by David Bell
“No.”
“Mr. Little, a child’s life is in jeopardy. We saw the wrecked car, the blood. What were you coming back here for? Where are they? You need to cooperate.”
Anger surged through Michael, a force that propelled him toward the man. “Where are they?” he shouted. “Where?”
He felt Angela take hold of his arm, try to pull him back.
“Mr. Frazier. Please.”
But the man on the ground craned his head around, looking at Michael as best he could from his position. “You’re him. We finally meet.”
“Where are they?” Michael asked.
“Where’s your sister?” Jake Little asked. “That’s who I’m looking for.”
“We know that,” Griffin said. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know.” He spat the words with such force, Michael thought they might knock the detective down. “I don’t know where they are. I’ve been looking all night. I came here to find her. Lynn. I know her family owns this house. Erica told me once about their lake property.”
A slow-moving unease crept through Michael’s body. He’d staked everything on this man knowing where Lynn was, where Felicity was. He spoke with such conviction. . . .
“Have you had any contact with Lynn Frazier?” Griffin asked. “Any at all?”
“Not since before Felicity disappeared.”
“How do you even know her?” Michael asked, his voice shaky.
“I met her at Erica’s house. Once. She was there, visiting Felicity, I guess. And Erica and I had just split up for the second time, so things were shaky with us. I went by to see Felicity, and this woman was there. She was introduced as your sister. I didn’t stick around and interfere with the visit.”
“Was my mother there?” Michael asked.
“No. Just Lynn.”
“And you talked to her?” Griffin asked.
“Very briefly,” he said. “That time.”
“So then you talked again?” Michael asked.
“When Erica cut me off about a month ago, after the CPS call, I wanted to get back in touch with Felicity. I didn’t want to be cut out of her life. I didn’t know who else to turn to, so I tracked down your sister. It wasn’t hard to do considering how well-known she is. I just e-mailed her through her Web site. I told her we had a mutual interest, and she wrote back.”
“What mutual interest?” Michael asked.
The man stared at Michael, his eyes bright with anger and fear. “Why? Can’t you guess?”
“Tell us,” the detective said.
The man kept his eyes on Michael, his glare as hot as the sun.
“You want to know?” he asked. “Are you sure? Fine. Because she’s the one who was supposed to approach Felicity yesterday. That’s what we decided. Wherever your crazy sister is, she has the kid.”
chapter
seventy-eight
7:48 A.M.
Michael took a couple of steps back.
He felt as though he’d been shoved, that a giant hand had landed against his chest and pushed.
“You’re full of it,” he said. “That’s bullshit.”
Detective Griffin bent at the waist, moving her head so close to the man on the ground that she spoke directly into his ear. But she didn’t whisper. Her voice cut through the still air like a revving engine.
“What are you saying?” she asked. “Why did you both want to take Felicity?”
“I didn’t want to take her,” he said. “I just needed something from her. And so did Lynn.”
“What did you need from a nine-year-old?” Griffin asked.
Before the man answered, Angela spoke up beside Michael.
“The paternity test,” she said.
Both the detective and Michael turned their heads toward Angela.
She was nodding, a look of certainty on her face.
“You wanted a paternity test,” Angela said. “To prove who her father is. You just needed spit or something, a cheek swab.”
The man on the ground almost smiled as he looked up at Angela. “Very good,” he said. “I didn’t want to hurt Felicity. I wanted to prove I was her father.” He turned his head toward Michael again. “And your sister wanted to prove you were her father. But Erica kept ducking us. She’d agree, and then she’d change her mind. She was giving us the runaround.”
“So, get a court order,” Griffin said. “Get a lawyer.”
“We were going to. But his name is on the birth certificate, and that makes it tough for anyone else to make the claim. The courts don’t just easily let any random person off the street come in and ask for a paternity test. You have to have a compelling reason. You have to build a case, and that takes time and money.”
“So?” Griffin said. “Take the time.”
“Erica threatened to leave town, to take Felicity away and never come back. And to not tell us where she’d go. When we heard from the music teacher that she’d stopped showing up for her lessons and blew Lynn off, we panicked. We thought she might have left. But Tolliver kind of knew Erica’s routine. He knew where she walked the dog in the morning, so he told Lynn.”
“He’d called Lynn because he was worried about Felicity,” Griffin said.
“Yes. I don’t think he knew he was causing any trouble for Erica. He just thought Lynn wanted to check on her. He thought Lynn would be a good influence on Felicity’s life with the love of music and all.”
“That’s why Tolliver didn’t tell us that little detail about sharing Erica’s routine,” Griffin said. “He didn’t want to be blamed. Or charged with anything. I guess that gave him even more reason to run away a couple of times. He thought he might be in too deep.”
“No shit,” Jake said.
“So Lynn went to the park to get the sample?” Griffin asked.
