Making Her Way Home

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “By herself? All day?”

  “No. I left her for a couple of hours while I went into work. But I didn’t have an important event this weekend and so I went home at eleven. I worked from there the rest of the day, okay?”

  They could check on her computer to see how much time she’d actually spent on it.

  “And Sicily?”

  “By early afternoon, she said she felt better. We spent an hour working on the math—” she made a face “—for what good I did her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s in an accelerated class. They’re already doing algebra. I didn’t like algebra when I took it, and I don’t remember much. She seemed to figure out a concept she’d been missing, though, so she was happy.”

  “Did anyone else see Sicily on Friday? Or from the time she left school on Thursday?”

  She was shaking and holding herself in by force of will. Mike had seen corpses with more color in their faces. Her very dignity made him feel like a son of a bitch, but all he was doing was his job. And somehow he had no trouble predicting what she was going to say.

  “I don’t know.” She closed her eyes momentarily. Then, so quietly he could barely hear her, she said, “No. Probably not. Unless one of the neighbors saw us driving away Saturday morning. Sicily didn’t leave the house Friday.”

  Goddamn. This thing only got uglier.

  “You called the school.”

  “My partner did. It took most of the day to track down Sicily’s teacher to confirm her attendance records.”

  “So now she knows…” She broke off.

  “Sicily’s disappearance is plastered across the newspapers today. Did you think we were keeping it secret?”

  “No. It doesn’t matter.” Those wounded dark eyes met his. “What are you going to do now?”

  Deploy officers to question her neighbors. Find out when someone had last seen the girl. It would be very, very good for Beth Greenway if someone had happened to be looking out the window to see Sicily and Beth in the car backing out of the garage, the girl chattering and smiling.

  Mike wasn’t putting any money on the odds of that happening.

  “You and I are going to keep looking,” he said, and walked toward the next clump of sword ferns. It was a minute before he heard her footsteps behind him.

  The afternoon had been as worthless and frustrating as the morning. If Mike was tired at the end of it, Beth had to be ready to collapse. After the earlier exchange, they’d barely spoken. His phone rang on and off, but she didn’t ask any questions about those calls and he didn’t offer any information.

  What really frustrated him was how aware of her he remained. He didn’t have to turn his head to know exactly where she was at every moment. When he did look at her, his gut clenched. She was dirty and sweaty, and all he could think was how beautiful she was. His gaze would catch on the graceful line of her neck when she lifted damp, tangled hair from it to cool herself momentarily. The swell of her breasts beneath the T-shirt. The length of her legs or the way a narrow waist flowed into a great ass. Never mind those amazing cheekbones or mouth that was a little pouty when she relaxed it.

  Lucky he didn’t think with his dick. Where she was concerned, it and his head were in opposite corners of the rink. Right now, she was his best suspect in Sicily’s disappearance. The fact that Mike Ryan, the man, didn’t believe she’d hurt anyone didn’t count.

  At about five, he talked to Phyllis Chang, keeping this conversation private by walking a distance away from Beth, who was exploring the edges of a particularly dense blackberry thicket. He saw her stop at what looked like a small tunnel leading into it and drop to her knees. By the time he reached her, she lay on her belly and was apparently trying to squirm into the hole, which wasn’t big enough for her. He was pretty sure she was swearing under her breath as thorns hooked her hair, shirt and skin.

  “That was made by wildlife,” he told her. “Probably raccoons. The canes aren’t disturbed around it. There’s no way Sicily could be in there.”

  Beth’s head dropped onto her forearm. After a minute she wriggled backward, giving him one of those uncomfortable jabs of lust as she half rose to her knees and her hips waggled back and forth a couple of times as she retreated.

  Then she sat up, face flushed. “I told you Sicily’s skinny. I think she could have gotten in there.” Her voice was a little husky, maybe from disuse, given that the muttered profanities he’d heard were the first words from her in close to two hours.

  “If she was running from someone, maybe,” he agreed. “But she disappeared a day and a half ago. Why wouldn’t she have come out by now?”

  Beth looked both mutinous and defeated.

  “It’s almost five-thirty.” He hesitated, knowing she wouldn’t like what he was going to say. “We’re suspending the search.”

  Her head lifted. “What? But it’ll be daylight for another three hours!”

  “We’re not taking a break until tomorrow. We’re calling it off for good, until we have some clue where to look.”

  Hot red color rose to her cheeks as if he’d slapped them. “You said you’d find her! You swore!”

  Once again, he squatted to bring himself to her level. One of his knees creaked. This had been a hell of a couple of days. “Ms. Greenway, we’ve had between twenty and thirty volunteers scouring this park and the surrounding land. You and I have worked our way from the road to the bluff.” He gestured and she turned her head. A stand of vine maples and a couple of scraggly red-barked madronas were all that separated them from the drop-off to the beach.

  “We can keep going.”

  “She’s not here.” He tried to make his voice gentle, in case she was genuine, but implacable because she had to face facts.

  Fact: not a single person they’d yet found who was at the beach yesterday had seen a skinny, blonde, ten-year-old girl with Beth Greenway. As of this moment, there was no confirmation that anyone had seen Sicily Marks since she left school Thursday afternoon.

