by PJ Fernor
I walked to the cracked sidewalk and saw Connor standing outside the old, white garage attached to the house. An obvious add on after the original part of the house was built.
When he saw me he jumped to push the door down faster and harder.
I caught him looking in the garage and quickly back at me.
His car in the driveway blocked the garage.
By the time I hurried to get close enough, the garage door was shut.
Connor twisted the metal handle, locking it in place.
He pulled to make sure it wasn’t going to open.
Then he turned to face me and his lip started to curl.
As a gesture of peace I showed him my hands.
“Just here to say hello,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” Connor said. “Don’t play that game with me, Detective.”
“Call me Allie.”
He wiped his hands on his pants.
He’s nervous. Sweating.
I kept my distance. “How are you doing?”
“Again, another stupid thing to say to me,” Connor said. “Goodbye.”
He turned to walk toward the house.
“What’s in the garage?”
That got him to face me again. “Excuse me?”
“You were closing the garage door pretty quick there.”
“Seriously? The door is two hundred years old, Allie. Sometimes you have to really pull at it to close it. By all means, go try for yourself. What do you think you’re going to find in there? My daughter?”
I took a step toward the garage and Connor took a step toward me.
He pointed his finger at me. “You know what? We were supposed to get new doors. Automatic doors. With the clicker button. That was on our list. We had a list, okay? A long list. Things we wanted to do to the house. Fix it up. Make it our forever home. Which we were doing. You can look at the swing set out back if you want. I can show you the pictures of what the yard looked like. The previous owner had these grapevines that overtook the yard. It had a really rustic vibe to it. I liked it. Cat didn’t. She wanted Jessie to have the biggest yard we could make happen. So I made that happen. But the garage doors? Never got to that. Want to know why? Ask me why?”
The ask me why part was through gritted teeth.
Connor’s eyes were big, bloodshot, a father who hadn’t slept in a while.
Grief or guilt, Connor?
“I bet I can guess why,” I said.
“Why don’t you take a guess where my daughter is, Allie?”
“I’m working on that. I talked to Nelle. Search parties are out again. I wanted to come check on you. Personally. I can tell when you and Cat are near each other, it gets tense.”
“Don’t play the good cop with me,” Connor said. “You act like you’re my friend. Tell me you think Cat did it. Then you do the same with Cat. I understand I messed up by lying to you. I made a bad decision in the heat of the moment.”
“Were there any other bad decisions made in the heat of the moment?” I asked.
Connor’s face twisted with anger. “You have no right to come here and harass me. This is my house. Mine. You want a confession? Fine. This is my fault. And it’s Cat’s fault. We did this to our daughter. Together… we…”
Connor’s eyes moved from mine.
I took a quick second to peek over my shoulder.
There was a woman walking a little dog that looked like a furry snowball.
Connor waved. “Hey, Beth.”
I turned sideways to keep both of them in my view.
Beth waved. “I wanted to stop by. Jerry and I…”
Connor put his hand out. “Thank you.”
“If there’s anything we can do,” she said. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“No need to say anything,” Connor said. “This is Detective Allie Down. She’s going to find my baby girl.”
I heard the emotion creep up in Connor’s voice.
Beth and I exchanged a quick hello nod and she kept walking.
I noticed across the street there were other neighbors watching.
One on the porch.
One on the front lawn.
“We have an audience,” I said.
“Not every day something like this happens here,” Connor said. “And it’s pretty well known about Cat and I. What happened.”
“Why’s that?”
“You can look it up, Allie,” Connor said. “Police were here a few times to calm the situation. I don’t want to get into the back and forth. I can tell the truth of my ex-wife but it’ll only make me look guilty.”
“Do you think Cat would do something to Jessie?”
“Christ, what kind of question is that?” Connor asked.
His face turned red.
He was getting heated again.
When his eyes searched across the street, he motioned to the door.
“Why don’t we take this conversation inside?”
“That would be a great idea,” I said.
Connor led the way.
I looked at the garage again.
When we got to the door, he opened it and stepped inside.
He didn’t even bother to hold the door for me.
But he did look back.
The look in his eyes wasn’t sorrow or worry.
It was rage.
Just to be safe, as I entered the house, I put my hand on my gun.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Entering the house, the stairs to the second floor were on my left. To my right was a doorway where I took notice of a formal dining room table.
Connor walked forward, calm and casual, obviously. It was his house. His home. Every nook and cranny of the place memorized through living there.
The hallway we walked down had pictures hanging on the right side of the wall.
Family pictures. Baby pictures.
School pictures of Jessie.
Dance pictures of Jessie.
I paused for a second to admire the beautiful, young girl.
As a baby she looked like Connor. It was all in her face. The same structure and attitude.
“She looks like her mother now,” Connor said to me.
