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“You’re a fucking dick, you know that?” Harley looks up at his friend Rog, who has put on weight—a lot of it—and looks pasty, purple shiners of fatigue glazed under his eyes. He wears a tattered fleece-lined denim jacket and his eternal sweatpants, Converse high-tops. He dresses like a kid. Acts like one. Harley is really starting to hate him. Rog is cackling with that laugh that always puts Harley on edge. It’s a mean, derisive sound that reminds him of his father.
Finally, Rog climbs off of him and offers Harley a hand out of the murk, still laughing. Harley takes it and is surprised by the other man’s strength as he hoists him from the ground.
“Your face though,” Rog chokes out, cracking up again. “Priceless.”
“My phone,” says Harley miserably. He fishes it out from where it’s landed in the muck of the riverbed and holds it up. It’s completely dead. He rubs at his aching jaw, tries to catch his breath, ribs screaming. His earbuds are nowhere to be seen.
“Stop,” says Rog, annoyed. “You can afford to buy another one.”
“That’s not the point,” he answers, sounding peevish, even to his own ears. “Did you have to punch me in the face like that?”
He rubs at his jaw. It’s not that bad. He’s been hit harder.
“You said you wanted it to be realistic. Yousaidyou wanted me tosurpriseyou. I’d say mission accomplished.”
More cackling. Harley starts heading up the path back toward the house. “Was that you? Did you turn on the lights up there?” He should have remembered that he gave Rog the gate code earlier. Told him to Uber up there.
“I was taking pictures,” Rog says, jogging to catch up. “I swear there’s an energy. That room where Evan killed Steph, while Maddie watched, drugged. I can feel it, man. It’s wild.”
Harley didn’t like it when Rog talked like that, like he was part of the process. He wasn’t.
“We’re not even supposed to be here. Could you be a little discreet?”
“Um, you just did an Insta Live,” said Rog, blowing out a breath. “How was that discreet? Someone’s going to call the cops.”
As if on cue, there’s a wail off in the distance. Sirens. Fuck.
One of his dad’s favorite criticisms—that Harley didn’t use his fucking head. Act first, think later. But as they approach the house, the sirens fade. No one called the police. That’s social media for you. Thousands of people watching, commenting, sending little hearts, but no one everdoesanything. For all they know they just witnessed a murder. But now most of them were on to the next live, the next reel, the next story.
“You’re all set up to meet with Evan Handy tomorrow morning,” says Rog as they enter the house through the back door. “Paperwork is done and filed. I brought your copies to present on arrival. You park in a remote lot, and someone comes to get you for your press visit.”
There’s a smell to the house, something unpleasant. Harley’s been through every room, all the furniture is covered, and there’s something eerie about it. Abandoned but still breathing. The white covers seem to move, pushed by some unseen breeze.
He glances around. If only houses could speak. They bear silent witness to the most intimate, most horrific, of our deeds, holding it all in their walls. What story would this place tell?
“And Mindy Lynn keeps calling, wants to know what you’ve found,” Rog goes on, interrupting Harley’s thoughts. “That woman is nuts. She says she deserves to be in the loop since she’s the one that brought the case to you.”
That’s not true. It was Mrs. Wallace’s pleas that hooked Harley in, the desire to give her some answers. Sam and Ainsley Wallace are out there. Probably not alive—though stranger things have happened.
Butsomebodyknows where they are. And if Harley can find out who, he can bring the Wallace girls home, one way or another.
Mindy Lynn Handy was just desperate to think her son wasn’t a monster. Which he probably was. Harley wasn’t motivated to prove Handy’s innocence, though he’d do that if it wound up being the truth. He wasn’t interested in Handy’s side of the story, exposing the murderer’s twisted motives for all the sickos out there who were interested in that—and they were legion. Hewasn’tselling pain or profiting from misery. The thing that motivated him was reuniting mother with child. No matter how heartbreaking that reunion might be.
“Tell Mindy that she’ll be the first to know.”
They’re careful to turn off all the lights, lock the door, which has the same code as the gate, and step together out into the night. The weather seems to be ready to turn, that Christmas blizzard looming, the air growing more frigid by the moment. But maybe that’s just because his feet are wet, nerve endings still pulsing from Rog’s stunt.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” says Rog. “I was just having fun.”
“I know,” Harley answers, clapping him on the back. “It was good, actually. It was funny.”
They both start laughing then and Harley remembers why they’ve been friends since college. Rog is a good guy, smart, a little goofy, sometimes too exuberant. But he’s smart, efficient, gets things done.
“Oh hey,” says Rog. “I did that tax records research. All the privately owned properties with more than five acres in the fifty-mile region around the disappearance sites.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Harley. “Anything interesting?”
Rog shrugs. “I just gathered the data. You’re the investigator.”
