Dunning was still coming up behind him when Watts backed slowly out, a look on his face unlike anything Dunning had ever seen before. For a moment he thought somebody was holding a gun on him, but nobody followed Watts out onto the porch. Watts got to the end of the porch and lost his balance, the rotting outer edge of the porch giving way underneath his left heel. He fell backwards on his butt and Dunning started to laugh, then stopped himself. Watts was not a man to laugh at, no matter what kind of expression he wore on his face and no matter how stupid he looked sitting on his ass in the mud.
Neither one of them said anything for what seemed like a long time, and finally Dunning’s curiosity overwhelmed him and he stepped timidly up on the porch and peered cautiously inside. He stared, then turned around to face Watts.
“Shit—that little girl’s in pieces.”
Finally Watts moved, his right hand supporting him in the mud as he came to one knee. Dunning didn’t try to help him up, just stood there and watched the big man get slowly to his feet.
“What do we do?” he finally asked.
“Fucked if I know,” Watts told him. His voice sounded hollow.
“They’re gonna think we did it.”
Watts looked around. The rain was still pounding on the roof of the porch, rivulets of water streaming down onto the rotted floorboards. Neither of them made a move to get under cover.
“No they won’t,” Watts’s bluster never left him for long, “This is Dancer’s land. He did it.”
Frank was just coming back into town when his cell phone went off. He squinted at the display. It was the station.
“Where are you?” Lori asked. Lori’s voice sounded funny, tense.
“Just got back from Langdon’s,” he told her.
“Cunningham wants to see you.”
“I’ve got a couple of stops to make first,” he knew he should at least give Adrienne an update, scant as it was, and that it was better done in person.
“You don’t understand, Frank. Right now.”
Cunningham’s office had the feel of a place where everyone knew what was going on except him. He said hello to Julie. Usually she was friendly, even flirtatious—but not now, not even a smile. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well.
“Go right in,” she said, then turned back to her computer.
Both the mayor and Brent—that was a surprise—stood up as soon as he opened the door. Brent looked a little sheepish. Frank looked at Brent, who held his gaze only for a moment and then glanced at the mayor.
“What is this?”
“Sit down, Frank,” Cunningham looked like he was acting out a part in an old movie. If he’d had a pocket watch he would have taken it out and looked at it.
Frank shrugged and sat. He was tired anyway. Brent looked uncomfortable.
“I had a visit from Adrienne Simmonds, Frank.”
Frank couldn’t believe it. If she thought he wasn’t doing enough to find Emily, all she had to do was call him. Cunningham looked embarrassed.
“Frank, she says you had some kind of—involvement with her daughter.”
Frank sagged in his chair. Then he realized that he’d just shown the classic tell of a guilty man. Brent frowned slightly.
“That true, Frank?” the mayor asked.
Frank knew they wouldn’t believe what had happened.
“She’s young—she took a little run at me,” he stopped short of any detail, “I think maybe to piss off her mother.”
“Her mother seems to think it went farther than that.”
Both Cunningham and Brent looked at him expectantly.
“This is a misunderstanding,” Frank said finally, “I’ll talk to Adrienne.”
Cunningham and Brent exchanged another look, then Cunningham turned his attention back to Frank.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Frank,” Frank had the sense that Ed and Brent had already had their own conversation before he arrived, “Frank, I need you to turn things over to Brent for a few days.”
Frank started to protest but then stopped himself. It was plain that they’d want to keep a lid on this, at least for now. Things were different here. Back in the city there’d already be lawyers and Internal Affairs crawling all over him.
Cunningham was still talking, although Frank had missed some of it, “We’ll call it a work-related injury.”
Frank flared at that.
“You want me to shoot myself in the foot or something?”
“Frank,” Cunningham stared at him, the first hint of real censure in his expression, “I think you already did.”
28
There had been little ceremony about it. No ritual turnover of the badge and gun, just an admonition to go home and stay clear of Adrienne Simmonds and the search in general.
