Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake)

by Rachel Caine

  “You’re right, that sounds strange.” I say it, but I don’t mean it; lots of men dodge their duties as parents but try to make up for it by leaving shit behind they don’t want or need. I can see Tommy Jarrett thinking that would absolve him, and I imagine the bank account could have had some withdrawals prior to his disappearance. Maybe Tommy had saved up for his dash for freedom.

  I’ll pull the file. Odds are good that Prester was the detective, unless it was the last days of the other white detective I barely knew, the third one in rotation who barely came to work at all. He’s now retired and off to Florida, and he never gave me the time of day. Not looking much forward to questioning his judgment if that’s the case.

  “When’s the last time you saw Tommy, sir?” I ask, and take out my notebook. He takes a gulp of his coffee and gets out his cell phone.

  “About fourteen months ago. Here,” he says, and puts the phone down and slides it across to me. There’s a photo on the screen: Abraham in a plaid work shirt and jeans with his arm around his son, both grinning at the selfie camera. Sweet. I look hard at Tommy, trying to see past the easy grin, the shape of his face. Does he look like a man who would abandon his pregnant wife? I have no idea. One thing being a cop will teach you: nobody looks like it, and everybody looks like it. We contain multitudes, and at least half of that multitude is made up of assholes.

  “Nice-looking young man,” I say, which is true. “Mind if I get a copy of this picture? I can send it to my phone.” That’ll give me the date and time it was taken, as well as the location.

  “Please yourself,” he says, and I see a little flash of unease in his face. I make sure he sees I’m not snooping as I forward the picture, and I hand his device back. He immediately pockets it. I doubt it has anything to do with his son; everybody’s got something to hide, and I’m not interested in his secrets. “So, you actually intend to look for him this time? Not just file some piece of paper about how my son’s a cowardly piece of dog shit?”

  He sounds aggressive, but I see the glint of tears in his eyes. Hope’s a hard thing in cases like this. He’s fronting to try to hold in that fear, that desperation, and I get it. I’m very respectful when I say, “Mr. Jarrett, I’d be very glad to look into it. It’d speed matters along if you’d give me permission to take a look around where he was living, give me permission to access his phone and bank records as his next of kin—”

  “I will,” he says before I’m even finished. “Whatever it takes. Tommy lived in the house he bought with his own money with that woman—I ain’t even calling her his wife. When he disappeared, he was still living right there. He never moved.”

  “You know that for a fact?” I ask him, and I’m gentle about it. “That he didn’t throw some stuff in a bag and get a friend to pick him up?”

  He doesn’t answer that, and I didn’t really expect him to. He doesn’t want to believe it, but men can do strange things when their women get pregnant. Some bolt for the hills. Some get mean. Some get possessive and strange.

  Some kill their kids.

  It hits me with a small, significant chill that one person Sheryl Lansdowne would have stopped her car for out there in the dark was her missing husband.

  I keep a bland expression, but now I’m alert for any signs that Abraham is trying to cover up for Tommy. A prickle on the nape of my neck says I should check the house for any sign he’s been here, but I need to be careful; if he is here, I could be in a fatal situation, fast. Best I come back prepared, with backup.

  But even as I decide that, Abraham gets up and says, “Come on with me. I’ll show you his room. Nothing in there but what he left when he got married, but maybe it’ll help y’all.”

  There’s no clue in his body language that things could pop off, but I follow at a distance, hand close to the gun I’ve got concealed beneath my jacket. I’m fast and accurate, which is never a guarantee of surviving a gunfight, but it helps. My heart ticks up to a faster rhythm, and I breathe deep to slow it down. I’m hyperaware as we move through the small kitchen, down a dark, narrow hall, past a bathroom. There’s a single closed door at the end. Abraham swings it open and goes inside.

  In or out, girl—decide.

  I go in.

