Chapter 18

18

Faith longed to take another shower. And not just because she was sweating her ass off. Keisha had looked at her with such disgust that Faith had felt like a stand-in for all the shitty cops all over the world.

This was why she didn't want her son to join the FBI, the GBI, or any other law enforcement agency. Nobody trusted the police anymore. Some of them had damn good reasons. Others were inundated with constant examples of bad cops. It wasn't just a matter of bad apples anymore. Entire departments were bad barrels. If Faith had to do it over again, she would've become a fireman. Nobody was mad at the people who rescued cats from trees.

Faith shook her head as she traveled along the bottom half of the Loop Trail. That was enough wallowing about things she couldn't change. For now, she had two murders and one suspect. Will wanted her to take the lead on interrogating Christopher. He figured the man shared Chuck's incel-adjacent beliefs, which meant that being interviewed by a woman would irritate the hell out of him. Faith agreed with the strategy. Christopher sounded too calm for his own good. She needed to find a way to scare the shit out of him. Fortunately, he'd given her a lot of ammunition.

In the state of Georgia, simply owning a still that produced anything but water, essential oils, vinegar and the like was a felony. Add to that the distribution, transportation and selling, and Christopher was looking at hard time in state prison. But that was only part of his problem. The federal government was supposed to get a piece of every drop of alcohol sold in the country.

If the two murders didn't keep Christopher in prison for the rest of his life, the tax evasion would.

"Hi." Sara was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. "Will and Kevin are still down at the lake. Christopher is taking them to the boat dock to show them the second still."

Faith grinned. Will was dragging Christopher around like a dog on a leash so that by the time Faith got to him, he would feel completely helpless. "His timing is great. Dave showed up at the house right before I left, so now they all know he didn't kill Mercy."

Sara frowned. "How did he get up here?"

"Dirt bike," Faith said. "He's gotta be hurting butt to nuts."

"He probably scored some fentanyl as soon as he left the hospital," Sara said. "I called Nadine to tell her about Chuck. The problem is, the death notice moved the lodge up the list to get the road fixed, so we won't be isolated up here much longer."

"Well I've got even worse news. The phones and internet are back up, so this place is no longer our little slice of Cabot Cove."

Sara looked worried. "Jon's been hiding out in the cottage next door. I should tell him that Dave is here. He's probably looking for a reason to go home."

"I don't know, look at what he has to go home to." Faith thought of a better idea. She tapped the side of her purse. "Jon can't get online from cottage nine anyway. Can I show you the map? Maybe you can help me fill in some blanks while I wait for Will to give me the heads-up on Christopher."

"Sure." Sara motioned for Faith to follow her up the stairs.

Faith had to readjust herself first. She'd borrowed a pair of Sara's yoga pants. They were about a foot too long and an inch too snug. She'd had to roll the waistband three times to keep the crotch from dangling down to her knees, then roll up the legs like puckered mouths around her calves. Her milkshake was bringing exactly zero boys to the yard.

The cottage had been cleaned since Faith had showered. Sara had obviously straightened up. Or maybe Penny had, because Faith picked up the scent of oranges and, while Sara was tidy, she wasn't that tidy.

Sara asked, "What've you got?"

"Colored markers and a taste for vengeance." Faith sat down on the couch and dug around in her purse for the map. She laid it on the table. "I walked around the property with my phone to test the Wi-Fi signal. The yellow lines approximate the reception area. Mercy had to be inside these areas to make the phone calls to Dave."

Sara nodded. "So, that includes cottages one through five, plus seven and eight, plus the main house, plus the dining hall."

"The relay in the dining hall covers the viewing platform and halfway down Fishtopher Trail, which is where Chuck died. On the other side, the signal extends a bit into the area below the viewing platform. I didn't want to get too far away from civilization without someone knowing I was down there. Also, there was a shit-ton of birds."

Sara said, "It's interesting that both bodies were found in water."

"Christopher loves the water. Did you know there's a FishTok?"

"My father is on it."

"So is Christopher. He's really into rainbow trout. Let's start here." Faith pointed to the area where Mercy's body had been found. "Lost Widow Trail links the bachelor cottages and the dining hall. That's the way you guys went with Nadine to get to Mercy's crime scene. Will ended up taking the same trail when he was running toward the first and second scream. You following?"