“Erica told me if I came around Felicity or her, she’d call the police. Like I said, she blamed me for the child protective services call, even though it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t think she’d really call the cops, but why risk it? So we thought Lynn would have a better chance. She’d met Felicity a few times, and Felicity liked Lynn. She thought she was her cool aunt, the rock star. What kid wouldn’t think that?”
“So she kidnapped her?” Griffin asked.
“No. I don’t know what she did. She wasn’t supposed to do anything crazy. She was just supposed to get the swab and leave if she could get Felicity alone. If she couldn’t in the park, she might try another way. Maybe go over when the babysitter was there. But when she got the sample, she could compare them to herself or to me to see who the winner was. I don’t know what the hell went wrong yesterday. If I knew where Felicity and Lynn were, I wouldn’t be looking for them all over town. I wouldn’t be eating dirt right now.”
Michael closed his eyes for a moment. He felt Angela’s hand on his arm, offering support. The sunlight turned his eyelids red.
“I know about your dead sister,” Jake said. “The one who fell off the swing. I know all about it and how it fucked you and Lynn up. Erica told me everything when we were dating.”
“Shut up,” Michael said, but his voice was faint.
“I told Lynn about the CPS call. I was trying to let her know how urgent things were. Maybe that got her worked up even more. Maybe I said too much, but I wanted to know once and for all whether I was the father.”
“Stop talking,” Michael said.
Lynn took Felicity. . . .
Lynn had Felicity. . . .
But the wrecked car, the blood, the unanswered calls . . .
Where was she?
He opened his eyes again. Griffin was on the phone, calling for more backup, reporting what she’d learned, the man again squirming on the ground.
The sun caught something in the grass, the light reflecting off silver.
Michael star
ed at the keys, then looked up to the end of the driveway where Jake Little’s Impala sat, the sun shining off the glass and chrome.
Michael pulled free of Angela’s grip. Without breaking stride, he snatched the keys from the grass and started for the car.
“Mr. Frazier, wait—”
“Michael—”
“If you know something—”
He ignored them. He unlocked the car and jumped in, driving off, the tires throwing up a spray of gravel.
chapter
seventy-nine
Michael drove Jake Little’s car back toward town, back toward Cottonsville.
Back toward the house they grew up in.
The house where Robyn died.
While he drove, the sun bright in his tired eyes, the air-conditioning blowing against his face, he tried to comprehend the enormity of what he was experiencing.
Was Lynn hurt or in danger? Injured with Felicity?
No no no no no no no no.
He hoped she was just sitting there, at the house, writing a song or playing music.
Maybe she’d had a fender bender and needed the car from the lake for the short term.
Maybe Jake Little had lied.
Michael hoped for all of this as he drove.
But the blood. The unreturned calls. Jake Little’s story.
And if Lynn didn’t know where Felicity was, who did?
He entered the neighborhood, navigating through the familiar streets, the houses looking a little smaller than he remembered, a little older, but still nice. Still a place a family would want to raise children.
Michael worried about Lynn, the anxiety and fear churning in his blood like a roaring sea. He made two right turns, passing kids playing in their yards, an older man washing a shining red car. He felt the ache of nostalgia in his chest, the familiar sights and sounds bringing it all back as though time hadn’t moved.
He saw their house at the end of the street. A few cars lined both sides, but not the station wagon. The sun glared off windshields and mailboxes. Michael tried to remember the last time he’d been down there. He’d driven by a few years earlier, alone. Coming home from a meeting, he’d found himself nearby and took the slight detour. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see. He’d cruised by the house that day, going slow. The lights were on, the blinds closed. A family lived there then, because he saw kids’ bikes and a basketball in the yard. Michael found the experience unfulfilling. In a way, it bothered him that someone else lived there, that a family went about its life, never knowing about his sister’s death.
But what did he expect? An entire house turned into a memorial? A giant reminder of his sister?
Maybe, he thought. Maybe.
When the house came up for sale a few months earlier, he’d resisted the urge—the strong urge—to go through it, to visit during an open house or make an appointment to see it.
He even talked about buying it and then knocking it to the ground. But Angela talked him out of it, helped him let that thought go.
But maybe Lynn had looked at it. Angela suspected she had.
Maybe she’d done more than just see the house.
Michael parked in front. Before he pushed the door open, his phone rang. He checked the screen and saw Angela’s name. He knew what she was calling to say. She would tell him to turn around and leave, to let the police handle as much as they could. She wouldn’t think he needed to be at that house, reliving everything that had haunted him for more than twenty years.
The images from that day. What they had both seen.
How he’d turned his back and let it happen. . . .
He felt awful ignoring Angela’s call. He never wanted to do that.
But he did. He silenced the ringer and climbed out of the car.
He stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up at the façade of the house. The blinds were all down, the driveway empty, the garage closed. The grass and bushes were untrimmed, and some leaves overflowed the edges of the gutters. The state of casual neglect made Michael reconsider. Maybe Lynn hadn’t bought the house. Maybe no one had. But he saw no For Sale sign. If someone else owned the place or was living there, they weren’t tending to the property as Michael or anyone in his family would have.
He walked across the lawn, his shoes making soft sounds as they moved through the grass. When he reached the door, he leaned close to peek through the window. The glass was tinted, but he made out the foyer and the living room beyond. He saw no furniture, no sign that anyone lived there or had been there recently. He stepped back.
As far as he could tell, it was the same door as when he was a kid. Weathered and a little more beaten, but the same door. He couldn’t say how many times he’d come and gone through it, alone or with his family. In the fourteen years he lived in the house, it must have been thousands.
He reached out to the left and rang the bell. He rang it two more times before giving up, not surprised that no one responded. He stepped down off the porch and walked around the side of the house and moved toward the back. As he walked, a choking sense of dread and anticipation filled his chest, a pressure as though the heat in the air had come alive like a squeezing fist.
He knew the swing set was gone, taken down and removed by a handyman shortly after Robyn’s death. He remembered coming home and seeing it gone. His parents never commented on it, and when they moved, they never bought another one. But it didn’t matter whether it remained there or not. When Michael turned the corner, he saw the spot where the swing set once stood.
He froze in place. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see. It was simply a regular, suburban backyard, one of millions in the country. Grass and some small trees, a rectangular patio that sat empty under the bright sun. He could have been anywhere, in any everyday yard.
But he knew what happened there. He’d been shaped by it.
And so had Lynn.
He turned his head to the right, looking at the house.
He refused to walk away. He needed to go inside.
chapter
eighty
Michael tried the back door and found it locked. He studied the glass, which was divided into twelve smaller panes. He tugged the knob harder, but it still didn’t budge.
No surprise.
Michael scanned the area. His heart sank because he saw nothing he could use. Then his eye settled just off the patio where a fist-size rock sat in the grass. Michael bent over and picked it up, felt the sun’s warmth against his palm. He brought it back over to the door and studied the glass pane nearest the knob.
Michael looked to the left and then to the right. He couldn’t see the neighbors’ houses, couldn’t see any people in their yards. With the heat of the day rising and the air conditioners going, Michael doubted anyone would hear the glass breaking. But he also knew if he broke the glass, he was crossing a line.
What if Lynn wasn’t inside? What if all of it was for nothing?
Michael refused to turn back. He’d risk an unpleasant interaction with the police or a pissed-off homeowner. He brought the rock back and then forward, smacking it against the glass.
Nothing.
He swung back again, farther, and hit the glass again.
It gave way, his hand going through as well. Michael felt the small shards cutting into the skin of his wrist and hand, tiny stings. He slowly withdrew his hand from the jagged opening, taking care not to cut his hand any more. He shifted the rock from his palm to his fingertips and used it to clear the rest of the glass out of the pane. When he was finished, he tossed the rock back into the grass.
He checked his hand. A few cuts bled, and Michael gently picked some small shards out of his skin. But the damage didn’t look too great, nothing that would require stitches, nothing that would stop him from going ahead.
He stepped forward and reached through the broken-out pane. He
hoped the house wasn’t so secure that they had a double-sided dead bolt, one that required a key to open the door from the inside as well as the outside. It hadn’t been like that when they were kids, but that didn’t mean a later owner hadn’t changed it.
Michael fumbled around and felt relief when his fingers took hold of a small knob. He easily turned it and heard the lock click open. He straightened up again and tried the knob. The door swung wide.
Michael felt a cool rush from the air-conditioning. He stepped inside, his shoes sinking into the soft carpet. He paused for a moment after closing the door behind him, taking care not to tread on the broken glass. He listened and heard nothing.
He’d stepped into the family room, which was also empty of furniture or pictures or art. Something else struck Michael as he stood there—the smell. He couldn’t say what it was—some combination of years of human habitation—and he must have been experiencing an olfactory hallucination, but he would have sworn it was the same smell he remembered from his childhood. And it took him back. To the days and nights spent around the kitchen table, to the many evenings watching TV in the family room.
To the deadly somber day after Robyn’s funeral when the house filled up with friends and relatives, almost all of them in dark clothes. And Michael sat in a corner, trying not to cry, ignoring his cousins and their insistence that he come outside and play baseball. Even Lynn came by and tried to draw him out, but he refused.
Michael shook his head, releasing himself from the memories. He started forward, heading back toward the front of the house, to the stairs to the second floor. When he reached the bottom of the steps, something caught his eye. He looked down, trying to make it out. Then he saw it was a bandage, a piece of gauze marked by a quarter-size bloodstain.
He left it on the floor and looked up to the top of the stairs. He reached for his phone and was drawing it out of his pants pocket in preparation to call the police when he heard the floor squeak above him, the sound of someone moving around.