  There’s no ambush. And no Tommy Jarrett waiting with a child-killing grin to finish me off. Abraham jams his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe and stands back after turning on the overhead light, and I’m looking at a teenage boy’s room. It even smells like one—that lingering scent of old socks, testosterone sweat, dirty sheets. The bed’s made, with a cheap Wal-Mart comforter over the sagging mattress. Posters of white country artists I barely recognize, and muscle cars. A miniature basketball hoop in the corner that’s probably seen a lot of use; the net looks ragged. I make a slow circuit of the room, then glance at his father. “Mind if I open the drawers?”

  “Do as you please,” he says. “Ain’t got nothing to hide.”

  He’s right. There’s not much in the small dresser except some extra sheets, a pair of old running shoes that stink of years of service, a pile of papers that, when I look through them, mostly seem like schoolwork. Tommy was a solid B student. Not exceptional, but he paid attention. “Your son do anything in school special? Like football, or—”

  “Basketball,” he says, which I could have guessed. “Real good too. Could have gone off to university, he had some offers.”

  He had indeed; I’ve already found the letters. But none of them offered a full ride, and I knew Tommy would have had to give up on that dream. No way Abraham could afford college for his son without a scholarship. Tommy, I guessed, was a solid player but not a star. Same as his schoolwork.

  I check the closet. I half expect to find Tommy hidden in there like some nightmare, but it’s empty except for old wire hangers swinging gently on the rod, and a collection of abandoned high school tees. A letter jacket with his name on it. I understand the message of this room: when Tommy left, he put childhood things away. He left fully intending to become a man on his own terms.

  And then he ran away when it got too real? Maybe. But instinct is starting to pull me in a different direction.

  Abraham suddenly says, “You didn’t come about Tommy, you said. What brought you out here?”

  He’s going to find out anyway; it’ll be all over the news soon, if it isn’t cooking already. So I say, “His wife, Sheryl, has gone missing.”

  “Oh lord,” he says, and looks briefly taken aback. Then worried. “Did she leave them girls? Who’s got them?”

  I break it to him very, very carefully, and there’s something especially grim and sad about seeing an old, proud man like this break down. He sinks down on his son’s bed and puts his head in his hands and cries—huge, heaving sobs. I sit next to him. Don’t touch him, but I wait for the storm to pass. He’s lost everything now . . . his son gone, and now his two grandchildren.

  He finally whispers, “She never let me see them girls. Not even once.”

  I swallow a painful lump in my throat and say, “They didn’t suffer, sir.” That’s a lie, but I can’t tell the man the truth. Not now. “I’m looking into what happened to them, and to Sheryl.”

  He nods. His whole body is shaking with the force of his grief. I stand up, finally, and put a hand lightly on his shoulder. I take my business card out and place it next to him on the bed.

  Then I leave, shutting the door behind me on the hell that I’ve brought. Once I’m back in the car, I take a deep breath and reach for my phone. I text ACOM, which Prester will read as all clear old man. Prester’s recently discovered emojis, a fact that amuses me to no end, and I smile when he sends me back the cussing smiley face. It’s not much of a smile, but it’s something.

  The smile fades fast, and the small comfort along with it. I’m almost sure that Tommy Jarrett is dead.

  Which means in the morning, I need to get into Sheryl Lansdowne.

  Hard.

  9

  GWEN

  By the time I’m home
, it’s pretty late in the afternoon, so I dive right into Sheryl Lansdowne research. Kez is going to be tied up on that grid search outside Norton until dark, so best I make some headway for her with basic stuff.

  It doesn’t turn out to be basic at all, because it quickly becomes evident that Sheryl isn’t who she seems to be. In fact, records for Sheryl Lansdowne begin just three years back.

  It’s a false identity, and not a very good one at that. Good enough to get her a real driver’s license, but the social security number she’s using is false. She’d be kicked out fast if she had a job, claimed benefits, or had an employer who’d ever paid in for her, but it doesn’t look like Sheryl worked in any official capacity at all. Didn’t even apply for assistance, as far as I can tell, which is rare around these parts. Maybe she had some kind of gig that paid her cash? It’s not really possible to tell yet.