  “You’re exhausted,” he said. “How much sleep did you get last night? Four or five hours? You can’t keep on this way.”

  “I can,” she said stubbornly. “I’ll keep looking.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t make me leave.”

  “Yeah, if you force the issue, I can. County search-and-rescue and the sheriff’s department had permission to search on this land. Once we call it quits, you’re trespassing.”

  She stared at him as if caught between shock and hate. Then, without a word, she stood up, walked around him and started back the way they’d come.

  He followed. “I’m not giving up, Ms. Greenway.”

  She didn’t stop or look back. “What would you call this, Detective Ryan?”

  “Changing tactics.”

  “To what?” Her tone was curiously flat. This was the woman he’d first encountered, so locked down that no real emotion seeped into her voice. “Digging up my backyard?”

  “If necessary.”

  There was a hitch between one step and the next; her shoulders stiffened. That was all. She kept walking, looking neither to the right or left.

  A few birds chittered in trees. Farther away, gulls let out harsh cries. He heard a rustle in the blackberries, saw a squirrel dash up the trunk of a fir. He and Beth didn’t talk.

  They reached the blacktop road and were passed by several cars. He recognized volunteers and raised his hand to them. Marching along the verge, Beth didn’t even glance toward the passing vehicles or their drivers.

  “They gave a hell of a lot of time,” he remarked mildly.

  “Not a one of them would meet my eyes.”

  He frowned, only now realizing that it was true. Yeah, he’d noticed how dismissive Phyllis was this morning, but thought he was
the one to trigger Beth’s emotional breakdown. But maybe it hadn’t been only him.

  If she’d been a different woman, if circumstances were different, he might have lied and said something like, “I think you’re imagining things. They were preoccupied, that’s all. Thinking about Sicily, not you.” But he didn’t.

  “They maybe get angry if they’ve been at this long,” he finally said. “Mostly they’re looking for adults who are in trouble because they didn’t take common-sense precautions or who’ve done something stupid, or kids who got lost because no adult was paying attention.”

  “I would give anything not to have fallen asleep.” She turned a flushed face to him. “Is that what you want to hear me say?” A long scratch marred one of her cheeks. Dried blood was beaded along it. “But she’s ten years old. Not five, not six or seven. I don’t know that much about children, but you can’t tell me most parents of a ten-year-old wouldn’t have felt comfortable lying back on a blanket in the sun and closing their eyes.” Her voice had begun to rise. “If you’re right and she’s not here somewhere, hurt or… If she’s not there, then someone abducted her right in the middle of a crowded park. Have you even tried to find out who or why? Or have you already made up your mind she was never here at all?” One last glare, and she stalked away.

  “I’m pursuing all possibilities,” he said to her back, and wondered if he was being entirely honest.

  * * *

  SICILY HATED THAT THE COLA made her have to pee again, but she’d been so thirsty. She’d worried, staring at the cheeseburger and French fries, whether maybe they were drugged or poisoned, but in the end she was so hungry, she had to take a chance. First she took the pickles out and scraped as much of the ketchup as possible off the bun, like she always did unless she was the one doing the ordering, in which case she asked for her cheeseburgers plain.

  That was one thing she liked about Aunt Beth. Even though they ate fast food all the time, Mom had always—always—rolled her eyes when Sicily explained to the person taking orders that no, she didn’t want anything except hamburger and cheese and lettuce. Aunt Beth had only nodded and, the one other time they stopped for burgers, ordered Sicily’s just the way she liked it.

  Sicily was so hungry now, she hardly even noticed the ketchup that had soaked into the bun. The French fries were so good, she almost moaned.

  Only after she’d eaten did she sit and think about the man. She wished he hadn’t surprised her when she was asleep. Even if she hadn’t had the chance to put her plan into action, she should have been as observant as possible. What if she never saw his face again and later the police wanted her to describe him? When she was way younger, she’d been big into Nancy Drew. Now she read young adult books, a lot of which were paranormal, but Nancy had been kidnapped and held prisoner lots of times. She could always tell every detail later.

  But Sicily realized that when she closed her eyes, she could see him. He had a goatee that was lots darker than the long streaky blond hair that had fallen forward and hidden part of his face from her. But his nose was straight, and his eyes were kind of a gray-green and bloodshot, like Mom’s eyes were a lot. He was tall and super thin and the hands that had held the pop and the Burger King bag were shaking. So…he was probably using drugs. Not the kind of stuff Mom liked. He was so skinny and wired, Sicily thought he could be a crackhead. There were always some around the places she and Mom had lived. Even Mom had avoided them, because she said they were desperate and they’d steal from anybody.

  But…why would one want to steal me? she asked herself miserably.

  When she cried, she tried really hard to be quiet, so he wouldn’t hear her.

  * * *

  BETH DROVE HOME BECAUSE SHE didn’t know what else she could do. She felt like a wind-up toy whose workings were slowing down. Things that should be automatic required conscious thought. Her eyes were dry and burning because she had to remind herself to blink. Every movement was stiff and jerky. She struggled to concentrate when she was on the road.

