The Running Girls(27)
Maurice bent down with a grunt and picked a loose stick from the ground. Snapping it in two, he offered Randall a choice. Randall held his brother’s gaze, wondering what in hell he truly wanted, and took the larger of the two sticks. Leaning over the edge of the bridge, they counted to three and dropped the sticks into the stream.
“Quick,” said Maurice, moving with some speed to the other side of the bridge.
Randall grimaced, the cold reaching his knee, as he swiveled around and made it in time to see his twig arrive first in the stream below. “Who won this time?” he said.
“I think you did, brother,” said Maurice, with a smile.
“First time in sixty years, huh?”
Maurice placed his hand on Randall’s back, the touch so light it was as if there was no contact at all. “Things change, brother. We only have each other now.”
Randall eased away from his touch and began walking back to the church. Once, he’d made the mistake of telling his father how Maurice had cheated at the game. He didn’t think he was any older than six or seven, but his father hadn’t been the type of man to listen to such grievances. Randall twitched at the memory of his father’s belt snapping against his flesh. Three times, always three times. When Maurice had returned, he’d received the same treatment. They never played the game again.
“So what do you think?” said Maurice, as they retreated into the warmth of the house.
“What do I think about what?”
“My proposition?”
“Stop talking in riddles, Maurice.”
Maurice shivered as he took off his coat. “A storm is brewing. About staying here, with me. Neither of us is getting any younger.”
“I don’t think that would work,” said Randall, helping his brother load the fireplace with wood.
Maurice smiled. Randall imagined his brother thought it was enigmatic, but it wasn’t. It was creepy and reminded him again of Annie’s aversion to his brother.
“You won at Pooh sticks,” said Maurice.
“I won lots of times in the past, only you refused to acknowledge it.” How ludicrous it was to dwell on childhood games.
“My point exactly. We’ve both made mistakes, brother. You’re not the only one who seeks forgiveness. I seek it on a daily basis. Stay awhile and we can seek it together.”
Randall poked at the fire until the flames engulfed the chopped wood. He didn’t believe in the type of forgiveness Maurice was talking about.
The only thing making him hesitate was Maurice’s assertion that he, too, sought forgiveness. Maybe he was talking about the way he had treated Randall as a child, but Randall wondered if it went deeper than that. “OK,” he said. “I’ll stay for now.”
“Splendid,” said Maurice. His smile came and went, and they both stood back from the rising heat of the fire.
Randall briefly matched his smile, all the while wondering what it was Maurice truly needed forgiveness for.
Chapter Fourteen
Laurie knew immediately what she was looking at and as she edged nearer she drew out her firearm in case the perpetrator was watching her.
Wary of disturbing the crime scene, she took pictures before treading carefully toward it. Removing a plastic bag from her coat pocket, she picked it up: a size 8 Asics running shoe, purple and pink, the same make and size Grace had been wearing the night she went missing.
Any lingering optimism evaporated. Laurie’s mind began spinning in a number of directions: the body must be nearby, why had the sneaker been left in plain sight, this was the same location where Annie Randall was found, Frank Randall would become an obvious suspect, she would need to cancel the press conference. And, worse than all of it, she would soon have to tell Sandra and Glen Harrington that their daughter was dead.
The noise in her mind was distracting, and she shook her head to dislodge the thoughts before calling it in. She had to focus. It was hard not to think the worst, but it wasn’t over yet. She battled through the vines and moved further into drier land, her gun held out in front of her. She didn’t get the sense that she was being watched, but wasn’t about to take the risk.
In the distance, the surf roared. It felt as if the waves were nearby, ready to crash down on her, but the tide rarely reached this point. She stopped, frozen, as something brushed past her ankle, glancing down to see a grass snake disappear into the undergrowth. A vision of Annie Randall popped into her mind, the side of her face eaten away by wildlife, and Laurie shuddered before moving further inland.
Laurie was torn between two conflicting thoughts: she wanted to find Grace, but finding her would almost definitely mean the girl was dead and the thought of all that hope draining through her fingers was difficult to bear.
Fifty yards further in, the decision was made for her. Grace’s second sneaker was standing unattended in a patch of open scrubland, the toe of the shoe pointing to a veil of branches and vines, as if playing a part on some lurid treasure trail.
She didn’t bag the shoe this time but followed the line of the pointing toe to the tangled foliage, circling around it with her gun to make sure she wasn’t being lured into it by someone on the perimeter, before pulling back the vines to reveal a second open space, where Grace Harrington’s corpse lay.
At first glance, she appeared to be at rest, lying on her side, but as Laurie approached, she could see the violent dislocation of the ankles, the ghastly way her lower right leg dangled from the broken patella, and the zigzag mark around her neck where she had been cut. Laurie took an involuntary step back and fought to calm her breathing. The scene before her precisely mirrored the images of Annie Randall that had taken up permanent residence in her mind. Like David’s mother, Grace Harrington had been brutally manipulated into this unnatural position, her arms and legs fashioned to give the impression that she was running. It reminded Laurie of the type of figure you would see on top of a sports trophy or on the hood of a luxury car, a stylized pose that bore little resemblance to real life. As she called it in, she wondered if Grace had still been alive when she’d been placed into the pose.