Carl called as she was leaving the house. “Your mom says there’s a little girl missing up there. I checked, and sure enough there’s an Amber Alert.”
“Yes, they thought it was her mother who’d taken her.”
“But not anymore, according to the information here. Your mom’s worried.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“I don’t think that’s the cause for her concern so much as she says you dreamed about it.”
“Well, it’s no secret my dreams upset her. I shouldn’t have told her.”
“My concern is that the media will get hold of it.”
Gilly made no comment.
“This guy we have the lead on, Brian’s killer—if the story blows up, and he sees you on television, finds out where you are, it’s not safe for you up there.”
She started to argue.
“What about Mark Riley?” Carl cut her off. “You think he can’t find you, you’re wrong. I told you that when you left here.”
“I know, Carl, but I can take care of myself.”
He was quiet, and for a moment there was only the sound of their breath.
“I can’t protect you when you’re so far away, Gilly.” Carl’s voice was low and gruff.
It was the voice she’d heard mornings when, newly sober, she’d wakened next to him. As soon as he felt her stir, he’d pulled her into his arms, and she’d burrowed against him. The sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear, strong and sure, had soon lulled her anxiety, and calmed her yearning for a drink, or for Brian and her old life. She remembered Carl’s lovemaking, the way he had touched her, entered her with such reverence, as if she were a precious gift. I can’t believe I’m so lucky. How many times had he told her?
“I’m off in a couple of days. I’m thinking of driving up.”
Gilly’s heart surged with longing. But no, she told him, no, and when he asked why, she said she’d made plans with Liz. It was easier than the truth, which was that there was nothing she could give him, or any man, without betraying Brian.
They hung up, and Carl texted her almost immediately. I’m coming anyway.
Gilly had a flat tire on her way to the police station and wondered, as she stood looking at it, if it was a sign. She didn’t have long to think about it before a white van pulled in behind her. Shading her eyes, Gilly watched the driver—a man wearing a red ball cap—get out. It crossed her mind that if this were Houston and not Wyatt, she might be concerned. That was the difference between a small town and a big city.
“Howdy,” he said, joining her to look at her right side rear tire. “Looks like you’ve got a flat there.”
“I was considering whether I could drive on it. I have to get gas anyway. I thought maybe I could ask someone at the station to change it. I’ve never done it,” she added, feeling dumb.
“I can do it. Won’t take two shakes.”
“I hate to impose.”
“It’s nothing. I’m familiar with the RAV4. Guy that lives next door to me, his daughter owns one. What year is this?”
“Sixteen,” she answered. She’d bought it new after she got sober, paying cash for it. One more thing the payout from Brian’s life insurance policy had made possible. A woman, overhearing her tell the salesman it would be a cash deal, had said how she envied Gilly.
“No car payment. Wow!” she had said. “What I wouldn’t give.”
Would you give your husband? That’s what Gilly had wanted to ask her.
“Katy’s RAV—that’s the neighbor next door—hers is a twenty-ten,” the man said. “She bought it used. It’s been a good car. I help her with it. Her dad don’t know squat about cars. Can you open the back?”
“Oh, yes.” She popped the hatch, using her key fob. “Sorry.”
“No worries.” He took out the spare, and setting it down, introduced himself. “I’m Warren,” he said. “Warren Jester.”
She hesitated for a moment, worried he’d have seen last night’s news, and if she gave him her name, he’d put it together with her photo. “Gillian O’Connell,” she said. “Most folks call me Gilly.” She watched, but if he recognized her, he gave no sign.
He put out his hand, and she took it, losing hers in his larger grasp. His palm felt dry and rough, and his knuckles were large, reddened knobs. They were a workman’s hands. Gilly had the impression he’d struggled, that if she were to ask him, he would say nothing in life had come easy to him, and he had no expectation it would ever be different. He seemed old to her. His face was deeply creased on either side of his nose, and his eyes were kind but looked weary. He might have been fifty or seventy. She wasn’t good at guessing ages.