  I use our firm’s proprietary facial recognition software to try matching Sheryl to the driver’s license databases.

  My first hit comes from Iowa.

  Sheryl Lansdowne’s original name is Penny Carlson.

  Penny is a missing person. Last seen driving off, but she never arrived at the university she was scheduled to attend. Extensive searches were conducted for her car, and she was considered endangered missing, but since she wasn’t a child—she was eighteen at the time—there wasn’t much more to be done. As a legal adult, she had the right to disappear if she wanted. She packed up her life, got in her car, and vanished like a bad memory. I find a website dedicated to finding her, probably put up by family or friends, but it doesn’t look like it’s been updated for a long time. Several years, at least. They’ve given up.

  Maybe Penny had decided that college wasn’t for her, that she wanted to start over entirely differently. But my instincts catch fire when I realize the time gap between Penny Carlson and Sheryl.

  Ten years from Penny’s disappearance to Sheryl’s arrival in Valerie. So where was she during that time? What had she been doing? My brain keeps trying to connect random dots, but I don’t have enough to go on, just a deep sense of unease. None of this makes sense.

  Sometimes it just doesn’t, part of my brain says calmly. And while it’s right, I’m not about to admit defeat. Not yet.

  I widen the search to more states. Results slow down, and I get too many false positives. I’ve lost track of time when I finally hear the kids come home. Lanny appears in the doorway to say, “School’s boring, Connor aced a test, nobody’s bleeding, in case you’re interested. Did you eat?”

  I hold up the empty plate that once held pie, gaze still fixed on the computer screen. I see her shrug in soft peripheral focus, and then she turns to go.

  I wrench myself away from the screen and say, “Honey? Thank you for asking.” It disconcerts me to realize that she’s trying to take care of me. “Is it your night to cook?”

  “Yeah, and it’ll be pizza because I’m a basic bitch,” she says. “Calm down, with salad, so it’s healthy. I just have to watch out for Connor trying to sneak his habanero hot sauce all over it. What are you working on?”

  “Stuff,” I say, and realize how dismissive it sounds. “Sorry. It’s for a case that Kezia’s working, actually. It’s a little urgent.”

  “Can I help?”

  I instantly reject that idea. I don’t want her anywhere close to this. “Thanks, but I’m almost done with what I have to get together. Last of it right now, then I’m all yours. We can protect the pizza together.”

  “Then the range with Vee, right?”

  “Right.” In all honesty, I’d nearly forgotten about it. I want to ask her more about her day. I want to have her sit down beside me and give me a hug. But I’m derailed in the next second by the notice of facial recognition matches out of Kentucky.

  Ten possibles come up, but I spot her immediately, right in the middle of the pack of similar features. Penny Carlson took an improbably good driver’s license photo as a blonde. She’d also changed her makeup style, going for something dramatic and glam, and she looks older and much more sophisticated, though according to the new driver’s license in the name of Tammy Maguire, she was just twenty years old at the time of the picture.

  I realize that we don’t know Sheryl Lansdowne at all. Not her name, not her age, not anything except her face . . . and plastic surgery could put an end to that tracking, if she had enough cash.

  I don’t know if she’s running from something, but if she was . . . it’s caught up with her this time. And that’s a sickening, horrifying prospect that makes me sweaty with memory: A decaying Louisiana manor. A camera watching me. My demented ex-husband’s face.

  I know what it’s like to be the prey. And the hunter.

  But I still don’t know which of those identifies Sheryl.

  The search doesn’t turn up any more results before I have to leave it and help Lanny with dinner; Sam comes home in the middle of that process and pitches in, though I can see he’s tired. He tells me about his day, the training session in the late afternoon; I get the sense that he’s leaving something out, but I don’t press him on it at the dinner table. He’s aced the simulations, as usual. Sam doesn’t fail much, though he’s the first to say crashing in sim is the best teacher. I know he’s concerned about reactions slowing as he gets older, but so far, his twitch-times are damn good. Better than mine, I think.

