The Edge of the Shadows (29 page)

FIFTY-FOUR

I
t was Seth's idea to use the metal detector. While he tracked one down, Becca brought Jenn and Squat into the plan to search for the chain Isis Martin had been wearing on the night of the party. Typical of Squat Cooper, he had a grid system for conducting a search developed within minutes.

The military town of Oak Harbor at the north end of the island proved to be the location of the nearest metal detector. When he'd targeted it, Seth went up to rent it, and the plan was put into place. They didn't have a pile of hours prior to darkness falling, so everyone needed to bring a flashlight, Squat told them.

At Maxwelton Beach, they left their cars at the baseball diamond that defined Dave Mackie Park, and they picked their way to the party house via the beach. The scene of the fire having been thoroughly investigated by the sheriff's department, that property was no longer sealed off with police tape, so they climbed through the shrubbery and began their search.

Seth used the metal detector. The rest walked their assigned grids, taking the landscape inch by inch. The metal detector went crazy with all the trash that was on the property: everything from tin cans to rusty nails to discarded tools and keys. But other than that, it was mostly garbage.

They moved from there to the party property, being careful all the while to watch for anyone who might be observing them, with one hand on the phone ready to dial the cops. But as on the fateful night, there were no signs of life in the house where they'd partied and none in the nearest property to it, so they managed to search without being accosted by an understandably suspicious neighbor. When they were finished, they met out in front. No one had come up with a thing aside from beer bottle tops, a rusty political button from an ancient election, half a pair of scissors, two empty tuna cans, three bottle openers, and another button—less rusty—celebrating the Maxwelton Fourth of July parade that was a special feature of this part of the island.

They gathered in a circle. The weather had turned. It was very cold, and rain was threatening. They huddled into their fleeces and hoodies to figure out what it meant that there was no chain to be found.

“We don't know for sure she was even wearing a chain in the first place, do we?” Seth offered this. He leaned against the metal detector and pulled his fedora more firmly down on his head against the chill.

Becca said, “Not exactly. Only . . .” They all looked at her expectantly, but how could she tell them what she'd seen of Parker and Isis in her mind? She couldn't, so she said instead, “It's the only thing that'll help us out. If she had a chain on that night and if it was mostly under her clothes—”

“She wears a chain at school,” Squat put in. “I've seen it.”

“You? When?” Jenn asked.

“She shows a lot of . . . you know . . . like . . . chest,” Squat said. “And this chain, it sort of goes down between her boobs and . . . You know.” He ignored their hoots of laughter and said, “Come
on
. You've seen it. I bet if we looked at Facebook right now—”

“Yeah, there's been a chain,” Derric admitted. And then to Becca, “Hey, I'm a guy.”

“What
ever
,” she responded.

Jenn said, “So if this
alleged
chain broke and fell off her at some point, wouldn't she have noticed when she got home? And wouldn't she have sneaked back to look for it?”

“Not if she didn't know where she lost it,” Becca told her. But she had to add silently, And not if Parker removed it from her at some point back in the tree house and hung on to it as well.

Derric snapped his fingers at this and said, “We're forgetting the march.”

Becca picked up on his thought. “Oh my God. Yes. To the church. What is it, a mile?”

“Which means Isis could've lost the chain along the way,” Seth said.

• • •

WITH THE METAL
detector, Seth was the one who finally found the chain. They had all spread out across the road, which, thankfully, was narrow enough that the five of them comprised a sufficient number to handle its width. The difficult part was the road's shoulders, which were thick with weeds and the last of the summer grasses, now dying in preparation for winter. As the kids inched along, the metal detector signaled substances of interest time and again. It was only when they were about one hundred yards from the intersection where the church stood that the detector signaled the real thing.

By that time, it was dark and they'd been conducting their search by flashlight. The metal detector beeped and Becca went to Seth as usual and shone her flashlight onto the area of interest. This time something glittered in a rut made by the tires of a car, and that something was Isis Martin's chain.

“We got it!” Becca called out.

