False Step

by Victoria Helen Stone

  Another bubble of laughter as she eased her car down the alley. Johnny shot her a look of concern, but she ignored it. “Well?” she demanded. “Talk.”

  “Not yet.”

  “The cops haven’t bugged my car, Johnny.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Jesus. What the hell have you done?”

  He didn’t answer that. She hadn’t expected he would, but she wanted it out there just the same. Whatever was happening here was entirely his fault, and she wanted him to feel the ache of that in every cell of his body. And she was very, very afraid that she knew what he was going to say.

  The next five minutes were silent aside from the tapping of Johnny’s foot against the floorboards. His knee bobbed in a jagged, nervous dance, and his frantic tension made her drive more slowly, putting off the horror of what he would reveal.

  When they reached the parking lot of the pond, Veronica blew out a sigh and sat behind the wheel for a long moment even as Johnny got out of the car. There were two families along the edge of the water. Johnny gestured toward the far side of the pond, and Veronica finally opened the door.

  “Tell me,” she demanded as soon as she got out.

  Instead of answering, he glanced toward the people throwing crackers into the water, and then began walking toward a bench halfway around the pond. Veronica rolled her eyes and followed.

  Johnny found a bench he liked and dropped hard onto the curved metal. He slumped down to hold his head in his hands. Veronica sat a full foot away from him and waited. It took only a few seconds for her impatience to get the better of her.

  “Well?”

  “All I did was find the kid,” he said to the ground.

  Veronica’s heart stopped. She’d known this must have something to do with the kidnapping, but it was so unthinkable, so horrifying, that it hadn’t really been possible until he’d said it aloud.

  “Johnny . . . ,” she breathed.

  He nodded as if she’d said something more and sat up to stare out at the water. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “No,” she said. “This can’t be true. Tell me you didn’t do this.”

  “All I had to do was go hiking at a certain place on a certain day. That was it. I helped out a child. That was all.”

  She shot to her feet and stood on shaking legs. Her stomach trembled too, threatening to tip her into nausea. She walked away, not toward the parking lot, not toward home, but just away, over yellowing grass and around pine trees as quickly as she could. No, no, no, she muttered as she moved. The grass ahead brightened into an impossible green, and when she reached the chain-link fence, she realized it was the golf course. Men in pale clothing shifted around on the grass as if nothing bad were happening a hundred feet away.

  Veronica grabbed the metal rail of the fence and squeezed as hard as she could. Her knuckles turned white, and then her vision too as she tipped her head back and stared at the bright clouds above her.

  He’d ruined them. All of them. He’d ruined their lives and their futures and even their pasts, because this was all he’d ever be now. This monster. Why?

  “They won’t find out,” he said from behind her.

  She swung around to find him standing ten feet away, tears sliding down his face and dripping from his jaw.

  “There’s no evidence,” he insisted. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Are you kidding me? You . . . you helped in a kidnapping!”

  “I only helped in the rescue.”

  “Do you think anyone will care about stupid details? Why would you do this?” She was nearly screaming now, her tight throat barely keeping the words low enough for discretion.

  “I needed money. Veronica. I . . . I wanted . . .”

  When his words stalled, she sneered. “You wanted. It’s her, isn’t it? You did this for her and your precious gym! She talked you into it.”

  “Who?”

  “Neesa! You did it for her!”

  “No! I mean, I wanted the money to invest in the business, yeah, but for our future.”

  “Oh, come on! Who planned it? Her? Her husband?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t talk about that. Ever. I made a promise.”

  “To Neesa?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Or it’s Trey, right? Trey and his stupid friends! They helped you come up with this plan?”

  He shook his head again and kept shaking it, his tan cheeks pale and splotched with a guilty flush.

  “Tell me who it is!” She raised her fists, shaking them, wanting to shake him.

  “I can’t, Roni. I can’t. It’s better if you don’t know. Can’t you see that? I can’t ever tell you.”

  “God, you’re all idiots. Do you really think you won’t get caught? Only one person needs to screw up, and then the police will link you to them, you giant fucking moron.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t even flinch when she marched across the grass and pushed him as hard as she could. He didn’t flinch and he barely moved, which only made her angrier. “You helped torture a child! Do you know how afraid he must have been?”

  “I didn’t. No. He was fine. He wasn’t . . . I mean . . .”

  “How could you do that? How could you put him in danger? How could you put us in danger? Sydney will . . . My God, this would kill her, Johnny! You’re her hero! And now . . . Now you’re a monster.”

  His face crumpled into a sob. “Please don’t say that.”

  She watched him crying like a scared little boy and her fingers stretched themselves wide. Her palms tingled. She could slap him. She should slap him. He’d hit her and he deserved it and she wanted to.

  “There’s no evidence,” he panted.

  “After all the time you’ve spent watching ridiculous TV shows, do you really think there’s no evidence? Phone calls. DNA. Tracks. They’ve got dogs out there, Johnny! And you can’t even use that money, you know. The serial numbers have been recorded! As soon as anyone uses any of those bills, it’s over. They’ll show up at our house one day, and . . . Jesus, Johnny, you’ve ruined us!”

