What Lies Below: A Novel

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  And as convoluted as Liz’s longing was, Gilly did understand it. She wondered if that made her as crazy, as mentally off the charts, as Liz. “You kept up with him all these years, is that right? That’s how you knew he had a daughter?”

  “Our class has a Facebook page. You know Mandy Bright? She runs it, and you know her reputation. Telephone, telegraph, tele—”

  “Mandy,” Gilly finished.

  “I saw her at the school today. She fell on me like I was her long-lost BFF. She hated me back in the day. She and Augie took Jake’s side.”

  “You went to the Little Acorn today?” Disbelief hollowed Gilly’s tone. “Did Jake see you?”

  “We talked. He took my hand, and it was like sparks went off. I know he felt something. If we’d been alone, he would have kissed me. It was all over him. I know he still loves me. When he sees me with Zoe, sees how good I am with her, he’ll realize we could—we were meant to be together. We can still do it, be the family we dreamed about.”

  Liz’s belief, her will that her vision was true, was fierce in her eyes. Maybe she was right, Gilly thought. Maybe Jake did still love her. The making of a child formed such a powerful bond between a man and woman.

  “What about your husband?” Gilly named the obvious obstacle, the one Liz seemed to have forgotten, the man whom she’d claimed had saved her.

  “Roger? He’ll understand. All he wants is for me to be happy. He tells me all the time.” Liz held Gilly’s gaze, seeming unfazed.

  “The police—”

  “You think they scare me?” Liz barked a laugh. “I’ve had the cops sicced on me before. After prom, that summer, Jake’s folks got a judge to issue a restraining order. They accused me of harassing them and Jake. They said I followed him. Because I went in their house a few times. I was only trying to get Jake to do the right thing, to stand up and act like a man—a father. He was going to be a father. I didn’t get pregnant by myself, you know.”

  A pause fell. Gilly looked beyond Liz’s bowed head at the door.

  “I tried killing myself that summer, but I couldn’t even get that right.” Liz turned over her forearms, offering them for Gilly’s examination. The scars led toward the crooks of her elbows. Thin and deadly, they were white now after so many years. “I used Jake’s razor. I got into his bathtub when no one was home. I wanted him to find me. I thought it would wake him up.”

  “You didn’t think about what it would do to your baby, to Cassie?”

  Liz picked up the gun, aiming it at Gilly, sighting down the barrel. “The last time I went in his house”—she lowered the Glock and went on talking as if Gilly hadn’t spoken—“I was just going to wait for him in his bedroom. I went in through the window like I had before. I could hear the TV on in the den. He and his mom and dad were watching the Astros. I was going to sit on his bed until he came, and we could talk. But something happened. I don’t know. I kind of flipped out. I set his bed on fire. They made it out like their whole house burned down. They pressed charges against me for arson and attempted manslaughter, some shit like that. They had a shrink talk to me, and he told the court I was nuts, manic, schizo—whatever. So instead of prison, they locked me up in the psych ward at Austin State Hospital. A month later my baby—Jake’s baby—was born. In a nuthouse! They let her be born there, and she died there. Mama took me to see her. She was so tiny and blue, but she was perfect. I wanted to hold her, but no one would let me. I don’t even know where she’s buried.”

  “Your folks—”

  “They left town, moved to Illinois, where my aunt lives. It was hard on them—what happened to me. The way everyone in the fucking town shunned them after—like their daughter was the devil’s spawn or something. Ha!” Her laugh was brittle. “I got it all over on them, though. I got a guy who drove the laundry truck to get me out. He dropped me at the highway, and Roger picked me up. I rode with him in his semi for almost a year. He made me sane, got me studying to be a nurse. It was after he saw me do CPR on a guy at this diner up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa—another trucker who had a heart attack. I learned CPR at this Red Cross thing my dad made me sign up for in high school. I guess I saved that trucker’s life.”

  She smiled slightly. “It made an impression on Roger. On me, too. It was cool, knowing that man didn’t die because I was there and knew how to take care of him. I thought then maybe I’d be okay. I would help people, make a difference.”

  “The law didn’t come after you?”

  “I was using my middle name, Elizabeth, and anyway Roger and I were always on the move. Then, when we finally settled down, we were married, and I’d become Elizabeth Ames. Everyone was calling me Liz by then. We bought a little country place outside Lubbock, half the state away from here. Roger fancies himself a rancher. He’s got a few head.”