“Don't touch it!” This from Squat. “You're never supposed to touch evidence.”

They gathered around, looking down at the chain. After a few minutes of discussion, they settled on calling Derric's dad and hoping he wasn't all the way up in Coupeville. If he was in his office there, they would have one hell of a wait for him in the cold and the darkness.

Derric had his cell phone out and was calling his father when Squat came up with the next plan. Since they were going to have to wait for Dave Mathieson to show up, it made sense for Seth and Derric to go back to Dave Mackie Park—some distance back down Maxwelton Road—and bring their cars up while the rest of them “guarded the evidence,” as he put it. At least that way they wouldn't have to hike back down there once whatever was going to go down with Isis Martin went down with Isis Martin.

“Like her getting carted off to jail,” Jenn said.

This sounded sensible once they learned that, while Dave Mathieson wasn't still up in Coupeville, he was at the café at Greenbank Farm, a repurposed group of agricultural buildings sitting on an expanse of acreage that had been saved from developers some time in the past. Now it was a place of community gatherings, with a café that offered the best pies on the island. Dave had been purchasing one of those pies on Rhonda's orders, but he'd “get down to Maxwelton and see what you kids've found ASAP,” he told Derric.

That meant the wait that they'd anticipated, so Seth and Derric started the hike back to the Dave Mackie Park for their cars. Squat, Jenn, and Becca found places to sit just off the road. It was going to be at least a thirty-minute wait, so they huddled together to stay warm. At least when Derric and Seth brought the cars up from the beach, they could wait inside them. For now, there was no shelter but their hoodies and each other. And, of course, it began to rain.

This time, it was no misty island precipitation but instead a real downpour. Jenn swore, Becca groaned, and Squat manfully put his arms around both of them. The wind came up. It creaked through the fir trees that climbed the hillside on the west side of the road. From the alders and maples, it blew leaves which quickly became sodden, forming a slick mat on the surface of the road where pools of rainwater were going to make each curve trickier to negotiate.

“This is just great,” Jenn groused.

“Hey, it's romantic,” Squat told her. “The dark, the wind, the rain, two damsels in distress.”

“Puh-leez.” She sighed.

“I guess that means you don't want me to nuzzle your neck?”

“Like I want a potato peeler up my butt.”

“That's totally gross,” he told her.

“I believe you've caught my point, little man.”

Becca had been using the AUD box during the search, the better to concentrate on what she was doing without picking up whispers from her friends. But now she took the ear bud from her ear and disengaged it from the box itself. She removed the whole little unit from the waistband of her jeans and tucked it into the pocket of her jacket.

“See?” Squat said. “You've grossed out Becca, too. She doesn't want to hear another foul image emanating from your mouth.”

But the truth was that Becca had decided on a period of practice while they waited. With Jenn and Squat, who was thinking what would be clear. Potentially, their whispers would be complete.

Jenn and Squat continued their verbal sparring while Becca listened in on their whispers. Squat's were about sex. A guy, sixteen years old, what else would you expect, Becca concluded. Jenn's were about soccer: the captain of their team, a senior girl called Cynthia Richardson, the locker room, showers, Cynthia's body, and . . . Becca glanced at her friend in the darkness, seeing only her profile in the dim light that came from a driveway nearby. It came to her that Jenn was thinking about sex as well, although she shifted from that to her ultra-religious mother and what was going to befall her—Jenn—when she finally told the truth.

Life was complicated, Becca thought. She wanted to tell Jenn that everything would all work out because it usually did. Only . . . she wasn't sure that was really the case.

Car lights came from the direction of the beach. The three of them rose in the pouring rain. Jenn stepped into the road and so did the others. Jokingly, they spread out to form a blockade that Seth and Derric would have to obey.

