What Lies Below: A Novel

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  “No problem.” The sergeant followed her from the cubicle. He held the door to the lobby open for her.

  There was a man at the duty desk, talking to the uniformed officer behind it. Gilly had a moment to observe him, long enough to feel he was familiar, even to feel a kind of dread, and when he turned to her and she saw who he was, her heart stalled.

  “You!” The word was a bullet. It was hate coming from his mouth, and Gilly stiffened.

  She felt Sergeant Carter come to attention behind her.

  The man, addressing the uniformed desk officer, asked if Gilly was under arrest. “Are you cops finally doing your damn job?”

  “You know him?” Sergeant Carter asked quietly.

  “It’s Mark Riley,” Gilly said. “The father of the baby I took in Houston.”

  Sergeant Carter stepped around her, drawing Mark Riley’s attention, saying his name, introducing himself, hand extended. “I’m Sergeant Carter. How can I help you today?”

  Mark ignored the sergeant’s hand. “You putting her in jail? That’s all the help I need.”

  “Why don’t you come with me? We can talk about it.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, goddammit. How many kids are you assholes going to let her take before you do the right thing and lock her up? Or am I going to have to take care of it? Huh?”

  “Mr. Riley—”

  “Just answer the damn question. It’s simple enough, isn’t it?” Mark took a step toward the sergeant, where he stood in front of Gilly.

  She caught Sergeant Carter’s glance. He nodded toward the police station entrance. “Why don’t you go on?”

  Gilly started across the lobby, and when Mark lunged at her, when he shouted, “You’re a monster, a sick bitch, and I will see you in jail, do you hear me? Or dead!” she ran for the double glass doors, flinging one open, hurling herself through it.

  “No! You can’t let her go!” Mark’s shout followed her.

  Gilly didn’t look back.

  She was shaking and pulled into a strip center down the street from the police station. Parking in front of a dry cleaner’s, she sat staring, sightless, hands gripping the steering wheel.

  Carl had said it would happen, but how had Mark Riley found her?

  She bent her head to her knuckled fists. The Rileys knew she’d moved. She had written a letter, telling them. Gilly had wanted them to know. She had thought it would help, bring them some kind of relief, knowing she was no longer in Houston, nowhere near their daughter. But she hadn’t given her destination. Carl had warned her even before she’d left Houston. He’d said Mark was a danger to her. He’d seen guys like him before, chip on their shoulder, wild in their eyes, take no shit off anybody. Carl had said Mark Riley wasn’t the kind to let some woman get one over on him.

  Mark had threatened her once, outside on the courthouse steps after the judge sentenced Gilly to probation.

  He’d come out of the crowd quickly, and before she could react, he’d put his lips near her ear and said, “You ever come near my family again, I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”

  Carl had been with her, and he’d been a witness. The two had scuffled. Other cops had jumped on Mark, too. He’d had no chance. But she understood the motive for his attack. She knew how fear for someone you loved—your little child, who relied on you for protection—could morph into rage, how you might want to kill the person who had created the danger. Sometimes she wished Mark had done what he wanted—taken her down, ended it for her. Then she wouldn’t have to live with the shame of the harm she’d caused. She wouldn’t have to fight so hard to be normal.

  Gilly got out her phone now, but Carl didn’t pick up. His voice mail came on.

  “Hey,” she said. “It’s nothing. Just—I’d like to talk to you when you get a chance.”

  She severed the connection, sorry she’d made the call. She didn’t want to add to Carl’s worry or encourage him in the idea they had a future. She didn’t want him to come here, where she would be tempted to lean on him. It wasn’t fair to him. He could do better than her, better than somebody who wasn’t sure she cared whether she had a future.

  You can’t outrun your past.

  Someone had warned her about that recently, Gilly thought. Who? Her mom? Julia?