  “Does Roger know you’re here?”

  “I never leave unless he’s on the road.” Liz picked up the Glock, aiming it at Gilly.

  She darted a glance at the door, still ajar, light in the hallway beckoning. Could she, in her condition, get out of here alive, get Zoe, and get away from this lunatic woman? “I’m really thirsty. I could use a drink of water. Would you get it for me? Please?”

  The moment held, silent, unyielding, as visceral and taut as a hanging rope.

  Gilly was amazed when Liz stood up, and pocketing the syringe and the Glock in her hoodie, said, “Don’t move.” She was equally amazed when she disobeyed the order, launching herself at Liz as soon as her back was turned.

  The collision brought Liz to her knees, grunting in surprised pain. Another shove knocked her flat. Gilly heard the cracking sound when Liz’s skull struck the floor. She scooted out of reach, but even as she pulled herself frantically toward the door, and got to her feet, she was waiting for retaliation, a gunshot, the slightest protest.

  But Liz lay still.

  Winded, Gilly thought. She wondered if she should try to get the gun, but Liz was prone. Her arms and the Glock were pinned underneath her, along with the key to the room Zoe was in, and the key to the truck. Gilly couldn’t risk it—turning Liz over, clearing out her pockets. Best to just get Zoe and go.

  Gilly backed out of the bedroom, adrenaline fueling her heartbeat and her steps, pushing back the numbing effects of the morphine. Out in the dimly lit hall, she looked at the other doors, and in the moment it took to wonder which one? she heard whimpering. The sound was hurt, enfeebled, and Gilly followed it to the door at the hallway’s end. She registered it only subliminally when the knob turned easily in her hand. Flinging the door open, the stifling heat and the smell hit her first, a sour, gagging stench of vomit and urine overlay the danker odors of mold and abandonment. But even that was of little consequence when Gilly’s gaze, adjusting to the gloom, found Zoe. She lay curled in a fetal position, a small hump atop a narrow iron bed against the wall.

  Crossing the room, Gilly knelt beside the mattress, hands fluttering, touching Zoe’s damp, matted hair, and her face that was crusted with mucous and tears. Her shirt and shorts looked new, but they were stained and reeked of illness and suffering. She felt warm to Gilly’s touch, and her eyes were open, but they were vacant and glassy. She didn’t seem to know Gilly was there. “Zoe, honey? It’s Gilly. Can you hear me?” Gilly sat back on her heels, staring into those empty eyes, and fury at Liz struck her behind her eyes followed by a prayer: Oh God, please help me. Her pulse tapped her temples.

  Gilly ran her glance to the end of the bed, and when she saw that Zoe was tethered to the footboard, tied by a length of clothesline to one of the iron rods, her anger nearly brought her to her feet. She had visions of the Glock in her hand, holding the muzzle against Liz’s temple, and pulling the trigger.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, but if Zoe heard her, she gave no sign.

  Retracing her route along the hallway, Gilly peered into the room where she had left Liz. She hadn’t moved but lay as she’d fallen, on her belly. Was she dead? Gilly stepped over the threshold and froze when Liz
’s leg twitched, when she groaned, leaving no doubt she was very much alive. If Gilly was going to get Zoe out of here, they had to go now, on foot.

  She returned to Zoe’s bedside, untied the clothesline, and lifted the child into her arms, trying not to mind the wealth of foul odors that moving her unleashed.

  Zoe cried, a series of soft bleats.

  “It’s okay, baby girl. We’re getting out of here.”

  She paused on her way down the hall to check on Liz, and she was alarmed to see she was up on her hands and knees. She had her head down and didn’t seem aware of Gilly passing only feet away.

  Gilly picked up her pace. Her heart pounded. Her breath came in weighted gusts. She felt as if she wore a target on her back and kept waiting for the strike of the bullet between her shoulder blades. Would it lodge there, or go clean through her, burying itself in Zoe? They were crossing the kitchen with only the width of the back porch separating them from the outdoors and possible freedom when Zoe came to enough that she found Gilly’s gaze.

  “Sick,” she whispered and retched, a dry, horrible sound.

