by Tami Hoag
Dana got out of the car, rearranging her hood, hiding herself in the back of it. She looked across the roof of the car at the deputy. He was medium height, broad shouldered and slim hipped, built to wear a uniform. He turned and looked at her, a wide white smile firmly held in place, blue eyes shining, set off by laugh lines.
“Dana,” he said.
Dana stared at him as he came around the car. Tim Carver, her high school sweetheart. Of course she recognized him . . . now that she did. She remembered his easy smile, the hint of good-natured mischief in his eyes. She had no memory of him becoming a deputy—or a grown man, for that matter. She hadn’t seen him in years—not that she could remember, anyway.
They had broken up the summer after graduation. She remembered that. It wouldn’t have been practical to try to keep the romance going. She was off to college in the fall. He was headed to West Point with much fanfare—something Roger had helped to orchestrate. Then Casey had gone missing, and nothing else that summer had mattered.
They hadn’t stayed in touch after they had left Shelby Mills. Dana had gotten caught up in her new life at school. There had been a new boyfriend—whose name and face she couldn’t recall now. She had lost track of Tim Carver.
“Welcome home,” he said, holding the flowers out to her.
Dana accepted the bouquet, looking at it like she had no idea what to do with it.
Her mother broke the awkward silence. “Tim, how long have you been a deputy?” she asked, coming around the hood of the Mercedes to stand with them.
“Five years now,” he said. “Not all in Liddell County, though. I started up in DeKalb County for two years, but I wanted to come back home, you know.”
“You’ve been back three years and you haven’t looked us up?” Lynda said. “Shame on you!”
“Well, you know,” he hemmed and hawed, ducking his head. “Time gets away. Busy with the job and all.”
“How are your folks?”
“They’re well, thanks. My dad is with a firm in Lexington now.”
“And your mother?”
“Moved back to Texas. My sister’s down there in Austin.”
The Carver family had come to Shelby Mills from Texas, Dana remembered. Tim had joined her seventh-grade class. He had never entirely lost the twang of Texas in his voice.
“The last I remember, you had gone off to West Point,” Lynda said. “You were going into the military.”
He nodded, looking a little uncomfortable, Dana thought.
“Yes, ma’am. Well, it didn’t quite suit me,” he said. “After what happened with Casey, I kept thinking I would rather go into law enforcement, and . . . well . . . here I am.”
“You’re losing your hair,” Dana blurted out.
Her mother gasped. “Dana!”
Dana frowned. “Well, he is.”
“I can’t very well deny it,” he said, chuckling, running a hand back over his head. Dana remembered him with a full head of fine blond hair. He wore it cropped short now, not trying to hide the fact that his hairline at his temples had receded markedly.
“Dana sometimes says things without thinking now,” Lynda explained.
“Don’t talk about me like that!” Dana snapped. “Like I’m a fucking moron or something.”
Her mother arched an eyebrow. “Case in point.”
Dana made a show of turning away from her, giving her full attention to Tim.
“I look different, too,” she admitted.
“I’d know those pretty blue eyes anywhere,” he said with a kind smile.
“You always were a charmer, Tim,” Lynda remarked.
“Well, ma’am, that’s easy around beautiful ladies.”
“I’m not beautiful,” Dana said flatly.
“Why don’t we go inside?” Lynda suggested, taking the bouquet from Dana’s hands. “Can you stay for a cup of coffee, Tim?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. I’d like that. I’m not on duty for a while yet.”
“You and Dana can catch up.”
Her mother turned to go to the house. Tim reached out as if to put his hand on Dana’s shoulder. She twisted away.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped. “I don’t like to be touched.”
Surprised, he stepped back, raising his hands. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Dana said, turning away.
They went inside, into the kitchen to sit at the big table, Dana at one end, Tim with his back to the wide expanse of window. Dana looked past him, past the deck that stepped down in levels to the flagstone patio, and beyond to the gentle green slope that rolled down to the woods. A deer stood in the clearing looking up at them, then flicked its tail and dashed away.
Dana wished she could dash away. What was she supposed to say to him? What kind of small talk was a person supposed to make after they’d looked into the face of evil and barely snatched their own life out of the jaws of doom? Were they supposed to talk about high school after that? Was she supposed to ask him if he had married, if he had a family? She didn’t care.
“So are you married, Tim?” her mother asked, as the coffee machine hissed and spat into a cup. She busied herself at the sink, snipping the stems of the flowers, putting them into a vase.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “Married to the job, as they say.”
“That’s not very romantic,” Lynda said as she brought the bouquet to the table.
“All things in their own time,” he said. “I’m on a serious career track with the sheriff’s office. I passed the detective’s exam recently. I’m just waiting on an opening in the department.
“You know, I had the best girlfriend,” he said, nodding toward Dana, eyes twinkling. “I haven’t found another girl who could fill those shoes.”
“I remember you now,” Dana said dryly. “You were always full of shit.”
