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Chloe heard a stumbling sound and realized Millner was still following them. "Are the campers in danger?" he asked, a squeak in his voice.
"Noah is," Chloe muttered under her breath.
Blanchard stopped on the gravely beach, squinting into the dim. She could practically see his thoughts: Would Moira take the official path or the shortcut along the lakeshore? And if anyone else had left first but stopped along the way—like the world's worst buddy system buddy and the girl who'd been promised a prize if she kept him happy—she'd run straight into them.
Blanchard headed toward a patch of woods that looked to Chloe exactly like every other chunk of trees in this hellhole. But when the three adults filed into it, the rocks seemed to part, just as they had earlier. Chloe felt her shoes slip on the rock, but she recovered and kept going. Millner followed a little indignantly.
Blanchard looked over his shoulder at her, eyes gleaming with anger. "Why didn't you take her back to Los Angeles?" he demanded.
Chloe glared back with a fire that had once cowed the devil himself.
Because the universe had promised her that her daughter would live, no matter what. She'd grow up traumatized, no matter what. She'd bought and paid for it. But she couldn't say that in front of this man.
"Statistically, there are more murders in big cities than in the—" Millner shut his mouth in the face of two furious glares.
"This way," Blanchard said at last, heavy body moving much faster than before.
If Moira had used the lake path to avoid being seen, she'd go past the rock outcrop without stopping. But what if Rory and Noah were already there? Rory and Noah were kids. If there was another shortcut, another desire path from campfire, they'd have gone direct, climbing over or through anything in the way. Which meant, shorter legs or not, they could get to the rock by the lake first. How would Moira react to being caught? One of them had covered for her once already but was the daughter of a prowling police captain. The other one couldn't keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it.
The evening had grown darker since the counselors had lit the bonfire, and Chloe felt the woods press down on her. Animals made weird noises and branches seemed to duck down and brush her forehead in the dim. With a cold feeling, she realized how Stevens would see this: She was running off into an isolated area with two men they'd once suspected of killing a nosy girl who'd butted into their business. Rory might even be back at Puma Cabin, or taking Noah on an ice cream raid in the pantry. If Millner and Blanchard killed Chloe and threw her body in the lake, it would only prove she'd been an idiot all along.
Blanchard slowed down, and Chloe noticed he was breathing hard, air coming through his throat at a thin whistle. There were voices up ahead. Chloe realized she could smell lake water and hear thin waves lapping against the rocks.
"I don't know anything about a camera!" Rory was saying.
"Did you take it?" the echoes over the water gave Moira's voice had more body, more mass. "Did you show it to them?"
"No! Show what?" said Rory. "I'm just bringing Noah to show him ...the lake!"
"She said it was better than salamanders," Noah's voice wasn't projecting nearly so well as it had on the stage. His stomach muscles would be busy holding the fear in.
"I didn't push her. She just fell!"
"Over a railing taller than I am? Her center of gravity would be—"
"SHUT UP, NOAH!" snarled Rory.
The trees parted so that Chloe could see the lighter dimness over the lake. The sun had gone behind the hills but there was still enough light for her to see Rory standing on the flat rock that jutted out into the water, one hand in a death grip on Noah's. Standing between them in the shore, alien with agitation, was Moira.
All Chloe's muscles were telling her to bunch and spring across the rocks like she was the only real puma on the lake, snatch Rory out of there, and run far, far away. But there was a more esoteric problem. Rory knew she was only allowed to show her wings in front of people if it was a big-time, life-and-death emergency. Which this was.
Half-angel or not, Rory was still a kid. Seeing Mom freaked out would freak her out, and that only made the chance of Millner and Noah having their own book of Revelation moment that much worse.
Out in the lake, a thick ripple formed, its motion breaking the pattern of the waves.
Moira rubbed her face, turning in place. The knees of her trousers looked dark, as if she'd been searching for something on her hands and knees.
Chloe stood up.
A perfect person would have found a way to keep Moira talking, get a confession, and keep Noah safe and Rory secret. A perfect mom, a perfect detective. Even the Chloe from years ago, the miraculous Chloe who shouted at God and kept the Devil at her side might have been able to do it. But the ground was slippery, the water was high, and one innocent had already died here.
She motioned for Blanchard and Millner to stay down. Blanchard was muttering something under his breath.
