The Leaving(64)

“I know.” Chambers nodded. “But the evidence is overwhelming.”

“Did anybody near here ever see us?” she said. “Remembers us?”

“The nearest town is Everglades City and it’s not much of a town. We’re asking around.” Chambers scratched his head. “This happens, this kind of stuff, and it’s a shock every time. Women held in basements for years—babies being born while neighbors were only just fifty feet away—and no one around knew or even suspected anything was wrong.”


Scarlett went back to staring at her hot air balloon.


Now that she was here, the memory felt . . . fake.


Chambers was still talking. “We found vials. Syringes. They’re being tested. Some were labeled as a protein Sashor has talked about. A protein involved in memory formation.”

“But who is he?” Scarlett asked. “Why did he do this?”

“Don’t know,” Chambers said. “Possibly just to make it easier to keep you here longer?”

“But why? And how would he have the skills to do it all?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Scarlett asked, “But who killed him?”

“We don’t know,” Chambers said.

She shouted, “You don’t know anything!”



/

/

/





She was in the abyss.

Alone.

No, wait . . .

Tammy was there, too, chewing gum; she seemed to approve of her daughter’s outburst. Something about the hand on her hip showed a bit of defiant swagger.

Kristen said, “Under hypnosis, I remembered something. A journal I hid near an owl. Did you find any . . . owls?”

Chambers shook his head. “No owls, no.”

Like he was talking to a crazy person, pandering.

They all stood there for a moment, disappointment spreading like toxic invisible gas. Scarlett felt the urge to cough, resisted.

Then Chambers said, “Come on, I’ve got one more thing to show you back at the dock.”

They walked back across one of the bridges. Police officers in chest-high rubber overalls were out scouring the property.

Scarlett fell in step beside Chambers and asked, “Did you find a gun?”

Lucas caught up with them and said, “What about a camera?”





Lucas


The ride back seemed faster.

The cloud burning off, the sky becoming blue again.

This time, he had his camera in hand the whole way.

Pink birds.

Click.

White birds.

Click.

Tall grass.

Click.

An alligator—or was that a stone?

The evidence said he’d been here.

He had no way to prove otherwise.

Back at the airboat dock, they followed Chambers through a field to an old garage.

Scarlett came over to Lucas’s side as they walked. “There are no stairs,” she said. “And like I said, it’s nowhere near Anchor Beach.”

He nodded. “It feels, I don’t know . . . staged?”

“We have no way to prove it,” she said.

“Not yet.” He caught up with Sarah. “The house you see in your mind’s eye. Is it here? Is this it?”

She shook her head. “Maybe it’s just a house I drew. And a girl I drew. Imaginary.”

“Maybe.” Lucas had yet to come up with a good theory about the mystery girl Sarah remembered.

“Have you drawn them?” Scarlett asked. “So we can see?’

“I’m working on it,” she said. “Soon.”

Some uniformed officers were standing in front of a large shed and stepped aside as the group approached. They fanned out in a semicircle at the open door.

The mud was so thick that it was hard, at first, to even see it.

The yellow-orange paint of a small school bus.

“There’s a white van, too,” Chambers said. “Like the one you described. Broken taillight and all.”

Lucas stepped into the shade of the structure to get the sun out of his eyes, to better see. He lifted his camera, took a few shots. Let it drop to hang around his neck on its strap.

Chambers looked at his phone, read a message, looked back up. “We have a gun,” he said. “Listen, I’ll be in touch with you all after we go over every inch of this place. And I’ll come see each of you with some of the items we found.”

He ushered them back to the parking lot, and Lucas couldn’t take his eyes off Chambers’s weapon, holstered in his belt.

Thought about grabbing it.

Aiming it.

Firing it.

When Chambers started to walk off toward his car, Lucas called out, “Wait!”

Chambers stopped and turned.

Everyone else turned, too.

And Lucas felt that dizziness return, for the first time in days—


HORSES, TEETH,

ROUND AND ROUND


—and steadied himself by thinking about the cold metal of the gun, the weight of it in his fingers, a feeling of calm, of release.

“The gun you found,” he said. “You’re going to find my fingerprints on it.”