to leave it here to be stolen or vandalized.
“No way.” Stephen half rests me on the hood of his car while he digs for his keys.
“It’s not like my ankle’s broken. It’s just I can’t put my full weight on my foot, that’s all. My car’s an automatic, so I don’t even need my left foot. And I promise”—mentally, I cross my fingers—“that I’ll drive straight to the hospital.” I’m pretty sure it’s a $250 copay for an emergency-room visit. Probably a bunch more if it involves a CT scan or an MRI.
“And I would be liable if you ended up plowing through a light because your foot decided not to cooperate or you had another seizure. I can see the headlines now. ‘Police chief abandons injured girl in woods.’” He opens the door to the back of the police car and plops me down on the hard seat. I hiss a little as my ankle brushes against him. “See if you can put your leg up and still get a seat belt on.”
I turn sideways. The seats are formed with weird dips that I realize are shaped like the prisoners who must normally ride back here. There are indentations for their butts and shoulders and heads. But I manage to stretch out my leg and still buckle up as Stephen watches, shaking out his arms and massaging his biceps. He no longer seems like the rigid cop who would never color outside the lines. His fear for me has softened him, made him more a person than a cop.
Maybe there’s a way I can use that. “So what do you think really happened with Naomi and her boyfriend?” I ask after he gets in the car and pulls out onto the road. The police radio has been turned down, but little voices drift back to me. “Do you think it was Benjy?”
“We’ll interview him, sure, but in my opinion, that guy’s just mentally ill. He’s not a killer. You have to feel sorry for him. He was going places, but then something that wasn’t his fault sent him off the rails. Yesterday, everyone was so busy pointing fingers, but there’s a strong possibility it was actually a serial killer.” We’re already on the main road.
“A serial killer?”
“About a year after your parents died, a girl in Grants Pass was murdered. Stabbed to death. She had long dark hair, just like Naomi’s. Sometimes the first crime in a series is worked as a single case and then closed, and no one realizes it’s related until years later.”
He’s talking about Angie Paginini. “Wouldn’t there be more than just one or two girls if it was a serial killer?”
“Not if the killer kept moving.” Stephen’s hair is cut so close I can see the little white dots of his scalp between the bristles. His eyes never leave the road. “If you kill someone in one state and then kill someone else in a different state, chances are pretty good no one will ever put the two murders together, especially if you don’t leave evidence like shell casings or fingerprints or DNA behind.”
“Jason’s a trucker,” I say. “That means he’s always moving on.” I decide not to mention what I know about the FBI task force.
“Jason Collins?” He shakes his head and makes a sound like a laugh. “I don’t think so.”
“He said some weird stuff to me last night. About how people are tapping his phones. And about how you’re watching him.”
In the rearview mirror, I see Stephen’s eyes widen. “Who? Did he mean me? That I’m watching him?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm.” He looks thoughtful. “Of course, we’re going to be reinterviewing Jason along with everyone else who was a friend of Naomi or Terry. We’re following up all possible leads. But my money’s still on it being a stranger.”
“But why? Why would someone just randomly kill people?” My stomach clenches. How can you ever let down your guard if there are monsters walking around who look like people?
He sighs. “Some people enjoy killing. They don’t have any more reason than that. Thankfully, it’s a very small percentage of the population.”
“But why kill a couple?” I shift on the hard seat. “Don’t serial killers usually kill either all men or all women?”
“It could be he killed Naomi and then killed Terry when he realized she wasn’t alone. And some killers are jealous of people who are capable of forming relationships, so they’ll target couples.”
Like the couple on the Northern California beach that Duncan told me about. “But whoever killed her and that Terry guy took their car,” I protest. “And Naomi’s kid.”
“Boy, you really have been reading up on it.” Even though he doesn’t have his lights or sirens on, Stephen is still driving about ten miles an hour over the speed limit, his hands tight on the steering wheel. I wish I could reassure him about my “seizure” without telling him the truth. “Anyway, the two still might be related. He didn’t keep the truck. Maybe he only took it so he could easily transport the kid.”
“But why didn’t this guy just kill the kid?”
He looks pained. “Even a serial killer might balk at killing a toddler.”
I realize that it’s more than that they simply couldn’t bring themselves to kill a little kid. They still could have left me there in the cold woods with the bodies of my parents. They could have walked away and let chance decide whether I died from exposure or whether some other person venturing out in the wintry forest found me in time.
But instead they took me somewhere safe, a place where they knew I would be found. And then they let me go.
CHAPTER 41
LIKE I NEVER WAS
All day at work, I’ve had to answer questions about my blue plastic walking boot. My ankle’s not even broken, just sprained, but the doctor wants me to wear the boot for ten days as my ligaments heal. After I was done at the hospital—I was able to talk them out of doing a scan of my head—Duncan picked me up in his mom’s car and drove me to get the Mazda.
We talked a lot. He told me that he wants to be my friend more than he wants to be my boyfriend. I’m not sure he was totally telling the truth, but my truth is that I missed him. Plus I still need someone to help me figure out what really happened to my parents.
The only two good things about the boot are that it’s on my left foot, so I can still drive, and that it allows me to work, because I can’t afford to take time off. The bad news is it attracts a lot of attention, mostly from customers who want to tell me about the times they’ve sprained their own ankles. In detail.
The vinyl seat scorches me when I get into my car. Nora asked me to bring back some lemonade, but when I pull into my driveway, I see a cop c
ar parked in front of her house. Her curtains twitch, and then Stephen steps out of her door, dressed in uniform, face flushed from the heat. “Just the person I came to visit,” he says, meeting me halfway down the walkway. “I wanted to see how your ankle was holding up. And I need your help to plan the new search.”
“Just a sec.” I hold out the sweating bottle. “I’m going to run in and give this to Nora.”
He shakes his head. “I was just visiting with her, but she said she wasn’t feeling well. She’s taking a nap.”
“She won’t mind if I stick it in her fridge.”
He steps in front of me, and I’m suddenly conscious of the jut of his chest, the gun on his hip. “No, Olivia. You shouldn’t go in there.”
The hair rises on the nape of my neck. Something is terribly wrong. I don’t waste time arguing. I step to the right, then slip past him on the left, clomp up the two steps as fast as I can, and fling open the door.
Nora is sitting on the couch. Her lap is covered by a pile of afghans, and she’s wearing those fake UGGs on her feet. Her head is tilted back against the cushions. Her glasses are lying on the floor.
Her eyes are open. Not moving or blinking.
“Oh my God—” I turn to Stephen, who has followed me inside, but then I see he already knows that something’s wrong.
He closes the door behind him. I take a step back, but the coffee table catches me in the back of the knees.
He grabs my wrists and pulls me close. Through gritted teeth, he says, “You asked so many questions, turned up in so many places. So I ran you through our databases. Turns out you’re not who you say you are.”
Inside, I’m frozen. Everything’s wrong. Everything’s twisted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Olivia Reinhart.”
“Yes. And you’re also Ariel Benson. Terry and Naomi’s daughter. And once I saw that, it explained why you seemed so familiar.”
He looks over at Nora’s still figure. “She saw me knocking on your door and invited me in. She realized I had figured out who you were. But the thing is”—his eyes flash back to mine—“she hadn’t figured out who I was. Before she died, she said you hadn’t told anyone else who you were.”