Page 17 of Bitter Falls

Connor’s still curious. “Did something happen to him?”

“Maybe. He disappeared one night when he was out with his friends.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be found?”

“College students don’t run away,” Lanny says. “Theyalreadyran away from home. Legally.”

“Sometimes they run from other things,” I tell her. “Life. Responsibility. Problems with relationships. And it’s also possible he could have gotten involved with bad people, or gotten into drugs, or had a mental break. Maybe even an accident, though that’d be unlikely under these circumstances. It’s impossible to tell right now. That’s why I’m going to talk to his mom, to get a better picture of who he was and what could have happened.”

“Can we come in with you?” she asks. She hates being left out, and I have to admit she’s certainly got a case for being able to handle serious issues. But her behavior this morning concerns me. I don’t know what’s going on in her head right now.

“Sorry, no. I can’t,” I say. “I’m on the clock, and it won’t help my client trust me if I bring you guys along. So...I was thinking that I could take you both to that zip line place you like so much—”

“Navitat?” Connor beats Lanny to it by a couple of seconds. “Cool.”

“Yes, Navitat, and let you guys off on your own for a couple of hours; then I pick you up. Lanny—”

“I’m in charge,” she said. “Like I don’t know?” But she’s not displeased. Neither is Connor, come to that; my kids have pulled together recently, where they’d been pulling apart before. And they both nag me regularly for a little more autonomy. Navitat’s a safe place with good security, and I can trust them that much.

I don’twantto, though.

It’s just for a couple of hours,I tell myself, and try not to think of all the people out there who’d love to terrify, hurt, or even kill my children. On top of the usual child predators, there are more personal enemies who’d jump at the chance to “avenge”—their word, not mine—Melvin Royal’s victims by taking out his own family. Some of them have at least some reason to feel that way, because they lost their own loved ones. Most of them just like an excuse to indulge their constant and free-floating hatred.

But my kids are at an age where a little freedom can help them feel more confident in their own abilities. It’s part of growing up.

Much as I hate it.

We arrive in Knoxville. It’s an interesting place. The winters can get cold, but snow’s typically rare; ice is a much bigger problem. Today’s a sweetly sunny day with temperatures in the high sixties, and it gives the city a shine it doesn’t altogether deserve.

For an otherwise typical small southern city, it’s had a fair number of truly awful murderers. And as we drive through, I start identifying nondescript locations where bodies were found, crimes committed, murderers caught. It isn’t that I want to know these things. I just don’t really have much of a choice. After Melvin, after his abductions and murders of young women were carried out under the roof of the home we shared...I needed to understandwhyhe was what he was. So I looked deep and long into a very dark abyss. I can’t say I’m any wiser for it, but I am far more...aware.

Knoxville—and Nashville even more—will always have a darkness under the shine, at least for me.

Thankfully, Navitat—which specializes in nature trails and zip line adventures—doesn’t have much in the way of horror stories, and it’s well managed and guarded. I give Lanny and Connor spending money and make them promise to not lose sight of each other,ever, and I quiz them on emergency procedures. They know the drill. Scream and run. Emergency calls on their cells. Attract attention and get help. Never let anyone get them off alone. I keep reinforcing it, even though I know kids will always find a reason and a way to break rules and take risks. If I can make them hesitate for a second, think just a little more, that’s all I can ask.

“Panic buttons?” I ask them. They both show me their key chains. The buttons activate an alert on my phone, plus an ear-piercing alarm that I hope to never have to hear again in person. “Okay. Be safe, be smart, be—”

“Careful, yeah, we know,” Connor says, and slides out of the SUV. He looks back inside. “Thanks, Mom.”

“I love you.”

He’s at that age where he just nods. Saying it back feels wrong. It doesn’t matter. I know he loves me too.

Lanny gives me a quick hug and is gone in seconds.

I idle at the curb until I see them pass through the security gate, and then I look up the address of Remy’s mother.

Fifteen minutes away.

I head that direction, and find myself sliding not into middle-class suburbs, but bustling streets crowded with apartments. I know Remy’s mother moved to Knoxville, but this isn’t a place a middle-aged woman fits in. Every person I see is well under thirty, most loaded down with backpacks and heading to or from the university.

It hits me then.She’s living in her son’s old apartment.He’s been gone for three years, and she’s paying the rent and...waiting. I take a breath. Think about what I’d do in the same situation after the police gave up and the case went cold. If Connor disappeared and I couldn’t find him, would I be able to give up a place he’d once called his home?

No. That would be like giving him up too.

The address takes me to a not-very-impressive apartment block that screams that it was built in the mid-1980s, but has at least been repaired and repainted on a regular basis. The unit number in my notes is 303.

I park and climb the stairs. Someone on the second-floor landing has a nice fern soaking up sun, and it gives me a welcome scent of damp earth to replace the faint odor of dust and age and wood rot.

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