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.
Officially, they'd been invited to eat lunch with Deer Group. Unofficially, they were waiting for Millner to get off the phone with Hayleigh's parents. Chloe tried to keep her clothes from snagging on the rough wooden picnic table while Rory tore into a hot dog.
At least Ella was having a good time.
"So I'm in the back of our cousin's pickup covered in a sheet, and the fog is wearing off enough for me to tell what Luiz and Ricardo are saying—"
"I still can't believe your brothers broke you out of a mental hospital," said Blanchard. "And that you're admitting it in front of…" he nodded his head to the side at Stevens, who was poking at a cardboard holder of soggy French fries.
"Statute of limitations on most of this went up years ago."
"But they broke you out of a mental hospital?" said Stevens.
"Yeah, social worker convinced my parents to send me there when I was twelve, yeah."
"No, the undue incarceration seems fairly true to life for your typical bumbling bureaucrat—begging present company's pardon—but your brothers do seem dumber than a box of hammers in a rock tumbler."
"I wasn't going to say it, but yeah," added Stevens.
"Well… What happens next is Ricardo throws my med bottle out the window and says something like 'you never have to take that poison again!' Then Luiz starts yelling at him because he read what it said on the label …which was 'do not allow the patient to stop taking this cold turkey; you have to step the dose down. May cause erratic sensory response.'"
"Oh no."
"So Luiz is hitting Ricardo on the head with what's left of his orderly's uniform, and I'm sitting up in the back asking if the whole world just got bigger and started humming."
"What happened to Jay and the porcupine?"
"Still in the flatbed!"
"My word."
"She's not telling the part where Auntie Ray-ray shows up," said Rory.
"No, I guess she's not," murmured Chloe, still watching Stevens with her fries.
Rory pushed her hot dog around on the paper plate, drawing triangles with her uneaten condiments. "You still mad at me from before?"
"No. I'm just scared," she said. Linda always said it was okay to convey negative emotion so long as the delivery was calm.
"You've never gotten scared for me before," said Rory, still looking at the catsup patterns.
Chloe blinked. No, no she hadn't. She'd never needed to.
"You'd get scared about T but not about me, even though she's bigger," Rory said.
Chloe watched Ella recount the story of her inept but ultimately effective escape from St. Michael's and felt something twist in her stomach. She put her arm around Rory's shoulders. "I love you, baby."
"Awwww," said Noah from the other side of the table.
"Hasn't your home planet sent a ship to come get you yet?" Rory glowered.
"I know you mean that with love," Noah recited.
"I really don't," said Rory. She turned back to Chloe. "I really was practicing my chords," said Rory. "It's not like I had anything else to do after they took away our phones."
"I know what I did without my phone," said Noah. "I went looking for Moira's secret boyfriend, and—" His eyes tightened in concentration. "…they found a UFO!"
Rory put her hot dog down. "Noah, it drives me nuts when you make stuff up. Can't you tell a real story? Miss Marvina says we have to be real in our acting."
"I guess I could…"
"Why don't you help him work on one, Deer Girl?" Blanchard said, turning away from Ella.
"But I'm not in the storytelling track," said Rory.
"You gonna let that stop you?" he asked.
"Yeah, you gnna ln tha stpp yu?" Ella said around a bite of her own lunch.
Rory looked at Noah sideways. "Okay…" she said speculatively. "But if it's not a hundred percent real, then you only get to tell it when you have both feet on a stage. Never when people might think you mean it."
"But then I don't get to tell it!" protested Noah. "Except maybe at Campfire, and Miss Abby'll never let me do Campfire!"
"Miss Abby might owe a certain Rory a favor," Rory said. Chloe covered a flinch. "I might have found the igarettes-say she's not supposed to ave-hay."
Noah nodded. "Okay. If you promise you can get me on Campfire, I'll let you help me work on my story."
"Wait…" Rory held up her fingers. "I'm trading in a favor for you, so… I should get something, but what I get is …more work for you, soo…" She turned to Blanchard. "Do I get to play Excalibur if this works?" she asks.
"I believe we said you get to play Excalibur if he doesn't cry," answered Blanchard.
She glared at Noah. "If you get stage fright like Cavenaugh did two weeks ago, the only liquid coming out of your body had better be pee."
"But what if I barf!"
Rory raised an eyebrow at Blanchard.
Blanchard sighed. "If he doesn't get any on me, I will think about it."
