Page 23 of Glimmer in the Darkness

“I’ve lived through this. I know the drill.”

Cote shifted, and the chair beneath him squeaked. “You know how hard it is, this balance between what we share and what we hold close. And now your best friend’s going through it. This can’t be easy for you.”

“Or you.” Detective Cote was Reid’s uncle, Ella’s great-uncle. This kidnapping had hit a little close to home for the Cote family.

“I’m not with the media,” James said.

Cote’s expression didn’t shift. He said nothing.

“I have a few questions.”

“I’ll answer if I can.”

“I worried, back then, that Cassidy had been killed too. But Vince assured me that you guys knew she was alive. I always wondered how you could be so sure.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You don’t know? We told your parents.”

Because of James’s relationship with—and loyalty to—Cassidy, the conversations with his parents about what happened had been awkward… tender. Like open wounds nobody wanted to press too hard, wounds one jab away from bleeding. In the interest of protecting their relationships, of protecting his feelings, he supposed, his parents hadn’t shared much.

When he didn’t respond, Cote said, “She called us on the day Hallie’s body turned up, told us a story about having been kidnapped and held on the mountain for two nights against her will.”

Cassidy had told James the truth. About the call, anyway. “Did you follow-up on that?”

“Gee, should we have?” The sarcastic remark sounded off coming from the sixty-something professional.

“Everybody was so sure she was guilty, I just wondered if her claims were dismissed out of hand.”

He leaned across the desk. “We don’t dismiss anything out of hand. We checked the mountain, asked around. Nobody’s ever heard of any rock formations on the mountain a person could climb into. Bart Bradley told us about some big boulders up there, and I had someone check ’em out. They found nothing like the place where Cassidy claimed she’d been kept, and no evidence anybody had been there. Not only that, but it was the dead of winter, and she claimed to have spent that first night out in the open. It was in the thirties that night. Little chilly for a campout.”

“Wasn’t like they went up for fun.”

“Kid your sister’s age probably wouldn’t have survived, especially considering she’d been sick.”

She’d had the flu, had been confined to the house for a week. Hallie was never one to stay inside for long, much less a week, despite how sick she felt. It was probably the reason she and Cassidy had been out that afternoon. Hallie had probably begged Cassidy to take her onto the trails.

“Hallie was better by then. And she was tough, tougher than you’d think.”

“Still… little as she was, and your mom said she hadn’t been eating. How would she have survived the elements?”

Cassidy would have taken care of her.

“According to your girlfriend, they were on the trails on Ayasha when they just happened upon a man, who just happened to be a kidnapper. But the parking lot was blocked off. Nobody but Wilson and Eugene Cage had been at the campground, and no strange cars were found anywhere at the base of the mountain.”

He started to ask about the Cages, but Cote lifted a hand, silencing him. “We looked into Wilson and Eugene. Wasn’t them.”

“No chance you’re wrong.”

“I’ve been doing this a long time. Wilson told us he saw Cassidy and Hallie on the trail, but he and Eugene had an alibi for that night.”

“You and Wilson’s family go way back, don’t you?”

“What are you getting at?” Cote asked.

“Getting at the idea that it’s easier to blame the outsider than—”

“A little girl was dead, Sullivan. You think I didn’t care about who did it? You think I was more concerned about protecting an old friend?”

“I think it’s hard to believe ill of somebody you think you know.”