by Chaz McGee
“No, I’m sorry.” Hayes gazed at her with his mournful eyes. “I wish I could help.”
He suddenly seemed so alone and helpless sitting there, an oversized man in an undersized chair, vulnerable and exposed, overcome by the memories of what had happened to his daughter. But as he sat there, I realized how curious it was that he was facing Maggie alone. Where was his wife? His other daughter? Why had they disappeared at this difficult time for him? Why were they not there to lend him emotional support?
For the first time, I wondered: was the fear I felt lingering in this house somehow fear of him?
Surely not. He was perfect in both appearance and manners, hardly the stuff of nightmares.
And yet, something about him and his home was off-kilter. I could feel it closing in on me, despite the gracious facade, a jumble of conflicting emotions so strong they swirled through the house like winds that might coalesce and turn into a hurricane at any moment. The longer we were there, the more I felt it. Something in this house was off. And much was hidden.
Could Maggie feel it, too?
If she did, she did not show it. She began to question Hayes about his daughter’s death almost four years before, leading him through the events up to her disappearance a week before her body was found. She followed up on details and asked questions that neither Danny nor I had even considered.
Alan Hayes had a remarkable memory and he shared what he remembered with her in precise, almost finicky detail. But not once, I realized, did he seem to be emotionally involved in what had happened to his daughter. He had pulled a force field of detachment around him, masking what he felt inside.
Protection—or a weapon? Or was he on medication? I could not tell.
Maggie did not try to penetrate his aloofness. “Thank you,” she said after extracting a few more meager bits of information. “I would like to speak to her sister now,” she asked.
“That is impossible,” Alan Hayes said firmly. “She remembers nothing that would be of help. She was too young when Alissa died. I cannot allow you to reopen old wounds.”
It was the longest speech he had made all night.
“You’re her guardian,” Maggie said without rancor. “That’s your call.” She rose from the couch to go. “I should let you know that Bobby Daniels will likely be released from prison soon. His lawyer will file for release as soon as possible and the district attorney does not intend to fight the motion.”
His reaction was instantaneous and overwhelming. The news that Bobby Daniels would be freed enraged Alan Hayes. “You are freeing Bobby Daniels?” he asked, his voice cracking with anger. Silent waves of hostility radiated from him with a palpable force even Maggie could feel. She took a step away from Hayes as he jumped to his feet and clenched his fists. He fought to regain control, but failed. His face blazed with hatred. “You’re freeing him after what he did to Alissa?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hayes,” Maggie said quickly. “But the evidence is overwhelming. He did not kill your daughter.”
“After what he did to my child?” Hayes asked through clenched teeth. “After the way he defiled her, he walks free?” His arms started to tremble with the effort of maintaining control. I felt a sudden fear for Maggie’s safety.
“I’ll have someone call you when we know more,” she said quickly, moving toward the door. “I’m sorry, but we will find her real killer. I promise you that.”
“Her real killer?” Hayes asked contemptuously. “Bobby Daniels destroyed my daughter. That’s all I need to know.”
“Thank you for your time,” Maggie said. “I’ll let myself out.” She hurried into the hallway, glancing around to see if the wife or daughter had overheard. She had nearly reached the front door when it flew open, slamming into the wall behind it with a crack that sounded like a pistol shot. Maggie drew her gun automatically as Danny barreled into the house, arms flailing as he tried to shed the grasp of two plainclothesmen being towed along in his wake.
“What are you doing here?” Maggie asked, horrified. She holstered her gun and exchanged a glance with her backup: they were all in for some trouble.
Danny ignored her question. “Mr. Hayes,” he called out. “I apologize for the intrusion tonight. I’ve explained this is an unacceptable way to handle the situation. I’d like to talk to you about . . .” Danny’s thoughts failed him and his words trailed off as he realized what he had done. He stood, blinking, in the hallway, looking almost surprised that he had gained entry.
