I’m sure of it now. My senses are sharper than before the woods, tuned more finely. I have evolved into something that survives.
I’ve listened to Paula approach for a quarter of a mile, her footfalls crunching the frost. Wind whips the flag above the watchtower. As she enters the Sheepfold, grackles hidden in the tops of pines take off in a whorl. I sit on a flat stone to the side of the tower entrance, the one I palmed before hiding inside, because it was smooth and seemed like it might be the last pleasing thing I would touch before dying.
“Thanks for meeting me here,” I say.
“I hadn’t heard from you in a while. I wasn’t sure how you felt about me.” Paula wrestles her heavy hair into a ponytail. “I’m not popular around Shiverton these days.”
“How Shivertonians feel about you is irrelevant. How I feel about you is irrelevant. What is relevant is that I still need you,” I say.
Solve it, or leave it.
I nod toward the crime scene. “He collapsed the pit, but the police dug it up again.”
“I know. I saw it before,” she says, her voice brittle. “The day we met, remember?”
The pit looks nothing like it did the last time I saw it, and the things inside. Ubiquitous yellow crime tape is staked in a rough octagon wide of the pit’s original perimeter. It flaps in the breeze like sad party streamers. A perfectly excised rectangle of earth has been removed along with Ana. If Jessup closed over the pit after I escaped and before he was arrested, that means he came and saw her one last time. He wasn’t experienced enough to know he should have taken her out, that you can’t just leave a body in the elements. Ana’s soul might have flown off long before I saw her, but her body would stay and make itself known.
The pit is too changed. It doesn’t suit my purpose.
“Why did you ask me here, Julia?” Paula says, impatient.
I reach into my bag and hand her the pamphlet. “I think Liv and her mother are going to Bolivia for something called Makeover Travel.”
Paula skims the text and lewd photos. “Where did you get this?”
“It was in Liv’s Christmas stocking,” I say, twisting my mouth grimly. “I think it’s a present.”
I once asked Liv what she wanted for Christmas. She scoffed, reminding me that she stopped making lists when she was six, because didn’t I know that Deborah always decided what she needed?
“You like to do research,” Paula says, a new edge to her voice. “What do you know about medical tourism?”
“Only that something like half a million Americans go abroad for procedures every year, and the majority of those procedures are elective cosmetic surgery,” I say.
Paula hands me back the pamphlet. “So what do you need me for?”
“Confirm what Deborah’s up to for me.”
“What Deborah’s up to? You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
“Confirm whom the surgery is scheduled for,” I say slowly.
“Did you know I ended up with ethics infractions from complaints made by your mother and your therapist? Dateline didn’t care, but the station took the charges more seriously than they had to, because it made them look good,” Paula says.
“I’ll give you something,” I say. “The story of my escape. And how I found Ana Alvarez before everyone else did.”
Paula stares at me for a full minute, eyes blazing. Then she digs for her phone and paces away, speaking into a cloud of breath. When she returns, the edge in her voice is replaced by exhilaration.
“I confirmed that the Lapins’ travel plans were made through an intermediary, something called Swan Tours, a company that sends Americans to Bolivia specifically for the purpose of getting plastic surgery.”
“Why go all the way to South America to get a nose job?” I ask.
“The cost is lower than in America. Bolivia in particular is becoming a hub for this kind of thing. It’s a third of the price in some cases.”
“Deborah doesn’t hurt for money. She gets anything she asks for from Leland. It’s always been that way.”
“Perhaps her ex-husband wouldn’t pay for elective plastic surgery.”
“Maybe.”
“There’s something else. Liv is sixteen?”
“We’re both sixteen.”
“Plastic surgery is viewed differently in South American culture. It’s practically a birthright. If you have the money, and you don’t like it, you get it fixed.” Paula comes closer, that old look in her eye, hot and bothered, wanting something from me. “Is there a part of Liv’s body that she’s unhappy with?”
I see them, in front of my eyes. Faded marks, encircled Xs, on her bottom, legs, arms.
I shake my head.