  “Almost there, ZooRoo.” She used Jake’s pet name.

  Shifting Zoe upright into a one-armed embrace, she reached for the back door with her free hand. The shot rang out just as she twisted the knob. The sound deafened her. It seemed to go on for hours, centuries, an eon. Now Gilly was the one falling to her knees. She bent over Zoe, shielding her with her body.

  “Don’t make a sound,” she whispered.

  25

  Where are you?” Clint was gruff, angry at Jake for hanging up on him.

  “Near the turnoff to Karen’s house. If I remember, the road isn’t marked. It’s that dogleg just past CR 321, isn’t it?”

  “Pull over. We’ve got a whole new ballgame here.”

  It was the urgency in Clint’s voice that caused Jake to obey. He bumped onto the weedy verge. “What’s happened?”

  “The clerk out at the Quick-Serv called about a car abandoned at a gas pump there. I’m out here now. It’s Gilly’s RAV4. I ran the plate.”

  “Karen’s got her.”

  “Yeah, maybe, as far out as that sounds to me. Clerk says he saw a woman come up to her, saw them talking, but he got distracted. Next time he looked, he saw the woman driving out of here in a white pickup. Could be the same pickup from the park security footage. The clerk didn’t see a passenger—”

  “But Gilly could have been inside, lying down. He get a license plate?”

  “No. He says there was a guy parked in front who saw what went on. Drove a black Lincoln Navigator. The clerk didn’t get his plate either, but Mark Riley drives a black Navigator.”

  “You think he’s in this with Karen?”

  “I don’t know what in the hell is going on. We got a report, too, of a white pickup that was stolen from Burley’s yesterday morning, early.”

  “Where the blue sedan was with Zoe’s backpack inside.”

  “Yeah. The driver left his truck unlocked and running while he went in to get bait. Can you believe it? Dumbass. He said he figured jacking cars didn’t happen in the country.”

  “So Karen saw it and decided it was time to trade—”

  “The idiot couldn’t have helped her out any more if he’d handed her an engraved invitation. She’s got to know law enforcement is on to her.”

  “This is just unbelievable.” Jake’s head felt light.

  “There’s more. I spoke to Roger Ames, Karen’s husband. He’s a long-haul trucker. He’s been on the road for more than two weeks. He didn’t know she’d left home, but he’s kind of suspected something was going on the last several months. He’s noticed she’s been putting miles on her car, a lot more miles than if she’d just been doing routine stuff around town.”

  “Did you tell him she was here, that she’s got Zoe? Can he get hold of her?”

  “She’s not answering her phone. Gilly’s phone is here, busted on the concrete by her car. Look, from what Ames said, Karen’s in some serious trouble mentally, emotionally, legally—you name it. Last December she was fired from her job at the hospital. She’s an RN, and she was caught stealing drugs, using some, maybe selling some. Roger wasn’t sure. He said she’s had problems over the years. Been off and on prescription meds for depression, bipolar disorder—”

  “No surprise there.”

  “Yeah, well, it gets worse. Around the same time she was fired, her folks were killed in a car accident up in Illinois, where they’d been living since they moved from here. Roger said she hadn’t talked to them in years, and it tore her up. She blamed herself.”

  “He know her history? Does he know about me?”

  “Yeah. He said he picked her up off the highway when she was nineteen. She’d broken out of the psych ward at the state hospital in Austin. I guess you know this?”

  “Somebody from the hospital called us. I kept waiting for her to show up.” Jake remembered how scared he’d been—for Karen and himself—when he found out she was on the loose. He’d been dating Courtney then, but the hell of it was he’d missed Karen, had a god-awful craving for her, deep down. He never told anyone, and finally it had gone, leaving only the faint scrim of self-loathing and regret. Until now, when she’d taken Zoe, the only thing in his life that mattered. She still wanted to hurt him, to make him pay.

  “Ames said all she could talk about was you, how your folks got her arrested and charged with arson and attempted manslaughter. How they caused her to end up in a mental hospital, and you let it happen.”

  “Ha! My folks went to bat for her, Clint. The DA wanted her to do hard time in a prison cell, but Mom and Dad went to the judge and said she needed psychiatric help.”

