“You talked to her?” He sucked in his lower lip, considering. “Is she—is she mad at me?” His voice cracked at the end, like the hurt little boy he’d once been.
“She doesn’t want you to get hurt. She loves you.”
He shook his head resolutely. “No. It’s too late. Why were you talking to her, anyway?”
“We were looking for you.”
His expression darkened again. “No, you were looking for her. The girl. Don’t lie to me and say it isn’t true, because I know how you cops operate.”
“I didn’t say I was a cop.”
“How many cops you think I’ve known? They came by the dozens at first, ripping up every inch of our little house, looking for some answer that they would never find. I heard the talk. They thought maybe my mother brought the murderer to the Stone place, that he was after her. Like they could pin it all on her.”
“It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t Teresa’s fault, either.”
He trembled at the words. “She called her! That was my mother’s whole life, you know, living by someone else’s schedule. It didn’t matter if we had T-ball or felt sick or were on our way to the city pool. You know what my mother was doing when Teresa summoned her that afternoon? She was cleaning out Beth’s room. She had to stop sorting her dead daughter’s clothes to go polish silver for some dinner party. No one ever gave a damn about her and what she wanted. If one of her richie-rich clients called up with a hangnail, she had to go running over to help them. They never had to alter their perfect little lives.”
“You think Teresa’s life has been perfect?”
“She got herself a brand-new family, didn’t she? A kid she barely sees. I know because I watched her for weeks. She was always at home or with the nanny, being trotted off to dance or swimming or piano. She looks happiest at the Y among the poor kids, if you can believe that. Teresa would probably shit a brick if she knew her precious daughter was mixing with the masses. My sister wanted to take dance, you know, back when she was a kid. Mom said too bad, we couldn’t afford it, so Lisa used to twirl around in her bathing suit to the radio.”
“You wanted to teach Teresa a lesson,” Ellery said, wading in farther until she was just ten feet away from him.
“She got to start over. Her life wasn’t ruined—it got better. She married an even richer asshole and got a fancy job at a big hospital. Her kid was running off on her. Did you know that? When I grabbed her, she’d ditched her regular phone in the garbage and was heading for the T. Her nanny didn’t have a clue about it, either. No one gave a damn until I made them care.”
“You were making a point. I think it worked.”
“You’re damn right it worked.”
“But you don’t want to hurt Chloe. It’s not her fault who her mother is.”
“She’s better off this way.”
A chill went through Ellery at the finality of his words. “Where is she now?”
Bobby looked down at the swirling water and rocks below. He did not answer.
“Bobby, where is Chloe?” she asked, her voice low and urgent.
A thrashing noise at the tree line jerked Bobby’s attention from the water. Reed appeared, huffing and puffing from having run straight up the steep incline. “Cops are like friggin’ rats,” Bobby muttered. “Where there’s one, there’s dozens more you can’t see.” He turned his fevered gaze to the trees as if searching them out. “Go ahead!” he yelled into the forest, spreading his arms wide. “Shoot me.”
He staggered forward, his bare toes at the precipice of the stone column. A few more millimeters and he’d tumble to the rocks below. “Bobby, listen to me. No one wants to shoot you. We want to help you.”
“It’s too late,” he said, his tone turning mournful. His gun dangled from his right hand, maybe four feet now from Ellery. “Tell Lisa I’m sorry.” The hand with the gun started to rise.
“No!” she shouted, and surged through the water at the same time, closing the gap between them with a single desperate lunge. She knocked the gun free and it sailed over the edge into the ravine. Bobby tried to leap after it. “No!” she cried again, clutching for him as he slipped on the wet rocks and slid down into the waterfall.
He grabbed her arm. She almost went with him. He sputtered as water poured into his face. “Ellery!” Reed screamed her name from the shoreline.
“Hang on. I’ve got you.” Bobby had hold of her, really. She needed all her strength to keep from falling. She panted from the effort required to brace herself on the column, holding both their weight. Her arm felt like it would tear off. Dimly, she heard Reed crashing into the river after them. “Help is coming,” she panted to Bobby. “Hang … on.”
“No,” he gasped around the water that splashed over his face.
The stone scraped her belly, her arm. They slipped farther over the edge. “Where is Chloe?” she said through gritted teeth. “Tell me.”
“She’s gone. In a better place. She’ll be happy.” His wide eyes bored into hers. “So will I.”
He let go and fell straight down onto the rocks. Ellery sobbed and covered her ears instinctively as he hit the ravine. Reed reached her at that moment, pulling her from the edge as they fell backward together into the river. “I couldn’t stop him!” she cried, completely drenched. She felt drowned, half-dead. She tried to sink back down, but Reed held her up.
“I know. I saw.” He clutched her to his chest, and she heard his heart pounding like a hammer. Far overhead, a helicopter arrived with its searchlight. It found them easily and pinned them with the bright white light. “We need to get to shore,” Reed said. “We need to get help.”
Ellery looked to the edge of the dam and the water coursing over it. She didn’t have to see the body below to know that Bobby was right: it was too late.
