Page 119 of Veil of Silence

“These tracks are on top of the marks the rain washed out.” Austin stood. “Cross could have transferred to it.”

Prine photographed the tracks while Luke requested a crime-scene unit. No cameras watched the turnout, and the pavement held no trace of which way the second vehicle had gone.

Austin looked toward the service road. His father would have walked this place until he found the detail everyone else had missed.

Austin forced himself to slow down.

Cross had left the phones and cruiser where law enforcement would find them. Every minute they spent here gave him more time to disappear.

“We need a dog,” Austin said.

“I’ve requested one,” Luke replied. “Twenty minutes.”

Prine asked him to have the technician at the Loveless house bag one of the boy’s recently worn shirts for the handler. They could also use an item from Cross’s locker to establish his scent if necessary.

Austin looked again at the tire tracks. If Cross had driven away in another vehicle, both trails might end right there.

Rain fell across the gravel, softening the tracks as he watched.

The crime-scene technician finished photographing the boy’s room twenty minutes after Austin left.

“I’ve documented everything,” she told Nora. “You can look through the folder, but handle the pages by the edges.”

Nora carried the folder to the desk and opened it. She found several pages covered with scribbles and examined them one at a time.

One held a drawing of a house.

A steep roof rose above a row of narrow windows. A stone chimney stood along one side. Nora had glimpsed part of the drawing while Zack gathered the worksheets, just before the boy slid the page beneath the others.

She searched the remaining papers.

Another sketch showed a weathered barn with a circular window beneath its peak. Two piles of rocks stood in the clearing between the barn and the house.

Nora remembered finding him outside after midnight, barefoot and moving stones from one pile to another.

The third drawing showed a road curving between two stone pillars.

She spread the pages across the desk. Together, they showed the same property from different angles.

And she had seen it before.

A bus engine strained in her memory. Dad muttering as the tires spun against wet gravel.

Her family had stayed at a farmhouse between concerts. The first time they arrived, they learned the tour bus couldn’t fit between the pillars at the front entrance. Dad had circled around and found a narrower road that came in behind the barn.

They had used the rear entrance every time they stayed there afterward.

Nora photographed the drawings and carried the folder downstairs.

Dad turned from the window. “Did you find something?”

She spread the pages across the coffee table. “We stayed here. Remember the place where you couldn’t get the bus through the front entrance?”

Dad studied the drawing of the pillars. Mom leaned forward from the couch.

“The place with all the bedrooms upstairs?” Mom asked.

Nora looked at her. “You remember it?”