She turned the key in the ignition, unconsciously reaching up to touch a photograph rubber-banded to the sun visor above her head. It was a European-looking young man with curly black hair smiling confidently, holding a camera with a long telephoto lens as he half-leaned, half-knelt against an ancient crumbling wall. His chambray shirt, dirty jeans and work boots looked as suave as only a Frenchman could make them look. It had to be Jean Paul Lemarnier.

  “Is that your husband?”

  “Shut up.” She put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking spot. “I’m not telling you squat.”

  We were not en route to the Eve Nil’s family farmhouse as originally ordered. After Addison McIntyre learned murder victim Eve Dahlgren had a sister, she insisted on going there with the photographer Pat Robinette. Instead, Charisma and I rushed to the scene where Mrs. Dahlgren’s abandoned Buick had been discovered, nose down in a ditch on a two-lane road somewhere on the east side of Plummer County.

  Within minutes, we arrived at the lonely country road surrounded on both sides by old-growth woods. A wrecker was pulling up to the Buick’s up-ended bumper as a collection of sheriff’s deputies and volunteers stood in circles, examining maps as they planned to search for the old woman.

  Charisma pulled off the side of the road and shut off the car. Covered in her icy silence, we walked toward a man in a black uniform. He was medium height, slightly younger than I, with a weightlifter’s bulk through his shoulders. He wore a black ball cap with the word ‘SHERIFF’ across the front; one hand rested comfortably on his service revolver, the other hooked around his belt. He was speaking to Graham Kinnon, the young man I’d seen previously in the newsroom, who nodded as he took down what the sheriff said.

  The sheriff, whose name was Judson Roarke, nodded as Charisma introduced me.

  “This is at the back side of Canal Lock Park, which is not too far from our missing subject’s home,” Roarke said. “While it’s a good thing that she isn’t posing a danger to others while she’s behind the wheel, I am concerned that she may be injured from the accident. We haven’t found Mrs. Dahlgren walking along the road and deputies have checked in both directions. If she’s not injured and wandering through these woods, my other concern is that the gorge is two miles due east from here. We’ve got to find her before she falls into the gorge. We’re organizing groups of people for a grid search through the woods.”

  “I’d be glad to help search,” I said.

  “So would I,” Charisma chimed in. “If this goes late, I can take over for you, Graham. Just call me on my cell.”

  Graham nodded.

  “What do you think was the reason Mrs. Dahlgren fled her home?” Charisma asked Roarke.

  Roarke motioned us over to the Buick and asked the tow truck driver to stop pulling the car onto the back of his flatbed. He pointed through the window to the front seat of the car.

  “There’s your reason right there,” he said.

  It was today’s issue, laying flat across the upholstered seat; the headline ‘Victim linked to other crimes’ screamed across the page.

  “It’s likely she read the paper and, in an instant of clarity, realized what was going on,” Roarke said. “Sometimes that happens with dementia patients. If what you and Addison wrote is true, who knows what’s gone on in that family? She might be running for her life. We just need to find her before she gets hurt.”

  Charisma shot the sheriff a sharp look. Did he know her secret? Was his comment a reference to her disastrous Syrian story?

  “We wouldn’t publish it if we couldn’t verify it, sheriff, ” she said. “Twice.”

  Within the hour, three groups of volunteers, each with a deputy leading, spread out along the side of the road and began walking through the woods. Charisma and I were in the group walking to the east. I was the last searcher on the deputy’s left, with Charisma the next searcher in line next to me. Each person was about ten feet from the other, too far to hold an intimate conversation, but close enough for him or her to hear a yell if Betty was found.

  I swept the underbrush along with the rest of the walking group, catching glimpses of Charisma out of the corner of my eye. She never looked at me—at least I never caught her looking. Instead, I listened as her steps, like mine, crackled on the fallen sticks and branches underfoot and she called out the old lady’s name.

  The alcohol fog in my head began to clear the more we walked, thanks to the cool clear air. The smell of the deep woods reminded me of that final camping trip in southwestern Pennsylvania with Noah and his mother. I still loved her then—we still loved each other—and we were looking forward to a new stage in our lives, one where Noah was officially launched and we could go back to that time where our lives were our own.

