You see something and you raise your hand.
Doesn't matter if it's a cigarette paper or a soda can.
You see something and you raise your hand.
Don't touch it, neither.
Just raise your hand.
The townspeople readied, their feet in the ford. Movement in line, twenty paces between, a hundred eyes down, but still, they held together, the choreography of the damned.
Behind, the town emptied, the echo of a long, pristine summer had been smothered by the news.
She was Sissy Radley. Seven years old. Blond hair. Known to most, Chief Dubois did not need to hand out photographs.
Walk held the farthest side. Fifteen and fearless, his knees shook with each step.
They marched the woodland like an army, cops led, flashlights swept, through the trees was the ocean, a long way down but the girl could not swim.
Beside Walk was Martha May. They had dated three months, confined to first base, her father was minister at Little Brook Episcopal.
She glanced over. “Still want to be a cop?”
Walk stared at Dubois, head down, last hope on his shoulders.
“I saw Star,” Martha said. “At the front with her father. She was crying.”
Star Radley, the missing girl’s sister. Martha’s best friend. They were a tight group. Only one was absent.
“Where’s Vincent?” she asked.
“He might be on the other side.”
Walk and Vincent were close like brothers. At nine they’d cut palms, pressed them together, and sworn oaths of classless loyalty.
They said nothing more, just watched the ground, past Sunset Road, past the wishing tree, Chuck Taylors parting leaves. Walk focused so hard but still, he almost missed it.
Ten steps from Cabrillo, State Route 1, six hundred miles of California coast. He stopped dead, then looked up and saw the line move on without him.
He crouched.
The shoe was small. Red and white leather. Gold-tone buckle.
A car on the highway slowed as it came, headlights traced the curve till they found him.
And then he saw her.
He took a breath and raised his hand.
Walk stood at the edge of a feverish crowd, some he’d known since his birth, some since theirs.
Vacationers with cameras, sunburn and easy smiles, not knowing the water was stripping more than timber.
Local news set up, a reporter from KCNR. “Can we get a word, Chief Walker?”
He smiled, shoved his hands deep in his pockets, and looked to thread his way through when the people gasped.
Fragmented noise as the roof caved and crashed to the water below.
Piece by piece, the foundation lay crude and skeletal, like the home was no more than a house. It had been the Fairlawn place since Walk could remember, a half acre from the ocean when he was a kid. Taped off a year back, the cliff was eroding, now and then the people from California Wild came and measured and estimated.
The stir of cameras and indecent excitement as slates rained and the front porch clung. Milton, the butcher, dropped to one knee and fired off a money shot as the flagpole leaned and the banner hung in the breeze.
The younger Tallow boy got too close. His mother pulled his collar so hard he tumbled back onto his ass.
Behind, the sun fell with the building, dissecting the water with cuts of orange and purple and shades without name. The reporter got her piece, seeing off a patch of history so slight it barely counted.
Walk glanced around and saw Dickie Darke, who looked on, impassive. He stood like a giant, close to seven feet tall.