What Lies Below: A Novel

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  One Thanksgiving, with her whole family over for dinner, she’d taken him out behind her dad’s workshop, and he’d held her, impaled on him, against the wall, both of them fully clothed. He’d called her his kryptonite. Somehow he’d known it wasn’t love but obsession that drove them. Still, when they’d talked about marriage, he had wanted it, wanted her in his bed. They had dreamed of days spent building a life together.

  “We were so young then,” she said now. Her gaze on his intent as if she could see the memories rising like vapor in his mind.

  “Yeah,” he said. Then, “I should go—” But he didn’t know where. He glanced at his watch. Just past four. More than fifty hours since Zoe had disappeared. Two revolutions of the earth, and he was no closer to finding her. He felt like he was approaching the edge of an abyss. He felt like running, full tilt, headlong. He locked his knees.

  “You’ll be at the vigil?” Karen asked.

  “I guess, yeah, if I can. If nothing—if Zoe isn’t—” He looked over Karen’s head and spotted his mom talking to Augie and Mandy. “I should go,” he repeated.

  Karen caught his hand.

  Her touch jolted him. Their eyes locked. Her shift toward him was almost imperceptible, but he felt it, the moment shimmered with the heat of old desire. He might have cupped her cheek, bent to brush her lips with his, and he knew she would welcome him. It was all he could do not to act on the impulse. He could lose himself in her, lose his mind, the god-awful panic.

  “Zoe will be all right,” she said. “I just know it.”

  He nodded and left her, wishing he had her faith.

  “Hey, bud, how you holding up?” Augie asked when Jake joined him.

  “All right,” he said.

  “You passed the lie detector, did they tell you?” his mom asked.

  “Yeah, but how did you find out?”

  “The Madrone County sheriff—deputy—whatever he is—John something—called Clint and he was kind enough to tell me. As if you wouldn’t—”

  “It’s okay, Ma. At least now the cops are focused where they need to be—on other suspects.”

  “But the film of the woman and little girl, wading in the lake, it wasn’t of any use?”

  “Nah. Too grayed out. It showed the woman driving, her profile. You could tell there was a car seat with a child in it—” He broke off, seeing the image again in his mind. The tech had run the film in slo-mo, and he’d bent close to the monitor, hardly daring to breathe. The figures were the right size and appeared to be the right ages to be his ex and his daughter. But that was his desperation talking.

  He wasn’t an idiot. He knew none of the timing worked. Even if the little girl in the film was Zoe, the woman with her wasn’t her mom. Stephanie had been in Dallas, in an altercation with a dope dealer, one that had landed her in jail. Alibis didn’t get better than that.

  Jake said, “I don’t get why the park installed security cameras in the first place when the film quality is crap. Why even have them?”

  “They only got them last year,” Mandy said. “Remember? After AJ Isley’s truck was found burned up there.”

  “The truck—Clint said it was a Ford.”

  Jake met Augie’s glance. “F-250 with a camper top. Not so new. Early two thousands, I’m guessing. Light colored, maybe white or tan. Texas plate, but it was smeared with dirt. Maybe on purpose. They’re still looking at footage, trying to find where the two left the park.”

  “Maybe it’s time to offer a reward.”

  Jake looked at his mom.

  “I’ve got fifteen thousand cash we can put up right now. We can borrow money on our houses, the business, whatever it takes.” She kept his gaze. “I think we have to face facts here, honey. Zoe wasn’t taken by anyone we know. She’s not with Stephanie, or even Stephanie’s boyfriend.”

  “We don’t know that for sure, though, until we find Duchene.”

  “But he’s no less a stranger than someone else would be, is he? A reward might entice him to come forward, give Zoe back.”

  “And risk getting caught?” Jake asked.

  “Someone could have seen him with her,” Augie said. “The reward might work to get a witness to come forward.”

  “I can probably lay hands on thirty, thirty-five thousand,” Jake said, and somehow he felt as if he were signing off on some kind of death warrant. He felt this was it, the end of the road.

