True Places(82)

“Okay, Iris. This is where I found you. The first thing we need to know for sure is that you came from the south.”

Iris bent closer. Suzanne zoomed out, then in again, switching to satellite view to show Iris an overview of the terrain.

Iris pointed to Highway 64, running east to west at the north end of the parkway between Yankee Horse Ridge and the city of Charlottesville. “I know that road now. I didn’t cross that.”

“Right. I just want to be absolutely sure.”

Suzanne zoomed out until most of Virginia was on the screen, then positioned the pin at Lexington, where they were now, roughly halfway between the north and south state borders, and near the western edge. Suzanne pointed to Roanoke, a city forty miles south of Lexington and the same distance from the North Carolina border. “This city has a hundred thousand people in it. Obviously, you didn’t go through it. But is there any way you could’ve gone past it?”

Iris ran her finger over the maze of roads north of Roanoke. “I would’ve turned around before I got anywhere near that.”

“Okay.” Suzanne checked the legend. “From Roanoke to where I found you is about sixty miles, as the crow flies.” She studied the map. “The width of the forested part varies from about seven and twenty miles across.”

“That’s big.”

“Big enough to disappear in, apparently.” She smiled at Iris, disguising the sense of futility growing inside her. She returned her attention to the screen and pointed out the east–west roads that cut across the mountains north of Roanoke. There were four, but the parkway itself didn’t obey a north–south vector. It snaked around. “Iris, can you say for sure how many times you crossed a road, a paved one?”

Sun was pouring through a clerestory window. Iris stared at the beam of light cutting across the room, sparkling with dust motes. “Not more than six times. Four times anyway.”

“That’s great. And you told the detective you mostly went north, right?”

“Yes. I’m not sure why. I guess I hoped the woods would keep on going.”

Suzanne looked at the map again. “If you never crossed a road when you backtracked, then you must have started at least four road crossings below where I found you. If you never crossed the parkway either—if you stayed west of it, where most of the forest is—then you started down here.” She indicated the area east of Buchanan. “But if you doubled back more or crossed the parkway, you might have started as far north as near Route 60, where we turned off to come here.”

Iris said, “I don’t remember exactly.”

“It’s fine. We’ve narrowed it down a lot.”

Suzanne questioned Iris about mountaintop views and showed her images from the higher peaks. One, Sharp Top, was somewhat familiar to Iris.

“It would’ve been not too long after I left. Later, I didn’t have the energy to climb hills for no reason.” The girl went quiet, probably recollecting the misery she had endured.

Suzanne waited for an elderly couple to pass behind them, then turned to Iris, who was still lost in thought. “I want to find your cabin for my own sake. But I have the feeling it’s going to be important for you, too.” Iris didn’t say anything. “Is there something wrong? Something you want to tell me?”

Iris hesitated, then tilted her head at the computer. “What about the river?”

“The river?”

“There was a huge river. I forgot until now. I had to cross it on a bridge. I waited until dark.”

Suzanne clicked the Google Earth screen to show a map instead of satellite imagery. Her attention was drawn to a thick blue line, wriggling northeasterly above Roanoke, bending south and east at Glasgow, then wending through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The James River, an unmistakable landmark. Suzanne smiled at Iris. “You crossed it once, right?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Going north.”

“Going north.”

“About how long after you left?”

She thought for a moment. “The leaves were gone, I remember that much, so not more than a few months.”

Suzanne strove to control her excitement. They had narrowed down the area by two-thirds. She clicked back to satellite view and studied the forested land, deeply crinkled and creased where the mountains dominated. There had to be more clues. “What about the streams near your house?”

“What do you mean?”

Suzanne touched the screen, tracing a fold between hills. “This one would flow north, I think, toward the James near where you crossed.” She traced another. “But this one would flow the other way, because of the mountains.” Iris nodded. Suzanne pulled a piece of paper from her computer bag and handed Iris a pen. “Can you draw the streams you remember near your house and show me which way they flowed?”

While Iris worked, Suzanne searched for the database on endangered species. Plant populations weren’t mapped on the small scale they needed to find the cabin, but she was hoping information about habitat might restrict their search.

Iris finished drawing. Suzanne compared the sketch of the watershed around Iris’s cabin with Google Earth images, turning the paper this way and that. It was no use because neither the satellite nor the map view showed the minor waterways. “Maybe we can get a detailed map, a topo map, in town later. For now, let’s talk plants.” She knew that endangered and threatened plant populations were usually listed by county and hoped that information might help. She typed “Virginia trillium” into the search bar and quickly found the flower related to the red trillium they had seen at the railroad tracks.