He squatted down, and setting his lug wrench to one side, he maneuvered the jack in front of the tire until he was satisfied with its position.
“I knew something wasn’t right,” Gilly said. “It was steering funny.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s a good thing you stopped. You drive on a flat, you bend the wheel rim. Cost you a lot more, replacing that.”
She looked out at the highway. They were east of town on FM 1620, the major route through Wyatt. Traffic was steady, and the air was laden with gas fumes, the more acrid smell of warm tar. The wind buffeted her legs, rippled the fabric of her shirt. Although it was barely midmorning, it was already hot, and where she’d pulled over there wasn’t a shred of protection from the sun’s glare. She felt bad for Warren, having to do this chore in the heat. She thought of retrieving the umbrella she kept in the car for rainy days, but she didn’t want to embarrass him, holding it open over his head. At least he had the cap.
“Are you a Rockets fan?” she asked, spotting the logo.
“Not so much since Olajuwon left the team. Never been a player since like him.”
“That’s what my dad says.”
“Y’all live here in town?”
“I do. I moved here not long ago. My parents are in Houston, though.” She bit her lip, afraid he’d put it together now for sure, turn to her and say she looked familiar, that he thought he’d seen her on the news. Aren’t you that psychic?
But he went on with his task, and his movements were calm, practiced, methodical. He didn’t seem in the least perturbed. She was sweating, but he didn’t appear to be. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you from Wyatt?”
“Victoria,” he said, naming a town close to the gulf coast. He had popped off the hubcap, and he was dropping the bolts into it as he unscrewed them. “I heard about the little girl who’s missing in the area. I work with search teams sometimes. I like to help out when I can.” He sat back on his heels, pushed his cap back on his head, stirred the bolts in the hubcap with the tip of his index finger.
Counting them, Gilly thought. Making sure he hadn’t dropped one. He was careful with the details.
He was a journeyman carpenter between jobs, he said, pulling off the flat. Within minutes, he’d settled the spare into place, tightened the bolts, and lowered the RAV off the jack. “You want me to set this back there in the hatch?” he asked, indicating the flat tire. He wiped his brow and his hands on a handkerchief he pulled from his pants pocket. It looked freshly washed and ironed.
Old-fashioned.
Gilly couldn’t recall seeing a man with a handkerchief in years, if ever. She glanced up at Warren, half smiling. It was endearing somehow. She said, “If you don’t mind.”
“There’s a nail in it.” He showed her the nail head where it had pierced the tread. “You can get it fixed. Don’t let them boys at the tire store talk you into buying a new one.” He rolled the tire to the rear of the car and lifted it inside.
Gilly closed it remotely. She offered to pay him for his help, but he refused. “Then let me buy you lunch, or at least a cup of coffee,” she said. “I work at Cricket’s. It’s the café on the town square?”
He picked up the tools. He was familiar with the place, he said. “I’ve seen it driving through town. I’m staying at the Motel 6, and I’ll be there
as long as there’s a need for search and rescue.” He stowed the jack and the lug wrench.
Gilly thanked him.
Warren lifted his cap, resettled it. “I’ll stop by Cricket’s sometime, take you up on that cup of coffee.”
“Yes,” she said. “Please do.” She’d make sure to offer Warren a slice of pie, something sweet to go with it, she decided, as she slid behind the wheel.
Gilly drove on her spare tire to the police station, and she was at first relieved to run into Sergeant Carter and not Captain Mackie on her way inside. The sergeant held open the door for her, and she asked about the search effort.
“Tip line’s generating a lot of calls,” he answered.
A woman in uniform was on the phone behind the lobby counter, and looking up at the sergeant, she shook her head, a gesture Gilly understood to mean the call she was taking was nothing that required the sergeant’s attention.
He turned to Gilly. “So what can I do for you?”
“I need your help,” she said, and it almost killed her having to ask a cop for assistance.