Alan Hayes materialized in the doorway just in time to see Danny befuddled and stranded. His relentless control had been restored. His eyes flickered over Danny, noting the disheveled clothing and florid face, then lingered on Maggie. “Is this your partner, Detective Gunn?” he asked quietly. “Am I to understand you are not here with authorization?”
“You are to understand that he is not here with authorization,” Maggie spat back, the first sign of temper I’d seen in her. “Get him out of here,” she ordered the plainclothesmen. “Take him back to the station and get him some coffee.”
Danny started to protest, but Maggie stopped him with a single word. “Gonzales,” she said distinctly.
Danny let himself be led out the front door. It had taken all of his alcoholic indignation to gain entry and he’d not thought far enough ahead to know what to do once he reached there. His confusion made him suddenly docile.
Alan Hayes looked amused. “It would appear your department is not exactly united in your belief that Bobby Daniels is innocent, Detective Gunn. Personally, I found Detectives Bonaventura and Fahey to be exemplary in their investigation into the case.”
“I bet you did,” Maggie said coldly. She glanced up the stairs to the second floor, sensing they were being watched. I felt her withdraw from her own anger, unwilling to let the younger girl see it. “And I can assure you of this, Mr. Hayes: every move the two original detectives made, every fact they uncovered, every step they took, every lead they pursued and the dozen they ignored will be retraced and verified and investigated anew. So, please, by all means”—she smiled at him beatifically—“sleep well tonight, rest assured that we will indeed find out what happened to your daughter. Even if we are a few years late.”
She walked out the door without bothering to see his reaction and Alan Hayes was alone with his fury. It filled the room and grew, feeding on its power, expanding until I was certain it pervaded the entire house.
“Good night, Miss Gunn,” he finally called after her, his clipped voice sounding oddly polite, almost as if he were mocking her. “Thank you for stopping by.”
Suddenly, I had to leave that house. It agitated me every bit as much as the atmosphere inside the prison had. Indeed, I realized, though this was a home, it felt very much like the prison. The anger now filling it had cleared away the confusion that clouded my initial reaction to it. I now felt despair beneath the fury, as well as suffering, hopelessness, and hatred so powerful it shocked me. I could not endure it any longer.
I hurried after Maggie, anxious to leave what I felt behind.
Alissa Hayes would not let me go.
She stood immobile on the front sidewalk, blocking my way, a silent specter whose pale face glowed under the front porch light. I stopped on the top step and stared down at her.
She held up both hands and pushed them out toward me, beseeching me to go back.
I shook my head. I was afraid.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She looked frightened. “Please,” she begged me silently, placing the tips of her fingers over her heart then extending them to me in supplication. She stared up at a light that burned in the window of a second-story room, her face filled with sorrow. I followed her gaze and saw the silhouette of a young girl outlined in the window as she looked out into the night, watching Maggie leave.
Alissa looked at me, wordlessly pleading, and I knew what I had to do. If Alissa Hayes could not bear to enter the house where her family lived, I would do it for her. I owed her that much.
I made my way up the stairs, past the closed door of a bedroom where I heard Elena Hayes inside, weeping beneath the angry murmur of her husband scolding her for letting Maggie in. I moved past the open door of an empty bedroom and made my way down the hall to the room where Sarah Hayes slept.
She was still standing at the window, looking out into the darkness, unaware that her sister was staring back at her from the yard, consumed with an identical sorrow and longing.
The young girl’s utter sadness filled me, too, unbidden. I wanted to weep for her. She was yearning for something, but I could not tell what. Her older sister back? Freedom from this house? For the years to pass quickly, so she could escape it all?
The angry voices down the hall grew louder. Sarah turned away from the window, dully, as if she was about to embark on a distasteful routine she had endured many times before.
She shut her bedroom door and locked it against the sound. Then she locked it again. And again. She had three locks on the inside of her bedroom door. Even so, she placed a chair under the doorknob as well, jamming it so the door could not be opened. Then she sat on the edge of her bed, hands trapped between her knees, shivering, though the room was warm. She stared at the door, waiting and waiting.
