She didn’t get far.
The strong hand that locked on her left upper arm pulled her back against a solid wall of chest as another hand covered her mouth.
She fought.
“Jesus! Shut up. You’re going to get me arrested.” She tried to shriek that that was the general idea but could barely breathe, so instead she stuck out her tongue and slathered it over the palm of his hand. “What the—” In disgust he tore his hand away. She screamed. He was forced to stifle her once again. “For crissake, will you stop? It’s me, Billy. I’m not going to hurt you.” As she began to relax, he slowly started to release her. “Unless you lick me again.” He swiped his palm across his jeans. “Gawd.”
Once free, she turned on him, smacking his chest with both hands. “Damn it, Billy. You scared the shit out of me!” She smacked him once more.
“Again! What’s the matter with you?” This time she hit him with only one hand.
Her heart was still thrashing about in her chest and her joints were going soft with relief. “Why didn’t you call out? Identify yourself.”
“I did!”
“Sooner! Before you start rushing toward me. People are dying around here. If I had a gun, I would have killed you first and looked to see who it was afterward.” She hesitated. “Even then I wouldn’t have been able to tell because I’d have shot you in the face because those Kevlar vests are so easy to get and you never know who’s wearing—”
“I found something.”
“Oh.” She took an involuntary step back, like he might burst into flames. At once it was as if she stood in the center of a cyclone that was sucking time from its very beginning into a pinpoint of darkness. This moment would change the entire world as she knew it, her whole life. There would be answers to her questions that could never be retracted, that she could never put back in the box. “Oh God.”
She stooped to pick up her keys and turned back to her car. She wasn’t sure if she should or how long she could ignore him, but she needed more time. She felt caught up in the whirlwind, off balance, on the verge of vomiting.
And Elizabeth was waiting for her.
Billy circled behind her to stand before her again. “By accident. It was like I was meant to find it. No one in town could remember anything from around that time—1985 or ’86. That’s almost thirty years ago. I tried birth records. Do you know how many females were born in Virginia in that time frame? In this county alone? Or in Charlottesville? Which is in Albemarle County? Or for that matter, any one of ninety-three other counties?”
Sophie checked the lock through her car window to make sure the tab was up, unlocked. She needed to be ready. Ready to run. Just . . . ready, because she wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say next.
“But then I realized I was approaching it all wrong. See, you weren’t just some normal average statistic. There was something different about your birth, something surrounding it was hinky, something Arthur Cubeck felt guilty about. Guilty enough to leave you his family farm, even though you weren’t family. Pretty damned guilty, if you ask me. So I start thinking of all sorts of different things like: he hit a pregnant woman with his car and ran off . . . or maybe she had her newborn baby in a stroller . . . or he was a drunk driver who killed everyone in your family but you—”
“Jesus, Billy.”
“Well, he wasn’t a saint. And shit happens, you know. It could have been anything. But it would be an event not a statistic. See what I’m saying? It was a real place to start looking . . . that might lead to something else . . . that might lead to who you are.”
“I’m Sophie Shepard.”
“Yeah. Well, you’re someone else, too.”
He pulled a folded piece of white paper from his pocket and held it between them. She stared at it—numb. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was repeating over and over, that she was Sophia Amelia Shepard, the best gift a daddy could ever dream of. . . . No piece of paper could change who she was—and yet just hours ago she’d seen the papers that had done just that: changed who she was. No. She was Sophia Amelia Shepard, the best gift—
“Since you were adopted in Charlottesville, I started there in the main library with the microfilm archives from The Daily Progress. Obituaries, headlines, some regional stuff—anything where a kid could be orphaned or left somewhere . . . or put in foster care for one reason or another.”
“I wasn’t in foster care. The lawyer said.” She heard a muffled echo in her voice like she was speaking from the inside of a fish bowl. “Special circumstances. She had a guardian.”
“See? Sure. I knew it had to be something out of the ordinary. At first I didn’t think I’d find anything because all the newspapers around here are sort of connected and print a lot of the same stories except for small sections for the highlights of local news, you know? I spent the whole day over there. Nothing. So I figured I hit another dead end. But then this morning”—he shuffled his weight, as anxious and impatient as he was hesitant and worried—“this morning I started to wonder if maybe whatever happened wasn’t a big enough story for the Progress. Or what if one of the smaller papers around here hadn’t been bought out back then—and even if it had, the local papers always go into more depth on a story. Probably to take up more space since nothing ever happens but—” He shrugged. “Hell, who knows. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to look, so I went over to the Staunton library to check out The News Leader first before I headed over to Waynesboro for The News Virginian.” He looked between her face and the paper in his hand twice. It was a long tense moment before he spoke again. “It was a headline. November 12, 1985.”
She looked into his eyes—so unlike Drew’s but still aware and empathetic. He wouldn’t force her to look at it; wouldn’t judge her if she chose not to. His steady gaze said: he found the information and the rest was up to her.
But that wasn’t what she was saying to herself. Deep in her core, she knew there was no choice. She could flee now, but the facts on Billy’s sheet of paper would chase her forever—plague her sleep and change her life whether she read it or not.
