by Allen Eskens
“I’m sure he has,” Amy said. “But that’s another thing I don’t keep tabs on. A boy needs his privacy.”
“Excuse me for saying this,” Niki said, “but it sounds like you and Gavin weren’t all that close.”
“We’re very close,” Amy said, her nervousness momentarily replaced by indignation. “He’s my only child. I just don’t pry into his life, that’s all. His affairs are his affairs.”
“Do you and Gavin talk much?” Niki asked, turning from the pool to face the woman.
“I guess, maybe once a month or so.”
“And he never told you about dating any girls?”
“Oh, I’m sure he told me, but I’m no good at remembering stuff like that.”
Niki took a couple steps toward the wilting Amy Spencer, closing the gap to about four feet, holding Amy’s attention so that she could read the woman’s eyes. “Did he ever mention a woman named Chloe Ludlow?”
“Chloe Ludlow? I don’t…That name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“It would have been about two years ago.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What about Virginia Mercotti?”
“I can’t say I remember that name either.”
“She also went by Ginny. Would have been about four years ago.”
“I don’t think I can help you with that.”
“Did he ever date a girl named Eleanora Abrams?”
Amy looked at Matty, then at the ground. “What’s this all about, anyway?”
“Eleanora Abrams? Does that name mean anything to you?”
Amy tried to hold her gaze on Niki but failed. “Of course not.” She smiled as her eyes fell away, laying bare the knots that twisted inside of her. “I told you, I don’t keep tabs.”
“That’s strange,” Matty said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, then handed it to Amy. “Because I have a police report here that says you threw a hot cup of coffee on Eleanora Abrams at a homecoming dance.”
Amy didn’t bother reading the report. “That was a long time ago.” Her cheeks turned red as she crumpled the paper into a wad and threw it to the concrete. “What does any of that have to do with Gavin now? It didn’t mean nothing.”
“You assaulted a fourteen-year-old girl. That’s not nothing.”
Anger flared in Amy’s eyes. “She treated him like shit. A mother’s supposed to protect her child, ain’t she? And the cops didn’t charge me because they saw the truth. That girl was a mean little bitch and deserved more than what I gave her.”
“Is that why you lied to the police?” Niki said. “To protect Gavin?”
“You’re twisting my words.”
Niki turned back to the pool, walking to the edge again. “Is this where Richard died?” She looked over her shoulder and saw Amy on the verge of apoplexy. Her lip had curled up into a snarl and her cheeks blazed with color.
“You need to leave now,” Amy hissed.
Niki gave Amy a soft smile, one that said, Yeah, we know what you did. Then she nodded to Matty and they headed toward the front door.
On the way, Niki had a thought. Gavin had an alibi for the night Lila Nash was raped, but Gavin was also a cunning little shit. Niki had no evidence that he faked his alibi, but at the same time, she was becoming more convinced he was not in Indiana that night. If Gavin was clever enough at the age of twelve to kill his own stepfather, he could surely manufacture an alibi.
Niki stopped in the doorway. “Ms. Spencer, I have one last name for you—Lila Nash. Did your son know anyone in high school named Lila Nash?”
“I told you to get out,” Amy said.
Niki nodded a polite goodbye and left.
As Niki walked with Matty back to her car, she wondered how long it would take for Amy to make her next trip to visit Gavin. And more important, how Gavin would react when she gave him the list of names—especially the last one, Lila Nash.
Chapter 43
Lila woke up that Saturday morning, rolled over to touch Joe, and found him gone, his side of the bed cold. He had texted her when he got to North Dakota, and they’d spoken on the phone last night, but that didn’t stop her muscle memory from seeking him out.
She hadn’t told him about Beth Malone’s plan to retire. If she had, he would have driven home, chucked the story so he could swoop in with some misguided impulse to rescue her. That was the last thing she wanted—or so she told herself. In truth, she wanted Joe there more than anything. She craved his strength. She would need him more than ever once her world fell apart.
She thought about staying in bed and dreaming about Joe, holding him in that hazy penumbra between wakefulness and sleep, and she would have had she not had an invitation to go rock climbing.
Lila still didn’t understand why Andi had asked her to go. It wasn’t as though they were friends. Hell, the woman had yet to crack a smile in Lila’s direction. If Andi hadn’t been her boss, there was no way she would have spent a Saturday climbing up the side of a bluff with her. But Andi was her boss, so Lila had decided to make the best of it.
* * *
Interstate State Park was a small slice of land along the St. Croix River. When Lila arrived, she found Andi waiting at the trailhead, wearing light pants, tight around the ankles, similar to the yoga pants that Lila wore but made of sturdier material. She wore a simple sports bra top that exposed a hard table of abdominal muscles, and she carried a backpack over her shoulder and a helmet in her hand.
“You’re late,” Andi said as Lila approached.
“You said nine, right?” Lila had glanced at her watch, which read 9:02. So it was going to be one of those days.
Andi pulled a pair of shoes from her backpack, light and colorful with hard, pointed toes. They looked expensive. “Size six, right?”
“Yeah.”
Andi handed the shoes to Lila and started down the trail without any further greeting.