“All right. You want to come this way?” He led her through a battered metal door and across a large room that was broken into cubicles, framed by shoulder-high partitions. Phones rang in discordant harmony. There was a jumble of voices.
“Volunteers.” The sergeant explained the source for all the chatter. “We don’t have enough staff to handle the calls that are coming in.”
“I could help with that,” Gilly said, but if he heard her offer, he didn’t acknowledge it.
“There’s coffee.” He paused beside a table set with a huge, ancient-looking commercial machine.
Two hard water–stained glass carafes sat on two warmers. The smell was stale, burned, with an underscore of something sweet. Gilly noticed the crushed shape of a pastry box in the overflowing waste can.
“I can’t vouch for it.” The sergeant poured some of the brew into a foam cup, handing it to her.
Gilly didn’t want it. She only accepted out of courtesy and the need to do something with her hands. She followed him into a nearby cubicle, sat in the chair he indicated, and while she fumbled with the cup and her purse, he sat behind a battered desk, regarding her without expression. Waiting for her to speak first.
Because that’s how cops operated. Gilly knew that. “I guess you know Cricket has closed the café for the time being. To everyday traffic,” she said, and it irked her that she’d done what he wanted, filled in the silence, as if she were here to pass the time of day.
“She brought the sandwiches y’all made out to the search teams yesterday.”
“We’re doing it again—every day the search goes on.” Gilly repeated what April had told her earlier.
“There were at least a hundred folks out there,” Carter said. “I expect there’ll be more today with the word getting out through the news and all.” His look seemed intent, pointed.
Gilly crossed her knees.
“We’ve never had anything like this go on around here before.” He nudged the desk blotter. “A couple of folks have gone missing from Wyatt in years past but never a child.”
“The trike Jake found in the woods at the school—on the news last night they said it didn’t belong to Zoe. Hers was found at a neighbor’s house?”
“Yeah, well, we never figured it had anything to do with Zoe. I know folks thought it was some kind of bait, but it belonged to Megan Phillips. Her dad, Ben—you know him?”
Gilly nodded. Red hair, freckles, English muffin, coffee black, 8:00 a.m. sharp, Monday through Friday, regular as moonrise. He sold insurance and always had a joke to tell.
“Kids like to ride the trail back there, behind the school.” Ken’s tone suggested he couldn’t imagine why. “Ben said he got a phone call, some kind of semi-urgent thing, and somehow Megan’s trike got left there.”
Gilly didn’t say anything. She’d gone along with the idea everyone in town seemed to have, that the trike had significance. She’d seen it in her dream. But the dream had been wrong. Again. She tucked her hair behind her ear.
The sergeant drummed his fingers on the desk edge.
“The news story last night,” Gilly began, and she noted the slight lift to his chin, a look in his eyes that seemed to say, Here we go. “It was inaccurate.”
“In what way?”
“I’m not a psychic, and I’m not employed by, nor have I been consulted by, the Halstead family about Zoe’s disappearance.”
“All right. But I’m not sure what your purpose is, telling me this.”
“I’d like you—the Wyatt police—to correct what was reported, or make KTKY and Suki Daniels issue a correction.” Gilly didn’t want to name Jake, to cause him more trouble by accusing him of giving a false impression of her to the reporter. “Ms. Daniels should have checked with me before airing such nonsense.”
“Well, that’s not—the media isn’t under our jurisdiction. Freedom of speech and all that—”
Gilly set her coffee, untouched, on the desk. “They made it seem as if it’s going to be me and not the police who finds Zoe. They practically came out and said the Halstead family has no faith in local law enforcement. I wouldn’t think you or your department would like it any more than I do.”
“We don’t.”
“Then I don’t understand why you can’t make them retract the story.”
“As I just said, here in the USA there’s such a thing as free speech.”
“So they can deliberately mislead the public—” Gilly stopped. Of course they could and did. All the time. She looked into her lap, irked—at the sergeant, at herself.
“You could try a lawyer.”
Her gaze came up.
“It’s possible an attorney might be able to advise you if there’s a way to make KTKY set the record straight.”