  “What about a GoFundMe campaign?” Mandy asked. “I know folks would contribute, and the money could go toward a bigger reward for information, or it could go for more resources—you know, more personnel and equipment, what local law enforcement can’t afford. Another helicopter.”

  The county had pulled the one that had gone up initially when, after hours in the air, it had detected nothing. Eventually it would all go, every resource—the search-and-rescue teams, the dozens of volunteers, Jake’s old friends. They wouldn’t stick around forever. They had lives, other obligations. There would be other crimes, other missing children, God forbid. Jake knew this; he knew every hour that passed lessened the chances that Zoe would be found safe and unharmed. But he couldn’t stay with the knowing. He couldn’t look directly at it. He said, “I don’t want to take people’s money.”

  His mom said, “Sometimes you have to accept help when it’s given, honey.”

  “We want to help,” Mandy said, and her voice trembled. “You have to let us.”

  Janet joined them, and if she was aware of the tension in the air, she gave no sign. “We’re headed into town with the fliers. Y’all want to take a stack?”

  “You bet,” Augie answered. “Anybody need a ride?”

  Janet said she was riding with Karen and Cody.

  Mandy hugged Jake and then his mom. “We’ll see you at the vigil? You heard about it, right?”

  “From Karen,” Jake said. He looked toward the edge of the parking lot, where she was getting into a car.

  Mandy squeezed his hand and left with Augie.

  “I saw you talking to her.” Jake’s mom was watching Karen, too.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was weird. She apologized.”

  “For?”

  “Prom, I guess. Not answering the door, she said.”

  His mom made a face.

  The list of Karen’s offenses had gone way past that. But Jake knew he wasn’t blameless. The head games they’d played, certainly the sex, had been mutual. The night of their senior prom, when she’d left his knock unanswered, had been it for him, though, the final seconds of the final game in the series.

  He had known she was there, standing on the other side of the door. He’d left the box with her wrist corsage, a circlet of tiny pale-pink rosebuds accented with white blooming stephanotis, on the seat of the porch swing. His parting gift. Then, for reasons unknown even to him, he’d parked the Thunderbird out of sight, and concealed himself in the neighbor’s shrubbery. She’d come onto the porch, as he had known she would. She’d looked up and down the street as if she knew he was there, a witness, and it thrilled her that he was watching. He was dead certain of her excitement when she took the corsage from the box and shredded it, taking her time, making sure every petal and leaf was destroyed. His stomach had twisted, seeing that.

  His reaction just now when Karen had touched him—the heat between them, the specter of old desire he had felt—confused him. It was as if his body had a separate agenda from his brain, and it rattled him; it burned him up. There was no room for that sort of distraction.

  “She lives in Lubbock with her husband.” His mom added special emphasis to it—the word husband. “No children,” she added.

  “Yeah, she told me,” Jake said.

  “You’re okay?”

  “Mom, it was years ago.”

  “I know, it’s just you were so—” She paused, changed direction. “I’m glad to see your old friends, so grateful for their support. But the reason for it—” Her voice broke. “Where is she, Jake? Where is Zoe? What if we never find her?” No
w, as if horrified at having put it into words, their darkest fear, she clapped her hand to her mouth.

  Jake slipped his arm around her shoulders, tucking her against him, taking comfort from comforting her.

  20

  Gilly didn’t ordinarily take naps, but that afternoon, after she walked Bailey, after she forced herself to eat half a slice of buttered toast, she went into her bedroom and lay down. Not with the idea of dreaming, although it was in her mind, and at first, when the dream began, it didn’t seem to have a thing to do with Zoe. The initial imagery was of a house in the country. It sat down from the road, low enough that when passing it, you would see only the peak of the roof, part of a chimney. It was two-story, native limestone with faded green shutters, one of which hung askew. The porch sagged. Boards covered all but one of the six front windows. A thick-trunked live oak towered over one corner of the rusted metal roof, wind-twisted and bent. Sequins of light glimmered through the dense canopy.

