He looked up, his face registering surprise and annoyance.
“Mrs. Gleason,” he said. He moved toward her and held up her hand. “What are you doing up here? This is a crime scene.”
“Does this have something to do with Abbey?”
Something on his face. He didn’t say no, dismiss her, or act like she was a fool. He just looked confused.
“Mrs. Gleason,” he said. His voice was suddenly stern and unyielding. “You need to go back to Miss Lovely’s and we will call you if this has any connection to Abbey.”
She felt herself backing away, a rising creep of shame. She was becoming one of those people, like the ones they’d met in group, pushing themselves in where they didn’t belong, their desperation for answers making them a nuisance to the police who had moved on to other cases, cases that could be solved. She was a fool to let something so random give her hope. That’s how lost she was; she was listening to her grief-stricken, borderline OCD, teenage son. She was about to apologize.
“So you’re saying it might?” asked Wolf. He had come up behind her, and he was wearing his reporter’s attitude. The I-have-a-right-to-be-here-whether-you-like-it-or-not thing he did. Often she found it embarrassing and annoying. Not tonight. “Look, we just need to know if there’s even a remote possibility.”
Some of the hardness melted on Detective Ferrigno’s face; he lifted a placating palm.
“All we know at the moment is that the vehicle of a missing man has been located in the barn in this clearing,” he said. “That is all the information I have. How did you find out about this?”
Merri took her phone out of her pocket and dialed Jones Cooper, but he didn’t answer. Wolf was arguing with Detective Ferrigno when something caught Merri’s eye, a flash of white over by the trees. She moved through the snow, which was about an inch thick on the ground.
“Mrs. Gleason,” said the detective. Getting angry, getting official. “I need you to stop or I will have you arrested. You are contaminating a crime scene.”
She really didn’t care, which was selfish and wrong. She did come to a stop, though, at the forest edge where there was a dark path leading in. On the ground was a tattered old doll made from rags with broken buttons for eyes and stitches for nose and mouth and a single child’s riding boot. There was nothing about either object that connected to Abbey, and yet Merri felt a surge so powerful that it forced Abbey’s name from her mouth in a shout. She used her phone as a flashlight, hearing Detective Ferrigno coming closer. She saw the brush was broken along the path, the marks of big boots in the snow—a chaos, pointing every which way. Something glittered on the branches, glittering gossamer in the snow. She stood, shining her light on blonde hairs tangled in the broken branches, wrapped around, binding two icy shoots together.
When Wolf came up behind her, she showed him. Even Detective Ferrigno stopped urging her to leave. Merri heard him say something into his phone. But she didn’t hear what. She was running up the path, calling her daughter’s name.
*
Finley ran from the barn in time to watch Jones step out onto the porch from inside the house, gun in hand. The snowfall was slowing.
“Did you see him?” he asked, looking out into the trees. His voice rang out, echoing.
“Who?” said Finley. She glanced around, peering into the dark spaces and shadows all around them. She felt like they were in a snow globe, held in an unseen hand, watched by some giant eye.
“The boy,” he said. Jones’s bearing was odd, his face slightly pale. “Not really a boy. A young man with a boyish face.”
Finley shook her head. She didn’t see anyone but the girl in the barn, and she wasn’t sure she could tell Jones about that. How much could he take? What would he believe? “I heard a gunshot.”
“He came out of the shadows,” said Jones, shaking his head and moving down the steps toward her. “I thought he was armed.”
“Was he?”
“He had something in his hand,” said Jones. She remembered the flashlight she’d seen in her vision, a large metal object that might easily be confused for a gun.
Finley went to meet him, concerned. He didn’t look right; someone so strong and sure of himself shouldn’t look so wobbly. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” he said. He brought his eyes back from the woods to Finley. “I opened fire. I shouldn’t have, but I did. When the gun went off, though, there was no one there. He was there. And then he wasn’t.”
“He must have run,” said Finley. She wasn’t sure what Jones had experienced, but she sensed he needed a real-world explanation to pull himself together, whether one existed or not. In Jones’s case, it probably did. He wasn’t a Seer or a Listener. The chances of him being open enough to have an experience were slim.
“Right,” said Jones. “It was dark.”
Finley nodded toward the barn.