  “Well, it took a long time, but Roger said she finally settled down. I guess there were some good years in there, riding with him. But that’s over. The guy’s shook up, Jake. He’s on his way home now. He said he had the Lubbock police do a welfare check at his house yesterday. They didn’t find her, or any sign of her car, which turns out is a rental. Ames said her car’s in the shop for some transmission work. He rented a car for her to drive while he was gone.”

  “Don’t tell me—it’s a light-metallic-blue Toyota Corolla like the one Gilly dreamed about. The one the neighbors saw outside my house.”

  Clint didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

  “So where does he think she is?” Jake asked.

  “I told him she was here, but not the circumstances. I didn’t mention you. He’s freaked out enough as it is, worried she’s on something. Self-medicating, he called it. He told me the first time she took drugs from the hospital where she worked, no charges were filed. They didn’t want the publicity. But after she got the news about her parents, Roger said morphine and some other prescription meds turned up missing, and when hospital personnel looked at security footage, they identified Karen as the one who took it. And this time, they did file charges.”

  “So not only is she crazy, she’s a damned dope fiend?” Jake had heard enough. Adrenaline pumping, he wheeled back onto the deserted highway. He wanted to floor it, leave the road and cut across the roughened countryside toward the Ameses’ house. It was only cold logic that kept him on the pavement, searching the weed-choked shoulder for the turnoff. He could feel the panic heating up in his gut, but he couldn’t look at it. Couldn’t feed it any of his attention.

  “The drugs concern me, too, and there’s one other thing. Roger said the Glock he carries in his truck for protection? It’s missing.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “As a heart attack. That’s why you need to let law enforcement handle the situation.”

  “She’s got my daughter, Clint!”

  “You don’t know that, Jake, and goddammit, if she does have Zoe, do you want to get her shot?”

  Jake found what he thought was the right highway turnoff, and going another hundred or so feet, he spotted the second turn—the dogleg that led to the Ameses’ private drive. He knew he was clo
se. He would have missed it if another vehicle hadn’t already nosed a path through the tangled growth of grass and weeds that had overgrown it. He bumped down a shallow hill, rounded a curve, and caught a glimpse of the old metal roof, a rusted silver sequin blinking in the dying sunlight. His pulse ticked.

  “Jake? Talk to me. For God’s sake, it’s already getting dark—”

  “There’s nothing to say. Karen’s got Zoe—”

  “Where are you?” Clint asked. “On 1620? Just stay there. I’m on my way.”

  “Sure. Okay. Will do,” Jake said, and cutting Clint off, he tossed his cell phone onto the passenger seat. It rang again immediately. He ignored it, hands gipping the wheel, bent over it, stare fixed on the tire tracks of the vehicle that had preceded him. They led down from the limestone ridge that rose along the east side of the house. Pieces of it flashed in and out of his view: a bit of the eave, the darker rectangle of a window, one end of the deep front porch. The drive had been pretty back in the day, winding its way along a gentle decline, curving beneath an archway of oaks and sun-reddened maples. He remembered the light filtering through the leaves, the way it had dappled the grass in shifting shadows. He remembered Karen’s dad had been religious about keeping up the property. It had always been tidy, welcoming. He remembered if he kept going now, he’d soon emerge into full view of the house, and he slammed on the brakes behind a screen of juniper.

  He needed a plan.

  He had no idea in hell what it should be.

  He got out of his truck and pushed the door closed without latching it. It was dusk, and the light was uncertain. He could still make out the tire-flattened grass trail that looped around to the south-facing back of the house, but rather than follow it, he angled west, making his way down a gentle slope toward the side of the house where Karen’s bedroom had been. He thought of the nights when he’d wait for her near where his truck was parked now. She’d climb out her window to come meet him, naked beneath a thick quilt she’d bring to lie on. Sometimes they’d share a pint of something they managed to get their hands on. Jake remembered a bottle of peppermint schnapps they’d passed back and forth, drinking until their lips were numb. He remembered pouring some in her navel, the minty taste, dipping it out with his tongue. He remembered having to cover her mouth when she came, lest her cries wake her folks. Hormones, his mom had said in no little disgust, looking in at the wet, charred mess of his room after Karen had set fire to his bed. Nothing but a lot of teenage hormones. They’d known it was more, that fire and police involvement were inevitable. Karen’s fate had been out of their hands after that.