Why the Rock Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  Today was about getting Michael away from his even worse memories of this place. She cruised around the pool into the house and tapped on the security office door. A woman she didn’t recognize, wearing one of Wayne’s blue T-shirts, opened the door.

  Jan introduced herself. “I’m here to pick up Michael Matheson, and I can’t find him anywhere. Can you use the cameras to pinpoint his location for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Come on in.” The woman turned to her monitors and began a systematic survey of all the cameras on the estate. Only the staff was visible around the grounds, going about the usual chores. On the house cameras, nobody showed at first. Then Georgie appeared in a one-piece bathing suit, stepping out of the guest suite on the second-level terrace. Behind her was Mylo. No question what they’d been up to. The bastard was still tucking in his polo shirt.

  Jan punched in the house phone for the suite, but although she saw Mylo hesitate, he didn’t turn back to answer it, just charged up the steps to the pool. What a nuisance. She’d have to try to catch him. She backed out of the small room and turned toward the pool doors, but he was hurrying past before she got them open and ignored her yell. By the time she got outside, the garage gate was swinging shut behind him. So much for that. Trying to avoid seeing the waterfall even from the corner of her eye, she spun a tight 360 to return to the security office.

  “Where’s Georgie gone?” she asked from the doorway.

  The security woman pointed to a monitor. Georgie was by the swimming machine on the lower level, coiling her mass of curls into a messy bun. It seemed she couldn’t face the upper pool, either.

  Jan took the elevator down. As she entered the swim area, the machine started up. She yelled over the motor. “Georgie, where’s Michael? We’re supposed to be leaving for our afternoon outing.”

  Georgie stopped with both hands atop her head. “He’s not with you? I thought he left half an hour ago.”

  “And you didn’t check?” Jan didn’t bother to hide her anger. Georgie was supposedly being paid to look out for Michael, not to fall on her back for Mylo. “He’s not visible on the cameras, either. Where might he go if he wanted to be alone?”

  “Tennis court?”

  Jan shook her head.

  “Stable?” Georgie tried again.

  “No. I’ve been all over the grounds, and he’s not here. Get your clothes on and get looking for him.”

  “Oh, fuck. Mylo will kill me.” Georgie ran up the outside stairs, whether to change her clothes or dash around like a demented poodle, Jan had no idea. She backed into the elevator, pushing buttons, and reached the security office again without seeing anyone else.

  She told the woman, “Michael’s missing. Can you radio all the patrolling guards to hunt for him? And we have to go back through the camera images to see when and where he was last recorded.” She might not have thought of that if she hadn’t been looking at Lacey’s archived images from the ranch for the past two days. “And track down Mylo Matheson. He should be told.”

  As the last word left her lips, the unmistakable thunder of helicopter blades passed the house.

  The security guard picked up her radio, and said, “Base to pilot. Do you have Michael Matheson with you?”

  The radio crackled as the pilot replied. “No. Only Matheson senior.”

  The woman looked at Jan. “Do I pull them back? How serious is this?”

  Jan winced. She could screw up Mylo’s schedule for what was nothing more than Michael sitting in a corner somewhere, grieving quietly. Against that was the possibility that his grandmother was in the neighbourhood and had found a way to lure Michael away. But surely they’d never let her onto the grounds without informing Mylo his mother-in-law had arrived?

  “Have any visitors been checked in today?”

  The woman shook her head. “You’re the first.”

  Well, that settled it. “Let Mr. Matheson go. If we don’t find Michael in the next few minutes, you’ll have to call him back.”

  Soon the woman had every security guard on the estate searching and co-opted the outdoor staff, as well. She set the house steward checking all the rooms. Then she told Jan, “You watch this monitor, I’ll watch that one, and we’ll reverse through the last hour. He must be around here somewhere.”

  But he wasn’t. Jan stared at her monitor, watching him walk backward through the back gate. She got the guard to start the images forward and watched him head out again, down the hillside trail. With Chad. Was Chad kidnapping him for Kitrin’s mother, or from suspicion about his parentage? Either way, he mustn’t get away with it. She got Travis on the radio.