  There’s something on his mind. Something on mine too. We’re both holding something back for a quiet conversation later.

  We eat, we talk. Lanny’s bright one moment, down the next. Connor’s quiet and a little sullen. Teens. I remember feeling those storms of emotion, and I know there isn’t much I can do to help him through it other than be understanding. It stings, though, and I miss the days when Lanny and Connor couldn’t stop excitedly talking except to shovel in food. The later teen years are different, and now I have two to deal with, and God, I don’t know how it should work.

  But at least they seem relatively normal these days. Therapy has worked magic on Connor; he seems much less anxious, more relaxed. Lanny’s still a firecracker ready to pop at the first perceived slight, but she laughs more often, and I think she’s going to find her balance. But it frightens me how little time I have left to make sure she’s safe and well and protected, prepared to survive alone in this world. Her and Connor both.

  Lanny eats a small bite of the pizza and says, “Mom and I are going to the gun range with Vee.”

  “We,” Connor says. “I’m going too.”

  “Excuse me, when did you suddenly like guns again?” Lanny frowns at him. “Don’t they still freak you out?”

  It’s an attack, but not a mean one, and he doesn’t take it too badly. “That’s why I want to go, sis. Because they still freak me out. Mrs. Terrell thinks if I get familiar with them, it’ll help.”

  Mrs. Terrell, his therapist, has talked to me about that. I’m a little worried about the effectiveness of that treatment. Connor’s problem isn’t rooted in an unfounded fear so much as it is trauma; he had a seriously violent reaction to a school-shooting drill, and that was before he was abducted and caught in the middle of an actual gunfight. Aversion therapy seems like the wrong move to me.

  But taking control back after trauma sometimes works. It did for me. Connor wanted his own therapist, not to share mine; I’m not sure I altogether approve of Mrs. Terrell, possibly because she’s a part of my son’s life I don’t control, and I don’t understand why she’s advising some of the things she does. But the feral-animal part of me, the part that never quite goes away . . . that part wants Connor to learn to shoot properly. Because my son will always be at risk, given who I am. Who his father was. Who he is. The future’s coming at us fast. I just want to reset the clock. Slow it all down.

  I hate it when I feel this tug-of-war inside me. I like clarity. Certainty. And I know I will almost never have it when it comes to the best thing to do for my kids.

  Lanny and Connor are both looking at me. So’s Sam. His is the hardes
t expression to read; he’s going to let me make this call without weighing in. Lanny’s wanting me to tell Connor no, of course; she’s only recently won the right to learn to shoot, and the last thing she wants is to lose that special status. But Lanny hasn’t been through the same things Connor has, especially back in that grim compound at Bitter Falls. I lock gazes with my son and say, “Fine. We’ll all go to the gun range. But you need to understand: if you start to feel uncomfortable, even a little, you tell me or Sam, and we will get you out of there. All right?”

  He nods, and I see tension ease out of him. Sam’s still watching me, and when I transfer my attention back to him, he nods once and digs into his salad.

  Lanny drops her fork. Loudly. She sits back in her chair with her arms folded. “Wow. Really. Not even a discussion?”

  “Not even,” Connor says. He’s way too smug about it. “What? You don’t think I can handle it?”

  “Like I worry about you at all.” Lanny shoves her chair back from the table and leaves. I hear her door slam.

  “That was mature,” Connor says. When I start to slide my chair away from the table, he rolls his eyes. “No, Mom, don’t go talk to her. She’ll be okay. Trust me. She’s just pissed off at me.”

  “Just because of the gun range? Or something else?”

  He shrugs, gaze on his food, and I know there’s more to it, but sometimes the kids need to work it out without me in the middle. I just shake my head and finish my pizza. We wrap up Lanny’s last slice and put it in the fridge.

  Sure enough, she shows up when we’re loading the car for the trip to the range. I say hello, she silently takes the back seat, arms folded, face a stone mask. It’s unsettling, because I can see the shadow of the adult she’s becoming. There’s nothing dramatic about her just now. She’s centered, even in her disapproval.