He hung up. ‘According to the computer, the girl was reported back home and safe with her family – six days after she went missing.’
27
It was mid afternoon when Tom and Lewis reached Buffalo. Schenk had made another call to say that they were on their way and Sergeant Jack Edwards came out to the station desk to meet them when they announced ourselves.
‘We can go around the corner and get a cup of coffee,’ he suggested. ‘Or there’s a bar that’s pretty quiet this time of day.’
Tom and Lewis had drunk enough coffee and opted for the bar, which Tom suspected was also the preferred choice of Jack Edwards. If he thought for a moment that the peppermint he was sucking could disguise the smell of liquor on his breath from an old hand like Tom, he was very much mistaken. It came as no surprise when Edwards ordered a large vodka with a Miller Lite as chaser. Lewis settled for a straight Lite, but Tom noticed a flicker of almost hostile recognition in Edwards’s eyes when he himself took his usual mineral water. The two men had never met before, but on a certain level they already knew each other only too well.
‘OK,’ Edwards said, ‘Murray’s filled me in on what you want. You’re asking a lot, I hope you know that. But Murray and I have done each other a few favours over the years.’
He took a slug of his vodka and followed it with the beer.
‘We’re very grateful for your time, Sergeant Edwards,’ Tom said. ‘I know you’re a busy man. All we want is anything you know about the search for Melanie Hagan.’
Edwards pulled a piece of paper from his shabby jacket and unfolded it. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a printout here of everything we have, and it’s not much.’
He had a slight tremor in his hands which most of the time he disguised cleverly by keeping them moving or in his pockets. That was something else that Tom knew about. Holding on to something solid, even a glass, was no problem; in fact it was a help. But paper was always the giveaway, especially when you had to hold it long enough to read what was on it, which Edwards had just made the mistake of doing. He couldn’t have been much more than fifty if that. He was of medium build, balding, and with the waxy, sweating pallor of a man running on nervous energy and with no idea how close to exhausted his supply of it was.
‘When exactly were you told that the girl had been found and was back home?’ Tom asked.
‘Date’s right here. The fourteenth. Six days after she was first reported missing.’
‘And who told you she was back home?’
‘I don’t have a record of that.’
‘Who would normally make such a report?’
‘Well, the family, of course. Or whoever had reported her missing.’
‘Sergeant Edwards,’ Lewis leaned forward slightly, inserting himself into the conversation in that discreet and diplomatic way he had, ‘is there any routine procedure to verify that some missing person, especially a child, actually is back home when someone reports that they are?’
Edwards shrugged. ‘Depends. Depends on a lot of things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Circumstances. If there are any suspicious circumstances, for example.’
‘Which in this case there weren’t?’
‘None that went into the record –’ Edwards tapped the paper, which he had set down on the table, with his knuckle – ‘and none that I recall. Teenage girl takes a bus, then hitches a ride, doesn’t cross a state line, isn’t in the company of anyone of known bad character. If she turns around and the family reports her back home a week later – end of story.’
‘Tell me,’ Tom said, after taking a moment to absorb this information, ‘did you yourself deal directly with any members of the family?’
‘Yeah, the brother.’ He checked the paper again. ‘Sawyer.’
‘Brother-in-law.’
‘Right. Brother-in-law. That’s the only name down here.’
‘Do you happen to remember anything about him?’
Edwards gave the kind of weary smile that suggested he was dealing with people in a league he shouldn’t even be wasting his time on.
‘After ten years? Have you any idea how many people I see in a month, or even a week, let alone a year?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said, ‘that was a long shot, I know. But look, you know she took a bus to Buffalo, then hitched a ride to Rochester, which means you must know who she hitched that ride with.’
Edwards consulted the paper again, leaning over it where it lay on the table, avoiding picking it up again and exposing his unsteady hand.
‘There are no details of that. Apparently some couple saw a picture of the girl in a local paper.’
They fell silent for a moment. Edwards took the opportunity to drain what was left in the two glasses before him, then pushed back his chair and got to his feet.
‘Now, if you gentlemen have no further questions for me, I’ve got work piling up on my desk . . .’
They thanked him, exchanged a perfunctory handshake, then sat down again as he left, and looked at each other.
‘He killed her,’ Tom said. ‘It’s the only explanation. Sawyer murdered her.’
28
Sawyer was on the same shift, ending at five. Tom stood on the same spot where he had waited for him a few days earlier. This time, Sawyer emerged alone. When he saw Tom, he stopped, nodding slowly in acknowledgement of the implied challenge. Then he started forward with a grimly cold smile spreading over his face.
Tom didn’t move as Sawyer approached, walking this time with the special swagger of a man who had delivered a fair warning and was now looking forward to showing that he had meant it. Tom took the initiative.
