Harris did not like it, but he agreed Patrick could come as far as the diner and stay in the car unless told otherwise. Patrick sat in the back seat with the photograph face down on his knee. He could barely look at it, but he would not let it go.
At the diner, we showed the waitress the picture and said we were looking for a cousin.
She nodded.
“That’s Emily. She helps at Miller’s produce stand sometimes. Lives with her grandmother over in Dalton Ridge.”
Patrick closed his eyes.
We drove to Dalton Ridge.
Emily’s grandmother answered the door, saw the photograph, and tried to close it again. Harris showed his badge, and she let us inside.
A man had taken the photo the week before, she told us. He said he needed it for a local sunflower festival flyer.
“He said his name was Vince.”
Vince.
His face flashed through my mind.
Vince would have known about the accident. He had been seventeen when Lily disappeared, old enough to hear adults talking and old enough to remember Patrick’s guilt. He had spent that night searching near the pond. He also would have known about the sunflower tradition and the strip of farmland we had sold the year before.
With her grandmother beside her, Emily told us one more thing.
Vince had asked her to hold a sunflower and look sad.
She said he had mud on his shoes and a white ribbon sticking out of his pocket.
Harris arranged the motel meeting.
Before I got out of the cruiser, he made me repeat the plan twice. Do not improvise. Do not follow Vince anywhere. Do not hand over the envelope unless he gave the signal.
I walked in with an envelope full of cut paper and a wire under my shirt.
Vince was waiting near the vending machines with a cap pulled low over his face.
He began talking before I even said a word.
Lily had survived, he claimed. A woman had taken her in. She remembered the farmhouse porch. She still talked about Patrick, though she called him Pat.
I let him speak.
Then I told him our farmhouse did not have a porch until four years after Lily vanished.
I told him Lily had never called her brother Pat.
She called him Patch.
Then I said:
“I found Emily.”
His face changed.
He tried to laugh.
But I had Emily’s grandmother. I had the photograph. I had the recording. I had the ribbon, the tire tracks, and his own story collapsing around him.
Harris stepped out.
Vince ran toward the back stairwell and made it only three steps before another deputy caught him.
By evening, he was in custody.
For Complete Cooking STEPS Please Head On Over To Next Page Or Open button (>) and don’t forget to SHARE with your Facebook friends.