  What was Mark Riley telling Sergeant Carter about her right now? She guessed it wouldn’t have been all that difficult, finding her, not with the internet. It could be done, if you were determined. Obsessed. A control freak. That was how Carl had described Mark. After he threatened her at the courthouse, Carl had looked into Mark’s background and learned he’d been arrested for punching his wife. Not his current wife, the mother of Anne Clementine, but his first wife. It was years ago. He’d been ordered to attend anger management classes as part of his sentence. He’d been in a couple of bar fights since, but the charges had been dropped. Carl said Mark’s history showed an affinity for violence—specifically, violence against women. You watch out for that guy. If you see him, don’t engage with him. You call me immediately.

  Gilly hadn’t followed Carl’s instructions. She had written to the Rileys, possibly reigniting Mark’s hostility, his need to see Gilly punished, and now not only had he found her, but he knew about Zoe, that Gilly had been implicated in yet another child abduction.

  If only Brian were here. But he’s not, said Miss Goody Two-shoes. Pull up your big-girl panties. Gilly blinked away the burn of tears. She got a tissue from her purse, blew her nose, wiped her eyes. Of all the places and all the times she could have chosen to start over, why here? Why now? Sergeant Carter had said nothing like this had ever happened in Wyatt. The town had never lost one of its children. He had seemed to soften toward her by the end of their interview. But he would likely change his mind once Mark Riley went through it step-by-step—how Gilly had taken his child, an infant barely one day old, and had gotten off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

  She would be under suspicion again. Her probation could be revoked. She’d be sent to prison. It was what Mark wanted. Maybe that was the whole idea. He wouldn’t stop with the local police. He’d tell his story to Suki Daniels. Then everyone in Wyatt—Jake—Jake Halstead would know. Gilly hated that as much as anything. But she was angry at him, too. He’d been wrong to go behind her back and speak about her to the media, telling them lies about a dream—a damn dream she’d had that meant nothing.

  Less than nothing.

  Why couldn’t he see it? How useless it was?

  Maybe she should refer him to Sergeant Carter for an interpretation. Ken Carter would happily share his impression of Gilly’s so-called psychic skill. She picked up her phone again, punching in Jake’s number.

  The call was answered, and she straightened, but it was only Jake’s voice mail. She groped for words, having nothing prepared for a message. “We need to talk.” She paused. “You can’t pretend you don’t know what this is about.” Pause. She let her stare drift. Then, not caring how he took it, “If you don’t call me back, I will find you.”

  17

  It was no ordinary jail visit—Jake had needed special permission to see Stephanie—but then the circumstances weren’t ordinary. It occurred to him that reality TV had nothing in its programming that compared to his life now. He shifted uneasily in the plastic chair.

  Habit had him reaching into his jeans pocket for his cell phone, something to do, but then he remembered he’d had to surrender it, along with his wallet and keys, before they’d let him come back here. He leaned forward, setting his elbows on the table. According to the guard who had escorted him, the room itself was an exception, not one ordinarily used for jailhouse visits. He wondered if it was bugged, whether he was being watched. He couldn’t see how. It was windowless and empty except for the table and two chairs. There wasn’t a camera, not that was visible to him anyway.

  Jake sat back, shifted his feet. Waited. Dry mouthed. Panic kept trying to stand up in his gut, and he kept shoving it down. He was worried about his ph
one—that he’d had to leave it. The guard had said if he heard any news about Zoe he’d let Jake know immediately. But it wasn’t the same, wasn’t good enough. He stood up, sat back down.

  You didn’t want her anyway.

  The caller’s words circled in his brain in an ever-tightening loop, agitating, shameful. He didn’t know how he could have felt that way. It nearly killed him, remembering. Who had he been then? He didn’t know. But he did know Stephanie was one of only three other people besides himself who had known his state of mind. She’d shared his fear of becoming a parent, possibly feeling the weight of looming responsibility even more deeply. What was he going to say to her? Where the hell is our kid? Jesus God, if the woman—if that bastard Duchene—if they’d done something to Zoe—

  The door opened, and she was there. A small-framed woman lost inside an overlarge suit of clothes, a boxy shirt and pants, striped in faded black and white. DALLAS COUNTY INMATE was stamped across a pocket. The woman was wild-haired, wild-eyed. Twitchy. She picked at her arms, reached for her earlobe, touched her temple, pulled at her lip. She looked scared. But maybe she was still high. Jake couldn’t tell. She was barely recognizable to him. It was hard to believe she’d once been the object if not of his love then of his obsession.