  “No. No. It’s going to be fine. I promise. We’ve talked it all out. There are ways around all of this. They’re nonsequential bills. We won’t—”

  “That phone?” she spat at him. “Is that how you communicate with them? This whole time I thought it was just for your girlfriend, but I guess you wouldn’t have slapped me over that.”

  He shook his head, raising his hands in a helpless plea.

  “If they find anyone else’s phone, whoever you’ve been talking to, they’ll be able to trace this one. What the hell is it doing in our house? You have to get rid of it.”

  The moment the words left her mouth, she realized what she was doing. She was helping. She was conspiring to cover up a crime. A real crime this time. Not just an assumption of one.

  She shook her head at her own terrible wrongdoing, but Johnny was nodding now. “Yeah. You’re right. I need to get rid of it. I will.”

  “No,” she whispered, but then she stopped talking, because yes, he needed to destroy that phone and leave the remnants far away. He should burn it somewhere. Obliterate their fingerprints and DNA.

  No, a little voice inside her insisted. She ignored it.

  “The dogs won’t find anything,” Johnny said. “I don’t know where exactly, but he wasn’t kept anywhere near where I found him. I know that.”

  She shook her head again. She didn’t want to know this.

  And was there any chance at all that Trey and his friends could pull something like this off without leaving bread crumbs of evidence across the forest floor? Were they in any way competent enough to get away with an elaborate heist? She didn’t think so. But then again, maybe she was just being a judgmental bitch. None of them had ever gotten caught dealing as far as she knew.

  But if it was Neesa and her husband—

  “Veronica?” Johnny whispered. His hands were still pal
ms up, his neck bowed. His lower lip looked swollen with childish regret, and she still wished it were swollen from her blows.

  She finally cracked, because apparently he needed her to play an interactive audience. “What?”

  “Are you going to tell the police?”

  Fury glowed inside her, heating until it spread to every nook of her body. “I can’t, can I? I can’t turn you in or I’ll destroy our daughter. You fucking asshole. Don’t think for one second that I care about protecting you. You deserve whatever happens. But she deserves none of it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he breathed.

  “We need to hide the money. Somewhere not in our goddamn house.”

  He nodded.

  “And the phone. Take out the SIM card. Smash it to bits. Then take it all somewhere isolated and burn it. Pour acid over it. Something.”

  “Okay.”

  She looked out at the golfers and marveled that they’d just watched her transform willingly into a criminal and they couldn’t even testify that they’d seen anything change. She looked the same. Just an average mom on an average day. But now she was a part of the horror too.

  CHAPTER 22

  She stared at her husband in the faint slices of moonlight that cut across the bed. How could he just lie there and sleep? How could he leave her here with all the questions she hadn’t known she would have at one in the morning?

  She’d been too in shock to organize her thoughts into more questions at the duck pond, and since he refused to discuss anything inside their home, he was safe from her here.

  Were there devices that could help them discover any bugs? Were the police even suspicious enough to surveil them?

  That was her biggest question right now. If there was no evidence, why did Johnny think they were being watched? But she knew the probable answer. If they really had no evidence about the kidnapping, Johnny was their only shot.

  After she’d pointed out how stupid his plan was, he’d agreed not to hang out with Trey tonight, at least. Just the fact that she’d had to steer him away from it gave her little hope that he would get away with this crime.

  He’d left for a while to dispose of the phone; then he’d returned home and raked the yard, as if finally taking care of that task might appease her. He’d thrown some steaks on the grill. Then movie night. A lovely family evening. Sydney had been so happy.

  Veronica had spent half of the night in the bathroom with an upset stomach.

  And now her husband slept like nothing was wrong, like he hadn’t put a child’s life in danger, like he was still a normal person. He’d set her whole world on fire, and now he was sleeping.

  She stared harder at his face. The heavy light-brown eyebrows, the fan of short eyelashes against tan skin, the large nose and strong jaw.

  When Sydney had been a baby and Veronica had spent far too many hours looking down into her sweet little face, there had been a few weeks of disorientation. Sometimes when Johnny was talking to her, she hadn’t been able to hear him because she’d only been able to think Why is his face so freakishly huge? The thought had consumed her. Was his face a normal size? Had it grown? Could a human have a nose that big? How had she ever thought him handsome?

  The obsession had passed within weeks, and she hadn’t thought of it since, but it returned now as she watched him sleeping. His face was huge and ugly. The face of a caveman, all brute force and no intelligence.

  Back then she could have reached out for advice. A question for other new mothers. Does your husband’s face look too big after staring at your baby? But now what could she ask? If your husband committed a terrible crime, do you think his face would look huge and ugly to you?

  Maybe she could find a Reddit board.

  She laughed softly, but her mood didn’t change. Finally she poked him. Hard. “Did you really get rid of it?” she whispered.

  He squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and shook his head.