  “Chad took Michael off the grounds by the trail gate. Does he have a vehicle parked anywhere around here?”

  “We drove out together,” said Travis. “The keys are in my pocket. We’ll bring the boy back right away. I’ll send a groom out on the long loop, and I’ll go downhill.”

  Jan wasn’t convinced it would be that easy to find them if Chad didn’t want them found. She phoned Dee. “Hi. Sorry to bother you, but I saw your car at home earlier. Just wondered if you heard the dogs bark at anyone on the trail behind your place.”

  Dee said, “Yeah, actually I did, about five minutes ago. I was surprised because school is back in now, and usually the trails are quiet during the daytime.”

  “But you didn’t see anybody?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do me a favour? Go up to your bedroom and see if you can spot a man and boy walking on the highway or the bridge?”

  “Sure. Hang on.” Rustling and thumping came through as Dee climbed the stairs. “There’s a man on the trail now, by himself. Out the other way, I see a man and a child across the bridge, quite a ways away. Almost to the grocery store, looks like.”

  Jan thanked Dee and hung up. Then she got Travis back on the radio and filled him in.

  He said, “I’m at the bottom of the hill, and I don’t see them along the road. Is there a candy store or somewhere they might be headed?”

  Jan thought back to her conversation with Michael yesterday afternoon. She’d told him about the art trip and promised him ice cream. She had even mentioned that famous old ice cream cabin down in the village and learned he’d been there once with Georgie. Hopefully he’d gone back there with Chad, and this wasn’t a conspiracy between Chad and Kitrin’s mother.

  “They could’ve cut through toward the ice cream cabin. I’ll pick you up.”

  After telling the security guard to stand down the search, Jan cruised her chair outside and climbed into the van. Three minutes later, she caught up to Travis, who was already across the bridge. Soon they were heading down White Avenue toward the ice cream shack.

  And there were the missing, sitting on a plank bench in the shade, eating ice cream cones. With them, hidden under a droopy hat and huge sunglasses, was a lean older woman sipping from a water bottle. She was the same approximate height as Kitrin’s mother, and her chin seemed vaguely familiar, but the inevitable brain fog from the stressful hunt was playing hell with Jan’s ability to focus. How on earth would she get through the afternoon’s photography session?

  One thing at a time. Get Michael away from Chad and the woman. She climbed out of the van and approached cautiously. Not by a gesture or harsh word would she let Michael know how scared she had been, how sick the hunt had made her, or how furious she was at Chad.

  “Hi guys,” she said, smiling. “Michael, I’ve been looking for you. We were supposed to leave for Calgary twenty minutes ago.”

  “Oh.” Michael lowered his gigantic waffle cone. “It took longer to get here than we thought.”

  “You shouldn’t have left the grounds without asking Georgie.”

  “She was busy with Daddy.” He licked a trail of melting ice cream.

  Travis said, “Chad, can I have a word with you? Over here.”

  That woman said to Michael, “You enjoy your ice cream. See you around.” She gave Jan a cursory smile and strolled away.

 
; The voice was familiar, and so was the walk, but who was she? Someone recently met, or the tightly wound wine-guzzler last seen a dozen years ago?

  “Who was that woman, Michael? Not your grandmother from Regina?”

  “Granny has yellow hair, not red.” He shrugged. “She was walking here, too, so she came with us. She bought me a double cone. Can I take it in the van, or do I have to finish it first?”

  Exhausted by the emotional cliffs she’d scaled in the past half hour, Jan sank down on the bench beside him. “You can finish it here while I rest up. There’s something I have to tell you before we go.”

  By lunchtime, Lacey had installed and tested the new electronic lock on the workout room, searched the entire storeroom area for signs that someone had sneaked through there last night, and identified three places where the attacker could have collected a dark balaclava: in the machine shed’s cloakroom, in the mechanics’ miscellaneous bin beneath the stairs, and in the middle storeroom where several snowmobile suits and their accessories occupied a rack. There were plenty of gloves around, too. Anyone on the ranch could have used any of them at any time. Forensic testing would be as useless here as getting DNA from that blood on the office chair.