  The guard pushed her forward. She said his name. “Jake?”

  It was the sound of her voice that did it, snapped into place his acceptance that it was indeed Stephanie, his ex-wife. He thought about standing up, but he didn’t feel capable. In all their history, he’d never seen her in jail garb; he’d never had to. The times she was picked up in Wyatt, Clint had been there to bring her home. Folks in town had looked out for her, covered for her on Jake’s account, for his and Zoe’s sakes. But Stephanie wasn’t known here. She’d landed someplace now where no one gave a shit about her.

  Pulling out the opposite chair, she sat down. Her fingertips danced across the tabletop, then plucked at her shirt. She was as pale as an egg and sweating. She swiped the wet from her hairline, from beneath her eyes, below her chin. She was suffering, coming down off whatever she’d been on.

  Jake looked away, fighting disgust, pity, an angrier, half-panicked urge to run.

  “You got thirty minutes,” the guard said, and he left the room, closing the door. But he didn’t go far. Jake could see him. A part of his uniformed shoulder was visible through the window in the door behind Stephanie.

  “I never expected to see you here.”

  It was the belligerence in her voice that got to Jake. He rapped the table with his knuckles, making her jump. “Where is Zoe?”

  She straightened, blinking at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “A woman picked Zoe up from school Thursday afternoon,” Jake said. “She told the assistant she was Zoe’s mother. That’s you. Zoe hasn’t been home since. Where is she?” Jake kept his tone civil, but there was no absence of menace. He watched Stephanie’s expression, watched her grow paler than she had been, if it was possible.

  She said, “I didn’t—”

  “It had to be you, Steph. You and I both know she would have hollered her head off if it was a stranger who got her.”

  “Look, I swear to you, it wasn’t me. Jake! My God! She didn’t come home?”

  “You called her, right? Sometime recently, you called Zoe at my house—the landline—and you told her you were going to see her soon.”

  “Yes, and I—I meant to, you know, but I—”

  “I’m not interested in your excuses, Steph. Where is our daughter?”

  “I don’t know. The cops asked me, too. I thought it was a joke, a mean joke they were playing—” She broke off, frowning deeply now, and a dawning urgency in her eyes was like a shaft of light through a fog.

  Jake saw it, an inkling of comprehension, along with the nascent thread of alarm, which once she grasped the sense of the danger Zoe was in—assuming she was telling the truth and didn’t know Zoe’s whereabouts any better than he did—would balloon into a bright and all-consuming terror. But he refused to consider the possibility that Stephanie was ignorant of the circumstances. He didn’t care what she had said to the police earlier, or what she claimed now. She was a liar. She’d proven it again and again. She had even told him before that she would lie when the truth would serve her better.

  “Look, it’s no joke. I got a phone call last night—Someone said—You’re the only one who—” He faltered to a stop. He was the uncertain one now. He shot her a glance. “Was it Duchene? Did he call me last night? Did you give him that line to say?”

  Stephanie’s face was creased with strain, the effort to find some solid mental ground. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Zoe lives with you. You’re the one who has custody. How would I know where she is?”

  “What about Duchene? Where is he?”

  “What does he have to do with it?”

  “He’s your boyfriend, your drug buddy. He ran off, didn’t he? While you were stabbing the dealer. What a damn fool thing—”

  “I was defending myself, and so what if Andy took off? He was smarter than me, landing in this hellhole.”

  “Where is he, Steph? Where did he take Zoe?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Don’t tell me he doesn’t have her. I got that call last night, and this morning Clint told me a half dozen folks have called the tip line in the past few hours to say they saw a little girl matching Zoe’s description with a man—”

  “Tip line? My God!” Stephanie stared at Jake, and he could see it, that she was putting the pieces together now—his visit to her and the reason for it. “You’re really serious,” she said. “Zoe’s gone, and you don’t know where. What the hell, Jake?”

