Shadow Creek

by Joy Fielding

“What exactly are you taking?” Val asked.

  “We’ll do everything we can to locate your daughter, Mrs. Rowe. I’ve assigned a team to start searching the woods …”

  “Have your search teams been successful in their search for David Gowan?”

  Mike Jones looked toward the other rangers present. “We’re pretty convinced that Mr. Gowan is no longer in the area.”

  “So, the answer is no, you haven’t found him.”

  “We’re pretty certain that come Monday morning, he’ll be back at work …”

  “Just like Henry Voight showed up for work today?”

  “We’re getting off topic here, Mrs. Rowe.”

  “I don’t think we are,” Val said forcefully, continuing before he could object. “Look. Three people are missing: David Gowan, Henry Voight, and my daughter, all of whom have mysteriously vanished in the last few days. What’s more, there is someone patrolling the woods impersonating a park ranger and wearing a uniform that likely belongs to the missing Henry Voight. Which, I don’t know, kind of suggests the possibility of foul play to me.”

  “I don’t think we should be jumping to conclusions …”

  “This man actually talked to my daughter and my friend here,” Val interrupted, indicating Jennifer, “last night.”

  “And Miss Logan has given us a description of the man she talked to,” Mike Jones interrupted, “and we’ll be circulating that description …”

  “Fine,” Val said, realizing this was the first time she was hearing Jennifer’s maiden name, that she’d gotten used to thinking of her as the other Mrs. Rowe, that they were, in some perverse way, related. “What else are you doing? Have you called the FBI?”

  “I really don’t think that’s necessary at this point.”

  “When will you think it’s necessary?”

  “Mrs. Rowe, I understand your concern,” Mike Jones said. “I really do. I have teenage daughters of my own, so believe me, I know the kind of hell you’re going through right now. But let’s look at the facts. The first fact is that yesterday afternoon your daughter was found by our rangers having sex with her boyfriend in a public place.”

  “Yes, thank you for reminding me of that.”

  “Fact number two is that she snuck out of the campsite last night at midnight to go meet this boy. Quite willingly, from what I understand.”

  “Yes. I’m not arguing with you …”

  “Fact number three is that there was a fight with this man’s son,” Mike Jones continued, nodding toward Gary, who was standing ramrod straight at Val’s side. “A fight that left him unconscious at the side of the road.”

  “Brianne wasn’t responsible for what Tyler Currington did to Hayden,” Val said, looking to Gary for support. Gary quickly looked away, unwilling to hold her gaze. What did that mean? she wondered. That he did consider Brianne at least partly responsible, that he might decide to press charges against her after all?

  “Be that as it may, Mrs. Rowe, your daughter then drove off in a car with this boy. So, at the very least, you can see why she may not be in a hurry to come back and face the music. She may be afraid …”

  “Brianne’s not afraid of anything,” Val said.

  Fearless, she heard Gary say. Again, she glanced in his direction, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. But he was staring at the floor, and didn’t look up.

  “I’m just saying that the odds are that your daughter is just too embarrassed to face you at this time. Just like David Gowan is too embarrassed to face his wife …”

  “And Henry Voight? What’s he embarrassed about?”

  “We’ll be looking into that.”

  “And, in the meantime, we’re supposed to just sit around here and wait?”

  “Actually, I’d suggest going back to the campground office. That way, you’ll be there should your daughter decide to return, and I can reach you by phone as soon as I hear anything.”

  “And if you don’t hear anything?”

  “Suppose we give it to the end of the day. If your daughter still hasn’t turned up, we’ll notify the state troopers.”

  “Why can’t we do that now?” Val pressed.

  A phone rang. Seconds later, Steve Severin approached, leaning in toward Mike Jones. “They’ve found Tyler Currington’s car,” he announced.

  “I KNOW YOU, don’t I?” Brianne said to the girl, taking several steps forward and shielding her eyes against the sudden reappearance of the sun.

