Caught (19 page)

"And the other?"

Stanton clicked and the giant Google Earth globe spun again. They watched it zoom in on New Jersey again. It stopped in a wooded area with one building in the middle.

"Ringwood State Park," Stanton announced. "It's about forty miles away from here. The heart of the Ramapo Mountains. That building is the Skylands Manor in the middle of the park. It's surrounded by at least five thousand acres of woods."

There was a second, maybe two, of silence. Frank could feel his heart beating in his chest. He looked at Walker. No words were exchanged. They knew. When something like this lands in your lap, you just know. The park was pretty big. Frank remembered a few years ago when some survivalist had hidden in the surrounding woods for more than a month. You could build a small lodging, hide it under trees and bush, lock someone up there.

Or, of course, you could bury someone where they'd never be found.

Tremont was the first to check the time. Midnight. Hours more of darkness. Panic set in. He quickly called Jenna Wheeler. If she didn't answer, he'd drive his car through her front door to get the answer.

"Hello?"

"Dan liked to hike, didn't he?"

"Right."

"Any favorite spots?"

"I know he used to like the trail in Watchung."

"How about Ringwood State Park?"

Silence.

"Jenna?"

A moment passed before she spoke.

"Yeah," she said, her voice faraway. "I mean, years ago, when we were married, we used to take the Cupsaw Brook Loop up there all the time."

"Get dressed. I'll have a car pick you up." Frank Tremont hung up and turned to Walker and Stanton. "Helicopters, dogs, bulldozers, lights, shovels, rescue squads, park rangers, every available man, local volunteers. Let's get moving."

Walker and Stanton both nodded.

Frank Tremont flipped open his phone again. He took a deep breath, felt the punch from Hester Crimstein's earlier words, and then he dialed Ted and Marcia McWaid.

AT FIVE AM, Wendy was jarred awake by the phone. She had only fallen asleep two hours earlier. She had stayed up and surfed and started to put things together. Nothing on Kelvin Tilfer. Was he the exception that proved the rule? She didn't know yet. But the more she surfed the other four--the further she dug into their histories--the stranger the Princeton suitemate scandals became.

Wendy reached blindly for the phone and croaked out a hello.

Vic skipped the niceties. "Do you know Ringwood State Park?"

"No."

"It's in Ringwood."

"You must have been an insightful reporter, Vic."

"Get up there."

"Why?"

"That's where cops are looking for that girl's body."

She sat up. "Haley McWaid's?"

"Yep. They think Mercer dumped her in the woods."

"What pointed them in that direction?"

"My source said something about Google Earth on her iPhone. I'll get a camera crew to meet you."

"Vic?"

"What?"

Wendy put her hand through her hair, tried to quiet her racing mind. "I don't know if I have the stomach for this one."

"Boo-friggin'-hoo. Get moving."

He hung up. Wendy got out of bed, showered, and dressed. She had her TV makeup case always at the ready, which was pretty sick when you thought about where she was headed. Welcome to the world of television news. As Vic had so poetically put it, boo-friggin'-hoo.

She walked past Charlie's room. It was a wreck, yesterday's shirt and shorts balled up on the floor. When you lose a husband, you learn not to waste time on stuff like that. She looked past it, at her sleeping son, and thought about Marcia McWaid. Marcia had woken up like this, looked into her child's room like this, and found the bed empty. Now, three months later, Marcia McWaid was waiting for word as law enforcement officers scoured a state park for her missing daughter.

That was what people like Ariana Nasbro didn't quite get. The fragility of it all. The ripples one horror can unleash. How any carelessness can plummet you down that pit of despair. How it can all be irreparable.

Yet again, Wendy said the silent prayer of every parent: Don't let anything harm him. Please just keep him safe.

Then she got into her car and drove to the state park where the police were searching for the girl who hadn't been in that bed in the morning.

CHAPTER 20

THE SUN ROSE at five forty-five AM.

Patricia McWaid, Haley's younger sister, stood in the middle of the activity storm and didn't move. Since the police found Haley's iPhone, it felt as though they had gone back to those numbing first days--stapling up posters, calling all her friends, visiting her favorite spots, updating her missing-girl Web site, handing out her photograph at the local malls.