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The oncoming afternoon was finally forcing a breeze into the stifling space outside the cabin door. Parents who sent their kids here for fresh air deserved a refund, Chloe decided as she murdered another mosquito.
"Are Hayleigh's ideas about cryptids really any more stupid than your boss sending you out here when he knows you're no good with kids?" Ella was asking Stevens as they waited for Millner.
"They're way, way more stupid," said Stevens. "There is documented proof that twentysomething women who are good with kids exist."
Ella narrowed her eyes. "Is any of it peer reviewed?"
Chloe peered inside. There was the homemade Ms. Alien. Rory had put her punk rock eyeshades on its head and laid it back against the thin pillow. She felt a pang. Did her father know how cute she could be underneath that too-cool exterior? Did he know how much she reminded her of him?
"All right," Millner said chipperly. "Deputy Stevens and I called Hayleigh's parents and they've given permission for her to show you where she left her equipment and to use the Finder app on her phone. Per camp policy, two employees will accompany you for as long as Hayliegh is with you and then escort her back to her activity or to Puma Group, depending on when we finish." He looked at Hayleigh, "Can I trust this won't take long?"
"That depends on where you put my camera," said Hayleigh. She dropped her voice. "The world will know what swims in these waters."
Millner erected a smile on his face as if it he'd had the scaffolding pre-made. "That's the Camp Silver Lake spirit!" He beamed. "Now we're only waiting on Ms. Alvarez, to—" Millner looked up at the sound of boots on gravel. John Blanchard waved from halfway down the path.
"Hello Dennis," said Blanchard, looking a little red and already winded. "Thought I'd help you with our Hayleigh's contribution to justice today."
"I asked Carrie to join us," Millner said, with an almost apologetic frown.
"She'd've had to cancel her hike with the Pumas," said Blanchard. "I'm between music classes, and with all this excitement I'm as antsy as a jelly factory with a rip in the screen door. We agreed it'd be better for me to come." He finished catching his breath and seemed to remember he was talking to the boss. "If that's all right with you, Director."
Then he looked at Chloe, just for a second.
Millner was nowhere near as discreet. His mouth turned into an orange-slice open grin. He might as well have clapped his hands. To middle-aged Millner, a man Blanchard's age might be a creep if he leered at Erinne or Moira, but the ex-hottie two-time mama in her late forties who reigned as queen of the frumps in this humidity? She should be bended-knee grateful for whatever antediluvian moves Blanchard could pull off without breaking a hip. Chloe held in a snort as Millner's face melted into a smile of middle-aged male solidarity. Millner was probably thinking, "He's old, not dead." It was all she could do not to tell the guy he was wrong.
Never mind that what Blanchard actually wanted was to talk to her privately…
"I'd rather not wait," said Stevens.
…which was not likely to happen.
"I'll show you where I set up my tripod, but the camera's not still there. It was the first place I checked," said Hayleigh. She turned to Stevens. "You sure I can't have it back right away?"
"Oh no, dear, sorry," Stevens said with just a little too much syrup.
Hayleigh's mouth set. "I'm not a Deer," she snipped. "I'm a Puma."
Stevens looked at Chloe. What did I say wrong THIS time?
Hayleigh gave a skeptical "Hm!" and folded her arms. "I hope you know I'm going to write a book about this." She traced one hand in the air, "Cameras and Cryptids: What Big Government Doesn't Want You to Know About West Coast Lake Predators."
"I'm flattered you think we're Big Government," said Ella.
Blanchard raised an eyebrow. "One day it'll be you on what's left of the History Channel."
"Darn right it will," muttered Hayleigh.
Hayleigh led them back toward the kitchen cabin near the picnic tables where they'd eaten lunch. She stopped near a patch of woods and pointed. "I usually get there by going across the bridge?" she said, indicating the place where Patricia had died.
"Go the long way," said Millner. "Deputy Stevens still needs us not to touch things."
Hayleigh nodded and kept going. They reached the kitchen and turned left, toward the lakeshore. The stream was wider here, and a lower, plank bridge stretched across.
Hayleigh trotted them down to the pier. This was the first time Chloe had seen Silver Lake close up. There had been some kind of algae problem a few years back, but now it gleamed like its elemental namesake. With a panorama of green hills on the far shore, she had to admit the place wasn't exactly hard on the eyes, in a haunting, alien way. A few brightly colored fiberglass canoes bobbed in the gentle waves while two counselors were attempting to give a life jacket demonstration to some young campers who'd much rather stare at the parade of strange adults and the older girl who was mugging it for all she was worth.