  Nikki looked from Brianne to Henry and then back again. “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, I do. I saw you at the lodge,” Brianne continued, recognizing Nikki as the young woman who’d plowed into her mother at the elevators when they’d first arrived, almost knocking her down, then giving them all the finger.

  “No. I don’t think so.” Again, Nikki looked toward Henry.

  “It could have been you,” Henry said easily. “We go there sometimes for dinner.”

  “Yeah. Sometimes my grandmother gives us money, tells us to go live it up. She’s cool that way.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  Nikki indicated the cottage behind her with a lazy flick of her thumb. “This is her place.”

  Brianne’s eyes shot toward Henry, watching him flinch. Hadn’t he said this was his cottage, that his parents had left it to him when they died?

  Sometimes terrible things happen to good people, she distinctly recalled him saying, although it was entirely possible she’d misinterpreted his remarks. She was beyond exhausted. Not to mention weak from hunger and dying of thirst. Under the circumstances, it was easy to get confused.

  “Anyway, I don’t remember seeing you there,” Nikki was saying now.

  “I was with my mother and her friends.”

  “Sounds like lots of fun.” Nikki made no attempt to mask her sarcasm. “Come on in.” She opened the cottage door and stepped inside.

  Brianne followed the girl into the cottage, Henry right behind her. Immediately she became aware of a vaguely unpleasant smell. She tried to identify it, but failed. “What’s that smell?”

  “We think it’s a dead animal,” Henry said, glaring at Nikki. “I thought you were going to spray.”

  “I did,” Nikki said testily. “English Garden.”

  “A bunch of raccoons were fighting with each other last week,” Henry said. “We think one of them might have crawled under the cottage to die.”

  “Kenny keeps saying he’s going to go under there and dig them out but—”

  “Who’s Kenny?” Brianne asked.

  Nikki paled.

  “Friend of mine,” Henry said. “He doesn’t mind doing that sort of thing. He’s just been a little busy lately.”

  “We don’t really notice the smell so much anymore,” Nikki said. “It’s worse when the wind blows a certain way.”

  “You’ll forget about it in a few minutes,” Henry added.

  Brianne’s eyes skipped across the room. This place is a mess, she thought in her mother’s voice. There was dust everywhere. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Cutlery was scattered everywhere, including the kitchen floor. The pillows on the sofa were hopelessly askew. A large rug had been rolled up and left in front of a stone fireplace that was filled to overflowing with ashes, the underside of the rug filthy and covered with stains that looked fresh, even damp. She couldn’t imagine anybody’s grandmother living in such a mess.

  Not even her own.

  Of course her mother paid a woman to come in once a week to keep her grandmother’s apartment relatively neat and clean. Neat and clean were clearly not priorities in this cottage, where everything appeared more than slightly off. Including this girl, Nikki, Brianne thought, in her oversized floral dress with the old-fashioned rhinestone brooch pinned carelessly into the folds above her left breast. “Do you think we could try calling the campground?” she asked. “My mother is probably half out of her mind.”

  “Already on it,” Henry said, holding up his phone and punching in a series
of numbers. “Babe, you think you could get our guest something to eat?”

  “There’s not a whole lot of stuff left,” Nikki said.

  “That’s okay. I don’t need much.” Brianne’s appetite had pretty much evaporated the instant she walked through the door. “Actually, just a glass of water would be great. I’m dying of thirst.”

  Nikki laughed, as if Brianne had just said something very funny, and walked slowly into the kitchen, searching haphazardly through the cupboards for a glass, as if she wasn’t quite sure where to find them.

  Please let there be a clean one, Brianne prayed, relieved when the girl finally retrieved one from the back of a cupboard directly over the sink. She watched Nikki fill the glass with water, then return to the main room, arm extended, a thin, wriggly red line snaking from the underside of her elbow to her wrist, like a tattoo. Or dried blood, she thought. Had Nikki cut herself?

  “Don’t know how cold it is,” Nikki said as Brianne raised the glass to her lips, drinking the water down in one gulp.