For what, I thought, for what?
Below me, outside the window, Alissa Hayes wept beneath the branches of a tree, her figure a ghostly apparition of anguish, a soul caught between worlds in a quagmire of sorrow she could not escape.
Even her sobs were silent. I was her only hope. And I had no idea how to help her. Except to stay where I was, waiting with her sister, waiting to find out the truth.
And then I saw something that gave me hope. It rose in me like an ember flaring among the ashes: I saw Maggie beneath a streetlight, leaning against the hood of her car, staring up at the windows of the Hayes house, watching the shadows that danced behind the blinds, drinking in the muted sounds of Alan Hayes’s rage, taking in every scrap of information she could.
Yes, Maggie, I thought. Do not be like I was. Do not turn away. The answer lies within this family. And as I thought it, I knew it was true. The truth was here, in this unhappy house, and it would take both Maggie and me to see that Alissa Hayes got justice.
I played my part. I waited in the corner of a young girl’s bedroom fortress, keeping watch while she slept, unknowing of all but her dreams, not even twitching in sleep when, deep into the night, her doorknob rattled, paused, then turned slowly in the dark, and finding no way open, grew still again as footsteps faded down the hallway.
I stared at the face of Sarah Hayes in sleep, drinking in her beauty, the innocence of her repose, and I was filled with a fierce longing to protect her and to protect her innocence.
I waited through the night, knowing I was not alone, not while Maggie watched with me. Together, we would find a way.
Chapter 16
I am disconnected from earthly pleasures in my present state. I do not need to eat or sleep. So it was that I waited quietly in a corner of a young girl’s bedroom, my mind on other things, while Sarah Hayes slept the night away, then rose and dressed for school. I could move easily from place to place, unseen, and my role as a detective had exploded in possibilities. I had spent the night pondering my options. When morning came, I chose to stay with Sarah. I wanted to understand what fed her fears, to know the secrets in her life and how it all led back to her dead sister. There were pieces missing and I wanted to find them for Maggie.
Sarah was a lonely girl. She ate breakfast alone, in complete silence, without even a cat to share the quiet of the kitchen. Her parents did not appear to send her out the door, nor did she exude any sort of desire to see them. She went about her morning ritual with a mechanical efficiency that made my heart ache—to be so young, and yet so without enthusiasm for what life had to offer. She had been robbed of joy at an early age.
I followed her onto the school bus, unseen by the boisterous crowd. I sat in the back, next to a skinny boy who smelled of curry and never took his eyes off his handheld video game. Sarah sat a few rows in front of me, beside a chubby girl with braces and frizzy hair. They did not say a single word to one another. Sarah ignored the chaos around her—the flying pieces of paper, the insults, the laughter and shrieks of outrage—and instead opened a small paperback she carried in a pouch of her knapsack, reading with an intensity that took her far from the world around her.
She was used to her solitude, I realized, and quite comfortable with it. Perhaps she even preferred it.
It seemed sad in one so young.
I followed her through the halls of her junior high school, where she walked alone unheralded by others—but not entirely unnoticed. The boys recognized her emerging beauty. They cast sidelong glances at her as she passed by, afraid to comment, yet captivated by her unconscious grace.
I wondered what that beauty would do to her desire for solitude. The world would not leave her alone for long.
The other girls gave her a wide berth, some resentfully, as if they had decided that Sarah was a snob who did not want to associate with them. But others avoided her out of a vague fear I could feel entwined with all the other confusing emotions these adolescents carried inside them: she was the girl whose mother had died, the girl whose sister had died. She must be cursed. Which meant that if you got too close to her, perhaps it would happen to you.