Sara nodded.

"You can see the trail kind of meanders around the ravine, which is why it takes about ten or fifteen minutes to get down. But there's a faster way from the dining hall to the bachelor cottages that's not on the map. Alejandro told me about it. They call it the Rope Trail. I found the ropes, and basically it's a controlled fall down the side of the ravine. If Mercy was running for her life, that's the route she would've taken. Alejandro estimates it would take about five minutes to get down. I'll need Will to help me time it out. We can use it to backstop whatever story Christopher comes up with."

"So, you're saying the first scream, the howl, came from the dining hall, and the last two screams came from the bachelor cottages." Sara looked at the map. "That makes sense, but last night, in the moment, I could only tell that the two screams came from this general direction. The way sound travels here is strange because of the elevations. The lake is in a caldera."

Faith looked through her notes. "You were at the compound with Jon when you heard the second scream for help?"

"Yes. We had a brief conversation, then I heard the scream for help. There was a pause, then another scream—please. Jon ran back into the house. I went to look for Will."

"Back into the house," Faith repeated. "So, when you first saw Jon, he was coming out of the house?"

"I didn't recognize him at first because it was so dark. He was walking down the stairs with a backpack. He fell to his knees and vomited."

"What was the conversation?"

"I asked him to sit on the porch and talk. He told me to fuck off."

"Sounds like a drunk teenager," Faith said. "You were looking at him when you heard the two screams, though, so that's Jon off the list."

Sara looked startled. "Was he ever on it?"

Faith shrugged, but as far as she was concerned, every male up here but Rascal was on it.

"Amanda told me that she wants to get a statement from Jon," Sara said. "He could help with the timeline. After the scene at dinner, Mercy would've checked on him, at least."

"Maybe not," Faith said. "She could've been giving him space."

"Either way, I don't imagine he'll be much help. He was probably too drunk to remember anything." Sara pointed at the map. "I can help you identify where everyone else should've been. Sydney and Max, the investors, were in cottage one. Chuck was in cottage two. Keisha and Drew are in cottage three. Gordon and Paul are in five. Monica and Frank are in seven. The Wi-Fi area covers all of them, so Mercy could've made the calls to Dave from any of these cottages. According to Paul, she was on the trail at 10:30."

"Paul Ponticello sounds like Pippa Pig's pal." Faith turned back the pages to find the timeline. "Whatever happened must have kicked off at 11:10, right? Mercy called Dave five times in the space of twelve minutes. You don't do that unless you're frantic, scared, angry, or all three. Mercy left the voicemail at 11:28, so we know she was talking to the killer by then. She said, ‘Dave will be here soon. I told him what happened.'"

"What happened?"

"That's what I need to find out," Faith said. "But let's assume that Christopher is the murderer. He kills Mercy, takes out Chuck, frames Drew, which shuts down Keisha, easy peasy lemon squeezy."

Will said, "It's complicated."

Faith turned around. He was standing in the doorway with his bandaged hand over his heart. She knew Will wasn't speaking ironically. Most crimes were very straightforward. Only comic book villains relied on dominos falling in the right order to take out the right people.

Faith told Will, "Dave's at the main house. Came up on a dirt bike."

Will didn't respond. Sara had returned with a glass of water. She held up two pills. Will opened his mouth. She dropped them in, then gave him the glass. He drank the water. He gave her back the glass. Sara went into the kitchen. Faith folded the map and pretended like none of this was weird.

Faith asked, "Any word on whether forensics was able to save Mercy's notebook?"

She had asked Sara the question, but Sara was looking at Will. Which was odd, because forensics was Sara's department.

Will gave a tight shake of his head. "No word on the notebook yet."

"Okay." Faith tried to ignore the weirdness. "What about the pregnancy? I know the preliminary autopsy didn't rule sexual assault in or out, but are we thinking Christopher could be the father?"

Sara looked horrified, but she still didn't speak.

Faith tried again, "I know we'll eventually get DNA from the fetus, but Mercy was hooking up with other men. It'd be easy for Christopher's defense attorney to argue that one of her hook-ups found out about the pregnancy, got jealous, and stabbed Mercy to death."