  “Easy there,” Henry advised. “You don’t want to get sick again.” Then, into the phone, “Yes, hello. Yes, this is Henry Voight with the park rangers. I’m trying to locate a Mrs.…?” He looked toward Brianne.

  “Valerie Rowe,” Brianne told him quickly. “R-O-W-E.”

  “Valerie Rowe,” he repeated. “I believe she and her friends stayed with you last night. Yes. R-O-W-E. That’s right. Of course, I’ll hold.”

  “Do you think I could have another glass of water?”

  “Why don’t you make Brianne some of your cranberry and peach tea?” Henry suggested. “Tea is very good for you.”

  “No, that’s fine. Really. I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble. Water’s already boiled,” Nikki said. She pointed toward the sofa. “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Brianne didn’t have to be asked twice. Despite the mess and the smell—or maybe because of them—she was having trouble staying upright. She collapsed onto the sofa, fatigue settling across her shoulders like a heavy blanket, weighing her down. Had she ever been so utterly exhausted in her entire life? Her head swiveled toward the bedrooms at the back of the cottage, wondering again what had happened to Tyler and thinking how nice it would be to stretch out in a nice soft bed, get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before having to confront her mother. “Is your grandmother still sleeping?” she asked.

  “My grandmother?” Nikki dropped a tea bag into a mug and filled it with water from the kettle, surreptitiously slipping three Percodan into the mix.

  Brianne wondered absently how long the water had been sitting there, if it was still even hot. “I’m sorry. I thought you said this was her cottage.” For the second time that morning, Brianne was starting to think she might be hallucinating, that this whole interlude was part of another vaguely sinister dream.

  “She’s away for a few days. Here,” Nikki said, handing her the tea. “Drink up.” She watched closely as Brianne swallowed most of the tea in one long sip. “How is it?”

  “Great,” Brianne said, although in truth, the tea was merely lukewarm and tasted more bitter than sweet. Still, she was so thirsty she finished the rest of it without further prompting. “Thanks.” She glanced toward Henry. “Have they located my mother yet?”

  “They have me on hold.” It was several minutes before he spoke again, and when he did, his voice was barely above a whisper. “Everything’s going to be all right, Brianne,” he began, lowering the phone to his side. “I don’t want you to go getting all upset …”

  “Has something happened to my mother? Has she been hurt?” Brianne tried getting to her feet, but it was almost as if weights had been attached to her ankles, and she fell back against the pillows, unable to stand.

  “Your mother’s fine.”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  A slight pause before he spoke, then, “Apparently she and her friends checked out of the campground an hour ago.”

  “What do you mean, they ‘checked out’?”

  “They left first thing this morning, said they were going home early. The director said they seemed very angry …”

  “I don’t care how angry they were,” Brianne protested. “They wouldn’t just leave me.”

  “I’m really sorry. It looks as if that’s exactly what they did.”

  “What? No. There’s been a mistake. They probably just went back to the lodge to wait for my father.”

  “Do you want me to call the lodge?” Henry immediately punched in another series of numbers without waiting for her response.

  Brianne tried to tell herself that it wasn’t unusual for a park ranger to know the telephone number for the Lodge at Shadow Creek by heart, just as she tried to tell herself that he hadn’t flinched when Nikki had said the cottage belonged to her grandmother, and that there wasn’t something very strange about this girl in her too-big dress and her bitter-tasting tea. She tried to tell herself that her head was spinning because she was so tired, and nothing more. She tried to tell herself she was indeed hallucinating.

  “The manager at the lodge says he hasn’t seen or heard anything from your mother since she left the premises yesterday,” Henry was saying in a voice that floated in and out of Brianne’s consciousness in waves.

  “So what do I do now?” Brianne asked. She barely recognized her voice. Her eyes were fighting to stay open.

  “First, you’re going to have a little nap. Then you’re going to take a shower, fix your hair, and brush your teeth. Make yourself nice and presentable for Mommy. Then Nikki and I will drive you back into the city.”

