26
I phoned the police and left a message for Detective Rona Wedmore, who’d given me her card when she’d asked me questions after we’d scattered Tess’s ashes on the Sound. I asked if she could meet me and Cynthia at our home, that we’d both be there shortly. Gave her the address in case she didn’t already know it, but I was betting she did. In my message I said that what I was calling about didn’t have to do, specifically, with the disappearance of Denton Abagnall, but it might, in some way, be related.
I said it was urgent.
I asked Cynthia on the phone whether she wanted me to pick her up at work, but she said she was okay to drive home. I left the school without explaining to anyone why, but they were, I guess, becoming accustomed to my erratic behavior. Rolly had just come out of his office, seen me on the phone, and watched as I’d run out of the building.
Cynthia beat me home by a couple of minutes. She was standing in the doorway, the envelope in her hand.
I came inside and she handed it to me. There was one word-“Cynthia”-printed on the front. No stamp. It had not gone through the mail.
“Now we’ve both touched it,” I said, suddenly realizing we were probably making all kinds of mistakes the police would give us shit for later.
“I don’t care,” she said. “Read it.”
I took the sheet of plain business paper out of the envelope. It had been folded perfectly in thirds, like a proper letter. The back side of the sheet was a map, crudely drawn in pencil, some intersecting lines representing roads, a small town labeled “Otis,” a rough egg shape labeled “quarry lake,” and an “X” in one corner of it. There were some other notations, but I wasn’t sure what they meant.
Cynthia, speechless, watched me take it all in.
I flipped the sheet over and the moment I saw the typed message, I noticed something about it, something that jumped out at me, something that disturbed me very much. Even before I’d read the contents of the note, I wondered about the implications of what had caught my eye.
But for the moment, I held my tongue, and read what it said:
Cynthia: It’s time you knew where they were. Where they still ARE, most likely. There’s an abandoned quarry a couple of hours north of where you live, just past the Connecticut border. It’s like a lake, but not a real lake because it’s where they took out gravel and stuff. It’s real deep. Probably too deep for any kids swimming there to have found all these years. You take 8 north, cross into Mass., keep going till you get to Otis, then go east. See the map on the other side. There’s a small lane behind a row of trees that leads to the top of the quarry. You have to be careful when you get up there, because it’s really steep. Down into the quarry there. Right down there, at the bottom of that lake, that’s where you’ll find your answer.
I flipped the sheet over again. The map showed all the details that were set out in the note.
“That’s where they are,” Cynthia whispered, pointing to the paper in my hand. “They’re in the water.” She took in a breath. “So…they’re dead.”
Things seemed almost blurry before my eyes. I blinked a couple of times, focused. I turned the sheet over again, reread the note, then looked at it not for what it said, but from a more technical point of view.
It had been composed on a standard typewriter. Not on a computer. Not printed off.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, trying very hard to keep my voice controlled.
“It was in the mail at Pamela’s,” Cynthia said. “In the mailbox. Someone left it there. The mailman didn’t bring it. It doesn’t have a stamp on it or anything.”
“No,” I said. “Someone put it there.”
“Who?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“We have to go up there,” she said. “Today, now, we have to find out what’s there, what’s under the water.”
“The detective, the woman who met us at the dock, Wedmore, she’s coming. We’ll talk to her about that. They’ll have police divers. But there’s something else I want to ask you about. It’s about this note. Look at it. Look at the typing-”
“They have to get up there immediately,” Cynthia said. It was as if she thought whoever was at the bottom of that quarry might still be alive, that they might still have a bit of air left.
I heard a car stop out front, looked out the window and saw Rona Wedmore striding up the driveway, her short, stocky frame looking capable of walking straight through the door.
I felt a sense of panic.
“Honey,” I said, “is there anything else you want to tell me about this note? Before the police get here? You have to be totally honest with me here.”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“Don’t you see something odd about this?” I said, holding the letter in front of her. I pointed, very specifically, to one of the words in the letter. “Right here, at the beginning,” I said, pointing to “time.”
“What?”