“Dana!” her mother scolded.
“Who? Me? Not at all!” Tim protested with a laugh. “That’s the God’s honest truth, Dana. You ruined me for other girls.”
“Cream or sugar for your coffee, Tim?” Lynda asked.
“No, thank you, ma’am. Black is fine.”
“Dana, would you like a coffee?”
“Do I like coffee?”
“You did this morning.”
“No, thank you,” she said, feeling stupid.
“I’ll leave you two alone to chat, then,” her mother said, setting Tim’s steaming mug on the table in front of him.
Dana drew a quick breath to tell her not to go but stopped herself. Tim had been her first crush, her first kiss, her first young love. He had been her best friend after Casey. She should be able to have a conversation with him.
He sighed as Lynda left the room.
“I can’t say how sorry I was to hear what happened to you, Dana,” he said quietly. “I can’t even imagine what you went through.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“None of it?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
“For what?” she challenged. “If there’s a God, he let a sexual sadist kidnap and torture me—after he’d already killed who knows how many girls. God gets a big pat on the back for that?”
His eyes widened a little. He only knew Before Dana, sweet Dana, happy Dana, the diplomat, the good girl. Welcome to After Dana, she thought. Damaged Dana. Unfiltered Dana.
“I guess I didn’t think of it that way,” he said.
“Nobody thinks of it that way. But the God that lets me forget the details is the same God that let it happen in the first place. So forgive me if I’m not entirely thankful to a higher power.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, I don’t blame you. You have every right to be bitter. People just want to make sense of things that can’t be made sense of. You and I both k
now there’s not always an answer to be had. We learned that with Casey. Seven years and we still don’t know what happened.”
“Did you really become a cop because of her?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did. I watched the investigation and the searches and all when Casey went missing. I was a part of that, just as you were. It stuck with me,” he said. “And I read that you were reporting on the murder of a teenage girl when you got abducted. The newspaper said you were putting in extra hours because you had lost a friend from high school.”
“Casey had a big impact for someone who isn’t even around.”
“More than she could know.”
“Do you have anything to do with her case?”
“Not directly. The original detective—I don’t know if you remember him—Dan Hardy—he retired a couple of years ago. The case got reassigned,” he explained. “It’s just been sitting, cold, truth to tell—until now. There hasn’t been anything to go on.”
“I heard there had been sightings of her in different places,” Dana said.
“Reports here and there,” he said. “Nothing panned out. People see the story on the news or on some reality crime show, and they want to help or they want to feel important. They think they see the person, or they just flat make it up. None of those leads went anywhere.”
“And now?”
“The detective in charge is going to want to talk to you about the possible connection to the man who attacked you,” he said. “I told him I know you. I figured it might be easier coming from me.”
It might be easier coming from an old friend with a wink and a smile and a bouquet of pink flowers, Dana thought, looking at the vase her mother had set on the other end of the table.
“You don’t have to try to suck up to me,” she said bluntly. “Just ask.”
“I’m not trying to suck up to you, Dana,” he said, offended. “I can’t bring flowers to a friend? I thought that was the gentlemanly thing to do.”
“I don’t have anything to contribute to your case,” she said. “I don’t remember anything about the man who took me. I don’t have any memory of what he looked like.”
“Would you be willing to look at a photo array?”
“No,” she said flatly. “What good would it do? I have no memory of him at all. You want to put a face into my mind so I can convince myself I might have seen him that summer before Casey disappeared?”
“No, that’s not—”
“Because that would make it easier on everybody, wouldn’t it?” she suggested. “Everyone could assume Doc Holiday took Casey and killed her, and that’s the end of it. Her body will never be found, but we’ll have a conclusion to the mystery. Case closed. Everyone can just get on with life.”
“Nobody’s looking for an easy way out,” he said with frustration.
“Everybody’s looking for an easy way out,” Dana declared. “And why not? It’s been seven years. An easy, made-up answer would be better than not having an answer at all, right? The parents of missing children always say the worst thing is not knowing.”
“I’m sure Casey’s mama would sooner have her daughter alive anywhere than think she’s dead,” he countered.
“Have you asked her? Has anybody asked Mrs. Grant if she ever saw that man before? Am I the only person in a town of ten thousand people who might have seen him?”
“No. Mrs. Grant moved away years ago, to Hawaii, I heard. But you and Casey were practically joined at the hip. Maybe this creep would have approached the two of you at the Grindstone or at someplace like that,” he said. “He preyed on young women. He frequented truck stops. Casey worked at the Grindstone. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that he came there.
“I mean, I know you all weren’t getting along right before Casey disappeared, but—”
“We weren’t?”
“No,” he said. “You were having some kind of a girl spat. You don’t remember that?”
“No.”
Dana tried to think back. All the ready memories of Casey were happy ones—the two of them smiling and laughing, having fun, being girls.
