So that leaves the date as a lie. It now seems possible that Riley was actually attacked at least several days earlier than she told us, when the creek was still high from days’ worth of rain—and that’s why she seemed evasive to me. It certainly doesn’t discount Ruck as her assailant. He’d been at his sister’s house for about six days before Mel was killed, which means there’s a clear window for him to have attacked Riley earlier than she claimed.
But why deceive us? As I sit motionless at the desk, I suddenly see, with gut-wrenching clarity, what her motive was. If she admitted to being raped days earlier, we’d be holding her partly to blame for our daughter’s death. Mel would never have taken a meditative stroll in a park one night if she’d heard there was a rapist on the loose.
In the end, of course, such a lie wouldn’t alter the bigger truth I’ve come to accept: Ruck killed Melanie and he also attacked Riley. It just would have been in reverse order.
Still ... unease has a grip on me and won’t let go. If Riley lied about that, she might have lied about other things—things that matter.
I send a text to Logan, telling him to start eating without me, that something’s come up that I need to deal with. Then I tap the number I have for Morgan Kroll. My call goes straight to voicemail, so I leave a message asking for her to phone me as soon as possible. She’ll probably groan as soon as she hears my voice. She wants all this behind her.
But a few minutes later, as I’m pacing the room, she calls me back.
“Can I pick your brain for a couple of minutes?” I ask.
“Okay, but two minutes tops,” she says briskly, sounding like she’s on the move. “I’ve got an eight-thirty class this morning.”
“Understood. Look, I know that Riley was brutally attacked. But—is there any chance she could have misled all of us about the timeline?”
“Thetimeline? That’s not something the two of us really discussed. I think she said she was in the park at eight or so, but she didn’t get specific about the length of the assault or how long she was in the water, any of it.”
She’s misunderstood my question.
“Sorry, what I meant was the timeline in terms of the night she was attacked. Is there any chance it happenedbeforethat Sunday? Like five or six days before?”
A long pause follows.
“Wow, that’s a weird thought,” Morgan says finally. “Needless to say, I didn’t give her a lie detector test, so I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but she definitely said it had happened the night before. And based on her demeanor, it seemed like she was still in shock.”
“Hmm,” I say. Her shock, of course, could have lasted for days.
“And why would she need to lie about that anyway?”
“Because if she’d been raped earlier and hadn’t reported it, we’d be holding her partially responsible for Mel’s death.”
“Okay, I see what you’re getting at,” she says, and I sense her stopping in place, finally absorbing it all. “And you’d be justified in blaming her. But where’s this idea coming from?”
“From some records I found about the weather that month. The creek level is related to rainfall, and it was probably too low that Sunday night to carry her away from the park.”
“But it was high enough days earlier?”
“Uh-huh.” Though I’m almost past the two-minute time limit Morgan gave, I glance down at the chart I’ve sketched, letting ideas take shape as I’m speaking. “It rained hard on thepreviousSunday, so the creek would have been high that day and also on Monday. Probably Tuesday as well. I think that’s the time frame it happened in.”
“So you’re saying she out and out deceived me.”
“Just about the date, not the horror of the assault. Let’s say Riley was attacked on Monday night instead of the following Sunday. She might have flagged down a ride just as she described and decided to try to get on with her life without going to the cops. But then on Friday, Melanie was killed only a short distance away, which would have triggered a huge amount of guilt and anxiety. Up until then, she might have convinced herself she could still manage school but then realized she couldn’t. That’s why she finally went by the English department to see about getting extensions. And she misled you about the time frame so that no one could blame her for Mel’s death.”
Another pause.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Morgan says after a couple of beats. “But wait ... she couldn’t have been lying about the date. I saw the bruises on her neck.”
I’d completely lost sight of that detail. How stupid of me.
“You’re right,” I say, bewildered.
“Are you sure the information you found about the creek is correct? Or maybe itwaslow, and she still managed to paddle downstream.”
Not only are my thoughts in a jumble by this point, but I’m also embarrassed. I’ve dragged Morgan Kroll back into this because of a theory that now seems baseless.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. “I’m so sorry to have held you up. As you can tell, this is all really fraught for me.”