Will did the tight headshake again, but not as an answer. "Sara, could you talk to Jon again? You've got a good rapport with him. He's probably seen a lot of things up here. People tend to forget when kids are around."

Sara asked, "Are you sure?"

"Yes," he said. "You're part of this team, too."

She nodded. "Okay."

He nodded. "Okay."

Faith watched them stare at each other in that secret way that excluded everyone else. She was yet again the hilarious sidekick in their romcom. Though she would like an award for not looking in Sara's suitcase when she'd had the chance.

She asked Will, "Ready?"

"Ready."

He stepped back so Faith could go down the stairs first. Which was gentlemanly, but also dangerous because Faith had nobody to land on if she fell. She slapped a mosquito off her arm. The sun was like a laser beam drilling into her retinas. She was so ready to get out of this place.

Will was more relaxed than usual as they walked down the trail. He stuck his left hand in his pocket. His right was still pressed to his chest.

Faith couldn't think of a way to be subtle, so she asked, "Tell me about you and Dave when you were kids."

He looked down at her, clearly needing an explanation.

"Dave ran away from the children's home," she said. "Whatever he was doing down in Atlanta, he probably did to Christopher up here."

Will grunted, but he answered, "He made up stupid nicknames. Stole your stuff. Blamed you for shit he did. Spit in your food. Found ways to get you in trouble."

"Sounds like a winner." Faith still couldn't figure out a way to be delicate. "Was Dave sexually abusing anyone?"

"He was definitely having sex, but that's not unusual. Kids who are sexually abused tend to focus on sex for connection. And sex feels good, so they want to keep doing it."

"Was it boys, girls, both?"

"Girls."

Faith took the way his jaw tightened to mean that Dave had been with Will's ex-wife. Which hardly made him an outlier.

Will said, "Being sexually abused as a kid doesn't mean you grow up to sexually abuse kids. Otherwise, half the world would be pedophiles."

"You're right," she said. "But let's isolate Dave from that statistic. He was thirteen when he got to the lodge, but they aged him down to eleven. Being thirteen with everyone treating you like you're eleven is infantilizing. Dave must have felt angry, frustrated, emasculated, confused. But he was also grooming Mercy. He was having sex with her at least by the time she was fifteen, and he was twenty. Where was Christopher when Dave was raping his baby sister?"

"Not protecting her, you mean?"

"I mean, Christopher was afraid of Dave, too."

"That'd be a really great motive if Christopher had murdered Dave."

"Maybe we'll get back to the compound and he'll have a bomb strapped to his chest and you'll have to defuse it before it detonates."

Will glanced down at her.

"Come on, Danger Dog. You've already run through a burning building and nearly tumbled over a waterfall."

"I would really appreciate it if you didn't describe it that way in your report."

He directed her down yet another steep path. Faith saw the lake first. The sun bounced off the surface like a disco ball from hell. She shielded the blinding light with her hand. Kevin was standing by the equipment shed. They'd put a canoe on the ground. Christopher sat in the middle. His wrists were zip tied to the bar that went across the center of the boat.

Will said, "Sara told me the bar's called the crosspiece. The upper edge is called the gunwale."

Faith was reminded of when Will had first met Sara. He'd found the stupidest reasons just to say her name.

"Hey." Kevin jogged up to meet them. "Hasn't made a peep."

Faith said, "Did he ask for a lawyer?"

"Nope. I got it on video when I read him his Miranda Rights. Dude looked into the camera and said he doesn't need a lawyer."

Faith said, "Well done, Kev."

"Agent Dogsbody continues to deliver." He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket. "I'll hit you up if I find the safe."

Will watched him go. He asked Faith, "Is Kevin mad at you for the dogsbody joke?"

"No idea." Kevin was mad at her for ghosting him after they'd hooked up two years ago. "I need you to do the scary lurking thing while I talk to Christopher, okay?"

Will nodded.

Faith studied Christopher as she walked toward the canoe. They'd faced him away from the water, giving him a wide-open view to the illegal still in the back of the shed. He was average-looking. Not muscular but not pudgy. His blue T-shirt showed a small paunch. His dark hair was a little mullet-y in the back, just like Chuck's.

