“And he’s going to see that they don’t match.”
“Yeah,” Josh said, “and we’ll tell him that she’s a friend of ours, that we borrowed her car. He’s already checking to see if the car’s been reported stolen. He’ll find that it wasn’t, so he’ll have no reason to doubt our story.”
That made sense. If, of course, the online police blotter Josh had checked was accurate, and if Katherine Southard hadn’t reported the car stolen since they’d checked the web earlier or since the police blotter website had been updated. Then she thought of something else.
“You said my disappearance made local news. Even national news.”
“For a while. Oh, I see where you’re going.”
“Yeah,” she said. “What if he recognizes me? Suppose he wants to know where I’ve been and why the heck I haven’t told anyone that I’m back?”
“You look pretty different, hon. Your hair’s short and red instead of longer and blonde. I barely recognized you.”
“Okay, but suppose when he sees my license, he remembers my name? Maybe then he’d recognize my face.”
Josh squinted and pursed his lips. He often did that when he was concentrating. She hoped he came up with something good. “Well, I guess that would be it, then,” he finally said.
“What?”
“I hate to say it, Caitlin, but that would be it. We can’t deny who you are. We’d have to come clean about everything.”
“But—”
“Hey, it’s not like we knocked over a bank. We’re not on the run here. I don’t think there’s a crime against being missing. Or failing to report in when you’re no longer missing. Relax, we haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Maybe you haven’t. Remember the gun and the blood?”
“I do, but you don’t . . . at least not where it came from. If they find out about all that, be honest. You didn’t do anything wrong. I know it in my heart. The truth will bear that out.”
He was right. Not necessarily that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but that there was nothing they could do about it if the trooper realized who she was.
Finally, in the mirror, she saw the trooper climb out of his vehicle.
“Here he comes,” Caitlin said.
He was stocky and a little shorter than she expected. She tried to read his body language. Did he walk slowly, warily? Not particularly. Did he have his hand on his gun? Nope, but he had his thumb hooked in his belt very near his gun.
“I guess we’re about to find out whether I stole this car,” she said. “And whether he recognizes me.”
She lowered her window. “Hi,” she said and thought the little crack in her voice probably made her sound guilty of something.
“G’morning, ma’am. Can I see your license and registration, please?”
He was being polite, which Caitlin imagined was a good thing. Unless he just didn’t want to tip her off that he was suspicious about the car, and about her, too, now that he’d seen her face. She couldn’t read his eyes, though, because they were hidden behind dark sunglasses. For all she knew, he didn’t even have any eyes. She glanced at the nameplate on his chest. Banuelos.
“Of course,” Caitlin said. She lifted her purse from the floor of the car, fished her wallet from it, and slid out her license, which she gave to the trooper along with the vehicle’s registration, which Josh handed to her.
Trooper Banuelos gave the documents a quick look before focusing on her again. He seemed to be checking out the car’s interior, too, though it was hard to tell with those sunglasses.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asked.
“I honestly don’t,” Caitlin said. “I’m sorry.”
“You were speeding,” he said. Caitlin had never been happier to hear a state trooper say those words. “I clocked you at seventy-three.”
Relief washed over her. “Oh, I was speeding,” she said almost giddily.
He frowned. That probably wasn’t the reaction Trooper Banuelos usually witnessed after delivering such news. “Yes, ma’am, you were,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Caitlin said. “I really am. It didn’t feel like I was going that fast. If you have to ticket me, I understand. Really.”
He seemed to be staring at her face for a moment, though his eyes could have been spinning wildly in their sockets for all she knew.
“I guess that won’t be necessary,” Banuelos said. “Promise me you’ll slow it down a bit, though, okay?”
“I will,” she said. “I promise. Thank you so much.”
She watched in the mirror as the trooper swaggered back to his car. After he was behind the wheel again, he sat and waited for Caitlin to pull out. He would follow her for a mile or two, she knew, before turning around and finding someone else to pull over.
Caitlin slipped carefully back onto the highway and, as expected, the trooper pulled out right behind her. She nudged the car close to the speed limit. The cruiser was still behind them after a mile. Soon after that, though, she looked into the rearview mirror and it was nowhere in sight. Caitlin exhaled with relief.
“So, you weren’t speeding, huh?” Josh said.
“I said I wasn’t ‘speeding speeding.’ And seeing as Trooper Banuelos didn’t give me a ticket, he must have agreed with me.”
“I wonder what the legal threshold is for speeding speeding,” Josh said, smiling. “We dodged a bullet there. He barely looked at your license and the registration. Maybe it’s getting near the end of his shift and he’s tired.”
“Maybe he didn’t look at them at all. Maybe he couldn’t. Did you see those black glasses? I expected him to have a seeing eye dog with him.”
Josh smiled and Caitlin did, too, but her smile faded quickly. She wondered what lay ahead. Wondered whether she could live with what they would find. They were getting closer to Smithfield. Closer to where she had been when she’d awakened from her fog. And, for good or ill, closer to maybe finding some answers.
