Disappearance at Devil's Rock Read Online Free PDF Page B

their search of the park around 3:30 A.M ., including a pair of officers who had Luis and his father accompany them. A State Police helicopter equipped with infrared surveyed the park during the predawn hours but was unable to spot Tommy. The K9 unit thus far has come up empty. Officers from the Metro LEC (Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council; a consortium of over forty local police departments) are due to arrive at 9 A.M. for their own briefing.
    Elizabeth says, “Jesus,” checks her phone for a message that isn’t there, and begins pacing behind the table again. “I don’t understand why or how. Any of it.”
    Allison asks, “How well do you know Josh and Luis?”
    â€œVery well. They’re over the house all the time. They’ve been Tommy’s best friends for years—the only friends, really, that come over.”
    â€œHave you known them to be truthful?”
    â€œYeah. Always.” Is there something—great or small—that’s off in Luis’s and Josh’s stories of what happened last night? Off either by omission or addition? Despite her answer, Elizabeth knows all teens lie. Even hers. It’s not necessarily that teens are being malicious or devious, but lying is an ingrained part of their makeup, of who they are; it’s how they attempt to survive and navigate their incomprehensible day-to-day. Adults are big, fat liars too, of course, and they’re usuallybetter at it than teens. It’s not because adults know more. It’s because adults have decided that living with themselves is more palatable when they fully believe in their own lies.
    Elizabeth: “Do you think they’re lying?”
    â€œNo, not necessarily. I wanted to hear what you think of them, what kind of kids they are.”
    â€œThey’re the best, as far as I’m concerned.” She feels strangely protective of Luis and Josh, and by proxy, Tommy, as though she’s always believed the three friends would never do wrong, never have wrong befall them. “So, are you going to, I don’t know, close down the park to help find him?”
    Allison tells her that closing the park to the public remains easier said than done given the many paths and trail entrances (both marked and unmarked) along the borders and given the large number of homes in the towns of Ames and Sharon that abut the state park. The police are encouraging local residents to volunteer to be a part of larger search teams to systematically walk the trails. There are over twenty miles of marked and mapped trails, each with varying levels of difficulty. Borderland is almost two thousand acres large. That number doesn’t include the neighboring wooded areas that are not technically within the park’s boundaries, nor does it include the entirety of the Moyles granite quarry toward the treacherous and very much lesser-traveled northern end of the park.
    Elizabeth knows the park and surrounding environs are large enough that someone, a teen, a kid, her kid, could become disoriented, particularly at night, and if he was drinking, too ( Jesus, Tommy, drinking? already? ) . . . he could get lost, hurt. Worse.
    Allison: “Elizabeth, is it all right if I ask you a few more questions?” She pulls out a small notebook and gives Elizabeth what is supposed to be a commiserative look: a tight-lipped smile that isn’t a smile, slightly arched eyebrows.
    This observed detail is accompanied by what Elizabeth believes is her first glimpse into the truth: nothing good will come of any of this.

    It’s almost 11 P.M. and Elizabeth is in her kitchen, leaning against the sink, a cup of lukewarm tea cradled in her twitchy hands. In the last twenty-four hours she has mainlined a week’s worth of caffeine, and it hums in her blood and gallops her heart. Her mother, Janice, sits at the small kitchen table with her own ignored cup of tea. Since Elizabeth returned home from the state park in