“We’re doing what’s called a top-rope climb. I’ll be taking a trail up here to go to the top of the wall and set the anchor. You follow the main path until you can’t go any farther. That’s the wall we’ll be climbing today. I’ll meet you there.”
With that, Andi cut to the right, taking a small path into the woods. Lila stopped, hoping to ask a few questions, but Andi was gone.
The path to the wall sloped down to the river, passing a landing where a riverboat was taking on tourists for a trip down the St. Croix. After that, the path turned rocky and followed along the bottom of a hundred-foot-tall bluff, the trail disappearing beneath fallen chunks of basalt that littered the base of the wall.
The coppery river churned a dozen feet away, giving the warm summer air an earthy aroma. Lila followed the trail until she could go no farther, stopping at the bottom of a bluff, dark and scarred with fissures cutting both horizontally and vertically like a Stone Age Tetris.
Soon Andi appeared at the top of the wall, bent over as she connected the rope to the anchor. Lila had watched a video the night before and knew that top-roping meant the rope ran through a pulley so that one person could climb while the other—the belayer—held the opposite end from the ground below.
When she stood up, Andi yelled, “Rope!” Two ends of a blue rope unfurled as they sailed down the face of the cliff. Andi then hooked the rope to a harness around her hips and slid over the side, easing herself down with the grace of a bird.
At the bottom, Andi took off her backpack and pulled out a second harness, which she handed to Lila. “This end goes in front.”
Lila slipped her legs through the straps and pulled the harness on like a pair of pants. Andi gave it a jerk and then tightened the strap around Lila’s stomach, shoving a hand between the padding and Lila’s belly, to check the snugness of the fit. Then she inspected the leg straps, tightening each slightly to account for Lila’s thinner legs.
“How’s that feel?” Andi said.
“Tight.”
“Tight is good. We don’t want you falling out of you
r harness.”
“Is that a thing?” Lila asked.
Andi didn’t answer.
“Am I climbing today? I thought I was just gonna…you know, belay for you.”
“Oh, you’re climbing, all right. This is a figure-eight knot.” Andi stretched an arm’s length of rope, made a loop, and wrapped the end around and through. “Do that first, then—” Andi slid the rope through two loops on the front of Lila’s harness. “Always make sure you connect through both hard points.”
“Shouldn’t I take a class first? I’ve never climbed before. I mean, I did a wall at the Y, but not—”
“Pay attention,” Andi snapped. “Your life depends on doing this right. Now take this end and follow the path of the figure eight.” Andi moved the rope, snake-like, through the figure-eight knot. Lila was lost.
“Is there going to be a test, because I have no idea what you just did.”
“You’ll just have to trust me, I guess.” Andi gave the knot a yank and then took the opposite end of the rope and passed it through what Lila recognized from her brief research as a belay device, connected to Andi’s harness.
“You don’t have your shoes on,” Andi said.
Lila hadn’t thought to put on the climbing shoes Andi had given her, and sat down to swap out of her cross trainers.
“Now, before you start climbing, you’ll need to plan your path. I’ve always found that rock climbing is a little like handling a case in court. You don’t just charge in; you plan it out—have a strategy that covers every contingency. If you make a wrong turn on the wall, you’ll end up under an overhang or stuck in water or mud.”
Lila stood in her new shoes and pressed her toe against a rock, getting the feel for the hardness in the soul. Andi handed Lila the helmet, and as she strapped it on, Andi attached a bag of chalk to the back of Lila’s harness.
“The object of top-roping is to climb to the anchor. Touch it and I’ll let you down.”
“And if I don’t touch it?”
Andi didn’t answer, but instead gave Lila a look as if she had just been insulted. Then she pointed at the bluff. “Start wherever you want.”
Lila walked to the face of the wall and put a hand against it. The east-facing rock was warm to the touch, but cool in the fissures where sun didn’t reach. She was about to start climbing when she remembered Andi’s instruction: Have a strategy. Lila stepped back.
The place where she stood seemed the obvious starting point, the cracks in the wall rising like a ladder. She followed the ladder with her eyes to the point where it ended, about forty feet up. From there, the wall turned smooth. That route was a trap.
A second starting point angled into a corner about halfway up and looked doable after that, but then Lila noticed the trickle of water painting the rock green. There would be no way to get to the top without climbing through mud and water for several feet. It might become impossible to climb with wet shoes. Another dead end.
On her left, the wall rose with very few places to grip, but seemed to offer relief about halfway up. She followed that path with her eyes and saw every step she would take until the last ten feet, where shadows obscured her view. She decided that that would be her path. If she was going to struggle on her first climb, she preferred that it be at the lower elevation.
When she looked for her first handhold, she spotted a patch of white—chalk from previous climbers. She had chosen correctly.
Lila had no cadence to her climb. She pressed her chest into the stone and made slow yet deliberate moves. She had never gone out for sports in high school, but she could keep up with the best of them in her PE classes. Still, this climb was putting her to the test, and she hadn’t gone more than thirty feet.
Andi called out encouragement, things like “Rely on your feet!” and “Your legs are stronger than your arms!” Lila looked for the chalk remains of those who had climbed before her, and even when the hold seemed too small, she put her faith in the chalk—her yellow brick road to the top.
