Murray flipped open his book and wrote something down. He didn’t press Will on the time line. Instead, he asked, “Can you tell me who else was there?”

Now Will looked truly miserable. “I don’t really remember,” he mumbled.

“And you were by the rope swing? Nowhere else? Not, for instance, in a house?”

Will glanced up at them, his eyes going wide. Then he looked away. “Look, Officer, I really need to go,” he said. “Coach is waiting for me.”

Murray turned and looked at the track. The coach was indeed staring at them.

“Okay,” Murray said, flipping his book shut. “Thanks for your help. We’ll get back to you if we need to.”

Will gave them one more worried look and then trotted off to join practice.

“He’s covering for his brother,” Jake said. “Too bad they didn’t get their stories straight.”

“It’s funny,” Murray said. “He’s nothing like the brother. Not what I expected at all.”

“So, what’s the next step?” Jake asked.

“Now we really scare them,” Murray said. “Let’s start calling parents.”

9

The River Inn wasn’t technically on the river—it was across the street, in an old stone building at the edge of the town. It smelled like the river, though: damp and earthy, like mud and leaves. On her last visit, Maja noticed a place along the front wall of the inn where they’d marked the water level of floods dating back over a hundred years, with the highest one as high as her waist, and the most recent one fifteen years ago. Better control of the reservoirs upriver in New York had cut down on the number of the once-common floods.

Her room upstairs was sunny, with wooden shutters, window boxes filled with geraniums, and a handmade quilt on the bed. Maja unpacked, mostly out of habit. She put her clothes for the next day in the oak dresser and lined up her toiletries on the edge of the sink. Even though she was just staying for the night, she hated the feeling of living out of a bag. Ted never seemed to mind. He always left everything in his suitcase, digging through it for clean clothes and tossing the dirty ones back in at the end of the day, silk ties jumbled with damp running gear. She gave him a hard time about it, but secretly she liked it. It was a little breach in his otherwise perfect businessman’s armor.

She picked up her phone and tried him, but the call went right to voice mail. She checked the time—4:30 p.m. The markets were closed for the day and Ted was probably on the subway, heading to pick up the rental car. She wouldn’t have the police report until tomorrow, and there was no point in contacting their insurance company until she had all the information. It looked like she had some time on her hands.