  Her shock and the suddenness of her panic, the lash of her damnation of him, cut through to his backbone. Shame rose anew, an oily tide that gagged him. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t stomach seeing in her eyes the reflection of his failure to protect their daughter. Yet some part of him clung to the idea that she was acting, creating a show to throw him off. But the sense of it—that she truly had no idea where Zoe was—shook him. “Duchene has her, doesn’t he?” Jake insisted over his doubt. “You planned this together.”

  “What kind of a monster do you think I am?” Her offense was instant, clarifying, the rising sun burning through the haze of his suspicion, and it infuriated him.

  “You didn’t want her!” The accusation was gone from Jake’s mouth before he could think.

  “Neither did you!” she retorted.

  He looked away. They were squabbling like children, pushing each other’s buttons the way they always had. He couldn’t back off, though. Couldn’t dial it down. “Duchene’s taken his own kids.” He brought his gaze around. “Did you know? He tried to get them out of the country. He was arrested—”

  “Yes, yes.” She was equally impatient. “I know all about that, but Andy doesn’t have Zoe. I swear.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Unless . . .” Stephanie’s gaze drifted.

  “Unless what?” Jake half stood, bristling, agitated.

  She shifted her glance.

  “Unless what, Stephanie?” He was bent over the table, shouting now. He wanted to shake her. It took everything he had not to grab her.

  The guard’s broad face lowered to fill the window. Jake waved him off. He took a moment, getting a grip on himself, then looked back at his ex. “Tell me where Duchene is, Steph.”

  “We talked about it, you know, having our children together. His and mine. Making a family with them. But we were high.”

  Jake groaned. “Jesus God.”

  Stephanie folded her arms, cupped her elbows in her hands. “I never wanted children. I thought—you always said it was fine. You could be fine without them, too.”

  “Do you remember the day Zoe was born?”

  “You cried.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I hated you for it, you know.”

  Jak
e looked up.

  “That you could love her so spontaneously, without reservation, unconditionally. We had the same doubts. You were all for the abortion.”

  “Yeah, and I took you home after you changed your mind.”

  Steph took her gaze away.

  “Why didn’t you go through with it? You’ve never told me.”

  “I was scared. I thought maybe I’d be better off, having the kid, trying to make some kind of life with you.” She looked back at him. “God knows there was nothing for me in New York. The fashion designer gig was over, worse than over. I had a dream, but they cut it up and crammed it down my throat. How many times can you take it? Getting told your designs are boring, or irrelevant, or unflattering, basically that you suck, every day of your life?”

  Jake waited, not responding. He’d used to try and comfort her, to get her to see the possibilities. Maybe New York wasn’t the place for her designs. Maybe it was Dallas, or LA, or even the internet. Who knew? But he’d learned she didn’t want to be encouraged, to move on. She was in love with her story, her role as the victim. It gave her an excuse to quit trying, and finally, it had given her an excuse to take her drinking to the next level.

  “No one cared,” she said.

  “I cared,” Jake said.

  “Out of obligation. It’s the kind of guy you are. You can’t help yourself.” After a moment, she laughed, and the sound was one syllable, a harsh bark. “I thought you’d rub off on me.”

  He kept her gaze.

  “Something happened with you, inside you, the day Zoe was born. The minute you saw her something in your face changed. Your tears . . . I don’t know . . .”

  Jake knew what she meant. He could still remember his feeling of awe.

  “Me? I was just scared shitless. I knew I’d fuck it up, and guess what, I was right. Give me a gold star.” She kept his gaze. “I wanted to feel like you did about Zoe,” she said, speaking so quietly, Jake had to strain to hear. “I wanted to feel that bond that all the new-mother books talk about. But I never—felt—anything. Except tired. Burdened. Pissed off and sick inside.” She looked up, ineffable sadness shadowing her eyes. “She wouldn’t take my milk. Wouldn’t have my breast in her mouth. Do you remember? The nurse gave her a bottle, and that was the end of it. She was on a bottle from then on. She was her daddy’s girl, too. Nothing left over for Mama.”