Cry Mercy

Since she had been following possible routes Beth might have taken, Susa

“Everything from a Mini Cooper to one of those big mean pickups must have bounced off you,” she said, taking note that the gashes on the trunk were of varying heights.

She stepped around the tree and looked down. The hill dropped off sharply and the trees grew in dense clusters, their branches and leaves forming a green wall. Now, in the summer, the foliage could hide just about anything down there. In midwinter when the trees were bare, however, she was pretty certain any car that might have gone over on this side of the road would have been visible. She started back to her car, then on a hunch, walked across the road and stepped over the guard rail, which was much lower on this side of the road.

“Oh, come on, Beth,” she said aloud. “You could help me out here.”

She stood at the top of the incline and studied the topography. Beneath her feet was solid rock, and looking down the mountainside, there were mostly rocks below for maybe fifty yards. Beyond the rocks an overgrowth of shrubs disappeared over a ledge. Susa

If she'd swerved to the left, might she have gone into the curve in the opposing lane? And if she had, she'd have looked up to see that rocky overhang right there. If she'd tried to overcompensate, if she'd hit ice… what might have happened to the Jeep? Might it have scraped through between the rock and the railing?

She stepped over the rail and made her way down the rock as far as the ledge and looked over. She almost missed it, but the sunlight bleeding through the clouds caught on something down below and sent a beam back up through the trees.

It could be nothing, she told herself as she made her way around the rocks and down into the ravine, or it could be chrome, or a mirror. She made her way down as far as she could safely go, but it wasn't necessary for her to go any farther. Through the thick growth she could see the back quarter panel of a brown vehicle, and she knew.

Susa

She eased her way down to the Jeep. It had apparently come straight down the mountainside until it smashed nosefirst into a rock that had held it in place for more than two years on the far side of the ledge. Suse crept forward sadly, her heart in her mouth. Robert's family had been found, after all this time, and now she'd have to tell him. The thought made her sick.

Almost against her will, she peered inside. Stu

Beth Magellan's remains lay across the front seat at an angle to the steering wheel. Ian's car seat was, as always, directly behind his mother's, but incredibly, Robert's son was nowhere to be seen.

A white-faced Robert sat on the hood of the car parked at the side of the road, numb with disbelief. After he'd gotten Susa

“What kind of person would take a child from a wreck and leave its mother there to die?” he asked the trooper who met them at the accident scene.

“Sir, we don't know what happened here. We're trying to find out.” The trooper, Captain K. Carlson, had tried to calm Robert. “If you'd just wait over here-”

“I want to see my wife,” Robert had protested.

“Sir, your wife has been removed from the vehicle and is no longer on the scene.” Carlson had blocked his way.

“Where is she? Where did you take her?”

“To the medical examiner's, sir. He'll need to determine the cause.” It wasn't necessary for him to add, “of death.” It was understood.

“What are you doing to find my son?” Robert demanded.

“We're almost finished processing the car, then we'll-”

“I don't give a damn about the fucking car,” Robert shouted. “I want to know what you're going to do to find my son.”

“Sir, someone removed your son from the car,” Carlson replied calmly. “The only way we have to figure out who that was is by processing every bit of trace evidence from that vehicle. We need to develop the fingerprints we've lifted so we can run a search through every database we have access to. I promise you that we'll do this as quickly as possible, but right now you're going to have to let my people do their jobs.”

“Robert,” Kevin touched his arm. “Let them work. Go sit with Susa

“Standing around… sitting around… while Ian is…” Robert waved an arm to take in the scope of the entire mountain. “I feel like I should be doing something.”

“What you should be doing is thanking God that there is a damned good chance that your son is alive somewhere,” Kevin told him calmly. “What you should be doing is thanking Susa

“Didn't I thank her?” Robert frowned. “I thought I said thank you.”

“Not sufficiently, no.”

Robert walked to the car where Susa

“I owe you an apology,” he said when he reached the car. “Kevin has pointed out that I haven't thanked you enough.”

She put a finger to his mouth and said, “You did thank me, and once was enough.”

“But Kevin is right, Suse. I can't thank you enough.” He sat next to her on the hood of her car. “I owe you an enormous debt. I still can't believe you spent every weekend searching for them.”

“It wasn't quite every weekend.” She smiled weakly. “But it was many.”

He took her hands and held them between both of his. “You know, in my heart, I think I've known all along that Beth was no longer with us. I was surprised, but not shocked that she's been found. But Ian… I've never felt that Ian was gone. I kept telling myself it was just because I didn't want to believe that my son's life had been cut so short. But honestly, deep inside, I felt he was still here, in this world. Now I don't know what to think.”

“Want to know what I think?”

“Of course.”

“I think that someone stumbled across the car. Either they saw the accident, or heard it, or were walking through those woods and found it. They looked inside and saw that Beth was most likely already gone. The car was old, Rob. There were no airbags that could have cushioned that fall. I don't know if the medical examiner can determine how she died at this point, but I think she probably did not survive the crash.” She watched the crime-scene techs load their black bags into the back of a car. “But Ian… you know, there was no blood on the car seat. No blood on the backseat.”