The boathouse loomed ahead of me and I spotted Norton a few feet from the river’s edge. He was pushing a battered old canoe into the water near the dock. The green tarp he’d used to camouflage it lay abandoned behind him in the brush. The boat tipped and swayed in the water, no match for the ferocious waves. Gripping a paddle, her free arm braced against the canoe’s edge, Jade was already huddled inside.

“Stop right there!”

Both Jade and Norton startled and whipped their heads around. Jade wasn’t wearing a lifejacket, and the canoe didn’t look seaworthy in the best of weather. I trained my flashlight at Norton’s face and leveled my gun at his chest. “You can’t run,” I hollered. “Look at the river. She’ll die. You both will.”

Norton squinted into the light, and his small eyes sank into his doughy face. Rain flowed in rivulets over his bald head. “I have to,” he said, wading into the water. “I’ve got to take her home.”

“I thought Tern was your home.” I willed my hands to stop shaking. He appeared unarmed, but there was no way I could get off a clean shot if Norton made a move. With the rain, visibility was poor, and the harder I squeezed the more the gun’s grip felt like sandpaper grating at my palm. I took three slow steps toward him. “Where’s Jasper, Philip?”

He was still holding on to the canoe, trying to drag it deeper, but my question loosened his resolve and he stopped moving. Norton locked eyes with Jade. Jacketless and soaked through, she looked miserable and afraid. “I didn’t think,” he told her. “I didn’t know . . .”

“Where is he?” I shouted.

“He’s dead!” Norton’s sobs were nearly drowned out by the sound of the waves, but I saw the horror in his eyes. “He’s gone. In . . . in the river. I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Jade’s perfect lips formed the shape of an O. As I looked on she transformed, fragile now in the knowledge that she’d crossed from childhood to the inhumanity of adult life.

Norton let out a moan. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and dropped his chin to his chest.

“Out of the boat,” I told Jade as I closed the distance between us.

She looked up at Norton with confusion, but did as she was told. Jade scrambled out of the canoe, sinking her coltish legs into the water.

Fumbling the flashlight, unwilling to lower the gun, I reached into my back pocket and handed Jade her phone. “Get in the boathouse. Call 911. Tell them we’ve got suspects out here we’re charging with domestic assault and first-degree murder. Go,” I yelled when the girl didn’t move. She hurried to the boathouse and closed the door behind her.

Several facts still needled me, slivers of treachery stuck so deep I was desperate to pinch their ends and pull them free. “I think you drugged Jasper last night,” I said when Norton and I were alone. According to Ned, Norton was the only one who saw them after the fight outside. Ned told Norton Jasper had taken a fall. They’d come in through the kitchen. The water ring on Jasper’s bedside table. “You drugged his water, didn’t you? And this morning you got rid of the glass.”