Marion crashes down the stairs. And as she goes, it’s as if it’s all happening in a slow-motion blur, and yet she’s thinking clearly. She’s thinking that Avery has bested her. She’s shocked, furious, helpless as she tumbles down the stairs, her head and limbs smashing as she goes. The door behind her is open, Marion realizes. How did she not see this coming? She strikes the back of her head hard against the sharp post at the foot of the staircase and comes to rest on her back on the floor, stunned and in excruciating pain. She looks up at the ceiling, dazed, panicking that Avery is getting away.
But Avery hasn’t fled, not yet. She’s looming over her. She’s smiling down at Marion, a horrible grimace of a smile. And now Marion knows for sure that Avery is truly bad, that she has no moral limits at all. Now Marion thinks Avery is capable of anything. She’s got the cold, unfeeling selfishness of a psychopath. In that, they are alike. And in her final moment, as she feels blood trickling down her neck, Marion knows that Avery has won.
* * *
? ? ?
Avery enjoys her moment of triumph, reveling in the terror in Marion’s fading eyes. She watches in fascination as the pool of blood expands beneath Marion’s head. She’s never seen anyone die before. Avery leans over her until she’s sure. Marion’s eyes are open, but she’s gone. Marion is dead.
Avery sees the rope that has fallen from Marion’s hand. So she was right. Marion was going to kill her. She can still hardly believe it.
But this is perfect. Marion died falling down the stairs while Avery was trying to escape. She can run out of the house now, run screaming down the street. It’s not like they’re going to charge her with murder. It was self-defense. She’s nine years old, and she’d been kidnapped. Everyone will be on her side.
She takes one last look around, leaves everything as it is, and runs back up the stairs to the open door. She finds herself in the familiar kitchen. She spies an empty blister pack of sleeping pills on the kitchen counter.
Yes, it’s perfect. They’ll believe that she was held prisoner, that she was drugged, that Marion meant to kill her—because it’s all true. She stops at the front door to study herself in the mirror over the hall table. She looks fine. That won’t do.
She rearranges her face into a mask of fear and horror, pulls open the front door—and is startled to see a woman coming up the front walk. The woman stops dead, as if she’s just seen a ghost.
Forty-six
Gully is stunned. She recognizes Avery Wooler, sees her sinking into a faint, and springs forward to break her fall. Her heart is pounding. She glances up at the open door behind Avery. What’s happened here? Is Marion in there? Is anyone else in there with her? She grabs her radio and calls for backup, for an ambulance. She calls Bledsoe. Avery’s eyes flutter open and stare up at her. “Avery,” Gully says, her arms supporting the girl’s small body. “Is there anyone in the house?”
Avery manages, “I pushed her down the stairs.” Her eyes flutter then close again.
A police cruiser screeches up in front of the house, an ambulance right behind, while Gully’s mind races. Avery must have been held here in this house, on her own street, all this time, and they missed it. Gully feels disbelief and a terrible sense of failure. They failed this girl. But she’s alive, and safe now—no thanks to them.
The uniformed officers run up the steps, and Gully directs them to secure the house, while more cruisers arrive. The ambulance attendants bend over Avery as Gully steps back. The officers return to the front porch and report to Gully that the house is secured; there’s the body of a woman in the basement.
Bledsoe arrives and directs one of the officers to fetch Erin Wooler from down the street. He arranges for someone to bring William Wooler to the scene. Everything is happening so fast, but for Gully, it feels as if everything has slowed down. She feels as if she’s been in an explosion—she’s stunned, disoriented, everything is muffled and muted.
Erin arrives, with Michael, while the ambulance attendants are checking Avery over, and pushes her way forward. She falls on her daughter, sobbing.
“Avery, Avery,” she cries, hugging her daughter tightly. She hugs her as if she will never let her go.
Michael watches from the sidelines, tears running down his pale face.
Gully feels her own eyes welling up, and she can sense the emotion in Bledsoe and the others standing nearby. This girl was missing for four days, probably given up for dead by many. God only knows what she’s endured. But they have a happy ending. She has come back to them.
At last William arrives and crouches down beside his wife, crying and studying his daughter closely. It seems neither parent can quite believe that their daughter is alive.
Bledsoe finally steps up and gently asks Erin and William if he can speak with their daughter. They pull away, nodding. Avery seems reluctant to release her mother from her grasp.
“Avery,” Bledsoe says, squatting down beside her. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Gully moves in closer to hear.
Avery nods. They help her sit up. She seems to struggle to speak at first, but when she gets the words out she sounds hysterical. “She locked me in the basement. She was going to kill me but I pushed her down the stairs!” The girl is hyperventilating now.
“It’s all right, Avery. She can’t hurt you now,” Gully says. “She’s dead.”
Gully glances up at the parents. They both appear to be in shock. She says, “It was Marion Cooke.”
* * *
? ? ?
William must fight a wave of nausea. Marion Cooke did this. Marion Cooke had his daughter all along. He can’t believe it. How could she be such a monster?
He stares at his traumatized daughter. Marion is dead. It sounds like she died in the fall down the stairs. It takes a moment for that to sink in. His little girl has killed someone. He doesn’t want to imagine it. He tells himself that her life was at risk, and that excuses anything.
* * *
? ? ?
Erin watches her daughter, her happiness at finding her again marred not at all by the revelation that Marion is dead. Avery pushed her down the stairs, and it killed her. Erin recalls her visit to this house the evening before. Avery must have been in the basement the whole time she was here. She feels like she might be sick.
Avery did what she had to do. Her daughter is a survivor. She didn’t give up. She’s like her mother that way. But what she doesn’t understand is, why did Marion Cooke take her daughter?
* * *
? ? ?
Gully watches them load Avery into the ambulance. There is now a crowd gathering on the street, press and bystanders, all agog. She and Bledsoe will speak to Avery officially after she has been thoroughly examined at the hospital, but now they have work to do. Gully glances at Bledsoe as he reaches for his phone and calls in the crime-scene team.
She turns and walks heavily into the house. She’d missed this. They had all missed this. It will go down as the biggest gaffe of her career. Why had they not looked more closely at Marion Cooke earlier? She’d seemed a credible witness, saying she’d seen Avery get into Ryan Blanchard’s car. And the whole time Avery had been held captive in her basement. It might all have turned out quite differently if Gully had arrived just minutes earlier.