CHAPTER NINE
ONLY A FEW PEOPLE CALLED George Maggert by the name on his driver’s license. Most called him Chops. He was fine with that. He understood where the name came from, how he’d earned it. And he had earned it. The first few times he’d heard it, he didn’t like it and had made that fact plain to the person who’d said it. But he soon realized that whenever he heard the name, it was being spoken with either respect or fear, depending on the speaker and the circumstances, and that worked for him. He had not only come to like it, but he actually started thinking of himself as Chops. He even tried now, whenever the situation allowed, to do things to make sure that no one forgot that name.
He washed his hands at the sink, being very careful to clean under his fingernails. After he dried off, he slipped out of his coveralls and left his workroom, pulling the door shut behind him and locking it with a dead bolt. He walked through the outer room of this two-room workspace, where he kept a few tools, a computer, and some file cabinets—all of which made his contractor business seem completely legitimate. Anyone taking a casual look around this little office could believe that he derived all of his income from general contracting work, rather than a mere 25 percent.
Once outside, he walked across half an acre of green lawn—well, he noticed, it was brown in a few places . . . grubs, maybe . . . he’d have to do something about that—toward a contemporary house he shared with two of the handful of people in the world who didn’t call him Chops. One called him George, and had since they’d first met six years ago, and the other called him Daddy, which she had done since she started talking two years ago.
Chops climbed the steps to the back door, noticing yet again that the second stair was starting to rot. It wouldn’t do for someone who was supposed to be a contractor to let his own house fall into disrepair. He’d have to replace the board.
He entered the kitchen to find his daughter, Julia, sitting at the table in her pink booster chair, buttered toast cut into tiny little pieces spread out on the plate in front of her. He coul
d see that it was the plate with the clown on it, her favorite. A matching sippy cup sat beside it.
Rachel turned from the stove with a sausage-and-cheese omelet on a plate.
“This okay?” she asked, looking up at him. She had no choice but to look up, even though at six feet she was the tallest woman Chops had ever dated, because he still had five inches on her. He sometimes thought her height was half the reason he’d married her. The other half was that he loved her. And she loved him. He could tell. He had no idea why. He wasn’t a handsome man by any stretch of the imagination. Not even close. He was too tall. He wished his eyes were a little closer together. And for some reason he just couldn’t hold a tan, even living in Southern California. But still, Rachel had fallen in love with him, which was a cause of endless wonder for him. It wasn’t as though she was a head-turner or anything like that, but she was definitely the Beauty to his Beast. He didn’t feel deserving of her love. And not merely because they weren’t a good match in the looks department. No, it was because of other things about him . . . things his wife didn’t know. He often wondered if she would still love him if she knew those things. He hoped he would never have to find out. But she did love him and he was grateful for that.
“Perfect,” he said. “I was in the mood for an omelet.”
She smiled. “You eating with us?”
“Wish I could, but I have paperwork to catch up on. I’ll take this out back.”
“You’re out there early today. It’s not even seven yet. The sun’s barely up.”
“I know, I got behind. But if the invoices don’t go out, the money doesn’t come in. Hopefully I’ll get caught up today.”
“Daddy eat,” little Julia said.
“I will eat, pumpkin,” Chops said. “I just can’t sit with you today. Daddy has work to do while he eats.”
He kissed the dark curls on the top of her head. She reached up with her chubby little hands and playfully laid down a drumbeat on his bald pate.
“That’s enough, Ringo,” he said, straightening up.
He grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and took them, with his omelet, back to his office. He unlocked the door to his workroom, stepped inside, and locked the door again behind him with a separate dead bolt, one that couldn’t be unlocked from the outside without a key. He turned to the man bound to a metal chair in the middle of the little room and said, “Give me a minute here. It’s breakfast time.”
The man didn’t respond, maybe because he had nothing to say any longer, maybe because of the duct tape across his mouth, or maybe because he had no voice left after all the screaming he’d done lately.
Chops ate the first half of his omelet, then opened one of the bottles of water and drank half of it in four gulps. The man in the chair watched, his eyes wide and pleading.
“I guess you’re thirsty, huh, Benny?” Chops said.
The man nodded weakly. Chops opened the second bottle of water.
“You’ve already learned how good the soundproofing is in here, right?”
Benny nodded again.
“So you won’t be annoying me with any more screaming, right?”
Benny shook his head.
“Okay, then.” Chops stepped over and yanked the tape from Benny’s mouth. “Open wide,” he said.
Benny opened his mouth, exposing bloody, toothless gums. Chops hadn’t yet decided what to do with all the teeth in the jar on his workbench. He poured some water into the gaping mouth, gave the man time to gulp it down, then poured in the rest of the bottle.
When he finished swallowing, Benny said, “I told you everything.” His voice was barely a croak, his words malformed, probably because of his lack of teeth. “I told you everything two days ago,” he added.
“I know,” Chops said as he stepped back into his coveralls.
“So why are you still doing this?”
“Well, the first two days was to get the information my employer wanted, to find who your boss was buying his shit from.”