  Gilly saw the house, the tree, all of it, as if she were looking down into a snow globe, a tiny world under glass. She picked it up, held it at eye level, and that’s when she saw the white pickup truck with the camper top. It was parked around back. Something was hanging from the rearview mirror, looped around it, making a bow. Gilly put her eye against the glass, bringing the image closer, and then she was inside the snow globe, inside the cab of the truck, in the driver’s seat, reaching for it, the length of faded ribbon tied onto the mirror’s metal bracket. It was satin, a blue so faded it was nearly white. Gilly had seen the ribbon before. It was the one Zoe Halstead carried, the one Jake had told Gilly had once belonged to Zoe’s mother.

  Gilly’s breath went down hard. She stared through the truck’s windshield at the house, the back door that was only steps away. Zoe was in there; Gilly could feel it. She lifted the truck’s door handle, and it wouldn’t budge. She scooted across the bench seat to the passenger side, and when that door wouldn’t budge either, she grasped the handle, lifted it, and rammed the door with her shoulder, shouting when pain jolted down her arm.

  But now she was outside the globe, holding it in her hands, and the shift was so sudden, she dropped it. Bits of glass and liquid spattered her legs, and that quickly it was night. She was in Houston, on the street outside the convenience store where Brian had been shot, staring down at her legs, knowing he was dead, and her water had broken. Soon, she would give birth to Sophie, only to lose her, too, all over again.

  Behind her, someone called her name. She wheeled and saw a man, coming quickly toward her. She ran from him, through a maze of streets, breathing hard, lost, flailing. It was the sound of whimpering that woke her. She thought it was Bailey. When she’d come to lie down, he’d jumped onto the foot of the bed, turned in circles, making his usual nest. He was there now, but quiet, head cocked to one side, watching her, eyes worried, and she knew she had been the one to cry out.

  “Sorry, buddy,” she said. “Bad dream.”

  Maybe not. A voice—not Miss Two-shoes, not the monkey, her intuition—spoke in her brain.

  Gilly sat up. Closing her eyes, she saw the house again, the faded green shutters, the boarded windows, the live oak. Now the white pickup. It had been dirty, the windshield bug specked. That ribbon—Gilly felt its satin smoothness. Was the sense of it valid? A real and true clue to Zoe’s whereabouts? Gilly’s stomach knotted. She swung her bare feet to the floor, ran her fingers through her sleep-matted hair, tucking it behind her ears.

  She picked up her cell phone from the night table but then sat with it cradled loosely in her hands. If she called Jake, Captain Mackie, whomever—what would she say? Even if the dream was accurate, and the length of blue ribbon hanging from the dream truck’s rearview mirror belonged to Zoe, Gilly couldn’t place the location. There must be any number of native limestone houses around the countryside. Any number of dirty white pickups. She’d seen nothing significant. No landmark, or road sign, nothing definitive—as usual. The dream was as useless as all the rest. She dropped the phone onto the bed, dropped her head into her hands.

  Why?

  Why did her brain do this?

  Bailey wormed his nose under her elbow, and she pulled him into her lap, rubbing his ears. “Where would I be without you, buddy?”

  He wriggled, turning into her. He had a nose for when she needed comfort, and he used it now, snuffling a trail up under her chin, resting his paws and then his snout on her shoulder, a doggy hug. She buried her face in his fur, leaking tears that irked her. But Bailey was impervious. Let them be, he seemed to say.

  Gilly lifted her head when the monkey started in, chattering something about fixing a stiff one. Shut up, she told him, sniffing, wiping under her nose. Atta girl, said Miss Goody. “You shut up, too,” Gilly told her.

  Bailey jumped off the bed and shook himself. Tail wagging, he looked eagerly up at her.

  “You need to go out, buddy?”