My right hand still rested on my gun. My right hip faced the door so Connor had no idea I was ready for anything he may have tried in that moment.
“Funny how that happens,” I said.
“Truthfully, if you look at an old picture of my grandmother, Jessie is the spitting image of her. Cat and I used to joke, wondering if we were somehow long lost relatives. Kind of a crude joke, but we always laughed.” Connor moved toward me. He pointed to a picture. “That was her first dance lesson. Jessie was terrified.”
There she was, around the age of five, wearing a pink leotard, her hair in pigtails, smiling with big eyes that made it seem impossible that years later someone would want to kidnap her.
Please don’t let her be hurt. Please salvage any sense of innocence for this girl…
I had no idea why that went through my head. I wasn’t even sure who I was talking to. Because the only person who was going to figure this out was me.
“Through here is the kitchen,” Connor said.
He walked again and the hallway ended where the kitchen began.
It was a busy kitchen. Everything cluttered on the counter and on the table.
Connor looked at me. “Over there is the sitting room which leads into the living room. To your right, around that door in the dining room. Want me to take you upstairs?”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Look, Allie, I know what you’re doing right now,” he said. “You’re looking at the house for clues. You’re hoping you see something that makes you believe I did something. I have nothing to hide. So look around. Call for backup. I don’t care.”
Connor walked to the table and pushed a stack of mail out of the way so he could lean on the table.
My eyes moved to the fridge. There was a whiteboard calendar. Pictures hung on th
e fridge with heavy magnets from different places they must have visited as a family. Some schoolwork and drawings. A school lunch menu too.
That one felt like a punch to the gut.
“I haven’t changed anything about the house since Cat left,” Connor said.
“She insists you threw her out,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Connor said. “What’s done is done. The papers were signed months ago. I helped her find an apartment and get settled. But here… it’s the same. The pictures in the hallway. Everything you see here…” Connor pointed to the dining room. “We only ever sat at that table for holiday dinners. And when Cat and I decided to get divorced.”
“It was a mutual decision?” I asked.
Connor nodded. “I asked her to leave. She did. She stayed with a friend. I’m sure between them drinking wine and tearing me apart, word got around town about me. I look like a monster and I really don’t care. Cat came back here and we talked at that dining room table. We decided to call it quits for good. I make enough to keep the house. That’s why I live here. We wanted to make it as normal as possible for Jessie.” Connor looked down and shook his head. “We really messed that up, huh?”
“When we were talking to Nelle, I asked her something I’m going to ask you.”
Connor’s eyes were back on me. “What?”
“Have you noticed anything different? A vehicle? Following you. Sitting outside. Just anything that seemed like nothing at the time?”
Connor shook his head. “I can’t say anything to that. I don’t know. Look, Cat had Jessie the night before…” He swallowed hard. “I was messing around with an app on my phone and decided to go on a date. I lied through my teeth about who I was. Why not? It wasn’t the kind of dating app where you’re looking for love, okay? I just…” Connor shook his head. “I walk into this house and it’s still her. It’s still Cat. The pictures. The master bedroom. I don’t even sleep in there. I sleep in the guest bedroom. At some point things have to move on. And we hate each other too much for that to happen. Cat gets drunk and calls me. Tells me if I sleep with another woman she’ll get full custody of Jessie. I don’t know how any of this works. So that night… it’s on the calendar on the fridge. Jessie had dance. And if it has a red star, that means Cat is picking her up. So somewhere the lines were crossed and Cat thought I was picking her up.”
“That’s happened before, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Connor said.
“How does that happen, Connor?”
“You try talking to Cat for more than thirty seconds,” he said. “It’s a fight. Everything is a fight. We can’t talk without tearing at each other.”
“Text messages,” I said.
What are you now, Allie, a marriage therapist?
I was just trying to understand what it must have been like for Jessie.
Stuck in this endless battle.
And her parents hoping to appear normal.
Jessie looking at pictures of her mother and father together even though they were divorced. Going to school, to dance, never really knowing who was going to pick her up.
“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “You met with Stephanie for your date. What was your plan if things got… hot?”
Connor just stared.
He didn’t blink.
“It’s a fair question,” I said.
Do you have a secret place around here, Connor? A favorite motel? Maybe an apartment nobody knows about. A cabin somewhere nearby…
He shook his head. “This has nothing to do with Jessie’s disappearance. You’re pulling at straws that aren’t there, Allie. I already told you to look around the house. Open every door. Go into the basement. Go into the attic. Wherever you want.”
What about the garage, Connor?
“I’m just making sure I have the full picture here,” I said. “I grew up in this town, Connor. There’s a lot of familiar faces to me. And a lot of new faces. I’ve done this before. I won’t rest until I find Jessie. And I find the truth.”
Connor pushed from the table. “That’s what I want too.”
