When Fiona arrived in the neighborhood, Mary took her to the tree house, and soon they were spending hours there talking about boys and music. There they fearlessly remained all night long, tucked into sleeping bags. If Blythe came to check on them, they never heard her.
Now that Mary had decided to immerse herself in the past, she wanted to do it totally.
For years she'd avoided even the faintest memory of this place, and here she was, wallowing in it. She was like the people who couldn't stop cutting themselves. The only difference was that they cut themselves as a distraction from reality. She was finally facing what she'd spent years avoiding. It hurt, but it also felt good in a weird way. Because even though she was where bad things had happened, she felt a strange sense of distance. Maybe time did heal. And unlike Fiona's mother, Mary had moved on. She was a functioning adult. Maybe not fully functioning, but functioning all the same.
The ground around the base of the tree was bare- a sign of activity. A new generation of kids probably came there to play. Maybe they could feel the energy of the young girl who had died nearby but interpreted it as something else, as the magic of the woods.
Mary was a practical person, but she'd been in enough places where evil lurked and powerful tragedies had occurred to know that such violent events could leave their imprint on a place-on the ground, in a building, or even in the air.
She wanted to climb into the tree, to look into the house her father had built, but there was no way she could do it without using her injured arm.
It's probably for the best.
But if she wasn't able to get up into the tree house, she was ready to find the spot where Fiona had died.
The leaves were thick under her feet, and the woods had changed since she'd played there. The deeper she walked, the denser the undergrowth. Multiflora rose, the bane of uncontrolled timberland, had taken over, spreading like cancer across the ground, choking out grasses and even small trees, suffocating the wildflow-ers and jack-in-the-pulpits. Sharp thorns caught on Mary's trench coat and snagged her corduroy pants. They caught in her hair and scratched the back of her hands.
Everything was so overgrown that at first she didn't think she'd be able to find the spot. And then she saw it-a white wooden cross stuck into the ground. She approached until she was able to read the lettering.
WE WILL ALWAYS MISS YOU
WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
Mary didn't remember the cross. But then, she didn't remember much of anything that had happened in those weeks after finding Fiona's body. For a time, her brain had simply shut down, her body moving on autopilot.
What struck her as odd now was the condition of the cross. It looked as if it was either fairly new or had recently been repainted.
She stepped closer, standing in the approximate area where Fiona's body had lain. There, at the base of the cross, was a bouquet of dead red roses. Beside it was a small stuffed teddy bear with a delicate gold chain around its neck. Mary crouched down. On the necklace was a charm shaped like a cheerleader.
She straightened and grabbed the top of the cross. She tried to wiggle it. A cross placed there ten years ago would have been rotten at the base. This had been driven firmly and securely into the ground. The bouquet couldn't have been over a week or two old; the stuffed bear looked to have been outside about the same length of time.
Who would be coming here, fighting the tangle of thorn bushes, to decorate the place where Fiona had died? Mrs. Portman would be the logical person, but Abigail said she never came into the woods.
Mary examined the ground, only to find that rain and falling leaves had obliterated any footprints. The sound of a breaking twig made her look up. She squinted through the undergrowth and strained her ears, listening for the sound to repeat.
Nothing.
She felt under her coat for the reassurance of her gun and remembered it was one of the rare occasions when she'd left it at home, not wanting to wear it when visiting Abigail.
She was being ridiculous. A grown woman, an FBI agent, jumping at every sound in the woods. It could very well have been a twig she'd heard, broken by a wild animal.
Nonetheless, she walked back as quickly as she could, while bushes grabbed her with their thorns. When she reached the street, she was a little out of breath.
At the Portman house, the shades were drawn.
Mary pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number she remembered from childhood.
Mrs. Portman answered.
It was probably a little silly, standing in front of the Portman house, talking to Abigail on the phone, but Mary didn't feel up to another face-to-face meeting at the moment.
"Do you know who put a cross in the woods?" Mary asked.
"A cross? For Fiona?"
"Yes. And also a stuffed animal-a bear, along with a bouquet of roses."
There was a pause as Mrs. Portman digested the information. "How odd," she finally said.
"Can you think of anyone who may have done it?"
"I haven't the vaguest idea. I mean, most people leave things at the cemetery."
"Thanks, Mrs. Portman. Sorry to bother you."
Mary hung up and crossed the street to her house.
Gillian went for a five-mile jog. By the time she was on the return path, it was almost dark. Approaching her apartment, she noticed an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway, a man standing beside it. She slowed to a walk and kept her eye on him.
"Oh, shit," she said once she was close enough to recognize Sebastian Tate. She was thinking about swinging around to the back door when he spotted her.
"Gillian!" He gave her a big wave and headed in her direction, meeting her halfway.
"What are you doing here?" she said.
"I have tickets to the Dylan concert tonight." He pulled them out of his coat pocket and held them in the air. "Wanna go?"
She'd tried to get tickets months ago, but the concert was sold out. She continued walking. "No, thanks."
"Oh, come on." He fell into step beside her. "I'll bet you like Dylan. Everybody likes Dylan. Plus, the show's at Northrop Auditorium. We could walk from here. No need to fight traffic. What do you say?"
"Did you get the tickets from a scalper?"
"I made a trade. I had something somebody wanted."
"What?" Detective Wakefield was always telling her to ask questions.
"Some photographs." He shrugged. "I'm a photographer."
So he said. "I don't want to go to the Dylan concert, and I don't want you coming around here again."
He followed her up the front steps. Mary had told her to call the police if he bothered her, but Gillian felt sure she could handle him. "Leave," she told him, with no intention of unlocking the door while he stood so near, afraid he might force himself inside. "Now."
He struggled to control his mounting anger. "I don't even like Dylan," he finally said, raising a hand as if to strike her. "I got the fucking tickets for you!" He threw them in her face, strode to his car, and left.
"Asshole." She bent and scooped up the tickets. Inside her apartment, the door locked, she grabbed the phone and called Ben Collins, the talkative intern from work. When he answered she asked, "How would you like to see Bob Dylan? I managed to get my hands on a couple of tickets."
Chapter 9
The phone was ringing.
Mary struggled through the disorientation of awakening in the middle of a sleep cycle. Where was she? Her apartment in Virginia? A hotel?
With each possibility, her mind conjured up the locale, complete with furnishings, until she settled on the correct location-her mother's home in Minneapolis and her old room with the India print spread.
With ease of practice, she felt around on the floor for her cell phone and caught it on the fourth ring.
It was Anthony. "A teenage girl's been kidnapped south of here," he said. "At a place called Canary Falls. A little town off Highway 52, between Minneapolis and Rochester."