"Is this pier new?" asked Ella. Chloe frowned and noticed the blushy yellow color of the boards.
"Yes," said Millner. "We've seen some subsidence over the past few years. Rebuilding the water access was one of the first things I did after I bought the camp."
"When my sister used to go here, the pier was back that way," Hayleigh pointed behind her. "That's why it's such a long walk. And why I probably got the lake monster on camera. It's not used to the new shoreline!"
Blanchard pinched the bridge of his nose but didn't say anything.
Millner coughed. "Our swim area is the other way, on the other side of the mess hall," said Millner, pointing down the shore to the right.
"Where the lake monster doesn't like to go!"
"Where the lake bed is less rocky, Hayleigh," said Millner.
"It's this way," Hayleigh turned left and scampered along the water's edge.
Millner and went after her with Ella close on their heels.
Ella looked around. "All this green. Hardly a scrap of concrete in sight? It's unnatural."
Chloe looked up as the woods closed in overhead. It wasn't dark, not exactly, but the canopy definitely cut the sunlight. The cabins and even the highway weren't that far away, but the trees muffled the sound, and the poor visibility unnerved her. Camping had been more Dan's thing.
She turned away from the lake and squinted into the trees. Could she see the cinder blocks of Puma Cabin or was it her imagination? Hayleigh had taken them in a long, U-shaped path. South, away from the dorm cabins and offices, northeast to the edge of the lake, and then onto this path, which ran north. If her sense of direction was right, then they weren't that far from where they'd started, but she couldn't see anything for sure except sapling trunks and underbrush. The night Patricia had died, the route would have been shorter, with the bottom of the U by the bridge. How long would it have taken Patricia to find her way there in the dark?
Chloe took a step toward where she thought the dorms would be. If she hadn't gotten too turned around, then cabin C with its music lessons was on the far side. There seemed to be a way clear of enough mid-level branches to cut straight through if—
Chloe felt the ground snap and sink unevenly under her feet as if it had been partially hollow. She looked down, but the ground around her shoes looked almost identical to where she'd been a moment earlier—brown and covered in half-decayed leaves. But it sank under her shoes like an old mattress filled with sticks.
"Ah, you're off the path," Blanchard pointed out. "The ground on the hiking trail's been punched flat by enough feet. Any loose twig what can break's already broke, but everywhere else still has plenty of spring to it. Miss Alvarez teaches it as a way of stopping the campers getting off-trail on their hikes. And giving the local bears clogged arteries."
"Does she? That's so interesting," Chloe said, a little louder than she needed to. She looked down the path, to where Stevens and the others were getting farther ahead. Sound carried further in the woods than people thought—she and Dan had had to call a family camping trip early on account of some overenthusiastic newlyweds—but if they got far enough…
Blanchard had clearly drawn the same conclusion. He took a step closer, voice going lower and smoother, "There's something you need to—"
"Captain Decker?" Stevens called from up ahead.
"Coming," Chloe called back. Blanchard set his mouth and they both kept up.
Chloe looked behind her. Now that she knew about it, anyone trying to cut straight through from the cabins would be snapping sticks and plowing through low plants the whole way, maybe tripping over rocks they couldn't see. And Patricia's killer would have been out here in the dark. Even if you went the long way, the path was gravel and packed dirt when it wasn't uneven slabs of rock half-covered in dead lake plants and slippery pebbles. You just had to know where you were going.
As Blanchard headed past her toward Ella, Chloe realized he and Millner were both wearing hiking boots, and Hayleigh had bright orange sneakers with a thick tread. Just as she was about to say that "sensible shoes" was a relative term, Ella yelped and slid sideways.
Blanchard leaned back and caught her by the arm, giving out a loud "Oof!" and a twang that had nothing to do with his accent. Chloe winced.
"Thanks. I guess tennis shoes aren't the best choice for out here," said Ella. Her face stilled in concern. "Are you okay? That sounded like you pulled your shoulder."
Blanchard rubbed his left wrist. "No need to concern yourself. This arm's been bothering me all day. But it's not how I like to hear the catgut, no," he said.
Ella stared at Blanchard's wrist. "Oh! Do you play the fiddle too?"
"Ah—"
"You know the name 'catgut' is short for cattlegut, right? We made them out of cows, not cats." Ella made a face, "One of my first cases as a crime scene tech back in Detroit was this guy who'd broken into an animal shelter and tried to get the cat carcasses—"
"That would never work. Cats are too small."