  With Jan’s suggestion in mind that a female had sabotaged the Rover, she hovered near the front drive while Cheryl moved Sloane’s Porsche SUV toward the front door for their drive into the city. Those were the only two women whose legs weren’t accounted for. But she was thwarted by Cheryl’s loose khakis and Sloane’s long, flowing summer dress. No visible shins.

  Over a late lunch in the kitchen — bacon-wrapped scallops on a bed of greens, drizzled with warm maple-whisky sauce — Lacey chatted with the kitchen staff, trying to learn without leading questions about anyone running past their dorm last night. They variously said the wind had been banging things around and they’d had to turn up the TV because an owl was hunting over the climbing gym’s roof. Nobody spontaneously mentioned running feet or letting someone into the building.

  Ike, returning with the emptied lunch kits he’d driven round to the gates, said a change in the weather was coming. Wind and rain tomorrow, he predicted. That would complicate the search. Lacey hoped he was wrong, or exaggerating, but he didn’t seem the type for either. Back to the cabin she went, to rinse off the dust before meeting Wayne for the new external drive. She’d suggested he leave it at Dee’s, but he’d refused. He wanted to examine her injuries for himself to make sure she didn’t need either a doctor or a Workers’ Comp claim form.

  Her phone pinged as she headed for the garage. Jan’s message read I told Michael his friend is lost, and you are up at the ranch helping to look for him. Any new news I can share, besides what Terry told me when he got home last night?

  If only …

  Tell him there’s a special drone hunting for Tyrone’s cellphone signal now and there’s a good chance we’ll have news from that. Between you and me, I hope he’s found before the weather changes. Ike (ranch foreman) says we could see rain tomorrow, and he should know.

  The same reporters were parked near the front gate as she drove out. She nodded to the hands on guard duty and watched them firmly close the gate behind her. They turned their backs on the reporters who approached, like they’d been doing for three days already. No media vehicle followed her. They probably guessed from the security sign on the truck door that she wouldn’t talk to them, anyway. She passed the airstrip, wondering if the drone had now searched all the relevant phone numbers.

  Four nights Orrin and Tyrone had been missing. Would they have been found already if the search coordinator had received Tyrone’s phone number from the first moment? Would they survive another night out in the wild if the weather turned wet and cold? The uncertainty bugged her so much that she did a three-point turn and headed back to the SAR base.

  Before she’d gotten ten paces from the truck, she felt a new buzz around the camp. Search teams were walking faster, talking with greater animation than on her last visit. Had some promising trail been found?

  Constable Markov, as usual on liaison duty, filled her in. “We’ve got three numbers up with the drone now,” he said. “Not only the boy’s phone, but apparently Orrin Caine had two phones with him, one personal and one business. We only had the personal number.”

  “Why wasn’t that other phone reported up front?”

  He shrugged. “Miscommunication between home and office. Each one thought the other had reported it. Today’s good news, though: we can narrow the search area at last. A fellow from Water Valley, who was up north fishing over the weekend, heard the local news on his way home late last night and called in that he saw Orrin’s vehicle last Saturday afternoon as he was heading out. It was definitely northeast of the ranch at that time, eastbound on 579 toward Water Valley.”

  “He’s sure it was Orrin?”

  “Yup. He’s gone hunting with Orrin in that very Rover.”

  That explained the vibe around the base. Lacey wished him luck and got back into her truck. The airstrip vanished behind her, and she was alone with her thoughts as the gravel road spooled out between the unending trees. Cloistered at the ranch, with everyone from family to staff to ranch hands talking as if it was only a matter of time before Tyrone overcame a challenge set by his overbearing — abusive! — father, it was easy to go along with optimism instead of looking at the reality. Even with the new information, the already exhausted search teams faced hundreds of square kilometres of hostile terrain, not only heavily treed and crisscrossed by cutlines and OHV trails, but split by deep, rocky ravines filled with thick brush and rushing streams. Canyons like those were easy to climb down or fall down and sometimes impossible to get out of without a rescue tech dropping down hundreds of metres beneath a helicopter. She’d never say so to the searchers, and not to Tyrone’s family, but this was a time when she really wished she didn’t know the odds against finding the boy alive.

