Ink and Bone(80)

“On the trail,” she said quickly. Yes, yes, that was it. “The trail you and I visited.”

“And on the trail you witnessed a murder?”

“No, not exactly,” she said. “I don’t know.”

He watched her a moment, shaking his head as if she were an equation he couldn’t solve.

“What were you doing up there, alone in the middle of the night?”

“After I left you, I researched the iron mines,” she said. She patted at her jacket and found the folded pages there. Fugue or not, at least she’d had the presence of mind to bring the maps. She handed them to him. “I found these.”

He took them from her and squinted at them. “These are too old to be useful,” he said. “Trust me. I grew up in this place and I was a cop here for a good long time. I’ve pulled kids out of those mines. There’s no accurate map in existence.”

“There was a man,” said Finley. “A guy named Michael Holt who dedicated himself to mapping out the mines. It wasn’t that long ago.”

“The guy you’re talking about was a nutcase,” said Jones.

“And his father before him,” she said. “He was a professor, wrote a couple of books.”

“Another crazy person,” said Jones. “He was a hoarder.”

Stubborn, Finley thought, holding on to fixed ideas that he didn’t want changed. Or was it that he didn’t want to think that they’d missed something when they were all looking for a missing girl? That they’d all been up there searching and she’d been there, just out of sight.

“Didn’t Michael Holt hide in the mines for a while?” Finley asked.

“He did,” Jones admitted.

“So it’s possible then that whoever took Abbey did the same,” said Finley.

Jones blew out that sigh again. “Even if he had, it was ten months ago.”

“But it would mean that maybe they didn’t have to go far,” said Finley. “That there was no car waiting. That maybe Abbey is still right here, in The Hollows.”

He looked at the maps, then up at the sky.

“All right,” he said after a moment. “Let’s head out there and see what you saw or didn’t see. We’ll take my vehicle because, I’ll tell you what, it doesn’t look like you should be driving. I’ll call Chuck.”

Finley guessed he was talking about Chuck Ferrigno, the only detective at The Hollows PD. There had been others, according to Eloise, but budget cuts had reduced the department to the bare bones, which is why Jones Cooper consulted regularly.

A pretty woman appeared in the doorway as Jones and Finley were headed over toward the SUV. He walked to her and they exchanged a few quiet words, a quick embrace, and she went back into the house, casting a motherly, concerned glance in Finley’s direction. Maggie Cooper offered Finley a wave, then disappeared back inside. She came back a minute later with a blanket and some towels, and handed them to Jones. After giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, she closed the door.

In the car, Finley used the towels and some antibacterial ointment Jones had in the center console to wipe some of the blood off her hands. Then she wrapped herself in the blanket, still shivering, foggy headed, afraid.

“There was a girl there, too,” Finley said, as he pulled out of the driveway. Finley could see her, slight and dirty, standing among the trees. Her face was a strange blur, in focus but not. A pulse of frustration moved through Finley. What was happening to her?

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Finley nodded. She wasn’t crazy; she knew that much. Whatever she saw was real; she just couldn’t get the pieces to coalesce, couldn’t understand where she’d been when she saw what she saw.

“Who was she?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. How many times had she said that? She thought that she must sound like an idiot. She bet Eloise was never so uncertain. “Her face is unclear. They were deep in the woods.”

“How did you get up there?” he asked. “Did you walk from the path?”

She wasn’t going to say “I don’t know” again.

“Is there another way up into the woods?” she asked instead. “Is there a road that goes up to wherever someone who veered off that trail might go?”

Jones seemed to consider her question. “There’s a rural road that leads to private drives connected to old properties—all of which were thoroughly searched when Abbey disappeared.”

She’d never been up that way on her bike. “Who lives up there?”

Jones shrugged. “Back when I was a kid, we called them hill people. I suppose that wouldn’t be considered politically correct these days.”

“Hill people?” asked Finley. The phrase sounded strange, made up.

“Yeah, you know, folks who live off the grid. They have generators, hunt for their food, come into town to do odd jobs, get supplies. But mostly they stay up past The Hollows Woods.”

Finley tried to process this. It was totally new information to her, something her grandmother had never mentioned, something she’d never read online. “You mean like a Deliverance kind of thing?”

“Well,” said Jones. “That’s a little oversimplified. They’re just people living the way folks used to live. They’ve rejected the modern world. Some might argue that they have good reason. Not everybody wants wireless internet, a smart phone, and a latte or whatever from Starbucks.”