It was all very genteel, old-school. Neither Cunningham or Brent actually used the word ‘suspect’, although of course that’s exactly what he had just become. He just accepted that as a matter of course, didn’t even blame them. It was just what he would have thought, too—the way cops everywhere thought. Cunningham’s sense of political self-preservation would kick in all by itself.
He managed to resist the urge to call Adrienne. He wasn’t sure what he’d say anyway, not without going into excruciating detail about what had actually happened that night—and nothing changed the fact that Emily was still missing. Even in the present circumstances that remained Frank’s real concern, and without his own participation Frank wasn’t confident that they’d find her. Certainly he’d been the only one, other than her mother, who’d exhibited any real urgency so far. The irony, of course, was that urgency could be interpreted as a self-serving smokescreen on his part.
He was angry—with himself, with Adrienne, Emily, everything. He pulled into his own driveway, rain drumming on the roof of his truck. It was unrelenting, heavy, and everything around him looked dark, monochromatic. He turned off the truck and looked across the bleak expanse of field toward Dancer’s house, then at the forest that began a few hundred yards from where he was sitting. He’d traded Pittsburgh for this.
He got out of the truck and walked slowly inside, not even trying to escape the rain.
Brent knew that word would travel fast. The ‘work-related injury’ story encouraged speculation anyway, and all he could do was stick to it—at least for now. He thought of making some sort of general announcement at the start of the next shift but decided against it—he was a lousy liar, and while he thought Stallings was getting shafted it had been the mayor’s decision, not his. He was slightly ashamed of the fact that he’d done little to defend Stallings’ position when Cunningham had called him in to let him know about Adrienne Simmonds’ visit.
Just about everybody in town knew that Frank Stallings was ‘seeing’ the Simmonds woman, but the revelation about Frank’s possible involvement with the girl was a bombshell. As far as he could tell the only people who knew, other than Adrienne Simmonds and possibly Julie, were he and the mayor—if it were otherwise it would have been all over town and all over the department. He knew both the town and human nature well enough to know that wouldn’t last. It was probably out of the bag already.
Cunningham was a good man and a half-decent mayor, but he hadn’t been elected for his decisiveness. He’d been elected primarily because he was a nice, self-effacing man who had the gift of making people believe the things he wanted to happen came from their own ideas. He hadn’t pressured Brent to take the next step with Frank, but Brent knew what was expected.
It didn’t matter what Cunningham wanted, anyway. Brent didn’t have any illusions about who or what he was. He was a cop and had been for a long time, although he’d never thought of himself as an investigator. In this case the circumstances were so obvious that he couldn’t ignore the possibilities no matter how outlandish or distasteful they seemed. He knew he’d have to pay Frank a visit soon. He couldn’t see any reason to put that off—he knew Frank would be expecting him, and he was reaching for his jacket when Lori kn
ocked on the door and stuck her head in. Her eyes were wide, excited.
“We got a call,” she told him, “they found her.”
Frank had dug out a half bottle of Scotch, lasting only a couple of drinks before falling into a fitful sleep. He came awake suddenly, and he immediately knew why. Emily was still missing, and he couldn’t just take himself out of the equation because of what had been done to him. He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his eyes. He thought again of calling Adrienne and just as quickly dismissed the idea.
He walked into the living room and looked out the window. The rain was still falling—if anything it had intensified—and gusts of wind blew it in sheets across the narrow two lane road. He felt a corresponding wave of futility run through him, and he made a conscious effort to shrug it off only to have it replaced by the beginnings of true anger. The feeling was free-floating, pervasive, and he couldn’t find anywhere to direct it—not at Adrienne, not Brent, not even Cunningham and his small town survival instincts.
Brooding about it wouldn’t help. He had to move, do something, even if at this moment he had no idea where to start.
Brent was in over his head and he knew it. He almost hoped it was out of his jurisdiction—but it wasn’t, at least as far as he could tell in those woods. It was a large wooded area bounded by 126, the road Frank and Billy Dancer lived on, and 293—the numbers made no sense—the road on which Watts and Dunning lived.
