The heat hadn’t broken. The afternoon sun blistered the pavement. She kept her Avalanche ice cold as she drove, shivering in her spaghetti-strap top and white shorts. Her small feet barely reached the pedals. As she neared the gold reflections of the river at Perch Lake Park, she could see a flotilla of multicolored sailboats squeezed into the narrow inlets. Motor-boats dragged teenagers through the waves in old tires. On the shore of the nearest island, she spied rows of near-naked bodies, their bare flesh baking on beach towels.
Maggie got out of her Avalanche and adjusted her burgundy sunglasses. She took a seat on the nearest bench, pulled her legs underneath her, and tilted her face to the sky, relishing the sunlight. When she opened her eyes, she realized that, like Mary, she was alone here. Everyone else had someone with them to share the day. Husbands had wives. Mothers had sons and daughters. Boys had brothers. Even the old men walking by themselves had dogs on a leash.
Maggie thought it again. She wanted a child. Someone to raise, take care of, and be with. It was easy to wish for something when you couldn’t have it.
She pushed off the bench and headed along the dirt trail leading up the shore, past birch trees and lowland brush. This was the route Mary Biggs had walked, innocent and unknowing, from the safety of the little gray bench to a place where strangers and deep water took her away. From where she was, Maggie kept an eye on the highway. Donna Biggs, running to rescue her daughter, could have glimpsed a tall man through the trees as he climbed into a silver SUV, but at this distance, she wouldn’t have been able to identify him. She knew that Donna was right, because she believed that Finn Mathisen had been here. Stalking Mary. Driving a silver RAV. What she knew and what she could prove, though, were two different things.
When she reached the point in the trail where Mary had run for the river, Maggie veered off the path into the woods. She knew the ev techs had been over this ground thoroughly, and she didn’t expect to find anything they had missed. Even so, she wanted to put herself in Finn’s shoes. Mary is screaming, running away. The noise terrifies him. He escapes back into the trees, heading for his car, pushing through spindly branches that claw at him, hearing his own breath and the squish of wet leaves beneath his feet. It isn’t far, but it must have seemed far, wondering if he would be caught. Maggie saw the road ahead of her. She emerged from the trees, as he would have done, and found herself on the gravel shoulder of the highway. The silver RAV4 would have been parked right here.
He got in; his tires spun on the loose rock; he sped away.
Maggie stared down the curving stretch of road. She could see the flat area near the parking lot where the young boy had spilled off his bicycle. From there, Donna could see clearly up the slope. She would have seen the RAV parked here as she called out for help. It all must have happened quickly. Mary wandering up the trail. Donna noticing she was gone. The man spying Mary, realizing she was coming closer, stepping out onto the trail to confront her. Mary wailing, Donna running to find her, Finn-if it was Finn-pushing through the trees.
Maggie realized that Finn couldn’t have predicted that Mary would wander up the trail alone. That was a bonus. He knew that Donna and Mary came down to the park most Fridays and that they spent time sitting on the bench by the river. So the most he could have hoped for was to spy on her. Watch her. Where would the best place have been to do that? Maggie didn’t think he would have risked sitting in his car, with traffic coming and going. He would have taken binoculars and staked out a spot near the trail, closer to where they sat.
She wandered down the slope, looking for a place where she could duck back into the trees. She kept an eye on the parking lot, as Finn would have done, trying to find a hiding place with the best vantage. Twenty yards away, she found a slim trail, where the foliage was beaten down, a shortcut for kids to hike and ride bikes off the highway on their way to the river. She followed it, certain that Finn would have used this route. Maggie reached the wider trail, the one Mary had used, and realized that if she continued down to the water, she would have a largely unobstructed view across the bend of the river toward the clearing where Donna and Mary sat, watching the birds fly.
Maggie scooted down the gentle slope to the water. There, she could imagine Finn tucked behind the brush, crouched down, binoculars in hand, zooming in on the pretty young face a hundred yards away. When she studied the area, however, she didn’t see any remnants of someone lurking there. She would get the ev techs to come back and examine the spot in detail, but she wasn’t optimistic.
Frustrated, Maggie retraced her steps up the slope. When she pushed her way back onto the main trail, she was surprised to find a man watching her, no more than ten feet away.
It was Clark Biggs.
“Oh!” Maggie exclaimed. “Mr. Biggs. I’ve been looking for you.”
Clark nodded but said nothing. His hands were jammed in his pockets. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept. Maggie thought that big men always took it hardest. The burly ones were used to thinking of themselves as strong, but when it came to something like this, a strong man was nothing in the face of disaster. His muscles didn’t matter. His courage didn’t matter.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Talking to Mary,” he said.
“I understand.”
“She loved the water,” he continued. “It’s so ironic, because the water is what killed her. I used to take her down to the Wisconsin Point, and we’d spend hours on the beach there. She hated to leave. It was her favorite place.”
Maggie said nothing.
“Tell me you found this bastard.”
“We’re pursuing some promising leads, but I don’t want to get your hopes up, because this could all come to nothing. But I do need your help.”
“Anything.”
Maggie took a breath. “If you don’t mind my asking, how are you? I can only imagine what you’re going through. And your ex-wife, too. I know that families are often reluctant to get help, but there are people you can talk to.”
“I don’t want that kind of help,” Clark said.
“If you should change your mind, call me. I can give you some names.”
“I know a little about you, Ms. Bei. I know you lost someone close to you earlier this year, too.”
“Losing a husband isn’t the same as losing your daughter,” Maggie said. She didn’t add that Eric’s murder had come at a time when their marriage was largely over, when their love had wasted away to contempt.
Clark shrugged. “Loss is loss. Just tell me, how can I help? I want to see this man rotting away behind bars where he belongs.”
Maggie reached into the pocket of her shorts and extracted an eight-by-eight postcard with six photos pasted in two rows. All the photos were from driver’s license records. All the men were bald, in their forties.
“I’d like you to look carefully at this photo array and tell me if you recognize any of the men here.”
Clark took the wrinkled postcard from her hand and held it up at arm’s length from his face. Maggie watched his eyes as he studied each photo. He hesitated at the man in the upper right corner, then moved on. When he was done, he went back to that photo and squinted at it for nearly a minute. Finally, he tapped the picture with his finger.
“This one,” he said. “I’ve seen him before. I don’t know where, but I know I’ve seen him.”
“He’s a delivery driver. On the Saturday that Mary first saw the man outside her bedroom window, this man delivered a package to your house. A swing set.”
Clark’s fingers tightened on the card. Maggie didn’t like what she saw in his eyes. She pried the card out of his hands and slipped it back in her pocket.
“So it’s him,” he said.