Investigator Tremont, who had been so nice to her family, seemed to have aged about ten years in the last few days. He forced up a smile for her and said, "How you doing, Patricia?"

"Fine, thank you."

He patted her shoulder and moved on. People did that a lot with Patricia. She didn't stand out. She wasn't particularly special. That didn't bother her. Most people aren't particularly special, though they may think they are. Patricia was content with her situation--or at least she had been. She missed Haley. Patricia did not relish attention. Unlike her big sister, she hated competition and avoided the limelight. Now she was a "pity celebrity" at school, the popular girls acting friendly, wanting to get close to her so they could say at parties, "Oh, that missing girl? Well, I'm friends with her sister!"

Patricia's mother was helping to organize the search parties. Mom was pure strength, like Haley, a pantherlike power to their walks, as if even a stroll was a challenge to those around them. Haley led. Always. And Patricia followed. Some people thought that bothered her. It didn't. Her mother would sometimes get on her, tell her, "You need to be more decisive," but Patricia never saw the need. She didn't like making decisions. She was just as happy seeing the movie Haley liked. She didn't care whether they ate Chinese or Italian. What was the big deal? When you think about it, what's so great about being decisive?

News vans were being corralled into a roped-off area like she'd seen cowboys do with cattle in the movies. Patricia spotted that shrill-voiced, frosted-hair woman from that cable station. One of the reporters sneaked past the barricade and called out Patricia's name. He gave her a toothy smile and showed her a microphone, as if it were candy he was using to lure her into his car. Tremont walked over to the reporter and told him to get the f-something behind the barricade.

A crew from another news van started setting up a camera. Patricia recognized the beautiful reporter with them. Her son, Charlie Tynes, went to their high school. Charlie's dad had been killed by a drunk driver when he was young. Her mom had told her that story. Whenever they'd see Mrs. Tynes at a game or the supermarket or whatever, Patricia and Haley and Mom would all go a little quiet, as if in respect or maybe fear, wondering, Patricia guessed, what her life would be like if a drunk driver did something like that to her dad.

More police arrived. Her dad greeted them, forcing up a smile, shaking hands like he was running for office. Patricia was more like her father--go with the flow. But her father had changed. They all had, she guessed, but something inside of her dad had shattered, and she wasn't sure whether, even if Haley came home, it would ever be right again. He still looked the same, smiled the same, tried to laugh and act goofy and do those little things that made him, well, him, but it was as if he were empty, like everything inside of him had been scooped out or like some movie in which the aliens replace people with soulless clones.

There were police dogs, Great Danes, and Patricia walked over to them.

"Is it okay if I pet them?" she asked.

"Sure," the officer said after a brief hesitation.

Patricia scratched one behind the ears. His tongue flopped out in appreciation.

People talk about how much parents shape you, but Haley was the most dominant person in her life. When girls in second grade started picking on Patricia, Haley beat up one as a warning to the others. When some guys catcalled at them by Madison Square Garden--Haley had taken her little sister to see Taylor Swift--Haley had slid in front of her and told them to shut the hell up. At Disney World, their parents had let Haley and Patricia go out alone one night. They ended up meeting some older boys and getting drunk in the All-Star Sports Resort. The good girl could get away with stuff like that. Not that she wasn't good--Haley was--but she was still a teenager. That night, after having her first beer, Patricia had made out with a guy named Parker, but Haley made sure that Parker went no further.

"We'll start deep in the woods," she overheard Investigator Tremont say to the officer handling the dogs.

"Why deep?"

"If she's alive, if the bastard has built some kind of shelter to hide her, it has to be pretty far off the path or someone would have noticed already. But if she's near the trail . . ."

His voice trailed off as he realized, Patricia was sure, that she was in earshot. She looked off into the woods and petted the dog and pretended that she didn't hear. For the past three months, Patricia had blocked everything out. Haley was strong. She would survive. It was as though her big sister had just gone on some weird adventure and would be home soon.

