I got angry. I was not going to die in this pool and leave my mother sad and lonely. I was going to fight for both of us. I knew that with the air almost out of my lungs I didn’t have much time. So, I went for it. I took both my hands and ripped Marco’s arm from around my throat. Then I jerked my head back and landed it solidly against his chest, which caused him to lean back. I planted my feet on the pool floor, squatted a little, then, with a fast thrust, sprang up and backward, a move that caught him by surprise and sent him tumbling. Free now, I lifted my head above the water’s surface and swallowed as much air as I could. Then I found the nearest side of the pool and swam for it as hard as I could. I kicked my feet with all the force I could muster, just in case he tried to grab me from behind.
I made it to the side of the pool and quickly grabbed the ledge. A hand reached down to pull me out. That was when I looked up and into the determined face of Eric Runyon.
53
I SAT BEHIND MY desk, looking at the stretch of endless blue sky patiently hovering over the lake. At the conclusion of most cases, I typically felt a sense of closure. But this case was different. A promising life had been wasted, while several others had been forever altered, and it didn’t have to be that way. Chopper was in the ground; Weston was sure to serve prison time, but how much would depend on the influence of his family’s wealth. I wouldn’t bet against him walking free one day. Then there was Tinsley, who I was certain was out there somewhere alive.
Carolina encouraged me to let it go, but we both knew that I couldn’t. I needed to see Tinsley with my own eyes and talk to her. I felt it was something Chopper would have wanted me to do: find his butterfly and make sure she was all right.
My cell phone rang. It was Gordon.
“Did you find that rich girl?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said. “She’s still out there somewhere.”
“What about the boyfriend’s murderer?”
I brought him up to speed on all that had happened. He congratulated me, but it felt hollow. My job was still not done.
“I got a DM from morpheusinthesky,” he said.
“What did he say?”
“He wanted to know if there were any updates.”
“Tell him what I told you.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said. “You found the guy’s killer. The girl is still alive and obviously doesn’t want to be found. Maybe it’s best just to leave things where they are.”
I looked at the door and thought about how Chopper had come through, full of confidence and vulnerability, sitting across from me talking about how special his love was for Butterfly and the line from Othello. Then I thought about his kids and what they would’ve looked like had Tinsley not terminated her pregnancy.
I thought about Blair Malone and what he had told me in that conference room. The Gerrigan family was so perfect on the outside but so dysfunctional inside. I never asked him about how he had chosen his Instagram name, morpheusinthesky. I looked upward—not a cloud for miles. The sun held its position, heating up an unseasonably warm day. I could see all the way across the lake to what looked like the outline of southwestern Michigan.
I kept staring. Just under sixty miles, a straight shot from shore to shore. And as I replayed the conversation with Blair, that was when the last piece fell into place.
54
WEALTHY NEW YORKERS HAD the Hamptons, a sumptuous summer playground that knelt at the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Affluent Chicagoans had southwestern Michigan, their summer enclave on the pristine beaches that collared the country’s third-largest lake. In less than sixty-five minutes from bustling downtown Chicago, I found myself motoring along an undulating tree-lined stretch of lakefront property that had long been closed for the season, while year-rounders hunkered down for what would be yet another frigid winter.
Lakeshore Drive on this side of Lake Michigan was spelled as one word instead of two, and in Chicago, where there were no private homes between the road and the lake, here in these tiny beachfront communities, grand houses stood on the other side of the road with unobstructed views of the fifth-largest lake by surface area in the world. Motorists occasionally got a glimpse of the water when gaps opened between the trees or the road rose high enough to see along the roofline of the houses.
The address I was looking for was in the small town of Lakeview. The GPS on my phone had a couple of problems with some of the smaller streets, but eighty minutes after leaving my apartment I sat outside a stretch of road with an imposing brick wall and wrought iron fence extending for at least half a mile. An army of surveillance cameras peered down attentively from towering fence posts and tree branches.
Two imposing limestone columns anchored a rolling ten-foot gate with metal meshing that obstructed the sight line into the property. I drove by the entrance and about a quarter of a mile down the road found a sign announcing a public access path to the lake. I parked my car underneath a canopy of trees and joined the footpath. The beach was wide and barren, the water a glittery blue under the unimpeded sun. A sailboat about a mile offshore glided aimlessly in the soft wind.
It took me a good ten minutes of trudging through the sand before the compound came into view. A wood fence, less secured than the one out front, ran along the
