Page 77 of In the Bones
Blair shook her head. “It was nearby, though. The police are going to be all over this,” she added, feeling a small thrill. “The whole freaking county’s going to be looking for this guy. I told her she could stay in the garage, but if you saw her leaving, she might be at the station already. Working with a sketch artist to get a drawing of the suspect. She knows all the physical characteristics. She told me.”
This, Blair thought.This is the world I want to live in. Solving crimes and identifying suspects. Paying attention to every last detail.
They’d come to a stop at the cliff, where piles of fat rocks sloped down into the water. It was always windy here, the water choppy, and there were actual whitecaps crashing against the rocks. Today’s breeze was sharp. It hit Blair’s cheeks like a spray of needles.
She turned to look at her boyfriend. His color had morphed from white to green, and the gray shirt he was wearing only made him look sicker.
The shirt.
Beside her, Nash was quiet. The wind stirred his hair, lifting thick pieces and flinging them over his eyes. He was staring out at the water, his expression dark and strange.
Blair’s skin was burning. A fire had started on her scalp and was slowly consuming her, the sensation so fierce it hurt.
Nash’s shirt—the one with the construction company logo, the one Terry gave him last summer that he always wore to work and sometimes after hours too—was exactly like the one Molly had described.
Blair dropped his hand.
“What’s wrong?” The question came out husky, Nash’s tone unfamiliar. He reached for her once more, his fingers locking onto her wrist. “It’s hot,” he said, wiping his brow. “Let’s get closer.”
Nash was already on the rocks. She could tell that they were slippery, both wet from the waves and coated in slick algae. Many were jagged too. She tried to root her feet to the ground, but he pulled harder and she stumbled toward him, landing in his open arms.
Nash held her gaze, and what Blair saw in his eyes terrified her. An awful mix of fear, defeat, and regret.
Horror rattled through her, knocking at her bones as he gave her his back and crouched down to cup one of the coarse stones with his hand.
“I don’t know how things got so fucked up.” He said it to the waves that were frothing at his feet. Nash’s shoulders were quaking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want this. Not any of it.”
When he turned to face her, tears marbling his cheeks and the rock clutched like a baseball in his hand, Blair was already planting her foot on the grass and hauling herself up the cliff. The clamor of panic in her ears was deafening.
“Nash!”
Her head snapped up, and she felt the world tilt. Maureen was running toward her, passing the lighthouse tower with Timclose behind her. Blair’s aunt looked stricken as she yanked her mouth wide and called the name into the wind.
“Drop the rock and move away from Blair,” Tim said when they reached the cliff, both of them huffing. “Come on, son. You know why we’re here.”
Bald fear on his distorted face. Tears darkening his shirt collar. The clack of the greasy rock as it hit the pile under his feet. These were the images of Nash that Blair would remember long after the day was done, and they would crowd out every other. She watched as Tim snapped handcuffs around his wrists.
“Blair,” said her aunt, reaching. “Hon. Come to me.”
Scaling the last stones of the rivermouth, Blair stepped into Maureen’s arms.
SIXTY-FOUR
Tim
Molly Kranz’s Labor Day weekend had started much like Woody Durham’s: with an invitation to Mikko Helle’s house. Where there had been gaps and missing hours, Molly’s words—spoken through Blair Durham, who’d heard them first-hand—had slotted neatly into place.
“You’re doing great,” Tim told Blair, while Valerie, seated next him, gave the girl an encouraging smile. Shana and Mac were there too, in spirit; in body, they were watching the live interview feed in a room down the hall.
Blair’s account unfolded like an origami fan, slow and deliberate, and Tim couldn’t help but be impressed. They’d need to corroborate it all with Molly, but that was looking increasingly possible. Post-surgery, the woman was in stable condition, the doctors optimistic.
Tim got an explanation for everything, starting with why Molly had spent several months hiding out in homes that were shuttered for the season. Apart from having nowhere else to go, she’d been searching the river towns for faces she remembered from that night. Looking for answers. Angelica had told her about phrogging, and she’d watched some videos. By the time Molly got back to Cape Vincent, she knew countless tricks for getting in and out of homes undetected.
He learned what happened after the party, too.
“Molly looked for Angelica for hours,” Blair explained. “In the morning, she took a cab back to town, hoping Angelica had gone back to the hotel, but their room was empty. She thought about calling the police, but Mikko was this big celebrity, and she didn’t want to go head-to-head with him. She seemed really afraid of that—like, what if she said her friend vanished at his party, and he turned it around on her? Toldthe police about the drugs, and claimed Molly had brought them? Molly didn’t know anyone in town, and didn’t have the money for a lawyer. She thought the best thing she could do was wait for Angelica to contact her. But she never did,” Blair said, “so, Molly went home to Syracuse, and a day later she saw Angelica’s face on TV. Her mother had filed a missing person report. Molly was really relieved about that. Wherever Angelica had gone, whatever had happened to her that night, she figured the police would find her.”
“We tried to question her,” Tim said. It still pained him that he and Sol had failed to detain her when it mattered most. “She could have told us what she knew. Helped us get there.”