Gilly didn’t answer.
“Look.” The sergeant bent, his weight on his elbows. “I’ve got to tell you, I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe people can see the future, or anything else other than what’s as solid as their hand in front of their face. But even if I did, what good is it? Of what possible use is it to me as a cop to know you dreamed Zoe Halstead was abducted the night before she actually was? I’m not trying to be an asshole here, okay? I really want to know.”
“Yeah, me too. When I have the dreams—it makes me sick and angry. They’re like a terrible joke because there’s nothing I can do. I’m never shown what to do.”
“We’ve had a couple of calls come into the tip line since the KTKY story about you. Two other women, claiming they’re psychic. One of them saying Zoe’s body is somewhere near water—”
“Are you kidding? You mean as if Zoe’s—”
“Dead. Yeah. The other so-called psychic says Zoe’s alive but being held captive. She claims the kidnapper is a man, and he’s holding Zoe in an apartment in Waco with a name that has something to do with cowboy boots or cactus. She doesn’t know which.”
“Is there any evidence to support either theory?”
“Not so far, but that’s the thing, see? We’ve got to run down every call, every lead. We’re looking at apartment complexes in Waco, and blue sedans—that lead’s per your dream. We’re looking at lakes and rivers, even stock ponds, statewide. It takes time. And if there’s one thing that little girl doesn’t have, Ms. O’Connell, it’s time.”
“You’re not looking for blue sedans because of me and what I dreamed. You have a witness, don’t you? One who actually saw Zoe get into a blue car.”
“Yes, but my point is, real or bogus, we have to follow every lead.”
Gilly stared at him.
“The potential is always there that someone like you, calling in with this type of information—”
“I didn’t call in—”
“Maybe you’re just looking for attention, your fifteen minutes, so to speak. Or maybe you’re involved somehow, and you’re trying to manipulate the investigation. Or maybe you think it’s funny, misle
ading law enforcement.”
“I don’t think a single thing about this is funny, Sergeant.”
The short silence was heated.
Gilly broke it. “I hope you aren’t suggesting I took Zoe.” Could he be? Hadn’t Captain Mackie said she was clear of suspicion? She wished now she could have spoken to him and not the sergeant. “I would never do that—”
“Uh, wait a minute.” The sergeant raised his hands a bit above the desktop. “Before you say more—we know you’re on probation for abducting a baby from a Houston hospital. So it wouldn’t be exactly true, would it—to say you’d never take a child?”
Gilly shifted her glance. The urge to defend herself, to ask the sergeant if he knew the circumstances, jammed the space behind her teeth. But she wouldn’t play the pity card. She wouldn’t say that under ordinary circumstances, when she wasn’t insane with grief and doping herself to forget, she would never have committed such a horrible act. “I don’t know what your intention is, Sergeant, in reminding me of what I did and the fact that I’m on probation for it.”
“You aren’t a suspect in this case if that’s what’s got you worried.”
“That’s good to know, but maybe, unlike Captain Mackie, you continue to have doubts about me. Would I have come here if I’d had anything to do with Zoe’s disappearance? Would I be asking for your help in getting the truth out through the media?”
“Well, like I said, a lawyer’s your best bet there.”
He didn’t trust her. That was obvious. But wasn’t it the nature of law enforcement personnel to be suspicious? It was probably a job requirement. She knew Ken Carter was well liked and well respected around town. She had liked him, too, the times she’d served him at Cricket’s. She stood up, shouldering her purse.
“It’s nothing personal, Ms. O’Connell. Something like this—when it involves a child—everyone’s a suspect, you know? Friends, family members. Everybody in this town is looking at everybody else.”
“I understand,” Gilly said, and she did to a degree. April had said the same thing. But as far as she knew, April hadn’t been questioned by the police. She hadn’t come under suspicion or been featured on the news, and April had served time in prison for murder. “Thanks for talking to me,” Gilly said.
What Lies Below: A Novel Page 17