"That's what I said!" said Ella. "Of course, that was way before they made the forensics departments independent of the precincts. I get that we need to keep the risk of bias down, but man, I miss doing this." Ella exhaled. "I know the old way had to go, but there were things about it that I miss."
Blanchard made an interested noise.
"The whole team environment, really. There was this guy who used to work with us as a consultant. Bigger than life personality. I thought he was a method actor for a buncha years there, but turns out he was always exactly who he said he was."
"Oh?"
"Good thing too. He was a complete goofball. Barely said goodbye when he left. Sometimes I still want to punch him right in the biscuits."
"Now when you say 'biscuits…'"
Chloe kept half an ear on Ella and Blanchard while she watched Hayleigh pick her way around a bend in the lakeshore. Something about the water looked deeper here, and colder.
"Counselor Alvarez said the shoreline drops off here instead of going in shallow like a ramp," said Hayleigh. "Fish get confused and swim in circles. I figure the lake monster eats fish, so I set up my camera right over there." She pointed to a rock on the far side that was nearly level.
"How'd you find your way without falling?" asked Ella.
"I came right before Campfire. It's still pretty light then. When I had to check on it after dark, I wore my headlamp," said Hayleigh.
"That explains it," murmured Stevens.
"Explains what?" asked Chloe.
"These trees aren't that thick," she said, pointing to the woods between them and the dormitory cabins. "You can't see a person through them, but anyone in those cabins would be able to spot the glow of a flashlight."
"The other Puma girls did say they knew exactly where Hayleigh's camera was," said Chloe.
"They what now?" asked Hayleigh.
Chloe squinted in the bright sunlight. From this angle, the woods between the lakeshore and the rest of the camp looked like a mess of underbrush and foot-snagging roots, but what would it look like to someone who'd been here half the summer and knew the layout?
So Patricia had known where Hayleigh's camera was and had, presumably, come to get it at night. Chloe closed her eyes. Something about all this… She looked back the way they'd come. Slippery rocks and iffy gravel.
"Hayleigh, when you set up your camera, did you use the path we took just now? Did you go all the way around to the lake?"
Hayleigh looked from Stevens to Millner and back.
"You're not in trouble, Hayleigh," said Millner. "You can tell her."
"I did during the day," Hayleigh admitted. "And after Campfire. But not when I checked after dark. There's a path through the woods." She pointed. "It kind of curves around to the big rock outside Puma Cabin," said Hayleigh. She pointed at a patch of bushes and thick, viny plants that looked exactly the same as every other patch of bushes and thick, viny plants. Hayleigh walked over to it and shoved some of the leaves away with her foot. Underneath, instead of puffed-up dead leaves and sticks, the ground looked dark and smooth.
Millner made a tsking noise. "That's probably been here since before I bought the camp," said Millner. "We tell the campers to stay on official trails, but they make their own."
"Oh, like when someone puts a sidewalk in a stupid place and people cut the corner," Ella said, lightly backhanding Stevens on the upper arm.
"Ow," said Stevens.
"The grass gets stomped dead, and they usually put up a fence when what they should do is put the sidewalk where people'll use it," Ella explained while Hayleigh nodded appreciatively. Chloe remembered the name she'd given them: "desire paths."
"How did you find out this trail was here?" asked Stevens.
"I kind of always knew about it," said Hayleigh. "I saw the Deers on it when I was a Chipmunk." Her mouth squished. "Patricia was insane about it. Always screaming at us to stay on the path! Stay on the path! Like it matters this close to the highway."
"It was Patricia's job to tell you where to walk," Millner pointed out. He actually starting counting on his fingers. "Too much foot traffic causes compaction. It causes erosion. You could get bug or tick bites…"
From long practice, Hayleigh ignored him. "I probably could have convinced Patricia to leave me alone, but we were all too tired from getting her to leave us alone about everything else. So I only went the short way at night, when Patricia couldn't see me."
Chloe stood back on her heels. Patricia was a stickler for following the rules. So even if Patricia knew there was a short path through the woods, she'd have gone the official way. When she went to get Hayleigh's camera, she'd have taken the path toward the picnic tables, then gone over the bridge, then back toward the cabins alone the lakeshore. She might have slipped and fallen on the rocks, but she hadn't. She came back across the bridge and died there.
Chloe looked up when she realized Hayleigh had turned around and headed back toward the water.