She walked past him, taking a deep breath as she looked out at the water. Gnats were swirling near the floating dock. Birds were circling. She let out a fake sigh of contentment. "God, it's gorgeous out here. I can't imagine having nature as my office."

Christopher said nothing.

"You should ask your lawyer to look into Coastal State Prison," Faith said. "It's in Savannah. If the wind shifts the right way, you can occasionally get a whiff of salt air over the scent of raw sewage."

Christopher still didn't respond.

Faith walked back around the boat. Will was leaning against the open door of the shed looking intimidating. She gave him a nod before turning to face Christopher. The suspect was sitting on one of two benches. He was hunched over because his hands were zip tied to the bar. The second bench was smaller, tucked into the back end.

She pointed to it, asking, "Is this the bow or the starboard?"

He looked at her like she was an idiot. "Starboard is the right side. The bow is at the front. You're standing at the stern."

"Talk about stern," Faith joked. She stepped into the canoe. The fiberglass made a grinding noise as it dug into the rocky shore.

"Stop," Christopher said. "You're ruining the hull."

"Hull." Faith made it extra crunchy as she sat down. "Believe me, you do not want me on the water. I don't know a crossbar from a gun-whale."

"It's crosspiece and gun-wall."

"Oh, my mistake, sorry." Faith pretended like she had never been corrected by a man. She picked up a piece of rope that was tied to a metal loop. "What's this thing called?"

"A rope."

"Rope," she repeated. "I feel like a sailor."

Christopher gave a put-upon sigh. His head turned. He stared down at the ground.

"Did they feed you? Are you hungry?" Faith opened her purse and found one of Will's Snickers bars. "Do you like chocolate?"

That got his attention.

Faith peeled apart the wrapper. She gave Christopher an apologetic look as she placed the bar in his upturned hand. He didn't seem to mind. He let the wrapper drop to the bottom of the boat. He held the Snickers longways between his hands instead of straight up. Then he leaned over and nibbled it like corn on the cob.

She let him enjoy himself as she tried to figure out a better approach. There couldn't be that many more parts of a canoe that she could get wrong. Normally, Will used his broody silence to pull the truth out of suspects, but you could get away with that when you were six-three and naturally terrifying. Faith's particular talent was making men incredibly uncomfortable every time she opened her mouth. She waited until Christopher had taken a large bite of Snickers to ask her first question.

"Christopher, were you fucking your sister?"

He choked so hard that the boat shook. "Are you insane?"

"Mercy was pregnant. Are you the father?"

"Are you f-fucking kidding?" he stuttered. "How could you even ask me something like that?"

"It's an obvious question. Mercy was pregnant. You're the only man up here except for your father and Jon."

"Dave." He wiped his mouth on his shoulder. "Dave is up here all the time."

"You're telling me that Mercy was fucking her abusive ex-husband?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. She was with him yesterday before the family meeting. They were rolling around on the floor like animals."

"Which floor?"

"Cottage four."

"What time was the family meeting?"

"Noon." He shook his head, still hung up on the incest. "Jesus. I can't believe you even asked that."

"Did Dave ever try to fuck you?"

The shock wasn't as extreme this time, but he still looked disgusted. "No, of course not. He was my brother."

"He fucked his sister but he wouldn't fuck his brother?"

"What?"

"You just told me Dave was fucking his sister."

"Can you stop saying that word?" he said. "It's very unladylike."

Faith laughed. If Amanda couldn't shame her, this guy didn't stand a chance. "Okay, buddy. Your sister was brutally raped and murdered, but you're hung up on me saying fuck."

"What does any of this have to do with bootlegging?" he demanded. "You've caught me red-handed."

"We sure as fuck did."

Christopher huffed out his breath like he was trying to control his temper. He looked at Will. "Sir, could we please get this over with? I'll take the blame. It was my idea. I built both stills. I was in charge of everything."

"Hey, ding-a-ling." Faith snapped her fingers. "Don't talk to him. Talk to me."

Christopher's cheeks turned red with anger.

Faith didn't let up. "We already know that Chuck was balls deep in your little liquor operation. He's even got the tattoo on his back to prove it."

Christopher's nostrils flared, but he gave in quickly. "Okay, I'll flip on Chuck. Is that what you want?"

Faith opened her arms wide. "You tell me."