Except it turned out that there was only one car, not two. And the car was neither Seth's VW nor Derric's Forester. It was a Nissan sedan, and given no choice in the matter, it had to slow and then stop. The driver lowered the window, and Isis Martin's voice called out brightly, “Hey! What're you guys doing here?” She sounded friendly enough but her whispers cursed
god damn little bitches
, which unnerved Becca for a moment. Then she caught . . .
happening
 . . .
Mom and Dad?
 . . .
no I won't not again
 . . .
that place
and it came to her that Isis wasn't alone in the car. Aidan had to be with her although he wasn't in sight.

Becca took a chance and called out, “Why's Aidan hiding? Where're you guys going?”

“Excuse me?” Isis looked around innocently. “Aidan's not—”

“He's in the back seat or he's in the trunk or he's just ducked down, Isis,” Becca told her.

“And it doesn't matter 'cause the game's over, hot mama,” Jenn put in. “We called the sheriff and you're about to be toast.” Then she called out, “Hey, Aidan, if you're in there? It's olly-olly-ox-in-free for you. Big sister here set the fire at the shack and probably all the others, too. We know it, she knows it, and the sheriff's about to know it too 'cause we got the evidence and he's on his way to get it.”

Becca winced at the flurry of whispers that came at her then because Isis was swearing at Jenn but so was Squat. She would have sworn at Jenn, too, if she hadn't been trying to maintain enough cool among them to keep Isis from taking off in the rain. As it was now, Isis gunned her car's motor as next to her Aidan rose in the passenger's seat and said, “What the
hell
?” to no one in particular.

Just then, the lights of two other cars approached from the direction of the beach. That, at last, would be Seth and Derric. Isis appeared to see them in her rear view mirror because she gunned the engine another time and said, “Get out of the road, you guys.”

“Like, where d'you think you're actually going?” Jenn demanded. “This is an island, dummy. And the sheriff's coming.”

“Get out of the freaking
way
,” Isis cried.

Aidan said to her, “You God damn told me . . .” but instead of finishing, he leaped out of the car. “What the hell, Isis?
You
 . . . Because all this time . . . And with Mom and Dad . . . and you were just waiting . . .” He pounded his fist against the rooftop of the car.

“Get back in,” Isis ordered.

“Don't do it, man,” Squat said.

“Shut your mouth!” Isis screamed.

And the rain fell harder.

Seth and Derric pulled their cars up behind her. Derric got out. He said, “What's going on?”

“What's going on is Isis trying to get her brother arrested and sent to jail or back to his school or whatever so that she can go back to her frigging stupid Palo Alto and run for homecoming queen,” Jenn said. “Only what she doesn't know because she's so stupid is—”

Isis floored the accelerator. Squat grabbed Jenn and pulled her to him. Becca jumped out of the way. Isis shot through them like a projectile from a cannon. Without a word, Derric ran back to his car.

• • •

BECCA TORE AFTER
him. Seth, stepping out of his VW, shouted, “What the hell's going—” as Jenn and Squat stormed him, yelling, “Go, go, go!” They climbed inside as Squat cried out, “We got to be able to tell the sheriff—” He slammed the door closed and cut off the rest of his words.

Aidan, looking stunned, remained on the side of the road, just out of the cones of illumination cast by the headlights of the two cars. He cried out, “You can't—” but the rest of his words were also cut off once Becca crashed her car door closed. Derric hit the gas and they shot after Isis with Seth's VW coming up behind them.

Isis, they saw, was screaming along Maxwelton Road. Ahead of them she careered through the intersection where the old wooden church stood among the trees. She made a sharp and sudden left onto a road called Sills. Her car slid but she righted it. She hit the gas and sent up a spray of water.

“Damn,” Derric said. “She's completely nuts. Where's she going?”

Like most roads on Whidbey, Sills was unlit. It dug deeply into the forest like a landscape scar. In the pouring rain, the cedars were dropping massive amounts of foliage onto the pavement. Alders bent forward, shedding leaves. Douglas firs got whipped by sudden gusts of wind.

The falling rain reflected the Forester's headlights right into the windshield. Ahead of them, they could see the taillights of Isis's car, but not much else. Derric said, “Babe, I'm thinking this isn't—” but that's all he got out when it happened.