  “Johnny! You really took care of the phone?” When he’d come home from the errand, he’d only nodded, and when she’d pointed at her own cell phone, he’d nodded again. But now she couldn’t stop imagining he’d gotten distracted by a shiny Under Armour shop on the way and forgotten about the whole plan. “Johnny!”

  “What?” he croaked, finally opening his eyes to slits.

  “The phone!” she demanded.

  “Yes. Be quiet. It’s gone.”

  “You destroyed it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m not saying that. Jesus. Go back to sleep.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” she hissed. He rolled over, and now she didn’t have to stare at his face anymore, at least.

  In the morning she’d confront him on paper and end this little fantasy that he didn’t have to answer her questions. She’d write them down and he could print out his confessions, and then she’d burn the pages. And the pages beneath the pages. She’d read enough mysteries and thrillers to know that pens left behind indentations.

  Johnny’s breathing evened out. She turned to her back and stared up at the vague darkness of the ceiling.

  How had they done it? Had they lurked in the trees at the edge of the sprawling Holcomb estate? It wouldn’t have been difficult. There were two main houses plus a guesthouse by the pool, then acres and acres of trees and paths and man-made hills and curves for BMX biking. She’d seen it all on the news. A whole army could have hidden unseen on that land. The police had even discovered a cave somewhere close by, but it had been shallow and the dirt near the entrance undisturbed according to a press release they’d written.

  The Holcomb grandchildren had treated the estate like a fantasy camp. They’d run wild, by all accounts. They’d spread out through the woods at every given opportunity and returned only for meals.

  Tanner had been too young for that, hadn’t he? People had whispered about it on the first day of the disappearance. By the second day they hadn’t bothered whispering. The boy was too young to play unsupervised. Colorado outdoorsiness was all good and fine, but the Holcombs had taken free-range parenting to a whole other level. When adults were that irresponsible, children went missing. Of course they did.

  And sometimes when adults were that irresponsible, children were taken by bad men. Bad men like Johnny.

  Veronica groaned in distress and finally sat up. She’d been avoiding coverage of the kidnapping since Saturday, determined to stop worrying and put it behind them. But now that she knew the truth, she needed as much information as she could get. She got up, grabbed her phone, and headed out to the living room for a cup of tea.

  Once she’d microwaved water and dropped some bourbon in with the tea bag, she curled onto the couch with a blanket and her internet access.

  The police had released more information this morning, and her starving mind grabbed at the skittery bits of story. At only three years old, Tanner couldn’t remember much about the kidnappers, or at least couldn’t convey reliable details to the police. Veronica couldn’t imagine Sydney trying to describe anything at that age. She’d once said President Obama had “small hair” and she’d called the bespectacled old woman who worked at the pool concession stand “owl parts,” whatever the hell that meant.

  Little Tanner couldn’t describe a voice or height or guess where he’d traveled, but he did remember playing hide-and-seek on the estate before a person picked him up. So someone had definitely snatched him from the Holcomb property on purpose.

  Then Tanner said it had gotten really dark, so the police suspected he was either put in a car trunk or bundled inside a blanket. They were currently looking for tire tracks, but with all the search parties in the area after his disappearance, there wasn’t much hope that anything would come of it. They’d had no luck with search dogs at the time of the disappearance either. Tanner had been running those trails all afternoon and all summer. His scent was everywhere.

  After being taken, Tanner remembered a room with a “dirty” floor and what police said must
have been a cot. There were blankets and crackers and juice. And the last detail they revealed made Veronica wonder exactly how the police had looked as they had conveyed this fact: Tanner said that Chewbacca had taken care of him the whole time.

  The theory, of course, was that a man wearing a Chewbacca mask had fed the boy and kept him comfortable. But she wondered whether Tanner believed the actual Chewbacca had been his companion. If so, would Star Wars bring bad dreams from now on? That poor baby.

  Tanner did not appear to have any injuries. He hadn’t been sexually assaulted, thank God. But they had found evidence of sedatives in his system.

  Veronica touched her throat when she read that. She pressed her palm to her neck and swallowed hard.

  How much of the planning had Johnny helped with? What had he known? He claimed his only role had been retrieval, but why would he confess the whole truth to her at this point? He needed her sympathy, after all. He needed her help.

  But these idiots—or maybe just one idiot; maybe just Trey or Neesa’s husband—had drugged a small child. They weren’t doctors or any sort of medical professionals. What did a three-year-old weigh? Thirty pounds? They could have easily killed him.

  Had Johnny known about the sedatives? If the worst had happened and Tanner had disappeared forever, would Johnny have told anyone?

  No.

  She didn’t have to sit with the question to know the answer. No, of course he wouldn’t have told anyone, because then he would have been involved with the murder of a child, and what would be the point in confessing? Every realization now led her to a worse thought. Every worry brought another horror.

  But even with all of their problems, Veronica could not reconcile this criminal, callous Johnny with the man she knew. He was a great father, a good friend. When he volunteered at Sydney’s school, some of the kids literally cheered when he walked in. Veronica had seen it with her own eyes.