"Right here," Hayleigh slapped the rock like it was it was the hood of a car. "When I came back yesterday morning, the tripod was here but the camera wasn't."
Which meant that the camera probably hadn't just fallen off its perch and gotten wedged in the detritus on either side.
"Okay, time to find our missing machine," said Ella. "Hayleigh, if you'd do the honors?" she held out a small Android phone, which Hayleigh unlocked with a swish of her thumb. Ella handed the phone to Stevens while Blanchard peered at the screen over her shoulder.
"The wi-fi connection isn't very good on this side of the cabins," said Millner. "Now that I think of it, we probably should have started the app back at the office and then walked it out here."
"I could take Hayleigh's phone back within range if that would help," offered Blanchard. "If you don't want me alone with it, I can show Lieutenant Decker the best place to—"
"Hang on," said Stevens. "It's loading."
"Oh," said Ella, watching the screen.
Stevens held up the phone. An angry red blotch reading "DEAD BATTERY" flared.
"Now that doesn't mean the phone's battery's empty, does it?" asked Blanchard.
"No, it means the camera's battery's empty," said Ella. That made sense given that Hayleigh had said she couldn't turn it off. "But it should still tell us the last location before it died."
Stevens held the phone up and twisted it to the side. "Ugh. Stupid auto-rotate."
"Hey, don't change my settings!" said Hayleigh.
"If someone took the camera and hid it, then it wouldn't matter if the battery ran out, so long as no one moved it after it had died," Chloe mentioned. Blanchard rubbed his left wrist.
"I think it's saying ...over there? " Stevens pointed back the way they'd come.
"The bridge over the stream is that way," Ella said skeptically.
Director Millner leaned in to look. "Oh no, north is that way, Deputy. The camera was somewhere near the art cabins." He blinked hard as if he'd realized what he'd said.
Patricia had left the dormitory cabin late at night to go get the camera. Whether she'd died on the way there or the way back, she'd still have no reason to take it that far out of her way.
Which could mean someone else had.
.
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Chloe examined the area while Stevens messed with Hayleigh's phone. Up close, it was pretty clear this spot wasn't as much of a secret as Hayleigh thought it was. There were old initials carved into the trunks of nearby trees. A few feet off, another rock, lower and flatter, jutted out into the water. The gravel next to it had the occasional speck of debris. A gum wrapper, a scrap of lined paper. Ella looked at Chloe and then snapped a photo.
"Why didn't you film from over there?" asked Chloe.
"When the wind kicks up, the waves go right over," said Hayleigh. "That's why I can't just leave the camera out forever."
Chloe stepped closer to the rock. A long-abandoned soda can. Her eyes narrowed. A take-away bag just the right size for half a burger. A logo for the Hungry Gila Diner.
"I only have one camera," Hayleigh was going on, "and I am not going to get another one if I can't get it back. Even if my mom and dad don't get mad at me for losing it, our online buying stuff thing got messed up."
"That's no fun," said Ella. "Did they reset your algorithm to get stupid ads? I hate it when they do that."
"Nah. Someone hacked us and tried to steal a bunch of money," said Hayleigh.
Stevens turned to Chloe. "Didn't you say—"
Chloe stepped closer to Hayleigh. "When was this?" she asked. "Did it happen before you came to camp?"
Hayleigh's eyebrows went up. "No," she said. "They told me a couple days ago. Mom likes to get a phone call on weekends, so Director Millner takes me to his office. That's how I knew that's where they keep our phones."
"Was it—" Stevens stopped herself and muttered. "No leading questions, no leading questions." "What kind of account was it?" she asked in a louder voice.
"," said Hayleigh.
"Not WobblePay?" she asked.
"No. I don't think we have that one," she said.
Chloe asked carefully, "Did you log in to the app at all while you were here at camp?"
"No," said Hayleigh as her freckles dissolved into a heavy blush and her eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets to the left.
"Not even on someone else's phone?" asked Chloe.
"I tried to order a new battery," she said. "Counselor Trence was really nice about it."
"Director?" Chloe asked. "Is Trence one of the counselors who's here for course credit?"
"Yes," he answered.
"University of Oregon," said Blanchard. "Computer science."
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I want to thank the crew at Discord and everyone who organized and commented on Full Moon June for giving me the spot-check help and zip I needed to focus. I don't want to make promises, but all but the very end is written (or has a postable written version). I expect I will post one chapter a week until she's all up.