“I’m sorry to bring it up, but Cat mentioned your family…”
“They wouldn’t know what to do,” he said. “My brother? Maybe. But he’s in jail. You can verify that. And what’s the point of taking Jessie? I have nothing to give to get her back.”
“Cat mentioned money…”
Connor laughed. “What a rotten… she dug into my past and my family. After we had Jessie. Got married. Bought a house. She found out my grandfather owned an auto repair shop just outside of Pittson. And there was some land attached to it. Land that he secretly sold and kept the money.”
“A lot of money?”
“Seventy-five grand,” Connor said. “Don’t get me wrong, that’s a lot of money… but it’s not family money.”
I started to feel myself leaning more toward Connor’s side of things. Cat had some issues for sure. Hiring someone to dig into Connor’s family. Then hiring a PI after they were divorced.
“I appreciate you talking to me, Connor,” I said. “I’ll get out of your way here. Anything you think of, please call. These people in town may not like you personally but they are out there looking for your daughter. Remember that.”
Connor nodded. “I don’t want to stand here and tear my ex-wife apart. I mean, believe me, I do. I can tell you stories for hours. But I don’t want that to be the focus. In my heart there’s no way Cat would have done anything to hurt our daughter. And I believe she would say the same about me. We loved our daughter. Are things a mess? Yeah. Should we have…” Connor looked toward the kitchen.
When he stopped talking that was my cue to leave.
I showed myself out through the front door and walked the sidewalk to the driveway.
I paused and looked at the garage door Connor had been wrestling with.
I looked around and the nosey neighbors were all back inside.
Casually, I moved toward the door and crouched down to grab the handle.
Before my hand could touch the handle, I heard a noise from inside the garage.
Chapter Twenty-Six
My hand tried to twist the metal handle but it was locked.
I heard another sound from the inside of the garage.
Scuffling? Scratching?
I pulled at the garage door and it refused to budge an inch.
I reached back for my gun but remembered where I was.
What was I going to do? Shoot at the garage door? Or the handle?
If Jessie was inside the garage and I shot at it…
I backed away from the garage.
There were windows across the top of each door. Up too high to see into. From my vantage point all I could see was the inside ceiling of the garage.
My heart raced and my mind said to call Ben.
I could have been onto something big here.
But if Ben showed up, or officers showed up, and Jessie was inside the garage, this could turn into a hostage situation in a heartbeat.
That’s the last thing I wanted for Jessie.
Which meant I needed another plan.
I moved from the garage to the house.
Back to the front door, where I carefully grabbed the curled door handle and pressed the button to open the door.
When it popped open, I let out a small breath of relief.
Connor had never come back to lock me out.
Which meant the second I exited the house he must have gone into the garage.
To do what?
And to whom?
I had to carefully sneak into the house, my right hand behind me as I guided the storm door shut, making its click shut as quietly as possible.
I left the front door open and moved to my right.
Connor mentioned the dining room wrapped around into the kitchen.
There were three doors in the kitchen.
My best guess was one went down to the basement. One opened into a pantry. And the ot
her being the garage.
I moved through the dining room and reached for my gun.
Each step I took made my heart beat faster.
I was used to this kind of stuff in the city. To me it was all tainted. Being there long enough and seeing so much, it didn’t bother me. But here… back home… this kind of thing happening in Sandemor…
Alex and I grew up playing outside until dark.
The streetlights would guide us home.
There was never any worry of this kind of thing. Even when the news started warning people of kidnappers and murderers.
I steadied my hands and kept my gun ready to be fired if need be.
I moved from the dining room into the kitchen.
To my left was the kitchen table where Connor had moved mail out of the way so he could lean on it. To my right were the three doors.
With my right hand, I grabbed the first doorknob and turned it.
The door opened and I saw a set of wooden steps, plunging down into the basement.
I shut the door.
Another door suddenly opened.
And Connor stepped into the kitchen.
“Stop right there, Connor,” I said.
When he saw me, his face turned white and then red.
Surprise to anger.
He had a black towel in his right hand.
“What were you doing in the garage?” I asked.
“A gun?” he asked. “All the casual small talk and you come rushing back in here with a gun? Get out of here.”
“What’s on that towel?”
“Beer,” he said. “I went out to the garage to get a beer from the fridge and I dropped it. Want to know why? Because all this talk about Cat and Jessie has me ready to lose my mind. My daughter is out there, somewhere, missing, and you’re pulling a gun on me?”
“I heard a noise.”
“I dropped a bottle of beer,” he said. “I grabbed a towel to wipe my hands. And now I need to pick up broken glass.”
“Show me,” I said.
“Are you serious right now?” Connor asked.
I didn’t answer.
He shook his hand and backed up to open the garage door.
He pointed and I made sure to approach with extreme caution.
I had to be sure I didn’t get close enough to him so that he could make a move on my gun.