  The further I walked among the thick, heavy trees, the more that last family weekend came back to me. Eschewing tents, we’d slept in hammocks strung between the pines—Noah in his and his mother and I in another. I’d held my wife close in my arms as we stared up at the stars. The campfire’s embers crackled and sputtered in the night, sending up golden sparks into the sky and I wanted our weekend in the woods to last forever.

  Pamela. Her name was Pamela, not Bitch Goddess. I hadn’t spoken her name in years, even in my thoughts. But that night as we hung suspended between the pines, we couldn’t leave the alcohol behind. My speech that night was slurred as I spoke her name into her hair.

  I looked to my right. Charisma and the line of other searchers were still walking deliberately through the woods. Their steps were purposeful, but not fast. No one wanted to miss anything—a piece of jewelry or clothing, the contents of a purse—that could tell us we were on the right road to finding Mrs. Dahlgren.

  The trees grew closer together and soon, a green, leafy archway obscured the sun. As I walked, I lost track of the real reason I was here. In my mind, I was following Noah as he walked ahead of me, his brown ponytail hanging down the back of his fishing vest and his fishing rod clutched in his hand, down a barely marked path. We were headed toward the Youghiogheny River from our campsite in Pennsylvania’s Ohiopyle State Park, toward a calm place on that rushing river where we’d fished since Noah was little.

  It was a trek we made every summer until everything fell apart. I had a series of memories of Noah as we walked this way each year, from the little boy with chubby legs, tightly clutching a chunky-handled, plastic, fishing pole, to the surly teen who would rather have died than go camping with his parents, and finally to that last family outing as I watched the young man, just beginning his career, leading the way on this familiar path one final time.

  Last night’s shame came back to me. Steve was right—I hadn’t fallen completely off the wagon. Maybe I’d been the one to pour the vodka into the bathroom sink—who knows? I didn’t remember. But I knew all I needed to do was to get back on, work the program again, and embrace the sobriety that came at such a cost.

  Noah would want me to do that.

  It looked like I’d lost Charisma before I’d even had the chance to connect with her. But if nothing else, I’d learned from the experience. She’d shown me that after four painful years, I was ready to step out again, maybe find someone who would be willing to take me into her life, somebody who just might be the reason to move out of Fitzgerald House.

  You could even say, then, my trip to Jubilant Falls hadn’t been a complete loss. After all, I’d found the one war correspondent the world was searching for, the woman no one could find—even if my actions (and I knew I had to take the responsibility for them) would send her back into hiding.

  After this was over, I’d drive my rental car back down to Cincinnati and catch the next plane back to Philadelphia. I’d write my story—as much as I had of it—and then settle back and wait for another fall quarter to begin.

  And I would do it sober.

  A bird called overhead and I stopped to listen, encircled in the dark green bower. I looked up in the trees, but couldn’t see it. I looked around for the other searchers. I had wandered farther than I should—the line of searchers was in the distance, out of voice range, but still visible. I’d have to work to catch up with them. The sound came again, this time clearer.

  “Help me! Help me!”

  It wasn’t a bird. It was Betty Dahlgren.

  “Hang on! I’m coming!” I ran toward the feeble, female voice.

  She had fallen, tripping over a fallen log and into the swale of a small creek. Her left leg hung at an odd angle in the cold water and mud streaked across her expensive pants and shirt.

  “Betty? Betty Dahlgren?”

  “Yes! Yes! Please help me!” Her claw-like hands reached out for me and her face was wild with fear. “Please, help me!”

  Carefully, I hooked my arms beneath her shoulders and pulled her from the cold water. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Charisma’s number. “Come quick! Bring a stretcher! I’ve found her!”

  In the distance, the woods exploded with voices and the sound of footsteps crashing through the underbrush. I rubbed her arms vigorously to keep her warm.

  “It’s going to be OK, Betty, it’s going to be OK,” I said. “Help is coming.”

