“You can hear anything in this town,” Augie said.
“I know,” Mandy said. “But if there is any truth to it—that a stranger might have taken Zoe—the police—” She cut her eyes to Cricket. “I’m sorry, but Clint should be getting a search effort together. He should be looking for the real kidnapper, not wasting time taking the easy way—”
“Mandy.” Augie was warning her.
She said no. She wasn’t having it. “Whoever took Zoe, they’re getting away.”
“What if they come back?” a woman said.
“What if they take another of our children?” another female voice chimed in.
“We can organize a search.” Hamp Echols’s voice sliced across the rest. “We don’t need the police for that.”
“Hamp’s right,” Augie said. “We can set up at the school. Whether the trike has anything to do with what happened to Zoe or not, the playground is the last place anyone saw her.”
Folks were getting up, asking for checks. Gilly went to the cash register. They were like a herd of cattle, she thought. Half-spooked as if by lightning. She saw Cricket slip her phone from her pocket. Calling to warn Clint, no doubt.
A half hour later, the café was empty, and Cricket turned from locking the door.
“Are we closing?” Gilly asked.
“Yes, for the time being. Maybe until Zoe is found.” Cricket brought her hands together. “I can’t believe this is happening. Clint and I couldn’t love that little girl more if she were our own granddaughter.”
“They’ll find her,” Gilly said, and then wished the words back. They sounded so empty and glib.
“It seems odd that you knew it wasn’t her mother who took her.” Cricket locked Gilly’s gaze.
Apprehension heated her temples, tightened her jaw. She didn’t respond.
“Clint’s never believed it, either, but you know as a policeman he has a sense, a kind of intuition—but you—how would you know? Unless you were there?”
“It’s just a feeling . . .” Gilly began, but then she broke off, struck by a thought: What if it was more than that? Her dream about Zoe, what if she’d acted it out? Somehow found her way to the school during that half to three-quarters of an hour April said Gilly had disappeared? She kept looking at it, that missing time, and there was no memory other than the one of splashing water on her face. Ten minutes. She couldn’t account for more than ten minutes. She pressed her fingertips to her temples.
April came out of the kitchen, holding her cell phone. “Nick says a lot of the kids on campus are going out to the school to help with the search.”
Cricket untied her apron. “When I called Clint, he said dispatch is flooded, people phoning in with tips or wanting to help some way.”
“I’d like to go out there,” April said. “Since we’re closed anyway.”
“All right,” Cricket agreed. “But could you and Gilly stay and help me put together some food? People will need to eat.”
Gilly was surprised to be asked, but maybe Cricket was keeping tabs on Gilly. Maybe she’d been assigned by Clint to watch Gilly’s every move.
They made sandwiches, working side by side, assembly-line style, until they had enough to fill the two large Coleman coolers Cricket had hauled out of the storage room. They didn’t talk much, but Gilly felt under scrutiny. It bothered her, yet she could hardly blame Cricket or April. She’d wonder, too, if one of them had claimed to know not who had taken Zoe but who had not. What had possessed her? The dream had shown her almost nothing of the woman’s face.
She followed April out the restaurant door, wheeling one of the coolers. Together they lifted it and the second cooler into the bed of Cricket’s truck. Cricket locked the door and joined them.
“I truly don’t know anything.” Gilly felt pressured to defend herself, and it irked her. She didn’t owe these women, or anyone in this town, an explanation.
Cricket fastened the tailgate and turned, searching Gilly’s face.
“It’s just weird, what you said—that it isn’t Zoe’s mom who has her.” April shouldered her purse.
“Are you accusing me of something?”
April’s eyes rounded; her “noooo” was drawn out; her expression, like Cricket’s, was wary, as if Gilly was overreacting.
Was she? Gilly didn’t know. She was uncomfortable; she wanted to go. She said, “I would have told you if I knew, if I had evidence—concrete evidence of where Zoe is, or who took her.”
“I hope so.” Cricket slid on her sunglasses.