  With an effort, she wrenched her thoughts back to something she could hope to achieve: discovering the identity of the person who had tampered with the Range Rover. She must have gotten close enough that the individual tried to cover their tracks by stealing the camera archive. So who was it? Jan said it was likely a woman on that recording, but if she discounted the one who showed up Mondays to clean floors, there were only three women close enough to Orrin to be viable suspects: Andy, Sloane, and Cheryl. All were similar in height and build. She considered them one by one.

  Andy: ruled out of attacking Lacey based on the lack of bruises today and because she was thought to be away from the ranch when the Range Rover was sabotaged. In unbiased eyes, though, she was a prime suspect. She must have known the workout room door was unlockable, for one thing. She was paranoid about cameras and knew how to avoid them. Most male investigators would assume her affair with Ben meant she was capable of murder to cover it up. Going ahead with trying to get pregnant this week, though, indicated to Lacey that a) Andy really wanted a child, and b) she and the twins thought Orrin would be found alive and they needed to keep the secret about Ben’s involvement.

  After reassuring Andy that she wouldn’t tell, Lacey had asked first whether Bart couldn’t make himself do the deed for her sake. Andy confessed they’d tried that for a year and both been miserable. As for why they didn’t go to a fertility clinic and get Bart’s sperm implanted that way, well, between Orrin’s obsession with snooping and the fact that all their health bills were paid by the company’s benefit plan, going to any clinic was risky. Even if she and Bart paid privately, their bank statements would track the expense or their health-care ID might turn up in a database somewhere that the company’s bean counters had access to. Questions would lead to an investigation, and Orrin would never let Bart live down a visit to a fertility clinic. He’d probably tell the child every day of its life, too. Ben was the only one they trusted to help them out, and his loyalty to Bart trumped even his eternal urge to piss off Orrin.

  The online search of paternity testing proto
cols lurked on Lacey’s phone. She hadn’t wanted to leave a trace on the ranch’s computers to give anyone else the idea. But it was just as Ben had told her: the standard DNA test for paternity would show the baby as almost inevitably sired by Bart. Only the much more advanced test could cast doubt about which twin was the sperm donor, and all three involved were determined that there would never be a reason for doubt. Would they bother to keep up the charade if any of them believed Orrin wasn’t coming home?

  As for the other two women, Sloane probably had the best motive for wanting Orrin gone, although why she’d wait twelve years to act was an open question. Also, why act before Orrin changed his will to leave everything to her son? She’d been at the ranch on that Monday night and could have tampered with the Rover. She hadn’t been near the workout room all week, though. Was she physically strong enough to tackle Lacey and win?

  Cheryl, now … She was tougher in all ways than Sloane, and she’d been on the workout room camera at least half an hour every day, working her muscles against the machines. She might have mixed martial arts training in her past, for all Lacey knew, or some other combat skill that would let her confidently tackle an ex-cop to wrest away the external drive containing the surveillance archive. By her own admission, she too had been at the ranch on the Monday night in question. Except … she’d been the only person to mention that someone might have tampered with the Rover. Why raise that at all if she’d been party to it?

  Come to that, how could she know about the archive drive? Who did know? While Lacey was discussing the archive footage with Jan, Ben had been on the bluff staircase. He could have heard the conversation, but equally Cheryl or anyone else could have eavesdropped through an open window.

  Wayne hadn’t bothered with a dossier on Cheryl because she was staff, not family. It probably hadn’t dawned on him that, as a close friend of Sloane’s from before the marriage, Cheryl wasn’t simply working for a wage. She had been an integral part of Sloane’s life for more than a dozen years, as close as any family member. Wayne’s internet snooper must dig up Cheryl’s background. If she was responsible for this throbbing bruise on Lacey’s cheek, it would be a personal pleasure to take her down.