  She looked up at me with her ice blue eyes. “I know who killed that man. I know who did it. I just had to get away before she could find me and do the same to me!”

  I stopped rubbing her arms. She doesn’t know Eve is dead.

  “What man? The state trooper?” I asked.

  “Yes. That one.”

  *****

  Wrapped in a blanket, Betty’s damning story kept coming, even as the EMTs splinted her leg and lifted her onto a stretcher. Charisma and Sheriff Roarke were beside me, both frantically taking notes as we walked her back toward the road and a waiting ambulance.

  “I told her she shouldn’t see him,” Betty said, her fingers picking at the blanket. “It was wrong, he had a family. She was so young and so pretty back then—she could have anybody she wanted and I don’t know why she insisted on seeing a man twenty years older that she was.”

  “What kind of relationship was it?” Charisma’s questions came like rapid fire shots from a machine gun. “Did they see each other a lot? Were there any plans for the future? Did Eve have hopes of Bob Martz leaving his wife?”

  “Yes. She was going to do anything she could to break up that man’s family and keep him for herself. She doesn’t care about anything else.” Betty shook her head as she lay on the stretcher. She reached a claw-like hand up to Charisma’s shoulder. “She has to have what she has to have... That’s because…”

  Betty’s sentence drifted off and I wondered if she was sliding back into her dementia—or thinking about the baby her daughter had. Like a slingshot, the old woman’s acuity was back.

  “When she doesn’t get what she wants, look out. She will destroy anything in her path.”

  Roarke stopped the EMTs and knelt beside the stretcher. “Tell me what happened that night,” he said.

  Betty looked upward, tears beginning to crest in the crow’s feet around her eyes.

  “It all started after her daddy killed himself. I told her she should haven’t gone to see Bob Martz, that I needed her at home that day, but she didn’t want...” Betty’s attention faded, whether from the pain in her leg or the pain in her heart, I couldn’t tell. “That was when he told her he was going to stay with his wife. She came home so angry—she said she was going to ruin him.”

  “She wrote a letter saying Trooper Martz tried to attack her that night, didn’t she?” Charisma asked. “Did you know that?”

  Betty nodded. “Yes, yes, I did. I told her not do to it, that it was a lie and it was wrong to send something like that. ‘There’s enough lies and secrets in this house, Mama,’ she said. ‘What do you care if we add one more?’ So she mailed the letter and went home to Texas.”

  “When did she come back to Jubilant Falls?” I asked.

  “It was a little while after her daddy died, maybe six months? I know when we talked long-distance, she told me she was still trying to call Mr. Martz and he kept refusing to see her again. She was very, very angry.”

  Judson Roarke reached over and took her hand. “Tell me what happened next, Betty.”

  “The night she came home, Eve told me she was going out with friends, but I didn’t believe her. People in this town don’t appreciate Eve—she’s too smart and too beautiful. Small towns are always like that—there isn’t anyone here who likes Eve. But I can tell when she’s up to something—she’s like her daddy that way.”

  “What did you do?”

  Pain from Betty’s broken leg made her face contort.

  “We need to get you to the hospital, Mrs. Dahlgren,” one of the EMTs said.

  “No, not yet. Let me finish,” she said. “I was waiting up for her when she came in—it was almost two-thirty in the morning. ‘You met Bob Martz again,’ I said. ‘Eve, that is wrong. It is so wrong.’ She just smiled and wouldn’t say a word. I saw the story in the paper the next morning, after she’d gotten on her plane back home.”

  “Did you ever find a weapon?” Roarke asked.

  “In her drawer, after she left.” Pain contorted Betty’s face again.

  “Did you know she had a gun? What was it?” Roarke asked.

  “No. I called her at home in Texas and asked her if she shot that man. She said if I ever told anybody, the same thing would happen to me. Eve still scares me.”

  The sheriff looked at Charisma.

  “She doesn’t realize that Eve is dead,” Charisma whispered. “The home healthcare worker told me that when Addison and I were out at her home.”