After a round of uneasy goodbyes, they got into their cars. Driving away, Gilly’s mind churned. That missing time she couldn’t account for—what if it led to her being investigated? But there was more to it than missing time, wasn’t there? Much more for them to find out about her—unless they already knew.
It was called tunnel vision when law enforcement honed in on a suspect, when they made up a story to fit the crime.
A horn honked, and Gilly jerked her glance to the rearview, where a driver, a man, had his arms thrown up in question. She lowered her gaze, looking now through the windshield. It was a moment before the scene assimilated itself into recognizable form. The intersection where she sat was familiar. A right turn would take her to her house, but she had no idea how she’d gotten here, no recollection of the drive from the café, nor any idea how long she might have been sitting here. The man behind her, giving up, roared around her. She kept her head down, bent to her knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
Come home. Her mother’s plea drifted through Gilly’s mind. She didn’t even know where home was anymore.
She wanted a drink. The longing was visceral, biting. There was a liquor store in the strip center back about a half mile. She passed it every day. It seemed sensible to go there. The idea was a finger, pointing. A remedy within reach . . .
Where was Zoe?
What if Gilly had taken her? What if she had hidden Zoe? But where? Where would she hide a little girl?
Her house? Was that possible? Could she have put Zoe in a closet? The extra bedroom?
Oh my God!
She made the right turn too fast, and the tires squealed, the rear end of the SUV fishtailed. Still she kept her foot on the accelerator, hard, only backing off when she saw the truck, the light gray F-250, in her driveway. She recognized it. It was Jake Halstead’s truck. She recognized him, the man himself, sitting on her front steps. She stopped in the road, looking at him through the windshield, heart slamming her chest wall. She could keep going, but he would come after her. If she had taken Zoe, the entire town of Wyatt would chase her down.
Jake was standing by the time she pulled to the curb and got out. She came around the front of her car, stepped onto the sidewalk.
“I’ve been waiting for you. I hope you don’t mind,” he said.
She stared at him, thrown by his demeanor. It was as if he’d come to her hat in hand. As if he were making an appeal. He looked awful. It wasn’t only his physical appearance—the scruff of his beard, or the clothes he wore that looked slept in and reeked faintly of body odor and despair. No. The change in him was deeper than that. She sensed his panic, of course, but there was something else working in his eyes, something equally, or perhaps even more, horrific—guilt. She recognized it. She knew it well. Her hand rose almost of its own volition. If he had been close enough, she would have clasped his arm, used her touch as a means to say she understood. But neither of them moved to close the distance, and she lowered her hand to her side. She heard a car in the street behind her.
Jake waited until it had passed to speak. “You’ve heard about Zoe. You know she’s missing, right? I thought you could help.”
Gilly eyed him, still confused.
“You did hear about what happened?” he prompted.
“Are you here because you think I have her?” Gilly found her voice.
His eyes narrowed.
Gilly could almost see the wheels turning in his brain.
“Do you?” he asked, and the edge in his voice might have drawn blood.
“I don’t know,” she said.
10
Mind reeling, Jake followed Gilly into her house. It was all he could do not to shove her aside, not to call out for Zoe. Instinct warned him not to yell, not to get rough. It made no sense that his daughter was here, but if by some bizarre chance he was wrong and Zoe was here, the easiest way to get her back was to let Gilly lead him to her. So he went with her from the front room through an arched doorway into an adjacent smaller front room, an office area if the desk and single chair were any indication. One wall was stacked with cardboard boxes. Books were piled along another wall. A second door led into a bedroom that was empty.
Gilly yanked open the closet door.
From behind her Jake saw it was empty, too.
Gilly whispered something that sounded like, “She isn’t here,” but his pulse was so loud in his ears, he couldn’t be sure.
They left the room, heels ringing as they crossed the hardwood floor. He followed her into a hallway.
“I didn’t know when I moved here how long I’d stay,” she said, and he thought she sounded panicked, as panicked as he felt.