A little over halfway, she came to a ledge where she could rest. It was the first time she’d had a chance to look down, and when she did, her stomach turned to jelly. Lila had never been afraid of heights, but she had never clung to the side of a cliff sixty feet off the ground before. Her lungs began to heave, pumping more breath through than she needed, making her dizzy.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “What am I doing? This is stupid.”
“What’d you say?” Andi called up.
“I’m dizzy. I don’t think…”
“Breathe like you’re standing on the ground. It’s the same air up there as down here.”
“You sure about that? It seems thin.”
“Take a moment. Look around. Find your next hold. Focus on the climb.”
Next to her, Lila could see chalk on both sides of a crevice. She tried to figure out how those two smudges could possibly work together.
“You’re going to have to do a lay-back,” Andi hollered.
“A what?”
“That edge of rock nearest to you is called a flake. Grip it like you want to pull it toward you. Then put a foot on the wall on the other side of the gap. Pull yourself toward the wall with your hands while pushing away with your legs. The tension will let you walk up the wall to that next hold.”
“I can’t…I—”
“Grip the flake!”
Lila put her hands where the chalk dictated. Then she put one foot on the chalk smear beyond.
“Once you start the maneuver, don’t hesitate,” Andi yelled. “If you stall, you’ll drain out. Just three steps and you can rest on that ledge above you.”
Lila would have stopped there, demanded to be lowered back to the ground, had Andi not seemed so certain that Lila would make it to that next ledge.
Lila patted her hands with chalk, and then dusted the soles of her shoes in case they had gotten damp along the way. She gripped the edge of the flake with both hands, took a calming breath, and pressed her foot into the wall.
Just like Andi promised, the tension lifted her off the tiny ledge. She slipped one hand higher along the flake and took another step. A third step took her to where the next hold was within reach. Her fingers shook with exhaustion as she swung her left leg up to the next ledge and pulled herself onto the eight-inch shelf.
She sat on the ledge as her body trembled and burned. Adrenaline release? Exhaustion? Both? She didn’t know. She could hear a quiver in the panting of her breath. The ground was so very far down. She was close to the end of her strength, but she was also close to the top.
She carefully stood up.
Behind her, the wall was as smooth as a playground slide. To her left, a crack ran upward, and on her right the wall flattened and dropped a good forty feet to a ledge below.
“You’re almost there.”
Lila looked up and saw that the top of the wall was a mere two feet beyond her reach. She looked for chalk marks and saw none. Had she boxed herself in? This is where her yellow brick road had led her, so what was she missing?
“There’s no handhold.”
“There is,” Andi yelled. “You just don’t see it.”
Lila looked again and saw nothing.
“Go to that crack.”
Lila shuffled along the ledge to the crack on her left, about five inches wide.
“You know how to play rock paper scissors?”
“Yeah.”
“With your left hand, do paper.”
Lila made paper.
“Now slide your hand into the crack just above head height.”
Lila moved her paper into the crack.
“Go deep enough so that the rock presses against the knuckles on both sides of your hand.”
Lila did as Andi instructed.
“Now make a rock.”
When Lila made a fist, her hand expanded, filling the gap, pressing against the walls of the crack.
“That’s your handhold—that fist. You need to jump, using your fist as a
handhold and—”
“I need to what?”
“Jump. Pull yourself up with your left hand and grab the top of the wall with your right.”
Lila’s arms were heavy and weak. Her legs shook so badly, she thought she might collapse and fall off the ledge at any second—and Andi wanted her to jump? “I can’t,” she said, more to herself than to Andi.
“Don’t think about it—just do it.”
“No, I’m serious. I don’t have anything left. I can’t jump. I—”
“It’s all in your head. Your mind will give up long before your body will.”
“I’m shaking. My legs feel like—”
“Don’t do that, Lila. Don’t give up. You’re stronger than that. Trust me—trust yourself!”
“I’m coming down.”
“That’s fear talking. Don’t let your head get in the way! You know what to do, so do it.”
“It’s too high.”
“God dammit, Lila.” Andi’s voice turned hard with exasperation, or maybe anger. “You get your ass to the top of that wall or don’t expect to see the inside of a courtroom again—not under my watch!”
“That’s not fair.” Lila stared at the top of the wall, which seemed to move farther away.
“If you let your mind fuck with you like that—”
“You can’t do that. I worked hard—”
“It’s your fear that’s stopping you. Nothing more.”
Lila started counting down in her head. Ten, nine, eight…
“Dig in,” Andi yelled. “Trust yourself.”
Seven, six, five.
“Do it!”
Four, three…Fuck it!
She clenched her fist as tight as she could in the gap and jumped with all her strength, her hand slapping the top of the wall. She brought her other hand up and fought to pull herself chin high. The anchor lay right in front of her face, but her arms were failing her.
She threw one arm out, her wrist slapping hard against the stone. Her feet scuffed against the wall until her toe found the crack. She jammed a foot in as far as it would go. It gave her the boost she needed to hoist herself onto her elbows. She reached out, grabbed the anchor, and pulled herself over the top of the wall.
