Chapter 9 #2
"We have to do it sometime, and there have to be enough shadows to give us the atmosphere we want. Why don't I get the car out of the garage, you grab our camera and lights and whatever else we need, and I'll pull the car around front and pick you up?"
"Okay," she said, clearly not happy about it. "I wish you weren't right, but you are."
I smiled. "It's going to be fine."
"I hope so."
While she went upstairs, I walked around back to the garage, feeling a little uneasy with the deserted area.
There were three parking spots for the yoga studio as well as a back door to the building and a large green dumpster.
But there were no cars, no people in sight.
That was a good thing, I told myself. I didn't need anyone to be lurking around in back.
The car was a little dusty, but the engine started, and I backed out of the garage, happy that I was able to close the door with a remote, rather than having to get out and unlock it again.
I drove down a back alley behind the theater and around the corner to the front of the building where Morgan was waiting.
She hopped into the car, and we were both silent as I drove to the lake.
Neither one of us really wanted to go there, but it had to be done.
As I drove the familiar streets of my youth, I also had to deal with more memories.
I had spent so much time walking around this area, and most of that time had been happy.
Things had really only gone bad the last half of my senior year, which should have been the best time, but it had turned out to be the worst.
As I stopped at a light, I looked down another familiar street, seeing the lit sign for McGee's, the bar where Liam had worked, where I had spent so many hours.
Now that I was back here, the time in between didn't seem as long.
It almost felt like yesterday. But it wasn't yesterday.
Liam didn't work there anymore. He had his own bar, and I had a life in New York.
Our lives had probably worked out the way they were supposed to, but I still felt a momentary wistful pang for a relationship that had started out so fun and exciting.
We'd fallen fast and hard, and I wished those early days could have lasted forever.
And maybe they would have if I hadn't gotten so obsessed with becoming a lead actress, taking center stage, and feeling like I was somebody.
"It's green," Morgan said, waving a hand toward the light.
"Sorry."
"You're having a lot of thoughts, aren't you?"
"Too many," I admitted.
"I'd tell you to stop thinking about the past and focus on the present, but that's actually not what tonight is about."
"No, it's not. Thankfully, this shouldn't take too long."
I parked in a lot near one entrance to the path along the lake.
"This isn't bad," Morgan said, looking around at the lit area as we got out of the car. "But we're not staying here, are we?"
"No. We need to walk about a quarter mile into that area."
"Trees, shadows, dark water…looks great," she said nervously.
"Look, there's a runner," I said, pointing to a man in a hoodie who was jogging on the path. "We're not completely alone."
"I'm not sure a lone male runner makes me feel better, but let's do this before I chicken out."
Morgan stayed close to me as we started down the path, which ran along the shoreline for about two miles, sometimes curving through the canopies of trees in nearby parks and then swinging back out to the water's edge, and running along sandy beaches as well as areas filled with water and dangerous protruding slabs of rock.
"It's so strange to be here," Morgan muttered. "From everything I've read about the incident, I think they found her body up around that next curve."
"That's where it was," I said.
She gave me a quick glance. "Did you go there after she died?"
"About two weeks after it happened. I didn't go there at night, but I went out one day to try to make sense of it. I wasn't the only one stopping to look, either. A lot of people wondered how a young woman could have died there."
Morgan shivered, and I felt a cold chill that wasn't from the breeze, but from the scene around us, and the knowledge of what had occurred.
"I can't imagine what she was thinking, walking here alone so late at night," I added. "That part never made sense."
"Maybe she wasn't alone. Her killer could have been with her, someone she knew, someone she trusted. She might not have been afraid at all," Morgan said.
"You should say that when we record. It's exactly right." I picked up the pace as the path curved, and then my steps slowed when I saw the cluster of rocks ahead. "If she'd fallen in the lake at a dozen other points, she might have survived," I murmured.
"Even if she hadn't hit her head, if she was drunk, she might not have been able to swim or find her way out of the water."
"Well, that's the theory." I stopped at the spot where I thought her body had been found, although I wasn't entirely sure that's where she had fallen in. "This is where they pulled her out, but she was in the water for more than thirty hours. Her body could have drifted from somewhere else."