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“I’m fine,” he said, although he wasn’t. “It’s a lot to take in, that’s all.”
“I can go in there with you, if you want. She might be scared. Might open up if there’s a woman with you.”
Somehow, Matt knew that girl was anything but scared.
“I’m fine,” he said again. “I mean, I’ll be fine.” He started for Ellie’s door, then stopped halfway and faced the crowd. “Listen up. If you’re here to report a crime, work with Sally to fill out the necessary paperwork, get it on record, then go home. There’s no reason for anyone to linger around here. The safest place for each of you is your own house with your loved ones. Lock the doors. Stay inside until this blows over,and it will blow over. Everyone’s on edge, and you don’t want to get caught up in something that makes things worse. Go home.”
He didn’t give anyone a chance to respond. Before they could, he unlocked Ellie’s door, slipped inside, and locked it again behind him. He closed the blinds on the windows looking out toward the main room of the station and did his best to ignore the growing headache as he turned and faced the girl.
48
Riley
RILEY STARED AT THEname written on her arm just above her left wrist:
Mason Ridler
“I didn’t write that.”
Mason glared down at her arm. “Great, not only is she chicken-shit, but she’s a mental case with a crush on me.” He frowned at Evelyn. “Tell me again why you want to bring her along? I didn’t sign on to be a babysitter for some little psycho ’tard.”
“I’m not a—”
“Why did you write his name?” Evelyn interrupted.
“I didn’t write it.” Maybe her mom wrote it there for some reason, or someone else at the police station while she was sleeping. She certainly didn’t write it on her arm, she would have remembered that. “It’s not even my handwriting.”
That was the truth, too. Did her mom even know who Mason was, though?
Robby tapped his foot impatiently. “Ev, come on. We don’t have time for this. Let’s go.”
He hoisted his red backpack over his shoulder. His entire body shifted with the weight of it. The bottom was stained dark, looked wet, and after seeing him stick a dead bird in there, Riley didn’t want to know what else he kept in that bag.
Evelyn gave Riley’s arm one last look, let out a softtsk, tsk, and started across the parking lot. “Come on,” she said, “it’s not far.”
Mason rolled his baseball bat through the air, rested it on his shoulder, and went after her, with Robby trudging along behind them.
Riley gave the open window of Matt’s office one last look before going after them.
Evelyn was right; it wasn’t far.
Rather than take the sidewalks on Main Street, they took the access road that ran behind the businesses, crossed the parking lot at the rear of the pharmacy, and cut through an open field near the middle school until they reached the chain-link fence surrounding the town’s water tower.
“You think those things came from here.” Riley craned her head and looked up. The tower was so much bigger up close. From school, the base looked like it could barely support the big, round part up at the top, but standing right there next to it, it was ginormous.
Robby set his backpack down in the tall grass. “It’s one hundred and twenty feet tall and holds seven hundred and twenty thousand gallons of water.” He pointed to a shed off to the right of the tower, just inside the fence. “The pumping station over there can move up to two thousand gallons per minute at peak hours, but averages five hundred gallons per minute over the course of a full day. Every drop of water for Hollows Bend comes from here.”
Riley gawked at him. “How, exactly, do you know all that?”
“Robby’s ‘on the spectrum.’” Evelyn made air quotes as she said this. “That’s what we’re supposed to tell people, but it seems like they call it something different every time he sees a new doctor. He’s got something called Asperger’s. It’s a type of autism.”
“Ass-burger,” Mason muttered under his breath with a laugh.
Evelyn punched him in the arm. “Asperger’s.What’s your excuse? Oh, I forgot, you’re just a dick.”
Mason rubbed his arm. “Whatever.”
Evelyn went on. “It means Robby is smart with some things and dumb with others, but mostly smart. He remembers all sorts of stuff. Reads it one time and can spout it back out a year later, word for word. He’s really good at solving puzzles, and youdon’twant to play cards with him.”