  Roarke turned back to the old lady on the stretcher. “What did you do with the weapon?”

  Betty finally lay back on the stretcher, covering her eyes with her arm. The group began moving again. The ambulance was in sight, its red lights flashing at the side of the road.

  “It’s buried in the flower garden, out by the gazebo.”

  Charisma leaned over the stretcher as our group came to the back of the ambulance. The driver was waiting at the open back door.

  “You did the right thing, Betty. It’s OK now,” she said as the wounded woman was lifted into the back of the ambulance.

  Betty groaned. “No, no it’s not. Eve is going to come get me now. I know she is.”

  “Eve can’t come get you, Betty,” Charisma said. “You’re safe. Eve’s dead.”

  “She’s dead?” Betty sat up on her elbows as the door of the ambulance slammed shut, her eyes wide.

  Judson Roarke smacked the side of the ambulance with the flat of his hand. The sirens screamed in response as the medics pulled onto the pavement and the vehicle headed down the road.

  He stepped back from the pavement to respond to a voice squawking from his shoulder microphone.

  “Good job, Charisma,” I said, stepping closer to her. “You got her to talk.”

  Her eyes followed the ambulance as it disappeared from view, but she didn’t answer, chewing her lip in consternation. Was she revisiting the day Jean Paul died? Was she planning where she’d run to next? Did she hate me as much as I hated myself? Or was she focused on Betty Dahlgren’s sad confession?

  I started to reach for her shoulder, but Roarke jumped between us.

  “We’ve got a suspect barricaded back in the Dahlgren’s house—and she’s got Addison with her.”

  Chapter 33 Addison

  Julia Dahlgren held the gun against the side of my neck, just below my ear.

  She’d grabbed me when I walked onto the porch. Pat Robinette waited in the yard to snap the deputy sheriff leaning on the fender of his cruiser, a photo for which I could have written the caption myself: Deputy So-and-So, along with Julia Dahlgren, wait to learn the results of the search for Dahlgren’s elderly mother, Betty, a dementia patient who removed her GPS ankle monitor and left in the family Buick Friday morning.

  Instead, it went bad—fast.

  “Julia, I know Eve’s secret,” I said.

  She reacted with the speed and strength of an animal, grabbing me around the throat and pushing the gun against my neck. Her other arm, surprisingly muscular despite her sloppy appearance, wrapped around my throat, nearly cutting off my oxygen.

  “You move and I’ll kill you. You won’t be the first, either,” she hissed in my ear.

  “Let her go! I’ll shoot!” the deputy called out.

  “No! Don’t! Don’t!” I cried. The barrel pressed against my neck and I was pulled backward into the house.

  Julia kicked the big white door closed and I fell against the mahogany staircase, her gun inches from my face.

  Standing above me, she was the exact opposite of her late, poised and well-coiffed sister. Julia’s brown boots were crusty with dirt and the knees of her jeans were dusty. Her green John Deere tee shirt emphasized her fat, middle-aged frame and her sagging breasts. She wore a pink camouflage ball cap that covered her choppy hair.

  When I saw Eve in Earlene’s office, her clothing was expensive, yet tasteful. Eve had been thin and trim—the day I saw her, I knew it took a village of beauticians, estheticians and personal trainers to preserve that high-maintenance blonde.

  Why hadn’t Julia been afforded that same attention?

  “You want to see what all the secrecy is about? I’ll show you. Move!”

  I scrambled up the stairs; Julia’s steps close behind me. I missed a step, and stumbled, gasping as I felt the gun barrel against my back.

  “Last door on the left,” she snapped.

  I walked past three bedrooms, filled with oversize antique bedsteads and dark bureaus, their windows darkened with heavy Victorian-style curtains, all designed to put a glossy image over a tawdry truth. Double-globed antique oil lamps sat on small bedside tables; intricate carpets covered the floors. A claw-footed bathtub with copper fixtures caught my eye as we passed the bathroom, toward a closed door at the end of the hall.

  As we approached, I could hear the sound of medical machinery, the rhythmic sound of an oxygen pump.