“Actually,” he says. “You might be surprised.”
I’m expecting to walk over to where the girls set up their campsite that night. Instead, Dean ushers me over to the parking lot, and we have to drive almost ten minutes to another area. He parks in a lot next to a bathhouse.
“This must be where Allison was talking about Ashley’s going,” he says.
“But this is nowhere near the campground,” I observe. “Why would her mother warn her not to go to the abandoned cabins if they were staying all the way over here?”
“If she didn’t know where they were actually staying,” Dean says. “Remember, Vivian’s parents weren’t really here. The girls chose their own campsite.”
I’m still thinking about this when I get out of the car. We hear a car door close across the parking lot. Allison Garrett tucks her phone into her back pocket and uses one hand to pull a ponytail holder out of her hair and shake it out before heading over toward us.
“Hi,” I say. “Thanks for meeting us here.”
“Absolutely,” she says, shuddering slightly as she looks around. “I haven’t been back here since then. It’s kind of weird to be back.”
“You haven’t been here at all?” Dean asks.
“I’ve come to the park, but not this area. I just couldn’t face it. After the police brought Vivian and me back so we could show them what happened, I left and didn’t look back. I thought I’d never see it again. Not until Ashley’s found,” Allison says.
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” I say. “To try to find her. Whatever happened to her started here. So it’s where we’re going to start.”
Allison nods and looks over toward the entrance to the parking lot. “Vivian should be here soon. She left work to make sure she made it.”
Almost as if her saying that ushered Vivian in, a car appears on the narrow road leading to the lot and turns in. It slides into the spot directly next to Allison’s, and a girl with spiked black hair and intense makeup climbs out. It’s a stark change from the picture taken of her just a few months ago, but I can still recognize her.
Allison meets her in the middle of the parking lot with a hug. It lingers, and I can see both are struggling with the emotions brought up by coming back here. At the same time, I wish Xavier hadn’t stayed back at Arrow Lake with Ava to give her a tour replicating our movements from the night we were here. I’d be interested to see what he thinks of these two, and what they’re telling me with what they aren’t saying at all.
Seventeen
When the hug ends, Allison leads Vivian over to us.
“This is Dean Steele and Emma Griffin,” she introduces. “They’re the ones looking into Ashley’s disappearance.”
Vivian nods, sniffling back tears. “Thank you. It’s been a long time.”
“It has,” I say. “Which is why she deserves to have her story told. And the two of you hold a really important part of that story. You were with her right before she disappeared.”
“We didn’t see where she went,” Vivian says.
“I know,” I nod. “But you were with her leading up to her disappearance. You might have some insight about it you don’t even realize. Which is why we were hoping you would come out here with us, and kind of walk us through what happened. You already did it with the police, I know. But we aren’t police. We investigate in a different way.”
I don’t explain exactly what that means. The point is to make them trust us, to be willing to give us more information.
“Where do you want to start?” Allison asks.
“Where did you start?” I ask.
They exchange glances.
“Right here,” Vivian says. “This is where we parked.”
“Where you parked?” Dean asks. “None of you was old enough to drive.”
“My dad started to teach me to drive when I was thirteen,” Vivian explains. “By the time I was fifteen, I figured I already had almost two years of experience, so I could manage to drive around a little. My sister worked a lot and was staying with her boyfriend more often than she was home, so her car pretty much just sat behind the house. Mom worked overnight, and I knew she wouldn’t notice the car was missing until she woke up after getting home from work the next day. So, I took it.”
“Did you tell the police that when they interviewed you?” I ask.
Vivian shakes her head. “No. They didn’t ask.”
“They didn’t ask how you got here?” Dean asks.
She shakes her head again and Allison joins in. “All they cared about was that we were here without parents and Ashley went missing. They saw three teenage girls who lied to go do something they knew their parents wouldn’t let them do, and one of them ended up a statistic.”
It’s a harsh evaluation, but I also know it’s accurate. I’ve seen it happen just that way too many times before. Detectives get an initial impression of what’s happening and won’t budge from it. Especially if a detective has a personal sticking point or a vendetta against a specific type of person or crime. Any of them can get clouded into automatically fitting a situation into that mold based purely on what he or she first absorbs from a situation.
And unfortunately, I can see how that could happen in this story. I’m keeping quiet. I’ll withhold my judgment until I know the truth. Which I have no doubt I haven’t heard yet.
“Show us what you did,” I tell them. “Just walk us through everything you remember from the time you got here until you realized Ashley was missing.”
They venture into the woods and Dean and I follow them. As we wind along an overgrown pass, I notice the girls glancing over at each other every few seconds. There’s something in that look. I