30
Reed sat in the waiting room of the E.R. where Ellery was being treated for minor scrapes, a twisted ankle, and a dislocated shoulder. The worst he’d endured was some uncomfortably damp clothes. He sat forward, his head in his hands, trying to stay awake. He had consumed three cups of black coffee already, but far from being energized, he felt smudged at the edges, like a sketch that had been drawn and erased several times. He sat up just in time to spot a familiar figure through the glass doors. Lisa Frick lingered near the rear exit as though she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave. Reed forced himself to his feet so he could go make his condolences.
“Ms. Frick,” he said, and she looked up in surprise. He saw she held the old family photo Bobby had left her at his apartment. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She blinked back tears and showed him the photo. “Everyone in this picture is gone now, except me.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. He held out his arms in case she wanted a hug, and she almost fell into him.
“Why did he have to do it? Why did he leave me like this?”
“I don’t know.”
She pulled back, her chin wobbling. “Isn’t that your job? To understand why people do these awful things?”
Reed considered. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
Lisa looked at the exit and then back at him. “They have his body upstairs. I know he’s gone, that he won’t know if I leave, but I can’t make myself go through the doors.”
“Let’s sit.” He walked her to a quiet corner of the waiting room and then went back to the coffee stand once more.
“Just can’t get enough, huh?” The guy behind the counter gave Reed yet another cup of coffee, and he stopped to scoop up a cream and a couple of packets of sugar just in case. Lisa Frick took them all without comment but didn’t move to drink the coffee.
Reed lowered himself into the chair next to her. “People commit suicide because they’re in terrible pain,” he said softly.
“I didn’t know it was this bad.” Her head bowed, tears leaking from her eyes once more. She used the paper napkin Reed had brought to wipe them away and set the coffee on the floor by her feet. “He didn’t t
ell me.”
“He may not have had the words.”
She took out the picture again and stared at it. “Dad getting killed in the accident was terrible at the time. I had no idea back then that it was just the start.”
“You mentioned that before,” Reed said. “That your father was killed in an accident.”
“He was walking home from work in a storm and a tree fell over on him.”
Reed had seen the police reports. Vincent Frick died from two gunshot wounds to the chest, not a fallen oak. “Who told you about the tree?”
“My mother, I guess. Maybe Beth. I was five at the time, so I don’t really remember.”
Perhaps the family had lied to the young kids to protect them, to help them feel safe after their father’s death. Reed’s family had lied to him for decades out of a misguided attempt to shield him from his origins. Love justified a multitude of sins. And yet. The tragedy that engulfed the Frick family felt like a house on fire, and Reed was not convinced the flames were out. “Beth had a scholarship to Penn,” he said. “Do you know if Ethan Stone had any role in helping her attain it?”
“Maybe? She was so much older than me that she seemed more like a grown-up, another mom. We didn’t talk about her scholarship. I remember Ethan Stone came to the house to pick her up once. He drove a red sports car and everyone came out to see it. Beth waved to us as they drove away.” She leaned back in the seat with a sigh, the old photo on her knee. “You have all these memories, right? They make up the story of your childhood, the one you tell yourself you had. You remember your dad telling ghost stories inside the blanket fort you made. Or your mom making pancakes with curlers still in her hair. Your sister putting on makeup in the bathroom mirror with it all steamy from her shower. Sometimes you have photos, like this one, that line up with your memories. Other times…”
“Other times?” he prompted gently when she did not continue.
“Mom used to get bad headaches. She said it was from the cleansers she had to use when working, and she’d come home and lock herself in her bedroom. Beth made us dinner. Or we’d just have cereal. Dad would be angry when he found out. They would scream at each other in the bedroom while we hid in our closet and pretended not to hear.”
“I think all families have good times and bad times.”
“I always try to remember the good ones. Bobby kept the bad.” She drew a shuddering breath and looked to the doors where the EMTs were bringing in a stretcher. “I guess I’m just wondering now which one of us was closer to the truth.”
* * *
Reed pushed aside the curtain and poked his head into Ellery’s room, where she lay dozing, propped up in the hospital bed. Her eyelids fluttered open at his approach. “Did you find Chloe?”
He shook his head and took her left hand, the one uninjured in her grappling with Bobby Frick. “Not yet. They have dogs and search teams combing the park. If she’s there, we’ll find her.”
“You think she’s dead.”
Reed said nothing for a long moment. “The blood in the van is type B-negative, the same as Chloe’s. Bobby Frick was type O.”
“There wasn’t much blood found. Certainly not enough to say she’s dead.” She pulled her hand from his and tried to sit up. The drugs made her unsteady and the pain made her wince. “I want to keep looking.”
“Ellery, you’re hurt and you’re exhausted. There are plenty of people searching for Chloe.”
“It’s not that bad.” She bit back a cry as her foot made contact with the floor. Reed stepped forward as she fell backward onto the bed. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Not,” he replied succinctly. “You need rest, not some foolhardy errand.”
“It’s not foolhardy,” Ellery ground out. “Chloe is alive.”
“Look, honey, I hope you’re right, but I think you need to face the brutal facts here. Bobby Frick was clearly suicidal. He’d abducted a girl and treated her like an animal while she was in his captivity. He told you he wanted to punish Teresa Lockhart, who by his account didn’t deserve Chloe, and then finally he said ‘she’s in a better place,’ isn’t that right?”