It had taken nearly an hour to get in there on foot once he’d taken the cruiser in as far as it would go—maybe farther, he’d thought, looking at the rear wheels sunk into the mud of the old fire road—road — and now a lot of eyes were on him as he walked up to the hut. He knew whatever was in there wouldn’t be good, and he squinted against the rain, keeping his own eyes straight ahead as he stepped up onto the porch and forced himself to go inside without a pause or hesitation.
The hut only had one roughly framed window, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness inside, but longer than that for his mind to catch up to what he saw. His first reaction was that there was no body at all, that this was some kind of setup. Then his mind finally registered that there were body parts and dried cascades of blood all over the walls and floor.
He kept his head up and his eyes forward, not wanting to betray himself to the men watching his back from outside. He closed his eyes, trying to give himself time to process everything he was seeing. The rain kept pounding hard on the battered roof of the old cabin, and between that and the darkness behind his eyelids he found himself swaying, disoriented. He forced his eyes open, willing himself not to take the full impact of what was scattered there right in front of him, and then consciously arranged his features into an impassive mask before he slowly and deliberately turned around and walked off the porch, back to the men who were waiting there to see what he would do. They looked at him expectantly as he walked over, his eyes on Wheelock.
“I don’t know who that poor girl in there is,” he kept his tone low, only a hint of reproach in it, “but it isn’t Emily Simmonds.”
It hadn’t just been Wheelock. The others, starting with Watts and Dunning, had jumped to the same conclusion, none of them managing to get past the horrific scene in the cabin. Everything had snowballed from there.
He waited for Wheelock to get it, then gave up.
“You had the Simmonds girl’s description—the hair color is wrong.”
Wheelock’s face dropped.
“It was ...”
“Yeah, I know. Hard to look at. But you have to. You have to get it right. Now go find a landline somewhere and call Lori, tell her to keep her mouth shut.”
Wheelock nodded, embarrassed, and hurried toward the cars.
The mayor had displayed the appropriate amount of shock and dismay when Adrienne had revealed what she knew about Emily and Frank, and at first she’d found a degree of reassurance in that. The feeling didn’t last long. It was clear the mayor had expected her to go back to her house and wait for a phone call while he and the rest of the menfolk took care of things.
It surprised her that in a sense, however briefly, she’d done exactly that. It wasn’t like her at all, and was probably a measure of her shock at the unreality of the situation. Now she was tired of waiting for somebody else to do something when she and her daughter were the ones with the most at stake. She knew better, and at a time when her own independence could have been her greatest strength and more importantly the key to finding Emily, she’d allowed herself to sit passively by while relying on other people, notably Frank, to act for her. It was stupid, and she berated herself for it. It was clear to her now that where Frank was concerned she’d allowed her carefully constructed emotional defences to break down. She’d let at least some small degree of trust to enter the mix, and after her divorce she’d decided she’d never allow herself to do that again.
But she had, and now she could only hope that she and Emily wouldn’t end up paying for it. From what she’d read on Emily’s computer screen—it was still unfathomable to her that Emily could have written it, too explicit in its detail to be anything but the truth—Emily had been a willing participant in what had happened. Why she had written it was something else again. Adrienne and her daughter were alike in many ways, but Adrienne had never had the slightest urge to record her thoughts anywhere, never kept a diary, and it surprised her that Emily had even thought of doing it, especially on a computer.
She thought back to the simplicity of the password, how accessible it was. She tried to fight off the obvious conclusion—that Emily had wanted her words to be found, and for Adrienne to be the one to find them. Adrienne made a conscious decision to leave those thoughts for another time, shove them in yet another tightly constructed compartment that she might—or more probably would not—revisit later. For now, she told herself, they were an irrelevant and dangerous distraction.
