Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,51

they might start coming up with stories. Fifty cents keeps them honest and the profile low.”

Robert Mackenzie watched this all nervously.

The call with instructions came at 7:07 that evening. The instructions said to move the money into Burlington and wait by a selected telephone booth for a call. Ellingham himself drove the car, with Robert Mackenzie and George Marsh riding along. Each man brought a revolver. They arrived just before 8:00 p.m., when the phone rang. From there, they were instructed to drive toward Rock Point.

Rock Point is very much what it sounds like—a rocky point off the side of Burlington, jutting into Lake Champlain. The point was largely uninhabited and the terrain rough. Once they arrived, they found an arrow chalked on the ground, pointing to the narrow dirt-and-rock path toward the water.

“Robert,” Ellingham said, “you stay here with the car.”

Robert looked at the pitch-black path into the rocky wooded point.

“Mr. Ellingham, this is . . .”

“You heard me, Robert. Stay here. If you see or hear nothing from us in an hour, turn around and drive back into town and get help.”

Ellingham switched on his flashlight. His shoes slipped a bit against the slick rocks as he began the walk into the dark.

“There’s a light ahead,” he said.

The path was marked by a series of impromptu lanterns made out of tin cans that would later be traced back to a diner in town. The diner appeared to have nothing to do with the crime—they had simply put out their garbage the night before. The garbagemen on their route reported that their trash was empty in the morning. Someone had stolen the garbage.

Even with the tiny tin-can lights, the path was treacherous and blind, and it got more so as the lights spread out and led to the cliff face. Finally, at one rocky ledge, they found three cans and a coiled rope. Below, a lantern flashed.

“There’s a boat down there,” Marsh said, looking over carefully, his gun ready.

“Use the rope,” called up a voice. “Lower the money.”

“Not until you show us Mrs. Ellingham and Alice,” Marsh called back.

“Look next to you.”

Ellingham scrabbled around and called for his wife, but found on the ground a handbag and a child’s shoe.

“We need a better sign,” Marsh said. “Proof of life.”

Ellingham dropped his bag to the ground and tied the end of the rope to the handles. Marsh sighed and helped him secure it.

“I’m putting the money on the rope,” Ellingham yelled. “Please, get my wife and child to a safe place so we can collect them. We have no interest in you, only them.”

The money went over the rock face, all four bags of it. Ellingham tossed the rope end over the side.

“That’s everything!” Ellingham yelled.

Below, the lantern began to flicker in a strange pattern.

“What are they doing?” Ellingham said. “What is that? It’s not Morse.”

“I have no idea,” Marsh said, cocking his revolver.

“Don’t shoot at that boat! They could be in there!”

The lantern went out. For a solid minute, there was no sound but the gentle lapping of the water and the wind.

“What’s happening?” Ellingham asked. For the first time that night, he sounded truly vulnerable and afraid.

“I don’t know,” Marsh said.

“Hello!” Ellingham yelled. “I gave you the money! What now? Where are they?”

The tiny boat sailed into oblivion, along with any chance of recovering Iris or Alice.

12

THE PROCESS OF WRITING TRULY DEVIOUS, THE VIDEO SERIES, WAS not as smooth as Stevie had promised.

On the first day, Nate greeted Stevie in the morning with a huge smile. “I drafted two chapters of the new book last night!” he said. “I mean, they’re drafts. I was writing so fast, Stevie. I swear to you I wrote like fifteen thousand words last night.”

“Is that . . . good?” she asked.

“I don’t know!” he said. “But it turns out that making me write this screenplay made me want to write anything else, which meant I worked on my book!”

“Wait,” Stevie said, “wait, does that mean you didn’t write the script?”

Nate shook his head happily.

“Yep!” he said.

By dinner, the story had changed.

“Everything I wrote last night is terrible,” he said. “And we have no script. Let’s write this thing. Show me that stuff again.”

This pattern repeated several times. Stevie would produce copied transcripts of the police interviews. These were all readily available online. Nate would go off to write. Nate would do something else. Finally, Stevie sat down with Nate at the farm table for five hours and side by side, passing the