"Chuck and I are connoisseurs, okay? We love whiskey, scotch, bourbon. We started making small-batch for ourselves. Just a little bit at a time. Experimenting with flavors and various species of exotic woods to bring out the richness."

"And then?"

"Papa had his bike accident. Mercy started making changes at the lodge. She fixed up the bathrooms. Started offering cocktails. More money started coming in. Big money. Primarily from the alcohol. Chuck said we should cut out the middleman, use our hooch instead. At first, Mercy didn't know that we were refilling the bottles with our own stuff, but then she figured it out. She didn't care. All she wanted to do was prove to Papa that she could turn a profit."

"It wasn't just the lodge," Faith said. "Chuck was selling to strip clubs in Atlanta, too."

Christopher looked caught out. He had finally realized that Faith knew a hell of a lot more than she was letting on.

She asked, "Did your parents know?"

"Absolutely not."

"Drew and Keisha did, though."

"I—" He shook his head. "I didn't know that. What did they say?"

"You're not asking the questions," Faith told him. "Let's go back to Mercy. How did she feel about being left off the money train?"

"I didn't leave her off. She's my sister. I created a trust for Jon. I put the money in an account. He'll be able to draw from it when he's twenty-one."

"Why not give the money to Mercy?"

"Because Dave would get his greedy hands on it. Mercy can't—she couldn't—say no to Dave. He needled everything out of her. There was nothing he wouldn't take from her. And you're telling me she was pregnant? She would've been stuck with him for the rest of her life." Christopher suddenly looked sad. "I guess she was, right? Mercy died before she could get away from him."

Faith gave him a few seconds to catch his breath. "Did Mercy know about the trust fund you created for Jon?"

"No, I didn't even tell Chuck." He leaned forward, straining against the zip ties. "You're not listening to me, lady. I'm telling you how this works. Mercy would've eventually told Dave, and Dave would've hounded Jon into the ground until the trust was empty. There's only two things he cares about: money, and Mercy. In that order. He'll do anything to control both of them."

Faith regrouped. "Tell me how it worked. How did you launder the money?"

He sat back. Looked down at his hands. "Through the lodge. Mercy's really good at bookkeeping. She opened an online account, set up payroll. She made sure that we paid taxes on everything. All of the records are in the office safe."

"You said that Mercy was good with money, but she didn't have a dime to her name."

"That was her choice," Christopher said. "I gave her whatever she wanted, but she knew if she had money in the bank, or a credit card, or debit card, Dave would find out about it. She depended on me for everything in her life."

Faith felt a crushing sense of claustrophobia thinking about how helpless Mercy had truly been.

"That's what we were really talking about before dinner." Christopher was looking at Will again. "Mercy was pushing me to turn down the investors. She told me that she had nothing to lose. I told her that I could take away the rest of her life. Maybe I did. Maybe I should've just cleaned out my accounts and handed everything to her. She might've left Dave before it was too late, right?"

He had asked Faith the question. She couldn't answer him. She only knew the statistics, and they were soul crushing. It took an abused woman an average of seven tries to leave her abuser, and that was if he didn't kill her first.

She asked Christopher, "What about Chuck?"

"I told you, he doesn't know about Jon's trust. He's more afraid of Dave than I am."

"No, what about Chuck meaning, why did you murder Chuck?"

There was no reaction this time, just a blank stare. "What?"

"Chuck is dead, Christopher. But you knew that. You're the one who spiked his water jug with the eye drops."

Christopher looked at Faith, then at Will, then back at Faith again. "You're lying."

"I'll take you to him right now," Faith offered. "We had to store his body in the freezer outside the kitchen. He's hanging there like a side of beef."

Christopher stared at Faith like he was waiting for her to laugh, to say it was all a joke. When Faith didn't, he gulped air into his mouth. His head dropped to his chest as he started to sob. He was more torn up about Chuck than he'd ever been about Mercy.

She gave him a moment to cry. Faith had played the bully. Now, she played the mother. She leaned forward, rubbing Christopher's back to soothe him. "Why did you kill Chuck?"

"No." Christopher shook his head. "I didn't."

"You wanted out of the liquor business. He was trying to force you to stay in."

"No." Christopher kept shaking his head. "No. No. No."

"You told Chuck that the business didn't work without Mercy."