She filled her cheeks with air and blew it out slowly through pursed lips, then held out a hand that was clammy and trembling. The muscles in her chest contracted painfully and it was hard to breathe.
There were actually two pages. The first opened to old black-and-white newsprint and a 3 x 4-inch picture of a happy girl with a lovely bright smile. Though she hadn’t had the privilege of braces to correct a slightly displaced lateral incisor, it was also Sophie’s smile . . . set in a more heart-shaped face than Sophie’s oval. The bridge of her nose was thinner, and while her eyes appeared to be paler, the shape of them and her eyebrows were also the same. Most shocking of all, however, was the thick, wild, curly hair that Sophie didn’t need Kodachrome to know was a deep burnt-orange color.
Immediately, her eyes lowered to the story.
CLEARFIELD POLICE SEARCH FOR MISSING GIRL, 16
Lonora Elizabeth Campbell went missing from her home.
Clearfield authorities have been combing the city and surrounding area since late Thursday in search of a 16-year-old girl who went missing from her home earlier in the evening. The disappearance of Lonora Elizabeth Campbell is being termed “suspicious” by police, who say they know the girl quite well and that while she has developmental disabilities and is known to have wandered off before, “she never goes far and she stays out in the open because enclosed spaces frighten her.” The girl’s father, Lonny Campbell, discovered her missing at 6:15 yesterday. He reported her disappearance 30 minutes later after searching the neighborhood in vain. Between 75 and 100 rescuers searched through the night and more volunteers have arrived to continue the search today. Lonora is 5'3" 110 lbs. She has blue eyes and red hair. Anyone with any information about the girl is asked to call the sheriff’s office immediately.
“She’ll be terrified when we find her,” Sheriff Charlie Barton said. “If someone she doesn’t know finds her they should call for he
lp before they approach her. That’ll only make it worse.” No sign of forced entry was observed in the family home.
Sophie heard an odd whirring noise inside her head. Lonny’s Lonora was her birth mother? She had to be, they looked too much alike. She turned back toward the hospital and looked up at the windows on the second floor. What was it Lonny said about his daughter? She was a pretty little girl. Like her mama. Like you.
Lonny was her grandfather! But only a part of her jerked with the thrill of knowing it.
He knew? Why didn’t he tell her? He’d dropped hints. You remind me a bit of my baby girl ’cept she had my wife’s blue eyes and she weren’t near as tall as you. But she was a happy gal growin’ up and that smile-a-yours is a real sweet reminder. He did tell her . . . without really telling her. But why? Why didn’t he want her to know?
Her heart hammered, but she couldn’t tell if it was raging anger or an anxious excitement surging through her veins, making her want to hit something and hug Billy at the same time.
“Sophie?”
She shook her head—she didn’t want to talk and she couldn’t look at him just yet. She bent her head and brought the second page forward to read—a shorter story in smaller print.
MISSING CLEARFIELD GIRL FOUND
Sheriff Charlie Barton reported Friday evening that 16-year-old Lonora Elizabeth Campbell was found dazed and disoriented in the woods around Calvin B. Harvey Park and Arboretum after a 28-hour search by local citizens and the Clearfield County Police. The girl was rushed to Clearfield Memorial Hospital to be treated for an array of cuts and bruises and the hypothermia sustained during her overnight ordeal. She is reported to be in stable condition.
Lonora. Lost and then found as a girl. Lost and now found by her daughter years later—years too late. And now Sophie felt lost—her gaze rose to the windows above—and there was plenty more information to be found up there, she knew. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear more—wasn’t sure she knew what to do with what she had.
“Sophie?”
“I don’t know, Billy.” She took a step back, opened her car door, and threw her hobo bag inside. “I don’t know what it means or what I should think. I need to think about it. I don’t want to say or do anything I’ll regret—”
“Sophie!”
She turned her head to address the demand in his voice, unprepared to see the helplessness and horror in his face as a large man, two to three inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier, held a big black gun to Billy’s head from behind. She froze. It felt like the slightest movement, a bare breeze, would cause the whole world to explode.
Chapter Twelve
The man with the gun had a crew cut–type haircut that showed him to be mostly gray haired; he had a pink pudgy sort of face and he wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. He squinted at Sophie—angry, bitter, and unforgiving. He delivered a scoffing chuckle.
“I thought that damned Maury finally pickled his brain about you coming back here to kill us.”
“Me?”
“Course he couldn’t go to the cops after ya got to Cliff, but he didn’t have to make a beeline over to my place so you could follow him straight to me.”
“Got to Cliff?”
He wrapped a wad of Billy’s blond hair around his hand and dug his fingers into the back of his head to keep it tight, pulling him sideways and tipping his head at her to pass in front of them. She did, her gaze unwavering. The man pushed his hostage a step closer to her, she backed away and he took another step forward. They were heading for the back of her vehicle.
“All you had to do was wait out the cops.” She couldn’t tell if Billy had done something or not, but the man gave his hair a sharp jerk that made him grimace. Her clammy hands trembled. “They’d pull out eventually, you knew that, and you’d have an open shot at me. Figured I’d strike first—you weren’t expectin’ that, now were ya?”
