A few minutes later, she finally forced herself into the kitchen to make tea. The cluster of spoons sat on the counter, mocking her. She tore off a paper towel and, holding it in her hand, pushed the little package toward the back of the counter.
Once the first light had appeared outside, she went back upstairs, showered, and dressed. When she returned to the first floor, she still felt jittery. But she couldn’t just crawl up in a fetal ball, she told herself. She had prep work to do for her Monday-morning classes, and she hoped to get some of it out of the way today. But first, out of sheer curiosity, she wanted to check out the spot where Trevor Harris’s body had been found. After throwing on her coat, she grabbed the set of her notes that she’d planned to give Hutch. If she had time, she would drop them off at his place.
She headed north for just over a mile along the river on Route 1, the road that ran parallel to the bike path she used, until she reached the Big Red Barn. Since the body apparently had been found across the road by the river, this would be the best place to park, she realized. Phoebe had shopped at the store once, just after she’d skulked into Lyle, hoping to find a few items that would help make Herb’s house seem more like her own. But to her chagrin the store seemed to sell mostly baskets, old metal spoons, and painted milk cans. It was too early for the place to be open, but there were half a dozen cars in the parking lot, some official vehicles, others probably belonging to people who’d come to rubberneck.
She parked at the far end of the parking lot and climbed from the car. Though the sky was clear, the air felt close to freezing, and she was glad she’d dressed in plenty of layers.
As she hurried to the road on foot, she noticed that there were two large carved pumpkins and about a dozen dried corn stalks leaning on either side of the wide barn door. Halloween is coming, Phoebe realized, and then after a brief mental calculation, she realized that the festivities were Sunday night. Perfect, she thought. It would feed nicely into any terror the students were experiencing now.
Though it was early in the morning, cars zoomed down the road in both directions, and it took a minute for Phoebe to find an opening in the traffic. Once across the road, she hurried through a cut in the tree border and emerged onto the bike path. On the other side of the path, in front of the muddy river, was an area that had been partially cleared of trees and set with five gray wooden picnic tables.
A movement caught Phoebe’s eye, and she glanced in that direction. Farther down to the right, about two dozen people, a few with bikes, stood on the path, staring into the wooded area in front of the river. Phoebe followed their eyes. Yellow police tape had been looped through the trees closest to the path. Deeper into the woods she could see four or five men and women in uniform moving, sometimes lurching, through the trees and underbrush along the riverbank. That was clearly where Trevor’s body had been found. It was horrible to think of him lying along the water’s edge for months as his friends and family—and of course Lily—frantically wondered where he was.
Phoebe glanced back at the crowd and let her eyes roam over the faces. There seemed to be a mix of townspeople and students, in addition to the cyclists, who must have just stumbled onto the scene. And then suddenly she spotted Hutch at the far end of the crowd, dressed in baggy pants and a heavy black-and-red lumberjack-style jacket. Considering how much he clearly missed the action, it wasn’t a surprise to see him here.
“Hey, Hutch, hello,” Phoebe said after wandering over to him. His expression had been solemn, but as soon as he turned and recognized Phoebe, his face relaxed into a smile.
“Professor Hall, good morning.”
“Phoebe, please.”
“Okay, Phoebe it is. So you came to check out the scene. Grim business, isn’t it?”
“Yes—things seem to be going from bad to worse,” Phoebe said. She gazed back through the woods at the cops stepping clunkily through the brush. “How did the cops discover him, do you know?”
“I talked to an old buddy of mine on the force, and he told me that they were hunting for a sweater the girl had worn, hoping to find where she went in. They found the sweater here, then the boy.”
Phoebe gasped. “So they died at the same spot. The cops must be thinking serial killer,” Phoebe said.
“Not necessarily. Since these two were boyfriend and girlfriend, they might have gotten into something over their heads—something that caught up with them at different times.”
“You mean something like drugs?” Phoebe said. She’d never considered anything like that.
“Could be,” said Hutch. “We’ve got a problem around here with that stuff. Marijuana, OxyContin going for eighty dollars a pill, and even heroin.”
“But just to play devil’s advocate, what if the deaths are part of a larger pattern?” Phoebe asked. “You mentioned the other day that a year and half was too long of a cooling-off period for a serial killer, but now we’re looking at four incidents spaced no more than six months apart.”
“If you count Wesley Hines.”
“Right. By the way, after you gave me Wesley’s name, I found out he lives near here, and I paid him a visit. He’s still saying someone drugged him and tossed him into the river that night. I suppose he could be a pathological liar, but he seemed genuinely upset to me.”
Hutch shook his head slowly, as if both doubtful and yet deliberating what she’d said.
“I took notes during my conversation with him yesterday and made a copy for you,” Phoebe added. “I was going to drop them off at your place later.” She fished the notes out of her bag and offered them to him.
“I’ll take a look,” he said, accepting the pages and tucking them into the breast pocket of his jacket. “You know, I’m going to feel like hell if I completely misjudged the situation with that boy back then. It happened just around the time I was being forced out. Maybe I was too distracted to see the situation clearly.”
Phoebe felt a rush of sadness, thinking of Hutch at that moment in his life. With his wife dead, work was all he had. And how honorable of him to acknowledge now that he might have been wrong. She couldn’t imagine Craig Ball admitting to as much as misdialing a phone number.
“One thing I know from writing biographies is that things often only make sense in context,” Phoebe said. “I included other notes in there, too. Yesterday I talked to a girl who’d been victimized by the Sixes, and she told me they’ve done their share of tormenting students here. I keep wondering if they might be behind the drownings—either directly or indirectly.”
Hutch whistled through his teeth. “I haven’t stopped thinking about what they did with the rats. You get kids in a group, and things can definitely escalate.”
She then told him about the little horror show at her house last night.
“I don’t think I like the way this has been handled,” he said, looking sincerely worried. “I’m concerned about your safety.”
“I’m calling the locksmith for extra security as soon as they open,” she promised. “And I’m staying with a friend tonight.”
There was some movement down by the woods, and instinctively Phoebe and Hutch turned their heads in unison. Phoebe’s heart sank a little at what she saw. Pete Tobias was now standing toward the front of the crowd, talking to two guys who looked like Lyle students. There was something downright feral about him—he always had his nose in the air, hyper alert—and she knew he’d soon turn and scan the crowd with those beady black eyes. If he noticed her here, he’d try to make something of it.