"Moira," she said in her gentlest tone. The girl's short hair flared out as she whipped her head to the side. "Moira, you don't really think the kids have that camera."
Even in the dim, Chloe could see she was breathing hard.
"They would have given it to us already," she said.
Moira was practically vibrating, her dullness gone. Rory looked out into the lake and started to nudge Noah further out onto the rock.
"They're on your side, remember?" Chloe said. "Rory didn't even tell the police deputy you were with them when they found Patricia. She covered for you."
"I hate it when people follow me around," said Moira, and Chloe could hear her breathing hard. "It was bad enough when Patricia went OCD on her campers, but then she turns around and does it to me?"
"It wasn't Patricia's job to tell you what to do," said Chloe, taking just one step closer.
"No," said Moira, some of her dullness coming back into her voice like a lava flow starting to turn to mud. Chloe could see it now. Alicia and the other Puma girls had told Patricia to check the rule book, so she had. And she'd seen there had been no rule about taking away campers' cell phones until very recently. At least one of Patricia's campers knew her family's accounts had been broken into. Patricia would at least have asked herself if it had something to do with the other counselor who was disappearing at all hours.
The sound of waves lapping grew faster, but the wind was still.
"She should've just minded her own business!" Moira said. Over her shoulder, Rory was backing away, tugging Noah along with her. She looked out onto the lake. Moira breathed stiffy. "Rory, Noah, you're coming with me. Then I'll—"
The wave-lapping sound got faster. And closer. Chloe was reminded of the sound of the sea lions at the aquarium, doing tricks near the surface. There was an overpowering stench of algae and dead fish.
"Detective!" Blanchard called out, wrapping his arms around Chloe and pulling her to the ground as something knocked Moira off her feet.
A massive shape had propelled itself out of the lake and onto the rock bed, pulling by a wave of fetid water. Chloe caught the gleam of moonlight against at least one row of teeth on an impossibly long neck.
Moira's voice wasn't dull any more.
Chloe felt night air inside her mouth as her brain fired on overdrive. This was no crocodile, no water bird mutated from toxic waste, no plesiosaur out of time. At least five eyes bulged out from the mismatched sockets on its head, and the flesh hung off its sides in rotted sheets. Her left palm hit the rock beside her as she landed hard on her butt. Blanchard was already standing up.
"You go now!" Blanchard said, standing up and waving his arms. "Shoo! Y'hear! Shoo! Or I won't give you no more of that canned tuna. Ain't nothing here for you!"
The Silver Lake Monster rumbled like a motorcycle engine from George Miller's nightmares. But Chloe was already getting up, walking past it, straight to Rory, gathering her in her arms like she had when she was little. For once, Rory didn't object.
Chloe didn't turn around at the massive splash and slither as the lake monster slid back into the water. There was a sound of groaning in Moira's voice. So she was still alive.
"You okay, baby?" Chloe asked with what breath she had left. She felt Rory nod against her stomach.
"I did try to tell you, Captain Decker," Blanchard said carefully, "but here at Silver Lake we don't want to let the local animal control to know it's here." He turned to Millner and said, almost in apology, "Been here since long before you bought the camp. I expect Abby and Marvina may have seen it a time or two."
"There really is a lake monster?" Millner's voice was like a thread pulled taut, thin as a hair. With a squeak, his eyes rolled back in his head and he sagged to the ground like a gas station skydancer with its fan unplugged.
Noah's eyes were lit up like streetlights, complete with fireflies.
"That …was …so …cool!"
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Moira's last words on Camp Silver Lake grounds were "I hate getting arrested."
"A what bit her?" Stevens asked, balancing the clipboard on her knee as she took Chloe's official statement.
"Some kind of water snake. Or maybe a big otter?" Chloe answered. She was seated awkwardly in Millner's desk chair, an unusually quiet Rory in her lap. Stephens was leaning against the inert radiator, and Ella leaned over the desk to give Noah a cup of hot cooa. "I couldn't get a good look in the dark."
The sun had fully set by the time they made it back. Blanchard had wadded up his vest to put pressure on Moira's bite wound while Chloe got her cell phone to work long enough to call for Stevens and her backup. Moira had been cuffed and the EMTs called for her Millner.