As she moved through the minutes of her morning, going from classroom to classroom, I sensed a gradual relaxing in her, a blooming of her spirit. Though she remained silent, never offering an answer in class, she seemed content. I realized she had found a refuge in the ammonia-scented halls of this brick-and-linoleum palace, however shabby a palace it might be. Her remarkable strength touched me. I marveled at the power of human beings to adapt and endure, to keep going in the face of fear, and to somehow find a corner of the world where they felt safe.
I could not share in her peace. After a while, the jostling, erratic energy of her schoolmates began to wear on me. So many adolescents gathered together seemed to trigger a chemical reaction in their basic physiological makeup. Impulses sparked and danced from them without rhyme or reason, as if they were little more than sacks of ions dancing off one another, or flaying wires intermittently jolted with electrical current. The bombardment of so much uncontrolled energy annoyed me. Walking through the halls was like being set upon by a cloud of mosquitoes. I was amused that I could still feel such an emotion. I felt human again, if only for a moment, but after a while I began to crave peace. I was glad when the morning passed and lunchtime arrived.
Sarah’s solitary existence continued, even in the middle of the noisy cafeteria. She sat alone at a table in a far corner of the vast room, hidden by a pillar from the hopeful eyes of the boys. An austere lunch sat untouched before her while she buried her nose in a book.
It seemed a lonely life for such a young girl, walking and eating alone among so many people who could have been her friends. I was relieved when, a few minutes before the bell, another girl approached Sarah’s table. She was a few years older than Sarah and every bit as breathtaking. Her deep brown hair was straight and cut well below her shoulders. It shimmered each time she turned her head. Her skin was perfect, smooth and unblemished, and still lightly browned from the summer sun. She was tall and slender, and carried herself with a confidence usually found in older women. She towered over Sarah as she stopped by the table to say hello.
She smiled at Sarah, revealing perfect teeth. “How’s it going?” she asked in an unexpectedly alto voice. “Did you find someone to lend you the notes?”
Sara smiled back. “Jeanie let me look hers over. I think I did okay. You missed the bus this morning.”
The other girl nodded. “Overslept again. My dad was pissed when he heard.”
“You shouldn’t have told him,” Sarah said. “He’d have never known.”
“They called him,” the girl explained. “Too many tar-dies in one month.” She hesitated. “But you kno
w how it is. They cut you slack.”
“You played the dead mother card?” Sarah asked, laughing.
“It ought to be good for something.”
Sarah’s eyes seemed suddenly to focus on some place far away. “Yeah, it ought to be,” she agreed. Their eyes met. “You going home on the bus today?”
The other girl nodded.
“See you then,” Sarah said.
“Sure. I’ll save you a seat.” The girl walked gracefully away, her hair swaying with each step, another beautiful young woman left without a mother, another young life left without a real home to call home.
At least Sarah was not alone.
Chapter 17
There are advantages to being dead. Finding a seat on the school bus is one of them. Eavesdropping on two young girls is another.
As I sat down in the seat behind Sarah and her friend, I ignored a drowsy kid with long hair who smelled like patch ouli on one side of me and a twitchy fat kid who smelled of pizza on the other. I could easily hear as the two girls exchanged small talk about schoolwork and teachers. They offered statements up to one another shyly at first, as if unsure whether the other would find their concerns too mundane. Yet each girl was respectful, almost tender, toward the other. The older girl, who seemed to be around sixteen or seventeen, was especially thoughtful of Sarah’s shyness. She drew Sarah out with questions about books, established common ground with their shared disdain for the rows of goofy boys sitting in front of them—every one of them hopelessly unmanned by these two beauties. Then she made Sarah laugh with a pointed comment about a teacher. That laugh startled me. I had never heard Sarah laugh before then. At last, though, the older girl uttered the sentence she’d been leading up to and I understood the bond between them even more.
“My dad is taking her to Bermuda for the weekend and he’s letting me stay by myself so I don’t pitch a fit.”
“The blonde lawyer?” Sarah asked. Her face crinkled with distaste. “Didn’t you say she was about twelve?”