He knew the odds of tying anything directly to Rachel were slim. Even so, Stride felt a sense of excitement. The Stoners had definitively identified the bracelet as belonging to Rachel. The initials cinched it: "Tommy loves Rachel." The bracelet had been a gift from her father years earlier.
Kevin Lowry had already reported in his original statement that Rachel was wearing the bracelet when he last saw her in Canal Park. Now it had been found here, near the barn, their first solid evidence of where Rachel had been after her disappearance. But he tempered his professional satisfaction with the grim reality of what the discovery meant.
Emily Stoner's face had gone white when she saw it. Stride understood. All along, she had still been harboring the hope that Rachel had gone off by herself, a runaway, part of a cruel practical joke. As Emily held the bracelet in her hand, that hope vanished.
"She would never have left it behind," Emily said simply. "Never. Tommy gave it to her. She wore it everywhere. She wore it in the shower. She never took it off." Then, with her husband looking on, she disintegrated into sobs. "Oh my God, she's dead," Emily murmured. "She's really dead."
Stride didn't try to fill the moment with empty hope. He could easily have told her that finding the bracelet meant nothing in and of itself, but the truth was clear to all of them. For weeks, they had been searching for a live girl, trying to unravel the mystery of her life, hunting for answers to a riddle.
Now, they would begin a different search. For Rachel's body.
Stride heard the slam of the van door and the shuffling of footsteps in the snow behind him. He glanced back. Maggie wore a black winter bowler cap over a pair of furry earmuffs. A red wool coat draped to her ankles. She trudged through the snow in her leather boots with square two-inch heels. She didn't wear a scarf, but her golden skin seemed unaffected by the bitter assault of the wind.
Maggie stood next to Stride, reviewing the work of a dozen policemen hunched over with brooms, walkie-talkies, and evidence bags.
"You must be freezing your balls off out here," Maggie said. "Why don't you come back to the van?"
"Guppo's in the van, right? I'm safer out here."
Maggie wrinkled her nose. "I made sure he didn't have any raw vegetables, and I cracked the window so we've got fresh air when we need it."
"No, thanks. I've got to do the media circus soon anyway. It's almost evening news time."
Stride glanced down the dirt road. The police cars blocked travel about fifty yards away, sealing off the area. Beyond the roadblock, he could see the glow of media lights, where at least two dozen reporters waited for him, shivering, complaining, and shouting for attention. He couldn't hear much above the wind.
He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes before five o'clock. He had promised them a live interview to kick off the news.
"So, you ever come out here when you were a kid?" Maggie asked.
"What do you mean?"
Maggie grinned. "Well, the woman who found the bracelet, she said this has been a hot make-out spot for years."
Stride shrugged. "I took my girls to nice, safe dirt roads near the lake, thank you very much."
"Then who came out here?" Maggie asked.
"The easy ones."
"Is that a sexist remark I should be reporting as harassment?" she teased him.
"If you could convince a girl to take a romantic drive with you along the lake, well, maybe you stood a chance of getting to second base."
"Tell me again what second base means," Maggie said. She playfully caressed her teeth with her tongue. "We didn't play baseball in China. Is that breasts, nipples, what?"
Stride ignored her. "But if you suggested going to the barn, and the girl agreed, you knew exactly what you were going to get. On the other hand, you didn't suggest it unless you knew what kind of girl you were dealing with. Otherwise, you got your face slapped."
"And you?"
"I recall mentioning the barn in passing to Lori Peterson," Stride said. "She threw a Coke in my face."
"Good for her," Maggie said. "Does this mean Rachel was easy?"
Stride bit his lower lip. "That's what everyone tells us."
"Except we still haven't found a boy who admits sleeping with her," Maggie said.
"Yes, that's interesting, isn't it? Although who wants to step up to the plate and declare himself a suspect when the girl disappears?"
"So you think it was a date?" Maggie asked.
"Maybe," Stride said. "She left Kevin just before ten o'clock and told him she was tired. Rachel doesn't strike me as a girl who gets tired early on a Friday night."
"So maybe she was meeting someone else. Someone who picked her up at her house."
Stride nodded. "They go for a little romp at the barn. But something goes wrong. Something gets out of hand. And suddenly the boyfriend has a body on his hands."
"We're assuming she's dead?" Maggie said.
Stride sighed. "Aren't we?"
"So who is this mystery stranger? Another boy at school?"
"That's the first place to start, Mags. Time to reinterview anyone who even smells like a boyfriend."
Maggie groaned. "A whole day interviewing high school jocks with overactive hormones who think they're God's gift to everyone with a pussy. You give me the nicest jobs, boss."
"Dress for the occasion, Mags. You'll get more out of them that way."
"Great," Maggie murmured. "It's not like I've got any cleavage to show off."
"You'll think of something."
Maggie punched him in the arm, then turned and stalked back toward the van. Stride smiled. He started walking toward the media crowd down the road, bringing up his walkie-talkie in his gloved hand and shoving it up under his hood.
"What have we got, Guppo?" Stride asked.
Guppo's voice boomed through the walkie-talkie. "What the hell is this place, Lieutenant?" he called. "Shit, we've got more crap in each grid box than I'd expect to find in a New York crack house. You had to pick this place as a crime scene?"
He heard something else, and then Maggie complained in the background. "Son of a bitch, Guppo, I'm back in the van for five seconds, and you have to do that."
Stride chuckled. "Tell her to quit whining, Guppo. Ask her what she's going to wear to work tomorrow."
He heard a voice crackle in the background. "Fuck you, Stride."
Stride transmitted again. "Look, Guppo, do we have anything that suggests a connection to Rachel?"
"Could be all sorts of things. Could be nothing. We won't know until this stuff is tested. There's plenty of evidence of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but without fingerprints and blood work, it's all speculation."
"Nothing like a confession from a murderer tied around a rock?"
"Not yet. We're still looking." Guppo belched.
"Okay," Stride said. He shoved the walkie-talkie back in his coat pocket. He approached the police cars and talked briefly with the two officers who were entrusted with the thankless job of keeping the media and spectators out. On the other side of the yellow tape, it was a mob scene, much as it had been on the night Rachel disappeared. Stride squinted as a series of floodlights illuminated him. The hum of voices escalated into a roar.
Stride pointed at one of the television reporters he knew. "Can your crew do the lights?" When the reporter nodded, Stride continued. "Okay, we'll have one team light me up, and the rest of you, keep the flashbulbs off, all right? If I hear shouting, I'm out of here. You want to ask a question, you raise your hand, I call on you, you ask one question."
"When did you get elected president, Stride?" Bird Finch retorted from the front of the crowd.
Stride grinned. "Listen up, everybody. Bird has already asked his one question. Move him to the back of the crowd."