When they'd arrived, the bite on her thigh already looked old, black in some places, seeping ooze in others, as if the infection had been there a long time. Chloe had a funny feeling in the place where she'd once been a miracle, that that wound would never leave her.
Clouds had blocked the moon and clouds of mosquitoes had blocked the streetlight. They'd moved inside Millner's office more for the window screens than the light. The cheap, dull fluorescents showed every flyaway on Stevens' head, the hollows under Ella's eyes, and Chloe knew she had to look even worse.
Stevens scratched inside her ponytail with the dull end of her pencil. "That looked like more than two tooth marks."
"That just means the snake wasn't venomous," volunteered Ella.
"Moira didn't say that she pushed her?" Stevens asked.
Chloe shook her head. "She said Patricia fell." Maybe that was even what had happened, railing or no railing.
"She didn't seem that bad," said Rory. Her tone was cool and contemplative, but she was sitting in Chloe's lap, something she hadn't done in years. Noah occupied Millner's office's sole other chair. Currently, he was wrapped in five quilts and enjoying a hot chocolate with more marshmallows than should be legal while Ella looked on.
"She wasn't that bad," said Chloe. "Until she was. When Patricia went over the rail, Moira should have gone for help or called 911." She breathed out slowly. "When you make a bad decision, you should try to fix it. If you can."
This was it, Chloe thought. She watched the tiny movements of Rory's eyes as she thought and thought. Would learning this kind of truth so young make her strong or wounded? Trixie had been betrayed like this once—worse—when Malcolm had turned out not to be just Daddy's friend from work.
Noah's hands fell forward, spilling some of his cocoa on the floor. "Do you think Patricia was still alive at first?" he asked.
"Uh..." Chloe cursed her mouth.
Noah sighed. "I'm just mad those other police didn't believe me about the lake monster. And that no one liked my Campfire story," he said. Chloe held in an exhale. Linda always had said that therapeutic moments got shorter the younger you were.
"I ...kind of liked it?" said Rory. "But I get why they were upset. If you tell people they're going to get a ghost story, then the story has to at least do what a ghost story does."
"But you told me to tell a true one!" said Noah.
"Wait, that was where that came from?" asked Rory.
"I'm sorry, what happened?" asked Ella.
"Noah had the stage at Campfire," said Rory, "he started telling a werewolf story that turned out to be about the some kind of cannibalistic tadpole that eats the others if there's fungus."
"The eastern tiger salamander?" asked Ella.
"And it's a cannibalistic morph," said Noah.
Ella turned to Noah. "Did you tell the part where they only eat—"
"Diseased or infected larvae? Yeah! That was the whole story!"
Ella pulled a business card out of her purse. "If you live anywhere in the greater L.A. area, I run a STEM program for talented weirdos—"
"Ella!" said Chloe.
"Which I mean in the Gonzo the Great sense." She dropped her voice, "And I'm only saying it because I'm pretty sure he's not available for adoption." She turned back to Noah. "Since the camp might not be open next year, you'll need options."
Noah bit his lower lip contemplatively. "Can I do a section about blowfly larva?"
"Can you?"
"Stealing passwords is usually a misdemeanor," Ella told Stevens. "If the DA wants to try Moira for a felony, they could say Patricia's death was felony murder. But they'd have to show Patricia died because Moira was stealing and that she stole enough for a felony. It's a mess."
"So if Moira's smart, her lawyer will plea her down," said Stevens.
"Or you or the sheriff will get her to confess," Ella suggested.
Stevens gave a real sigh. "I was kind of looking forward to working her together, you know?" Stevens said. "Tying it up neat. Now there's going to be all this legal finagling."
"The justice system isn't perfect," said Chloe. "We build the case on the evidence we have, not on the evidence we wish we had." Or at least that was the idea. Chloe thought about Patricia. Grieving families wanted justice, and they probably wouldn't think this was it.
Stevens twisted her pen in her hand. "Too bad we never really found Hayleigh's camera. I'd really like to see what was on that."
"Yeah…" Chloe said slowly. "Too bad."
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"John Keel" is a character from the Discworld book Night Watch. I don't know $# & about the geography of California, and comments on things I can fix will be welcome and possibly acted upon for, say, a few months after the post. As usual, I welcome concrit, typo-spotting, and general authentic reader response.