First Beach, Quileute Land
"Shit!"
Sue and Harry look up in alarm from the net they and Sue's mother are mending. Bay never speaks. Only ever signs. Or sings.
"What happened?" Sue asks.
Bay holds up the cordage in her hand. It has come apart. She signs. The circle is broken. She's gone.
It takes a moment for daughter and son-in-law to understand who and what Bay is talking about. Then Harry gets to his feet. "I'll call the boys."
Bay shakes her head, making a sharp movement with one hand, Too late. Fingers sweep like wings, She's gone. Closed hand cuts down with finality, No returning now.
"Oh Charlie." Sue pulls out her cell phone. "I'll get Billy."
"Is she dead?" Harry wants to know.
Bay closes her eyes for a moment, then sighs and bows her head, signs. Yes.
"Stupid girl!"
Strong in who she is.
"Doesn't know friend from enemy! Family from stranger!"
Bay just shakes her head.
"Swan here."
"Charlie. It's Billy." Everything in his voice says this is not a social call.
Charlie's heart seizes. He realizes that some part of him has been holding his breath, all these months. All the cases that could never be closed … Bella's been one of them.
"She's at the Cullen place isn't she." Not again.
"We'll meet you there."
Charlie calls in his team. Rescue. Medical. Please don't let us need forensics. Please not forensics. But he calls Orrin anyway. And Fred with the dogs.
He'd always kept an open mind about the Cullens. He'd found Carlisle and Esme refreshingly without airs. Carlisle in particular, always a straight shooter. Always there for those 2 AM calls. Charlie had come to rely on his judgement, skill, and integrity. Had counted him friend.
But everything bad that has happened to Bella since coming here has been somehow tied up with the Cullens.
He breaks speed limits now, counting on his sirens and lights to clear the way, gunning the cruiser up the mountain. Billy had been right about this family all along.
"I'm telling you, Charlie, they're nothing but trouble. Keep an eye on them, but steer clear."
He should have listened.
He's the first on the scene. Sees the truck. Procedure is out the window. He's out of the cruiser, running toward the red hulk, yelling her name.
"Bella! Bells!"
It's empty.
He goes to the burned-out crater of the house next. Almost trips over her backpack, there in the tangled grass.
"Bella!"
He can't help himself. Goes up to the edge and looks in. Hears other vehicles arriving behind him. Doors slamming.
There's nothing down there that he can see from here. Just the remains of a house that had been turned into an inferno, and fallen in on itself. Now blurred by a full year of weather and weeds. He feels panic rising.
Billy is calling his name. Dave and Kyle have him by both arms.
"Come on, Chief. We've got the gear. We're securing the scene. We'll get you down there."
Jacob and Sam are carrying Billy in the wheelchair so they don't have to deal with the lawn, which is now a wild meadow. Embry and Seth are with them, too. They reach him quickly.
"Let your boys do their work," Billy says.
Charlie goes down on one knee. He needs to take incident command, or he needs to assign it. "The trees! Check the trees!"
"We're on it, Chief." They've already taken a picture of her backpack and the grass, bagging it up now, marking where it lay.
"I can't do this, Billy. I can't. Not again."
Billy doesn't answer, just keeps his hand on his shoulder. The four boys, Jacob, Sam, Embry, and Seth, stand around the two of them like sentinels.
Dave hails them. "We got a rope down, next to the cellar stairs." The broken and burnt stairs. "Looks like someone's been down there before us."
Charlie stands again; hopes he won't be sick. "How many?"
"Can't tell. Orrin's taking pictures. Looks recent."
Fred is with the dogs at the truck. They're given Bella's knapsack to sniff as well, and the place where it had been on the ground. They whine and pull on their leashes, circling the edge of the foundation, finally stopping and barking where the broken stairs make their hazardous descent.
"Tracks!" Charlie yells. Where the overgrowth gives way to crunchy chars of wood and concrete. Caked silts of ash on the long pool of melted glass facing the wasted gardens. Did they get pictures before they walked over everything?
"They got this, Charlie. You trained 'em. They got this."
"We're ready for you, Chief!"
Orrin is tight-lipped as he follows Charlie down on the belay. He hopes that what he saw at the bottom through his camera zoom is not what it looked like.
Charlie notes a smudged hand mark on one crumbling bit of blackened railing. A piece below looks freshly broken off.
He has himself grimly together now. All business and nitrile gloves and yellow tape. Orrin is going over the scene with a fine tooth comb. He's bagged two threads of fiber that were caught on the last splintered step. Camera is capturing skids in the sooty rubble which might be where two sneakered feet had landed, and a backward stumble after it.
Underneath all the crap that fell from above — incinerated roofing, beams, flooring, and house contents, the basement floor feels to be tile. With inches-deep ash and the year's worth of rain making everything sludgy and slick, the footing is incredibly treacherous.
Charlie catalogues everything he sees. Disturbed surface, maybe tracks, make a strange circle around the debris field. It doesn't look like a struggle, but …
He goes over to the center area, where Orrin is crouched down, surveying before he touches anything. Someone has definitely tried to clean up here. There's a place, beside what might have once been part of a piano keyboard, that looks like it's been brushed or scraped over. Under the brushing, the stuff seems vaguely compacted, as if maybe someone, not very heavy, might have lain there. There's a short, blurry furrow close by that could be a toe drag, and more dislodged debris in line with it. Another stumble? None of the edges are clear, but everything is fresh. Maybe hours. If that. And tampered with. Definitely tampered with.
Charlie's radioing dispatch. "Jules. Call the state troop. Put out an APB." His stomach is churning and his chest is in a vise. He locks down his brain to stop the scenarios that are spinning up, and just gives short, tight descriptions of Bella, what she was wearing this morning, and each of the Cullens. Julia takes it all down without comment.
From the corner of his eye, Charlie's watching Orrin scraping a sample into a test tube. A spot that had been missed by whoever had tried to clean up the scene. The two men look at each other. It'll need lab to confirm, but they both know what blood in dirt looks like.
By the time they get back up from the hole, the light has shifted in the sky. Billy's still there, with the boys. Dave has taken their statements. "You and I need to talk," Charlie says. Billy nods.
"I'll call you. I need to get to the house first. She may have … may have left something."
Billy gets up from the chair, leaning on Jacob, grips Charlie's arm. "Sue and Leah are getting dinner ready. It'll be waiting for you."
"Billy. I gotta do this by the book. I can't …"
Billy looks at him hard, then nods. "You have my number." Jacob and Sam hoist him again in the chair, and the five from La Push head back to the Buick and the Rabbit.
They pass Ernie Sr's tow rig chugging up the road. The red truck is evidence now.