“Me? Look, I think you’ve made a mistake. I don’t even know who you—” She made eye contact with Billy as her voice trailed off.
The man peaked an eyebrow. “Finish.”
“I—I was going to say I didn’t know who you are but . . . now I’m guessing you’re Frank Lanyard.” If she was the hub of the wheel, then he was the missing spoke.
He pursed his lips and motioned with his head for her to turn the other corner of her car to the rider’s side. “You’re smarter than her anyway.”
“Who?” Keep him talking, distracted—wasn’t that one of the safety tips? “Her who? Did you . . . Is Maury Weims dead?”
“That ain’t gonna work on me, sweetheart. Can’t blame me for this here, what’s going on. This time it’s your fault.”
“My fault?”
“Stop repeatin’ what I say and actin’ like it’s a question, pretendin’ you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“I’m not pretending. What are you saying?”
“Open the door.” She followed his line of vision to the rider’s side front door. It did occur to her to pull it open in such a way as to position it between her and him, to take another shot at running for help . . . but he had Billy. “Now the other.”
Opening the back door put her in a makeshift cage of sorts, trapping her between the front door, the car next to them, and the off chance of freedom if she chose scrambling over the seats to the opposite door without getting shot. She stuffed the photocopies under the seat to free her hands.
Frustrated, she went back to distraction. “Please. Tell me what this is about?”
“You.” And with that he took a vicious strike at Billy’s head with the heavy dark metal in his hand.
“No!” She cried out as the life in Billy’s eyes left and his thin body crumpled. “Oh God! Billy!” A flash flood of blood rivered down over his eye and cheek, angling toward his mouth as his head lolled to the left. “Billy. You killed him?” Instinctively she pushed against the door, tipping him and Billy off balance—but only for a second or two. “He’s bleeding. Are you crazy?”
“Shut up! And you better think twice about giving me any more grief, girl. I’m up to my neck in this mess, so it makes no difference to me. I can drop him here and put a bullet in his head—up to you,” he said as he began to first tip Billy onto the backseat and then shove him in completely. “See? Still breathin’.” His smirk was spine chilling. “This here’s a McCarren?”
Sophie nodded.
“You best be careful. His mama’ll skin you alive if you get him killed, missy.”
Elizabeth was waiting.
“Hop in. You’re driving.”
“Where to? Where are we going?”
Hope gasped its second breath. If they drove by the Crabapple Café there was a chance, a slim one, that Elizabeth might be watching out the window for her. If not, Drew will show up at the café to rescue her from his mother . . . and call to check on her.
Shoot.
With the gun now pointed in her general direction from outside the back door, she did all she could to make it look more awkward than it was to climb over the center console to the driver’s seat. She glanced back at Billy, lying on his side, bleeding on her soft gray pleather interior, breathing. Slipping her hand inside her roomy handbag, she said, “Please. Billy needs help. Can’t we leave him on the hood of that car so someone will find him?”
“And wake him up so he can set the cops on us? I don’t think so. What’s that you’re doin’?”
“Nothing. Moving my purse out of the way.” She slid into the driver’s seat.
“Hell.” He slammed the back door closed against the bottoms of Billy’s feet, bending his legs at the knee. “Give me that damn thing.” Grabbing her bag, he flung it at the back window of the Jeep, spilling the contents in a short, noisy clatter.
Turning to look back at Billy again, while Frank Lanyard climbed in next to her, was the perfect opportunity to stuff her cell phone under her left hip, which would, hopefully, muffle any rings, dings, or pings that might occur if Drew tried to contact her.
It might take a while for him to get nervous when there’s no response, but once he was, the cops were going to need her phone on and in one piece to track the GPS inside.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Directions,” she snapped.
Instantly, fear stomped down hard on the anger creeping in around the edges of her emotions. One clever move with a cell phone did not an escape artist make. She and Billy had a long way to go . . . if they were lucky . . . and keeping a civil tongue in her head would, no doubt, be helpful.
“Which way out of the lot,” she asked, trying on submissive and finding it itchy. “Right or left?”
“Right.”
“Fine.” Glancing back at Billy as she twisted the key in the ignition, she couldn’t see his face, only the passive in and out of his torso as he slept. The fist in her stomach tightened and turned. It was in her to cry, but there were no tears as yet. She swallowed, but the back of her throat felt stuffed with cotton as she pulled out of the parking lot.
In the few blocks it took to get to Main Street, she went through every scenario she could come up with: speeding, a deliberate accident, jamming on the brakes and leaping from the car while in motion—maybe a daring combination of moves. But every idea produced a red flag: Billy . . . or telegraphing the move by releasing the seat belt . . . or accidental discharge of the gun and the consequences for failure. It wasn’t looking good.
They were parked at the stop sign, next to Lonny’s place, when he jerked the gun, now aimed in the neighborhood of her liver, indicating a left turn at Main. Looking both ways to make a safe crossing, she noticed her passenger staring at the Service and Tire—hard—a spastic tic in his cheek going wild. Was he angry he hadn’t managed to kill Lonny, too?
Something About Sophie Page 18