I summoned more than a hint of sarcasm for the last line, which I’m sure has caught her off guard.
“If so, how lucky for him indeed,” she says, the perfect response. “I wish you all the best, Bree.”
I wish her well, too, and offer a warm goodbye. It will surely be the last time we ever speak.
I give myself a minute or two to stew about Handler. He’s got some kind of game going on—trying to paint me as slightly unhinged, possibly barricading me in the room last night. Is it all a defensive move, in case I start making accusations about him and Mel? As Logan keeps reiterating, it was Ruck who killed Mel, and yet Handler might have secrets he wants kept under wraps.
But I need to table that right now and return to the task at hand. After briefly searching online, I end up on a site that provides the weather history for any place in the US. I type in “Cartersville, NY,” and then find my way to the October Mel died. I’ve done my best since yesterday to quell any vague, lingering doubts about her murder, but I’m not going to ignore a possible discrepancy. What I’m looking forare the weather conditions not only on the night Riley jumped into the creek but also on the days leading up to it.
The information is surprisingly easy to interpret. There’s a graph for each day of the month as well as an accompanying summary, covering details like the temperature throughout the day, dew point, and wind speed, but the only thing that matters to me is precipitation. As I go through the month one day at a time, I jot details down in my notebook and create my own little chart.
Just as Harry reported, the first half of October was incredibly rainy. There was at least some precipitation on eleven out of those fifteen days, and the temperature never reached sixty.
The Sunday before Mel died must have been particularly miserable. It apparently poured the entire day, with an accumulation of over two inches. But everything, I see, shifted on Monday. According to the graph, there was zero precipitation that day or during the days immediately following. The temperature climbed into the high sixties. Indian summer, just as Harry said.
Which meant it was practically balmy when Mel walked to the park that night after dinner.
I recall next to nothing about weather conditions upstate during the days after she died, though it must have turned cool again since I was always in a coat, a lightweight camel one that I tossed in a dumpster as soon as I arrived back to Tribeca.
It doesn’t matter, however, that I’ve forgotten the details because all I need to know is right here on my computer screen. The temperatures in Cartersville did indeed begin to dip again on Saturday, but—and this is the part that interests me most—the skies remained clear. There wasn’t a drop of precipitation again until the following Tuesday.
I finish drawing my own little chart and stare at it, reiterating the question I asked myself as Logan was about to leave my room:Can a creek be raging if it hasn’t rained in days?
Probably not,I think, but I’m out of my league here. What I need is a consult with someone who knows waterways, but since I certainlydon’t have access to anyone like that, I call Cartersville Taxi and ask for Craig, who seemed savvy about the creek.
“Yeah, hi,” he says after I remind him who I am. “Are you at the inn? I’m jammed up now, but I can have someone else pick you up in fifteen.”
“I don’t need a ride. I just want to ask a question about the creek.”
“You thinkin’ of taking a boat out on it?”
“Not quite,” I say, hearing myself laugh in spite of everything. “I was just wondering how much the creek might change during a given week. Like yesterday, it looked low and slow, but you said that it rises after it rains.”
“Yup, exactly.”
“And then how long would it take to go down again once the rain stopped?”
“Not long. The creek’s what they call flashy.”
“Flashy?”
“It’s how they describe a stream or river that rises fast when it rains but decreases almost just as fast afterward. It’s all got to do with the watershed.”
“So, if it was pouring one weekend but the rainfall stopped completely by Monday morning, would the creek be low, like, six days later?”
“If there was no more rain? Oh yeah, it’d be just pokin’ along by then ... That all you need for now?”
“Yes, yes, thank you.”
My heart is racing as I set down the phone. Based on what I’ve learned this morning, there’s no way Pebble Creek could have carried Riley downstream that Sunday night.
Which means I’m staring at a gaping hole in her story.
Chapter 26
I’m still convinced Riley was raped and almost killed—but she seems to have lied about one aspect of that night: either the date ... or the fact she escaped in swift-moving waters of the creek.
It seems odd she would make up leaping into the creek. Why would she include an almost improbable-seeming detail that could undermine the credibility of her story?