‘This time let’s skip the drink,’ he said. ‘Just tell me why you lied to the police about Melanie being back home.’
Sawyer froze and the blood drained from his face. ‘Who told you that?’
‘The police – who else?’
‘You interfering son-of-a-fucking-bitch!’
His fists were balled, and Tom readied himself for the punch he knew was coming. It was more than a little crazy, but some part of him wanted to fight this man. He knew, rationally, that he wasn’t a physical match: Sawyer was bigger and more powerful than he was. And yet that crazy part at the back of his brain kept reminding him that madmen have the strength of ten, so provided you’re mad enough you need not fear anyone. Tom was mad, deeply mad, at this man in front of him. He felt a kind of blind rage towards him for what he’d done to a defenceless girl and what he’d drawn his daughter and his whole family into. He wanted to show him that the world wasn’t run by men like him. And he wanted to do it himself, with his own hands – as he’d been ready to do when Sawyer had threatened Julia.
Tom also had an advantage – one that Joe Sawyer didn’t know about. It would have got him out of trouble if he’d started a fight that he wasn’t winning. But it was an advantage that he didn’t want to use.
‘Look over there,’ he said. Sawyer turned. ‘See anyone you recognize?’
Sawyer’s jaw dropped when he saw Murray Schenk leaning against an unmarked car. Standing on the far side, looking across the roof, was a young detective from Murray’s old station with a Neanderthal forehead who weighed two-fifty pounds and all of it muscle.
‘Let’s get in the car and go talk at the station,’ Tom said.
Schenk had set the whole thing up seamlessly. Although retired, it was obvious that he remained a popular figure on the force, and they had been glad to help him out. While Sawyer was being grilled by Schenk and Neanderthal man in one room, Jack Edwards, who had driven over from Rochester, watched the confrontation on closed-circuit television in another. Tom and Oliver Lewis were with him. It took a while, but eventually Edwards was sure he remembered Sawyer as the man he had talked to in connection with Melanie Hagan’s disappearance, that he was the man who had later called him to report that she had returned safely home and the case could be closed.
Edwards went to join the men in the interview r
oom while Tom and Lewis continued to watch on closed circuit. It was obvious the moment Sawyer saw him that he knew the game was up. Until then he’d been prevaricating, demanding to see a lawyer, asking whether he was under arrest, and making a big show of his willingness to cooperate voluntarily to clear up this ‘misunderstanding’.
Even before he’d shut the door behind him, Edwards was cutting through the crap with practised ‘bad cop’ savagery.
‘We don’t need the body, Sawyer. This case will stand up without the body. Your only chance is if she walks into that courtroom to prove she’s alive. Your second best chance is to make a confession – now. You’ve been tortured with guilt for ten years, you’re full of remorse for what you did, maybe the judge’ll go a little easier on you than he might. Or she might. Think about that, Sawyer. What if the judge is a woman? We can fix that, you know. A woman judge is going to like you even less than I do. So if I were you I’d think real hard. If you make us nail you for this, and we will, you are going to get so fucked. You know what they do in jail to guys like you who fuck little girls and then kill them . . .’
‘I didn’t kill her! I swear I didn’t kill her!’
Sawyer wiped a hand across his face. He was white as a sheet and pouring with sweat. Tom noticed that Lewis had his camera in his hand again and was taking shots of the TV screen they were watching. He thought this would probably be disapproved of, if not actually illegal; but as there was no one around to see, he supposed it didn’t matter.
‘You fucked her, didn’t you!’ Schenk said, nailing Sawyer with a baleful gaze, no doubt perfected by years of experience, that seemed to drill right through the eyes of the frightened man in front of him.
‘Sure he fucked her,’ Edwards said, pushing his face closer to Sawyer’s. Tom could imagine the smell of liquor and peppermint on his breath. ‘He fucked her, got her pregnant, then he killed her.’
‘She wasn’t pregnant!’
Silence hit the room like a sledgehammer. Tom and Lewis looked at each other in front of the television screen, then turned back to watch the morbidly compelling spectacle as Sawyer began to come apart.
‘I didn’t kill her. She never said she was pregnant.’
‘How many times did you fuck her?’ Edwards’s voice, cold and quiet now, dripped an almost tangible contempt.
‘I don’t know. Six, seven.’
Sawyer kept his head down, his shoulders hunched protectively as though to hide his face and avoid looking at any of them. His voice shook with fear.
‘It wasn’t my fault . . . I tried . . . She was coming on to me every chance she got . . . She told me if I didn’t do it, if I didn’t fuck her . . . She was going to tell her mother that I had . . . that I’d been . . . Oh, Christ! . . . I didn’t kill her! I swear I didn’t kill her!’