“It was about John Villante, as I recall. Casey and him had a big falling out; she was probably going to take him back,” he said. “That’s what you and Casey usually fought about. Villante’s back in town, by the way. I ran across him last night.”
“I know,” Dana said absently, still trying to dig for the memory.
“Maybe you don’t recall that you and I broke up that summer,” Tim mused, flashing a comically hopeful look. “That could work out for me.”
“I remember that,” Dana said without regard for his ego.
“Dang.” He pretended disappointment, then took a sip of his coffee.
“You wouldn’t want me now, anyway,” Dana said quietly. “I’m not the girl you used to know.”
He propped his forearms on the table, leaned down, and looked at her hiding inside the black hood of her sweatshirt. She felt trapped at the back of a cave with no exit.
“I think she’s probably still in there somewhere,” he said softly.
Dana shoved her chair back from the table and stood up. “No. She’s not. You should go now. I’m tired.”
“Okay, well, I need to be getting to work anyway,” he said, pushing his chair back from the table. He fished his wallet out of his hip pocket, pulled out a business card, and laid it on the table.
“You call me,” he said. “For any reason at all. If you have something to tell me, if you just want to talk, or . . . whatever. I’m told I’m a reasonably entertaining dinner companion.”
“I’m not very social anymore,” Dana said as they walked to the front of the house.
“That’s all right. I recall we had some pretty nice times doing nothing much at all. God knows I can talk enough for the both of us.”
“You talk a lot,” Dana said. “And I blurt out things I shouldn’t. That could be entertaining for someone.”
He paused on the front step. Dana pulled her phone out of her pouch and snapped a picture of him.
“It helps my memory,” she said.
He nodded but glanced away, like maybe he didn’t want her to see something in his face, like sadness or pity.
“I know the circumstances aren’t anything we would have asked for,” he said. “But I really am glad to reconnect, Dana. We were good friends. It’s been too long.”
“Thanks for the flowers.”
“You’re welcome. I’d give you a hug, but I know you don’t want that,” he said. “I am a hugger, if you recall, so . . .” He pointed to his temples and smiled. “I’m hugging you up here. It’s a good one. Visualize if you care to.”
“Maybe later,” she said, finding a little smile to give back to him.
“That smile is nice to see,” he said softly. “You go have a rest. And lock your doors. It’s not as safe here as it used to be.”
“No,” Dana said. “Turns out it never was.”
13
He pulled the cruiser to the curb in a yellow zone on the curve near the ER entrance and parked.
The Liddell Regional Medical Center was a bigger name than facility. While the name brought to mind a sprawling complex, the medical center was in fact a respectable modern small hospital that served the basic needs of the area. If you needed your appendix out, this was the place. If your wife was having a baby, the maternity ward was nice. If you got your lip busted in a bar fight, the ER staff could stitch you up just fine. Aside from the normal maladies and misadventures, all major and exotic diseases and traumas were deferred to one of Louisville’s many outstanding medical facilities just a short helicopter hop or ambulance ride away.
“Hey, Deputy Carver.”
“Hey, Jeannine,” he said, waving to the plump middle-aged redhead at the reception desk as he came through the ER doors.
&
nbsp; “Are you stopping by to keep me company?”
“As pleasant as that would be, I’m afraid I’m here on business,” he said, but he went to the counter nevertheless. It always paid down the road to cultivate friendships in a small town. He was a frequent visitor to the ER, coming in to interview drunken brawlers, overdose cases, accident victims, and the like. He made it a point to treat the staff well.
Jeannine Halston frowned, leaning toward him, arms on the counter. “That poor girl from last night,” she said, her voice hushed so as not to be overheard by any of the bored, uncomfortable people sitting in the waiting area. “I heard she got beat real bad. Kay O’Dell said she looks like she went five rounds with Floyd Mayweather.”
“I didn’t know you and Kay were boxing fans.”
“Do you have any suspects?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“I don’t know what she was thinking, walking home at that hour,” she said. “Nothing good happens around the Grindstone after midnight. Hookers in and out of those truck cabs. Drug deals going down in the parking lot.”
Tim arched a brow. “Sounds like maybe we should deputize you, Jeannine. You’ve got your finger on the pulse of crime in Liddell County.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Can you tell me what floor my victim is on?”
“She’s on two. I heard you answered the call. I was off last night. Was it as bad as they say?”
“I don’t know what they’re saying, but there’s sure as hell no good kind of assault. No matter what it looks like, it’s all bad for the victim.”
“Did she see the man? Did she know him?”
“All will be revealed in the full measure of time,” he said, drifting away from the counter. “You’ll probably know before me, anyway. See you later, Jeannine.”
He took the stairs to the second floor because he didn’t want to end up looking like the man who was standing at the nurses’ station, scowling as he read over a report.
“Isn’t the maternity ward on the third floor?” Tim said, winking at the nurse behind the counter. “Oh, Walt, that’s you!”