She pushed off the bench and headed along the dirt trail leading up the shore, past birch trees and lowland brush. This was the route Mary Biggs had walked, innocent and unknowing, from the safety of the little gray bench to a place where strangers and deep water took her away. From where she was, Maggie kept an eye on the highway. Donna Biggs, running to rescue her daughter, could have glimpsed a tall man through the trees as he climbed into a silver SUV, but at this distance, she wouldn’t have been able to identify him. She knew that Donna was right, because she believed that Finn Mathisen had been here. Stalking Mary. Driving a silver RAV. What she knew and what she could prove, though, were two different things.

When she reached the point in the trail where Mary had run for the river, Maggie veered off the path into the woods. She knew the ev techs had been over this ground thoroughly, and she didn’t expect to find anything they had missed. Even so, she wanted to put herself in Finn’s shoes. Mary is screaming, running away. The noise terrifies him. He escapes back into the trees, heading for his car, pushing through spindly branches that claw at him, hearing his own breath and the squish of wet leaves beneath his feet. It isn’t far, but it must have seemed far, wondering if he would be caught. Maggie saw the road ahead of her. She emerged from the trees, as he would have done, and found herself on the gravel shoulder of the highway. The silver RAV4 would have been parked right here.

He got in; his tires spun on the loose rock; he sped away.

Maggie stared down the curving stretch of road. She could see the flat area near the parking lot where the young boy had spilled off his bicycle. From there, Donna could see clearly up the slope. She would have seen the RAV parked here as she called out for help. It all must have happened quickly. Mary wandering up the trail. Donna noticing she was gone. The man spying Mary, realizing she was coming closer, stepping out onto the trail to confront her. Mary wailing, Donna running to find her, Finn—if it was Finn—pushing through the trees.

Maggie realized that Finn couldn’t have predicted that Mary would wander up the trail alone. That was a bonus. He knew that Donna and Mary came down to the park most Fridays and that they spent time sitting on the bench by the river. So the most he could have hoped for was to spy on her. Watch her. Where would the best place have been to do that? Maggie didn’t think he would have risked sitting in his car, with traffic coming and going. He would have taken binoculars and staked out a spot near the trail, closer to where they sat.

She wandered down the slope, looking for a place where she could duck back into the trees. She kept an eye on the parking lot, as Finn would have done, trying to find a hiding place with the best vantage. Twenty yards away, she found a slim trail, where the foliage was beaten down, a shortcut for kids to hike and ride bikes off the highway on their way to the river. She followed it, certain that Finn would have used this route. Maggie reached the wider trail, the one Mary had used, and realized that if she continued down to the water, she would have a largely unobstructed view across the bend of the river toward the clearing where Donna and Mary sat, watching the birds fly.