There was something sick going on in this place. They had their own way of life, their own rules, and when she and Emily arrived they had upset some kind of balance. She could see her mistakes back over her shoulder, as clear as daylight. She wasn’t as unconventional or original as she’d always given herself credit for. When the crunch came she was still dependent on authority, on structure and acceptance. It had blinded her to the obvious. Frank had not been what he seemed. Nothing had been, and if she kept trusting in other people she’d just be compounding her mistakes, staying on a path that would take her no closer to finding Emily.
She could think of only one place to start—something she should have done hours ago.
She was primed for a confrontation—even wanted it—but when she got there all she saw was a dark unmarked sedan in Frank’s driveway—he’d driven that on a few occasions when they’d been together. The big pickup truck he drove the rest of the time was gone and the house was dark. Much as Frank had a few minutes before, she sat there for a moment, trying to decide what to do.
She made up her mind and got out of the car. The rain was still falling hard and she nearly slipped as she hurried up the sloping, muddy driveway, heading for the wooden steps at the side of the house. She tried the knob on the side door, not really expecting it to open.
It didn’t. Cops, even cops in small towns, didn’t leave their doors unlocked. She looked around, then pulled the sleeve of her jacket down over her hand, balling it up into a fist so that the jacket’s thin fabric gave her at least some protection. She pulled her arm back as far as she could and punched a hole in the windowpane, then reached inside and unlocked the door.
It opened into a very small entryway, the kitchen on the right and another door directly ahead. She hesitated, then crossed the small space and pulled the door open. It led down into a basement. She fumbled for a light switch and found one inside the door, then went down the stairs.
The basement was small and musty. It took only a moment to see there was no one there, no other doors, no hidden rooms, just a few large cardboard moving boxes that look
ed as if they’d never been unpacked, almost indecipherable labels scribbled on them in thick strokes of black marker. A rudimentary work bench was hard up against the concrete wall at one side, a small blue metal vise at one corner, and a rack with some basic hand tools hung on the wall beside the bench. They all had a thick layer of dust on them.
She went back up the way she came, staying quiet, hesitating again at the top of the stairs and chiding herself for her caution—it was slowing her down. She turned into the kitchen. The main floor looked and felt empty, and it took only a minute or so to confirm that it was.
She took a deep breath and went upstairs, going directly to Frank’s room, the same room and the same bed where they’d made love—no, she told herself fiercely, they’d fucked, usually as a matter of expedience when she couldn’t be sure of where Emily was or what she was doing and whether she’d walk in on them in her own house. Now she wondered if Emily had been up here too.
She kept expecting to hear Frank’s truck in the driveway and belatedly realized the rain was coming down too hard for her to hear anything. For a moment she was afraid, had to fight down the urge to just turn around and get the hell out of there. She knew she couldn’t give in to it. She had to know for sure whether or not Emily was here or whether there was any indication of where she was. Her mind was travelling in disconnected leaps, each so far from the next that suddenly she physically froze in a desperate effort to slow herself down. She leaned back against a wall and tried to empty her mind, return her breathing to normal. She wouldn’t be any good to Emily if she didn’t.
She counted off two full minutes under her breath, then kept looking for any traces of her daughter’s presence, either before or now. She swept the room with her eyes one last time before checking the other rooms. There were no signs at all that Emily had ever been there either.
There were hardly any signs of Frank.
She shrugged back into her coat and went back outside, half expecting to see him pull in. It didn’t happen, and she stood on the porch for a moment. The rain was cold and it was slanting into her eyes, driven by hard gusts of wind. She squeezed them shut for a moment, then opened them again and looked across the open field at the old house in the distance. She remembered Frank telling her once that it belonged to the same huge, shambling man she had seen at the school, the one who had been stalking the kids. She and Frank had argued about that, Adrienne horrified at the giant’s proximity and that Frank had done nothing to get him put away. Frank had just smiled, patronizing her. She had gotten so angry all over again that she felt like hitting him. Frank had sensed it, laughing and grasping both of her wrists, holding them in a strong, dry grip that she couldn’t break. Their eyes had locked and moments later they were up hard against the wall ...
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