Page 28 of Everything She Feared

There’s pizza in the fridge. We held the onions for you.

She’d smiled—she liked cold pizza and ate a slice before heading to bed.

Now at her desk, in the tranquil predawn light, Pierce estimated that she still had an hour before Webb and Ethan would be up.

She drank more coffee and got back to work.

Once more chronologically with key points: Anna Shaw is Katie Harmon’s babysitter. How did they get along? There was the sleepover. Katie says Anna broke up with her boyfriend.

Pierce went to her notes for his name: Tanner Bishop.

We need to talk to him. What happened between them? What was Anna’s state of mind at the time she fell? So then Anna and Katie take the bus with the group to Sparrow Song Park. But no one’s at the park’s entrance booth. We finally got to Dave Kneller, the park owner.

Pierce found Kneller’s statement.

We staff the booth. But our person went home sick real early. I told him to leave the gate up. We knew the Sunny Days folks were coming, so it was no problem. The gate was up so it would’ve been free admission until I could get someone to work the gate. It was fine with me. We don’t have plate readers or anything like that. So, yeah, we likely had a few early birds come and go, hikers, joggers, etc. We’re a laid-back operation. We do have a camera in the parking lot for liability. But it’s an old one. This is just a terrible thing. We’ll do all we can to help.

Pierce bit her bottom lip and went online. Notice and details of the excursion to Sparrow Song had been made public, posted on the Sunny Days site. Anyone could’ve seen it.

And we don’t know who was in the park before or after the Sunny Days group arrived. We have a list of plates the team collected after the fact at the scene to run down and canvass, but the key question is, did anyone get by us, anyone from earlier?

Pierce moved to the videos and photos that followed Anna Shaw and Katie Harmon’s path to the scene, studying the terrain and area around the clifftop. She saw the cluster of stones several yards from the point where Anna fell. Partially concealed by underbrush and loosely spread around.

Maybe used in a campfire years ago. I can’t put my finger on it but there’s something about these stones.

Pierce moved on to the video and photos of the broken branch, the cliff face and the bottom of it. Her heart broke again as she looked at the area, the riverbank, then Anna’s lifeless body.

Pierce paused for a moment.

Was this all for a selfie, Anna? Is Benton’s assumption correct? Or is there more to it?

Pierce had no key facts, no evidence to support anything yet. One important item was Anna’s phone, which still hadn’t been located. They’d called the number without success, and tracking apps had failed. The phone may have been damaged or swept away down the river. Other work was ongoing. Much of the forensic analysis was still to be completed. They had the backpacks and they had warrants in the works for them and one to look at Katie Harmon’s phone.

Pierce went online to check Anna Shaw’s social media, which had a lot of posts related to music, fashion, celebs and food. Not a whole lot of selfies. If Anna was trying to become a Sunny Days supervisor, why would she stop to take a selfie? Seems a little irresponsible, even odd, or out of character, Pierce thought.

What we have is a dead seventeen-year-old girl and the account of one child witness.

As she reread other statements and reports, a pinging sounded at the back of Pierce’s mind.

I’ve forgotten something, overlooked something.

She couldn’t pinpoint it.

Kneading the tension in her neck and shoulders, she weighed what she had to do today when the floor creaked near her.

“Hey.” Webb kept his voice low, whiskers brushing Pierce’s cheek as he kissed her. “I didn’t hear you come in. You get any sleep?”

“A little.”

“Guess being the lead on a case means no sleep for you.”

She stared at the screen of her tablet.

“I can’t make mistakes. I have to get this right, Webb.”

“You can do this, hon. You’re a detective, you’ve got this.”

“We’ll see.” Pierce paused, closing the file of a photo of Anna’s corpse. “A girl is dead and it’s on me to prove without a doubt exactly what happened, and there are things going on.”

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