Chapter 37 - The Mud on the Threshold

The realization hit us like an electric shock.

"Raymond," I whispered, the paper crinkling in my clenched fist. "He didn't drown."

"The flume," Ellis said, his voice tightening with sudden fury. "The secondary overflow doesn't empty into the main gorge rapids—it drains into the emergency retention basin behind the old pumping station. If he survived the fall and caught the current, the intake would have pulled him straight through the diversion pipe."

Miller didn't hesitate. He drew his sidearm and shouted up the embankment to his men. "Seal the county line! Alert Hastings PD, Allegan County Sheriff, and the State Police post in Wayland! The suspect is mobile and injured! He has access to a utility vehicle!"

"He's not running for the border," I said, stepping out of the vault into the muddy riverbed, my voice dead and steady.

Miller turned to look at me. "What makes you say that, Abigail?"

"Look at the direction of the pumping station," I pointed through the trees toward the southern ridge. "That maintenance road doesn't lead to Interstate 196. It cuts directly through the back orchards of Lake Macatawa."

My wedding day had started on that lake. My father had stood in the foyer of that grand, white-pillared house, his hand striking my cheek with enough force to split my lip because I refused to surrender the walnut box. Everything he ever stole, every lie he ever told, began and ended inside the walls of that house.

"He's going back to destroy what’s left of Eleanor’s papers," Ellis said, turning toward our truck parked behind the police line. "He knows the federal investigators will search Macatawa next."

"You two stay with the troopers," Miller ordered, his tone commanding. "I will not have civilians pursuing an armed, unstable suspect who has nothing left to lose."

"He killed my mother, Agent Miller," I said, looking directly into his eyes, refusing to flinch. "And he's standing in my house."

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My fiancé let his friend chop off my mother’s waist-length

My husband spent the night with another woman

My husband brought his mistress to our nine-year-old daughter’s dance

Miller stared at me for three long seconds. He saw the cold resolve in my eyes—the same resolve Sanford had carved into the oak beams of the Pigeon River bridge.

"Follow my cruiser," Miller snapped, turning toward the gravel road. "Lights only. No sirens."