I don’t even wait until we are all the way out the door.

“Three victims, crime lab says,” I say as we jump in his car.

Sheriff gives me a puzzled look.

“What do you make of that?”

I pull the door shut and buckle up. “Sarah,” I tell him. “She might actually be a Seattle girl named Ellie Burbank.”

He’s all ears on the drive out to Snow Creek. I tell him that Ellie, in fact, might not be at the bottom of Lake Crescent, and that Susan Whitcomb is more than likely alive—her supposed death was merely an inspiration for the Burbank homicides—and he updates me about the Torrance case and how national media has already started calling.

“And her aunt is sure that’s Ellie? Not Sarah?”

“That’s what she thinks.”

“All of a sudden, we’re Ground Zero for murder,” he says.

I don’t disagree.

“We need to find Merritt Wheaton,” I remind him. “He’s out there somewhere.”

“Right. This is only the beginning.”

I look out the window thinking that this case has been the most bizarre I’ve ever been involved with.

At least in an official capacity.

Thirty-Nine

Bernadine Chesterfield, grandstander and attention seeker extraordinaire, a woman who would snap her gold-framed ethics code in a million pieces just to be in the middle of something noteworthy, sits by the road in a sagging heap.

We pitch to a stop and we get out.

I loathe this woman, and I’m not alone. She’s crying and hunched into a big ball. She looks like she’s had the wits scared out of her.

It’s not quite that. It’s something else.

Sheriff approaches first, and I follow a step or two behind. Bernie and I have a history. A decidedly mixed one. She doesn’t know that he’s the one who made the complaint about her conduct with the media during the Wheaton memorial service. Short as it was.

As fake as it might have been.

“I’m so stupid,” she says over and over. “So damn stupid.”

No argument comes from me—or Sheriff.

She doesn’t need any prodding. She unfolds herself and starts talking. Her blue slacks are torn and there’s blood on her sleeve.

She sees us looking at her clothing and the blood oozing from her arm.

“I’m fine. That’s just a scrape. I ran like hell.”

“What happened?” Sheriff asks.

She steadies herself against the car.

“I came out here, you know, to see how the kids were doing. They seemed so lost. Really. I just wanted to help.”

I don’t ask if she was making a court mandated visit because I know she wasn’t. I know her M.O.