“But I didn’t know who he got it from,” Benny whined.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know whether to believe you. I had to be sure. Now I am. I believe you. So that was the first two days. The last two have been to send a message. Well, several messages.”
Chops had overnighted Benny’s right hand to Benny’s boss, Kenny Jacks, a small-time drug dealer who had arrived in town a few months ago. With the hand, Chops had included a note that read, We found this in our cookie jar. The hope was that Jacks would learn his place and understand that that place was some small street corner very far from the territory run by Bill McCracken, a much bigger dealer who had hired Chops to put the fear of God into Jacks. Chops wanted to go after Jacks himself, but McCracken wasn’t sure yet whether he had connections about which McCracken should be concerned, so he paid Chops to make a statement without physically harming Jacks himself. Chops was good at his job. First he’d had Benny’s hand delivered—though not hand-delivered—to Jacks. Then to spread the message, Chops had sent the fingers from Benny’s remaining hand to the five guys who had been doing a little distribution for Jacks on the side, guys who used to work exclusively for McCracken. The hand alone should be enough to convince Jacks to pull up stakes and take his shit somewhere else, but just in case it wasn’t, Benny’s fingers should make it hard for Jacks to find anyone around here to work for him. And the longer that parts of Benny kept showing up around town, the less likely it was that some new dealer who tried to set up shop someday would be able to find anyone to work for him, either. But just in case . . .
Chops slapped another piece of tape over Benny’s mouth. He picked up a pair of tin snips, which he’d used a lot over the last few days, and knelt in front of the man. He untied Benny’s right boot and tugged it off. Benny grunted into the duct tape and whipped his head violently from side to side. He tried to kick out, but Chops grabbed his leg and gave it a quick, firm twist. Something snapped in the knee with the sound of a tree branch cracking, and something else tore with a popping noise, and Benny’s muffled scream faded away as his head dropped forward to his chest.
“It’s probably better for you this way, Benny,” Chops said. He wasn’t necessarily disappointed. It wasn’t like he needed Benny to be awake during this so Chops could get his rocks off. No, this was business. As long as he took what he needed from Benny, something he could use to send another message, it didn’t matter to Chops if Benny was asleep or awake when he took it. But before Chops could use the tin snips, his cell phone trilled in his pocket. He answered it.
“Hello?”
He listened to the caller for a few seconds.
“How do you know something happened to him? . . . Well, how long has it been? . . . Last night? That’s not long enough to worry about. You know Mike. He’s sleeping something off. Maybe he did too much of some kind of crap or another . . . No, just relax, I’m sure he’s fine . . . No, I have work to do. If you don’t hear from him by tonight, call me back.”
He put his phone back in his pocket.
“Now where were we, Benny?”
He pulled off Benny’s sock and counted in his head how many more people Benny had said were doing a little dealing on the side for Jacks . . . how many more people needed to receive a message.
CHAPTER TEN
THE EARLY AFTERNOON TRAFFIC HAD been light, allowing them to make good time. As they pulled off the highway, Josh began to pay closer attention to the GPS app on his tablet and the pleasant robotic female voice guiding them from the device’s speaker. They were on the outskirts of Smithfield now, a city in western Massachusetts that Josh knew to be one of the largest in the state. It didn’t appear as though Katherine Southard lived in the city proper, though, even though she had a Smithfield address, because according to the map on his device’s screen, they’d be at their destination in four minutes, yet Smithfield’s tallest buildings, which Josh could see up ahead, had to be at least ten driving minutes away. Instead, they were in a slightly more rural area
on Smithfield’s western edge, and the turns were coming more often now, more quickly as they neared their destination. Caitlin was driving slowly, just under the speed limit. Josh looked over at her behind the wheel, the way she watched the road with one eye while apparently scrutinizing every single thing they passed with the other. A bus stop there on the corner. A bagel shop on the other side of the street. A nail salon with a huge photograph of a woman’s beautifully pedicured foot dominating its front window. A quaint but tired little movie theater that seemed to belong decades in the past. She slowed down even more to watch a sandwich shop drift past.
“Want me to drive so you can pay attention out the window?” Josh asked.
She shook her head.
“Anything look familiar?”
After a moment, she shook her head again.
“Not at all? Not even a little?”
She sighed. “Not even a little. Was I even here at all?”
“You tell me.”
She shook her head again slowly. “I don’t know. I was hoping that seeing this place would spark a memory, like I’d somehow recall grabbing a sandwich in that shop back there or something. Anything to break through this blank wall in my mind.” She sighed. “We got off the same exit just now that I took to get on the highway last night. Shouldn’t I recognize these things?”
“Well, it was the middle of the night when you came through here. The stores were all probably closed. Everything looks different in the dark. And I doubt you were thinking too clearly. You had just . . . woken up, or whatever you want to call it. I’m sure your head was still cloudy.”
She nodded as though that made some sense to her.
“Also,” he continued, “maybe you came at the highway from the other direction last night. Want to turn around and see if anything looks familiar that way?”
She mulled it over. “No, I think we should just go right to Katherine Southard’s house, pray she’s home, and ask if she knows me . . . and what the heck I did for the last seven months.”
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