He was shaking so hard that she could feel it through the hull.

"Christopher, you're so close to telling me the truth." Faith kept rubbing his back. "Come on, buddy. You'll feel better once you get it all out."

"She hated him," he whispered.

"Mercy hated Chuck?" Faith patted his shoulder, but she kept her mothering tone. "Come on, Christopher. Sit up. Tell me what happened."

He sat up slowly. Faith watched his stoicism crumble. It was like every emotion he'd ever suppressed had been unleashed. "Chuck embarrassed Mercy in front of everybody. I was—I was taking up for her. I wanted to teach him a lesson."

"What kind of lesson?"

"To stop messing with her," Christopher said. "I don't understand. How did he die? I used the same amount as before."

Faith was seldom caught out by anything suspects said, but this one gave her pause. "You've spiked Chuck's water jug before?"

"Yes, that's what I'm telling you. I'm a distiller. I'm very exact with my measurements. I put the same amount in his water as the previous times."

"Times?" Faith repeated. "How many times have you poisoned him?"

"He wasn't poisoned. His stomach was upset. He had the shits. That's all it ever did. Chuck would say something rude to Mercy and I would slip some drops into his water to teach him a lesson." Christopher looked genuinely confused. "How did he die? It has to be something else. Why are you lying to me? Are you allowed to do that?"

Faith had heard Sara's theory at the crime scene. Chuck hadn't died from the eye drops. He had died because he'd rolled into the water and drowned.

She had to ask, "Christopher, did Chuck kill Mercy?"

"No."

Faith heard the certainty in his voice. She expected he would say something delusional, like Chuck was in love with Mercy, how could he kill her? But he didn't.

"I knocked him out."

"You what?"

"We always end the evening with a nightcap. I put some Xanax in his drink to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. Chuck was reading on his iPad, then he fell asleep." Christopher shrugged. "The bedroom window in cottage two lines up to the window in the back staircase off the kitchen. I checked on him before I went to sleep. He never left."

Faith was momentarily at a loss for words.

"I loved my sister," Christopher said. "But Chuck was my best friend. He couldn't help it that he loved Mercy, too. I kept him in check. I stood up for Mercy the only way I knew how."

Faith was almost at a loss again. "Did Chuck know that you were drugging him?"

"It doesn't matter." Christopher shrugged away the multiple felonies. "Mercy was kind to me. Do you even know how that feels when no one else in the world is kind to you? I know I'm weird, but Mercy didn't care. She looked after me. She put herself between me and Papa over and over again. Do you know how many times I watched him beat her down? I'm not talking with his fists. He whipped her with a rope. He kicked her in the stomach. Broke her bones. Wouldn't let her go to the hospital. And then her face—the scar on her face—that's all Papa's fault. He let Mercy carry that guilt around for—"

Faith saw the look of fear in Christopher's eyes before his head bobbed down again. He had said too much. But maybe not by accident. Christopher wanted Faith to try to pull the truth out of him. What he didn't understand about Faith was that neither of them was going to leave this canoe until she did.

She said, "Penny Danvers told me your sister got the scar on her face from a car accident at Devil's Bend. Mercy was seventeen years old. Her best friend was killed."

Christopher didn't respond.

Faith asked, "How is Mercy's scar your father's fault?"

Christopher shook his head.

"How is your father responsible for the scar?"

Faith waited, but he still didn't answer.

"What guilt did your father let Mercy carry?"

Again, he didn't answer.

"Christopher." Faith leaned forward, edging into his personal space. "You told me that you tried to protect Mercy the best way you knew how, and I believe that. I really do. But I don't understand why on earth you would protect your father right now. Mercy was violently murdered. She was left to bleed out on your family's land. Can't you give her soul some peace?"

Christopher was silent a few seconds longer, then he took a quick breath and pushed out the words, "It was him."

"It was who?"

"Papa." Christopher glanced up before looking back down again. "He's the one who killed Gabbie."

Faith could feel Will's tension behind her. She had to take her own quick breath before she could speak. "How did—"

"Gabbie was so beautiful. And kind. And sweet. I was in love with her." Christopher was looking at Faith in the eye now, his voice strident. "People laughed at me, because I didn't stand a chance, but I loved her so much. A pure kind of love. Nothing that could be tainted. That's why I understood how Chuck felt about Mercy. He couldn't help himself."