  A half hour later, when she’d seen to Bailey’s needs, she was still fighting with herself about the dream. The image of the blue ribbon looped around the metal arm of the truck’s rearview floated in her mental vision. It worried her. She kept eyeing it, sidelong. Other details from the scene, the truck itself, the green-shuttered house, the live oak, flitted through her mind like thieves. What use were they, though, when she recognized none of them?

  It was Julia who made Gilly see it. “Just checking up on you, girl,” she said when she called.

  Gilly sat at her kitchen table, Bailey curled at her feet, and caught Julia up, describing her visit with Jake, explaining that he wasn’t the one who had misled the media. It relieved her, she realized. She hadn’t wanted it to be him. Nor did she want it to matter. But her heart didn’t seem to care what she wanted. When she spoke, when she said to Julia, “I had another dream,” it was an attempt to distract herself.

  “Oh?” Julia’s interest was piqued. “Last night?”

  “Just now. I was only going to lie down for a bit, but I fell sound asleep.” Gilly didn’t say she’d asked for it, to be given a sign. That against her will, her desire to help Jake and Zoe had needled its way under her skin, pricked her heart, and now lodged there at her core. She gave Julia the gist of it, expecting her to agree the dream was like all the rest, totally worthless. But Julia didn’t.

  “You may not know the house, but what if someone else does?” she said. “You’re new in the area, but someone who’s more familiar with property outside Wyatt might recognize it from your description.”

  Gilly straightened. That hadn’t occurred to her, and she said so. She slid her feet into her sandals, got her keys, and her purse. She said goodbye to Bailey, who followed her to the door, eyeing her mournfully as she closed it behind her. “What do you think?” she asked Julia. “Should I find Jake, or go to the police? Not Jake,” she answered her own question.

  “Why not?” Julia asked.

  Gilly got into her car. “I don’t want to get his hopes up if it’s nothing.”

  “Ah, good thought,” Julia said.

  “Maybe I could talk to Cricket or try and find Captain Mackie,” Gilly said. “He actually seemed open to the idea of working with a psychic. Not that I am one,” she added quickly.

  “Wouldn’t it be some kind of miracle if your dream led to finding Zoe,” Julia said.

  “Big if,” Gilly said.

  21

  Jake talked his mom into leaving the school grounds and going home to rest. He told her he’d pick her up in time for the vigil. “I don’t see the point of lighting candles and praying,” he said, walking her to her car. “But I’ll go.”

  “People want to do it,” she said, shutting her car door, lowering the window. “Prayers—turning your fear over to God—it can’t hurt.”

  Jake didn’t answer. He wouldn’t say he’d pretty much given up on God.

  He was back in the picnic area, talking to a few of the volunteers, when Clint found him and beckoned him to a table out of earshot. He was keyed up, tense. />
  “We found a car behind Burley’s, the bait shop near the lake,” he said. “A metallic-blue Toyota Corolla. This was in the back seat.” He flipped through photos on his phone, and finding the one he wanted, held up the screen.

  Jake looked. Nemo’s orange face, the big eyes and friendly smile, looked back. His breath went down hard. “Zoe’s?”

  “Yeah. It’s got her name inside. We’re sending it, along with the car, to the lab in Austin. Get the techs to go over it. We already know from the tags that the car’s a rental. We should have more information, maybe in a few hours. They know the situation, that time is critical.”

  Jake didn’t answer. He felt stunned. He couldn’t find wits to speak.

  “You need to sit down?” He gave Jake a nudge, forcing him to sit. “You need water?”

  Not waiting for an answer, he got a couple of bottles of water from a nearby cooler, and handing Jake one, settled on the bench across from him.

  Jake downed half the contents of the bottle in one gulp. He pressed the cool plastic to his forehead. “This is just surreal,” he said after a moment.

  “Yeah.”

  They shared a beat.

  “You got any idea—” Clint began.

  “Duchene? Have you found him?”

  “Not yet. He’s still a possibility, but with the film footage and all showing a woman—”