Ellery struggled to sit up using her one good arm. “He could have taken me with him.”
Reed gaped at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“On the dam. He had a lock grip on my arm and there was no way I could get free of him. See?” She rotated it slightly to show off the deep fingermark bruises on her forearm. “I was slipping off the column. If he’d just held on, he would have taken us both over the edge. Or he could’ve just shot me when he had the chance. But he didn’t.”
“Thank God for that. But he didn’t have the same obsession with you that he did for Chloe Lockhart.”
“She’s alive. I know it.”
She rushed to get up, but the twisted ankle wouldn’t support her weight. Reed caught her as she teetered and eased her back down to a sitting position on the bed. A choked sob escaped her at this defeat, and the small noise was like a bullet to his heart. Ellery already walked around with the ghosts of the sixteen girls who had died in Coben’s closet. Gently, he tugged her head until he cradled her against his shoulder. She smelled like river water. “They’re doing everything they can to find her,” he whispered to her. “You need to go home and rest.” His own face felt cracked and raw with sheer exhaustion.
Dumbly, she nodded and let him help her to her feet. She bit her lip hard as he put her injured arm in the sling provided by the doctors, but she did not make a sound. He collected the prescription painkillers and offered his elbow to her for support. She refused him, of course, limping toward the door on her own, and he managed a thin smile as he trailed behind her. Ellery rebounded like one of those boxing dummies at his gym; you hit her and she got right back up again.
He’d driven her car to the hospital and strategically parked it in the back lot away from the reporters and news vans waiting at the front. There was no way she could drive, so he climbed behind the wheel as Ellery winced her way into the passenger seat. He watched her struggle briefly for the seat belt before reaching over without a word and clicking it into place for her. “Thank you.” She took his hand and kissed his palm once before holding his hand to her face. “Reed, I…” She looked at him and he thought she might finally say the words. His heart beat faster. He leaned in closer.
A camera lens appeared in the window next to Ellery. Snap, snap, snap. Ellery jerked away. A man’s face peered in and he started shouting questions. “Agent Markham, Detective Hathaway … any leads on where Chloe Lockhart is now? Is Bobby Frick alive?”
Reed started the car and gunned the engine, narrowly missing the reporter’s feet as he peeled out of the parking space. He took the speed bump faster than was advisable, jostling Ellery, who gripped the console with her good arm. “Sorry about that.”
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “They never go away. They never will.”
“I’ll have you home soon.”
“They know where I live. Everyone knows.” She sounded dreamy, far away. The drugs were kicking in. “Do you think it will be like that for Chloe? Will they write her story and make a movie? Will they demand she comment every time some other girl goes missing?”
“I can’t imagine Teresa will let them.”
Ellery hunkered in deeper into the seat, half-asleep already. “She can’t stop them,” she mumbled. “Nobody can.”
Reed drove the rest of the way back to Boston in silence, the sky brightening into brilliant sunshine around him. No matter how dark the night, dawn always arrived. He had stayed awake to see it many times in the course of his career, sometimes because the night’s work was not finished, sometimes to remind himself he’d survived. Ellery roused as he hit the city limits, blinking like a mole rat. “Almost home,” he told her as she frowned at her surroundings.
“No, I want to go to the Lockharts’ house.”
“Why?”
“I think I know where Chloe is. Where Bob
by put her.”
“She’s not at home,” Reed replied in what he hoped was a reasonable tone. Maybe she’d dreamed some crazy solution that had Chloe home safe and sound, but it was impossible. There had been police at the Lockharts’ house round-the-clock for days now.
“I didn’t say she was.”
“Ellery…”
“Are you going to take me there or should I call an Uber?” She grimaced as she took out her cell phone.
“Only if you explain to me what you’re thinking.”
She outlined an incredible scenario that might as well have come from a dream for the infinitesimal probability that it was real. Reed sighed when she was finished and signaled a turn for the Lockharts’ mansion. It was a dream worth believing in.
31
Improbably, Dorie Bennett opened the door of the Lockhart house. She looked Ellery over with a mixture of concern, compassion, and exasperation. “You look like death warmed over,” she said as Ellery dragged herself over the threshold. “What are you doing here?” She asked the question of Ellery but looked to Reed for the answer.
“I tried to take her home,” he replied. “She insisted on coming here.”
“I see.” Dorie looked at the car keys in his hand. “Did she also use psychokinesis on you to take the wheel?”
“You’ve met her, right? What gives you the idea that she’s liable to take any advice that I offer her?”
“Hello. I, a person with verbal skills, also exist in this room,” Ellery said.
“You probably have a head injury,” Dorie told her. “Your vote doesn’t count.”
“My head is fine. It’s everything else that hurts.”
Dorie grimaced as she surveyed Ellery’s bruises. Her touch was tender but her expression stern. “You know you broke about eleven different protocols by confronting the suspect on your own.”
“Go ahead then,” Ellery replied glumly. “Write me up.”
Every Waking Hour Page 27