  “Couldn’t we just go now?”

  “No, you’re way too tired for that,” Henry was saying, drawing closer, until she felt his breath warm against her lips. “Brianne,” he whispered as her eyes fluttered to a close. “Brianne, can you hear me?”

  Brianne opened her mouth to speak, but no sounds emerged.

  And then she saw and heard nothing.

  TWENTY-SIX

  VAL WAS THINKING OF her mother. Not the woman she was now, broken and befuddled by too many bottles of booze, and not the confused and unsure woman from her teenage years, when her self-confidence was being pummeled by her husband’s ceaseless womanizing and her own ceaseless rationalizations, but the strong and resilient mother of her childhood, the woman who’d taught her to follow her instincts and stand on her own two feet.

  “I don’t want to go to school today, Mommy,” she recalled telling her mother when she was four years old and enrolled in the nursery school at the local Y.

  “Why don’t you want to go, sweetie?”

  “There’s a boy who’s mean to me.”

  “How is he mean to you?”

  Little Valerie had straightened her back and puffed out her chest. “He says I’m a stupid little girl,” she’d announced, her tiny voice resonating with indignation. “I’m not stupid, am I?”

  “You certainly are not.”

  “Will you come with me and tell him not to call me a stupid little girl anymore?” she’d asked.

  “Oh, I think you’re smart enough to handle him all by yourself,” her mother had said.

  And handle him she had, returning to the school that afternoon and punching the little boy smack in the mouth the second the word stupid left his lips.

  “They’re having a ‘Swim for Your Life’ meet at school next month,” eight-year-old Valerie had announced to her parents some four years later. “It’s to raise money for charity, and I need lots of sponsors. You make money for how many lengths you swim, and I’m going to swim the most lengths and raise the most money.”

  “Put me down for a dollar a length,” her father had offered from behind the newspaper he was reading.

  “How about ten?” her mother had countered. Then, with a wink in Valerie’s direction, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get, sweetheart. You have to speak up in this life.”

  Little Valerie had repaid he
r mother’s confidence—and shocked the entire school—by swimming an astonishing seventy-four lengths. Her mother had stood by proudly as her father grudgingly wrote out a check for $740.

  Serves you right, Val thought now. You never believed I could do it. You never even paid attention.

  Even now she could see the look of boredom stamped across her father’s face, how after the first couple of lengths, he’d lost interest and drifted over to where Ava McAllister’s attractive, young mother was standing with a few of her equally young, attractive friends, and how they’d all spent the balance of the swim meet engaged in flirty banter. Only occasionally had he glanced over at the pool where his daughter continued to swim length after length, determined not to come up for air until she had her father’s full and undivided attention. She’d stopped—exhausted and on the verge of total collapse—only when she finally caught him looking her way, although when she replayed the scene later in her mind, she realized he’d probably just been stealing a glance at the clock on the far wall. She also understood, with a child’s instinctive grasp, that she was no match for any of these other women, no matter what she accomplished, no matter how many lengths she swam. She simply wasn’t interesting enough to merit his attention. She was just a stupid little girl. That boy in her nursery school class had been right.

  They’d gone out for dinner that night to celebrate her success, and her father had spent most of the night talking to the waitress. “Really, Jack,” Val could still hear her mother admonish as they left the restaurant, “do you have to be so obvious, especially in front of the children?” At the time, she didn’t know what her mother was talking about. Nor did she remember her father’s response. She did remember waking up that night to her mother’s soft cries, and coming into the kitchen to find her sitting alone at the kitchen table, her gaze loose and unfocused.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

  “Nothing, sweetheart. Go back to bed. It’s very late. You have school tomorrow.”

  “Are you sad?”

  “No, sweetheart. Why would I be sad? My daughter just swam the most lengths and raised the most money in the entire history of John Fisher Public School. I’m proud as punch,” she’d said with a smile, swiping at her tears with the back of her hand.