Faith worked to keep her tone even. "What happened to Gabbie?"

"Papa happened." The strident tone was gone. His voice had the familiar deadness to it. "He couldn't stand the way Gabbie flitted around the world like a beautiful butterfly. She was always so happy. She had this lightness inside of her. She flirted with the guests. She laughed at their stupid jokes. She loved Mercy. She really did. And Mercy loved her. Everyone loved Gabbie. Everyone wanted her. So Papa raped her."

Faith felt like her mouth had filled with sand. It was the matter-of-fact tone he'd used to describe something that was almost indescribable. "When did this happen?"

"The night of the so-called accident."

Faith kept silent. She didn't need to push him anymore. Christopher was finally ready to tell the story.

"I was out collecting nightcrawlers," he said. "Papa raped Gabbie in my bed. He left her there for me to find. Papa told me he wasn't going to let anybody have something that he didn't have first."

Faith tried to swallow the sand in her mouth.

"He didn't just rape her. He beat her face. All of her beauty, her perfection, it was just gone." Christopher took another sharp breath. "I went to get Mercy, but she was passed out on her bedroom floor with a needle in her arm. She had so much pain in her body. She was so desperate to get away. She and Gabbie were going to leave together at the end of summer, but …"

Faith didn't need him to finish the sentence. She had heard about their plan from Penny Danvers. Gabbie and Mercy were going to move to Atlanta and get an apartment together and wait tables and make lots of money and live it up the way that only teenagers can.

And then Gabbie had died, and Mercy's life was changed forever.

Christopher said, "Papa made—he made me carry Mercy to the car. He just threw her in the back seat like a sack of garbage. Then we put Gabbie in the front. She wasn't even moving by then. I guess the shock or maybe being punched in the head so many times—I don't know. Maybe Gabbie was already dead. I was glad she didn't know what was going on."

He'd started crying. Faith listened to his nose wheeze as he tried to control his breathing. She recalled another detail from Penny—that Christopher had been so inconsolable after Gabbie's death that he had taken to his bed for weeks after.

"Papa told me to go back inside the house, so I did. I watched them drive away from my bedroom window. I fell asleep with my head on my arm." Christopher gulped another quick breath. "Three hours later, I heard a car door slam. Sheriff Hartshorne was there. My mother came into my room. She was crying so hard she could barely talk. We all went down to the kitchen. Papa was there, too. The sheriff told us that Gabbie was dead and Mercy was in the hospital."

"What did your father say?"

He gave a bitter laugh. "He said, ‘Goddammit, I knew Mercy would end up killing somebody.'"

His tone had a finality to it, but Faith wasn't going to let him stop there. "Bitty didn't hear anything the night before?"

"No, Papa had slipped her some Xanax. Nothing would wake her up." He leaned down to wipe his nose on his arm. "All Mother knew was that Mercy had gotten high and ended up crashing her car and killing Gabbie. We never asked for the details. We didn't want to know."

Faith knew the official version from Penny. Mercy was the driver who'd been going down the rollercoaster hill that led to Devil's Bend. The EMTs had told the town that Mercy had laughed like a hyena in the back of the ambulance. Mercy had insisted that they were parked in front of the lodge. Which made sense, because Mercy was in her bedroom when she'd nodded off with a needle in her arm. She had no memory of being carried to the car.

Now, Faith could only assume that Cecil McAlpine had put the gear in neutral and hoped that gravity would rid him of his daughter and the young woman he'd beaten and raped.

She told Christopher, "The car dropped twenty feet into a gorge. Mercy got thrown through the front window. That's how her face was ripped off. Gabbie's head was crushed, but that happened before the accident. Your father's good friend Sheriff Hartshorne said that her feet were on the dashboard at impact. The coroner said that her skull was pulverized. They had to use dental records to identify her at the autopsy. It was like someone had taken a sledgehammer to her head."

Christopher's lips were trembling. He couldn't look Faith in the eye, but she knew that Christopher couldn't look a lot of people in the eye.

She asked, "What was Gabbie's full name?"

"Gabriella," he whispered. "Gabriella Maria Ponticello."