But now, looking out in the woods and petting this dog, she pictured the unfathomable: Haley, alone, scared, hurt, crying. Patricia squeezed her eyes shut. Frank Tremont walked toward her. He stood in front of her, cleared his throat, waited for her to open her eyes. After a few moments she did. She waited for his words of comfort. But he didn't offer any. He just stood there, shuffling his feet, indecisive.

So Patricia closed her eyes again and kept petting that dog.

CHAPTER 21

WENDY STOOD IN FRONT of the crime scene tape and spoke into the microphone with the NTC News logo near the mouthpiece. "And so we wait for some word," she said, trying to add gravitas to her voice without that TV-news melodrama. "From Ringwood State Park in northern New Jersey, this is Wendy Tynes, NTC News."

She lowered the microphone. Sam, her cameraman, said, "We should probably do that again."

"Why?"

"Your ponytail is loose."

"It's fine."

"Come on, tighten the band. It'll take two minutes. Vic will want another take."

"Screw Vic."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You're kidding, right?"

She said nothing.

"Hey, you're the one who gets all pissed when we air a take with a makeup smudge," he went on. "All of a sudden you got religion? Come on, let's do one more take."

Wendy handed him the microphone and walked away. Sam was right, of course. She was a television news reporter. Anyone who thinks looks don't matter in this industry is somewhere between naive and brain-dead. Of course looks matter--and Wendy had primped for the camera and done repeated takes in equally grim situations.

In short, add "hypocrite" to her growing list of failures.

"Where you going?" Sam asked.

"I have my cell. Call me if something happens."

She headed to her car. She had planned on calling Phil Turnball, but then she remembered that his wife, Sherry, had said that Phil spent every morning alone with the classifieds at the Suburban Diner on Route 17. It was only about twenty minutes from here.

The classic New Jersey diners of yore had these wonderful shiny aluminum walls. The newer ones--"newer" meaning circa 1968--had a faux stone facade that made Wendy long for, well, aluminum. The interiors had, however, changed very little. There were still small jukeboxes at every table; a counter with spin stools; doughnuts under Batphone-style glass covers; signed, sun-faded autographed photos of local celebrities you never heard of; a surly guy with hairy ears behind the cash register; and a waitress who called you "hon" and you loved her for it.

The jukebox played the eighties hit "True" by Spandau Ballet, a curious six AM song selection. Phil Turnball sat in a corner booth. He wore a gray pinstripe suit with a yellow tie they used to call a "power tie." He was not reading the paper. He stared down at his coffee as though it hid an answer.

Wendy approached and waited for him to look up. He didn't.

Still looking down: "How did you know I was here?" Phil asked.

"Your wife mentioned you hang out here."

He smiled but there was no joy in it. "Did she now?"

Wendy said nothing.

"Tell me, how did that conversation go exactly--oh, pathetic Phil goes to this diner every morning and feels sorry for himself?"

"Not at all," Wendy said.

"Right."

This was not a subject worth mining. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

"I have nothing to say to you."

The newspaper was open to the story on Haley's iPhone being found in Dan Mercer's motel room. "You read about Dan?"

"Yep. You still here to defend him? Or was that a crock from the beginning?"

"I'm not following."

"Did you know about Dan abducting this girl before yesterday? Did you figure I wouldn't talk if you told me your real agenda, so you pretended you were going to restore his reputation?"

Wendy slid in across the table from him. "I never said I wanted to restore his reputation. I said I wanted to find out the truth."

"Very noble," he said.

"Why are you being so hostile?"

"I saw you talking to Sherry last night."

"Yeah, so?"

Phil Turnball took the coffee with both hands, one finger in the handle, the other for balance. "You wanted her to persuade me to cooperate."

"And again I say: Yeah, so?"

He took a sip, gently put the coffee back down. "I didn't know what to think. I mean, some of what you said about Dan being set up made sense. But now"--he pointed with his chin toward the article on Haley's iPhone--"what's the point?"

"Maybe you can help find a missing girl."

He shook his head and closed his eyes.

"What?"