He caught her by her shoulder, spinning her around. “What is going on? Do you have my daughter or not?”
They were standing in front of another door, one that was closed. She gestured toward it. “My room.” And she reached to open it.
But Jake was faster, almost violent when he thrust open the door ahead of her, making it hit the wall. From the sound, he figured the knob had done some damage. He crossed the threshold, sweeping the room with his glance, taking in the furnishings: an antique vanity, one of those French-looking upholstered chairs, a four-poster bed. More unopened cardboard cartons.
But no Zoe. She wasn’t there, not in the room itself or in the closet. Not in the master bath or the tiny powder room across from the kitchen.
“What the hell?” Jake pushed his hands over his head. They were in the kitchen now, having searched the laundry room and the walk-in pantry.
“I didn’t take her, thank God. Thank God.” Gilly repeated herself, sagging against the countertop. Jake had the sense if it hadn’t been there she would have crumpled to the floor. He realized she was fighting tears.
Jake eyed her, wary, suspicious. “What made you think you did?”
She met his glance. “It’s a long story. I doubt you’d care to hear it.”
“Try me,” he said, because he needed her, needed the ability she had—or might have—to help him find Zoe.
“Why are you here? How did you find out where I live?”
From the lift of her chin and the note of challenge in her voice, he thought she’d guessed his reason for seeking her out and had decided to shut him down.
“Your landlord, Ruth Rendell, is a friend. We work together sometimes. She and Augie Bright and I have done some construction projects together.” Jake looked out the breakfast nook window. House finches shopped a feeder hanging from an old maple tree. A garden, or the remains of one, ran the length of the back fence line. “Up until this morning I was positive my ex-wife and her boyfriend had Zoe.” He turned his gaze back to Gilly.
She didn’t try to fill the silence, and he had the impression she was waiting for him to lay it out: Why he’d come. What he wanted.
“You told Clint—Captain Mackie—that it wasn’t Stephanie, Zoe’s mom, but some other woman who took Zoe. I want to know who she is. You can tell me.”
“I wish I could.”
“You can,” he insisted over his own doubt. “On Wednesday when Zoe and I were at the café, and I couldn’t find my wallet, you knew where it was.”
“Yes, but that was some kind of fluke. I don’t know how I knew.”
“But you did. So you must know where Zoe is, who she’s with.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said.
“I don’t care how this bullshit works—”
She interrupted him. “By bullshit I’m assuming you mean my ‘knowing.’” She quirked air quotes. “If you don’t believe in it, why are you here? Why are you asking me where Zoe is? And just for the record, if I did ‘know’ such a thing, I’d have told you or the cops—”
“Jesus Christ! Don’t you get it?” Desperation made him shout. “My little girl’s safety—her life—is at stake here! Do you understand what it’s like—to lose your child?”
“Yes. Better than you know.”
Gilly’s reply was barely audible above the heated sound of his breath, but it caught his attention. Jake looked sharply at her.
“When I told you Wednesday that my husband died suddenly? He was murdered in Houston three years ago in an armed robbery.”
“I’m sorry.” Jake wasn’t going to say that he knew, that Clint Mackie had told him. As private as he sensed Gilly was, he knew she wouldn’t appreciate hearing that her personal history had been a topic of conversation between men who were virtual strangers to her. Nor could he bring himself to mention the media coverage—that it had been reported she’d known it would happen in advance. What if Clint was right, and it was only a lot of media hype?
“I was six and a half months pregnant,” Gilly went on in a low voice, “and the shock, they think it was the shock, caused me to—I went into labor. Too soon. I lost our baby, Sophie, our little girl. She would be near Zoe’s age, a little over three years old now.”