  Now it’s time to put your foot on the brake. The light turned green. Go.

  Even though the truck ahead of her on the freeway was going below the speed limit, it seemed to take too much effort to check the rearview mirrors and change lanes, so she stayed where she was, slowing when the truck did, speeding up when it did. It was like giving herself up to the current in a river, letting it carry her. City traffic required more effort than she thought she could bear, but at last she was safely in her garage. As the door rolled down behind her, she sagged forward and rested her forehead on the steering wheel.

  She didn’t fool herself that she’d gotten away from him. A couple of hours later, he showed up. Beth hardly looked at him as she let him into the house, but even so she felt his imposing presence. She went to an easy chair in the living room and sat down. He settled on the sofa and placed his notebook and pen down on the coffee table. Elbows on his knees, he looked at her.

  “Did you get anything to eat?”

  “Yes.” Soup—she hadn’t been sure she could swallow anything more substantial.

  He nodded. “All right. Tell me about your search for Sicily’s father.”

  That surprised Beth for some reason, enough that she met his eyes and was startled anew by how blue they were. “What do you mean?”

  “You said you looked for him. How? Did you look in the phone book? On the internet? Did you have a starting place?”

  “I hired a private investigator.”

  “Who?”

  She told him and he nodded again, as if he recognized the name.

  “Would you give me access to whatever information he gave you?”

  “He didn’t find him.”

  “But knowing where he looked could save me time.”

  “Oh.” Her thoughts were wading knee-deep in sludge. “Okay. Um…give me a minute and I can find his report.”

  It took her longer than a minute, because she hadn’t put it in the file she’d started with a label that said Sicily. She had intended for it to hold vaccine records, report cards, that kind of thing. Instead, the report was in Miscellaneous.

  Detective Ryan read it, head bent. She found herself fixated on the hand holding the single sheet of paper. She’d noticed his hands before. They were big, the fingers blunt-tipped, nails cut short. The tendons stood out. A few hairs, darker than those on his head, curled on the backs of his fingers. He had enough scratches on his hands and forearms to make it look as if he’d lost the battle with an enraged raccoon. Her hands looked as bad. The scratches on her face and arms and even legs, made when a long thorn had snagged her through her pants, had stung when she’d showered.

  “He’s a musician.” Detective Ryan looked up. Mike. She was trying not to think of him by his first name, because she didn’t want to kid herself that he was anything to her but a cop.

  “Well, he was. I don’t know about now. He was a lead guitarist for a Seattle heavy metal group that got far enough to open for some bigger bands. I…went to see them play once.”

  “Then you did know him.”

  She shook her head. “I was curious, that’s all. I never even told Rachel I was there. We talked on the phone once in a while in those days, and she kept on about Chad, so I wanted to see him. That’s all.”

  “Was he good?”

  “I don’t know. I’m probably not a very good judge. I hated the music.”

  He grinned, a flash of white teeth, and she felt a bittersweet pang in her chest. Oh, dear Lord, what a smile did to that hard face!

  “What kind of music do you listen to?”

  She wondered if he was trying to relax her, soften her up so that he could take her unaware when he slipped in a stiletto of a question. But she said, “Jazz. Folk. Some classical. I have a weakness for Broadway show tunes.”

  “Phantom?”


  “I’ve seen it four times.”

  He laughed again. “You’re a romantic, then.”

  “No.” Being romantic implied some faith in human relationships. She had none. “I like the music, that’s all.”

  He quirked an eyebrow, but his eyes were so sharp she knew he was trying to see more than she liked.

  After a minute, he asked, “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since your sister has had any contact with this—” he glanced down at the P.I.’s report although Beth doubted he’d forgotten the name “—Chad Marks?”

  “Not really. Sicily doesn’t remember him at all. I’m pretty sure he and Rachel had broken up by the time Sicily turned two. I think Rachel tried to get child support from him and that’s when he more or less disappeared. The band had broken up. Rachel kept watching for him to crop up with a new band, because it made her mad that he wouldn’t pay anything. Supposedly he had wanted kids, too.”

  “All right,” Mike—no, Detective Ryan—said. “We’ll try to find him. We have resources the P.I. didn’t, but if he’s no longer in the state it may be tough.”

  He asked questions about Rachel: her friends, who had come to the funeral, if Sicily had talked about any of those friends or men her mother had been seeing. Beth had to keep shaking her head or saying, “I don’t know,” which set her stomach to churning because it reminded her of that first day, when she’d been so humiliated by how little she knew about her own niece.

  She was unprepared when he held her gaze and said, “What was the problem between you and your sister?”

  Her throat closed. It was a minute before she said, “It’s ancient history. It has absolutely nothing to do with Sicily.”

  “You don’t get along with your parents, you didn’t have anything to do with your sister, she didn’t get along with your parents or you, either. Right now, I want to know everything about Sicily’s life. Family’s real basic to a kid. Why does nobody in her family speak to anyone else?”

  With difficulty, Beth answered, “My parents shouldn’t have had children. My father was a virtual stranger to both Rachel and me. My mother…” Breathe. She thought about her mother as seldom as possible. “You met her.”