Jake was so much taken aback that his head reeled. “I’m so sorry.” He repeated his apology, and he was thinking Clint must not know Gilly had lost her baby, too. The fact must not have surfaced when Cricket was checking her out. But Jake had sensed it, hadn’t he? That there was something about Gilly—a poignancy, some tender vulnerability. He didn’t know how to characterize it. Only that he’d felt attracted to her, to her warmth, to the quiet light in her eyes that was belied by an underscore of grief and an anxiousness that seemed entrenched. He’d resisted an urge to draw her out. His mother often said—and his history with women proved it—that he had a mostly unfortunate penchant for those who were lost, a wish to reach out to them, to give them his hand. But he had no time for that now. “I’m really sorry.” He offered a third apology.
“Thank you. But my point in telling you is to show you that I do know what it’s like.”
“Yeah, okay, but you told Mackie it wasn’t Steph—my ex—who has Zoe, which would suggest you know who does.”
“What I saw was in a dream, as weird as that sounds, and somehow—it’s like I have an impression of something in here.” She touched her temples. “Maybe it’s intuition that tells me it’s not Zoe’s mother who has taken her. For whatever that’s worth. I did see a woman, but not clearly enough to give you a description.”
“How can you have this—do this? You really don’t know how it works?” Jake wanted to call bullshit on her. He bit back a renewed urge to tell her he’d heard how she’d seen her husband’s murder before it happened, too. He wanted to say that if she was in the habit of dreaming events before they happened, she must have some clue how it worked. But he was afraid of scaring her or pissing her off. He could lose her, lose all hope of her help entirely if he did that. Still, he said, “It’s your own brain, your own mind, for God’s sake.”
“I know. It’s the worst—I’m never shown anything useful.” She seemed crushed, making the admission. “Some people think it’s cool, a gift. To me it’s a curse.”
“Is that how you knew about my wallet? You saw it in a dream?”
“No. The information was just there in my mind. I wasn’t even aware of it until it came out of my mouth. It happens that way sometimes.”
“Were you in a trance?” Jake pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and spun it toward her, an invitation. “Couldn’t you do the same thing now? Sit down here, close your eyes, and it would come to you. Right? You’d see—”
“I told you—”
“It doesn’t work that way—yeah.” Jake pi
cked up the chair again and set it down. “They want me to take a polygraph.” He didn’t know why he was telling her. He was just so goddamned panicked on so many levels.
“Who?”
“The Madrone County sheriff’s office.”
“How did they get involved?”
“Mackie called them in.”
“You aren’t happy for their assistance.”
“I’m glad for whatever help I can get to find Zoe.” He paused.
“But?”
“They’re getting a warrant to search my house.”
“Are you serious? I thought you and Captain Mackie were friends.”
Jake hooted. “Yeah, he said I shouldn’t take it personally. It’s routine, ruling out family, blah, blah, blah. Like I’d kidnap my own kid. Or, hey, maybe my mom, Zoe’s grandma, is the one.”
Gilly averted her face, but not before Jake saw her expression harden.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing, really,” she answered. “I just don’t have a lot of faith in cops.”
Jake gave her time to explain, and when she didn’t he said, “Well, maybe they’re right to polygraph me.”
Gilly glanced at him, brows raised.
“Ah!” He pushed his hands in front of him, a gesture of disgust. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s just that after Zoe’s mom left, Zoe was really scared. She cried a lot, had nightmares. She was afraid I’d go away, too. I promised her it wouldn’t ever happen. I should have been there, protected her—” Jake swiped his face, under his nose. He shifted his glance to the window.
There’d been nights—although not so many in recent weeks—when Zoe had wakened, sobbing, and he’d gone to her, pulled her snugly against him, and paced with her through the darkened house, letting her cry it out against his shoulder. Some nights, she came to him, crawling into his bed. She’d pat his cheek, whispering, Monsters, Daddy. And he’d pull her close, barely waking, mumbling nonsense. He could feel her now, the shape of her small warm bulk in his arms, the silky top of her head nestled underneath his chin. He smelled her powdery sweetness. But the memory was shot through with the cold reality of her absence, and his anguish—that he hadn’t been there, hadn’t kept her safe—seared his chest.
What Lies Below: A Novel Page 10