‘Then why’d you tell me she was back home?’
‘I just figured . . . I figured if she stayed away . . . if nobody was looking for her . . . that would be best . . .’
‘But you made sure she was going to stay away, didn’t you, Joe? By killing her and burying the body.’
‘No, I didn’t! I didn’t do anything!’
‘You just said you fucked her.’
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘You hit her, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah . . . a couple of times.’
‘And she ran away.’
‘Not just from me . . . from that place . . . home, the neighbourhood, everything . . .’
It went on. After a while, Tom turned to Lewis again. ‘You know something? I’m starting to believe him.’
‘Sawyer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if he killed her, why draw attention to himself by lying about her being back home?’
Lewis thought a moment, then answered: ‘Maybe he just had to stop the police looking for her. Maybe he’d killed her but wasn’t able to hide the body very well. Maybe there were a couple of leads that would take them straight to it if they kept on looking.’
‘Too many maybes,’ Tom said. ‘He’s a piece of shit and a fool, but I’m not convinced he’s any more than that.’
It seemed that both Jack Edwards and Murray Schenk must have come to the same conclusion, because they let Sawyer go home after another half-hour, albeit it with all kinds of warnings not to leave town, and (this at Tom’s suggestion) a special warning to not even think about taking any of it out on his wife, or they’d break his legs.
Schenk, Edwards, Tom and Lewis repaired to the local cops’ bar around the corner from the station. They drank in silence for a while, each contemplating the table around which they were sitting.
‘What now?’ Tom said eventually.
Edwards clinked the ice in his glass restlessly, then took a drink before answering.
‘The case stays open,’ he said, ‘but not much is going to change unless we get some kind of break. Even if we are looking for a body, and like you I’m not convinced we are, we haven’t the first clue where to start.’
Tom could feel an idea taking shape at the back of his mind – a long shot, and perhaps his last.
‘Jack,’ he said, ‘could you make a call for me?’
29
The call Tom asked Jack Edwards to make was to the local paper that had carried the picture of Melanie – the picture that Edwards had told them was recognized by a couple who had given her the ride into Rochester. The police had no record of who they were, but Tom thought there might be a slim chance that the paper itself still had something. A call from the police department, he reasoned, would focus their minds far better than a request from a private citizen.
As Edwards pointed out, knowing who brought her to Rochester wouldn’t necessarily tell them what happened to her next, but he agreed it was worth a shot – especially when somebody else was doing the leg work.
The paper’s young editor, who had only been in the job eighteen months, gave Tom all the cooperation he could hope for. The library was scoured, old notebooks examined, even phone records checked. The result was negative.
Oliver Lewis had flown out the day before, due in Stockholm to deliver a public lecture. He promised Tom he would say nothing and write nothing about Julia’s case for the time being. In return, Tom promised to keep him informed of any developments. As there hadn’t been any Tom thought he would wait until he got back home to call him. Instead, he called Clare on his cellphone while drinking a solitary coffee in the newspaper’s canteen. He told her that he’d drawn a blank and would be driving back to Niagara Falls and taking a plane out the following morning.
‘You know what?’ she said, ‘I’m glad you’ve drawn a blank.’
‘How so?’ he said, not entirely surprised.
‘You remember when Brendan Hunt called last week and asked if we still had that stuff Julia brought back from the Hagan house?’
Tom remembered it well. He had taken the call. Hunt had asked what they had done, more importantly what Julia had done, with the bundle of old magazines, records and clothes that Jennifer Sawyer had let her pick out from the stuff that Melanie had left behind.
‘As far as I know, it’s in the bottom of her closet,’ Tom had said. ‘Why?’
‘Does she play with it much, spend time sorting through it, or anything?’
‘Not that I’ve seen.’
Just to be sure, Tom had checked with Clare. She confirmed his impression.
‘That’s good,’ Hunt said. ‘Here’s what I want you to do. Put it in a sack and hide it somewhere safe, but where you can get it back easily any time you might want to. But do that now, before she comes home.’
Julia hadn’t noticed that the stuff was missing. Or if she had, she’d not mentioned it. Tom and Clare had spoken every day since then, and still she had said nothing.
‘Brendan Hunt called again today,’ Clare said, ‘and told me we could throw the stuff out now. He said she’s either forgotten about it, or wants to forget about it, and he’d
rather there was no chance of her coming across it by accident. And he wants to see us both as soon as you’re back.’
Neither of them dared say openly what they were both feeling – that this whole extraordinary and disturbing episode might be finally drawing to a close. Wherever it had all come from, whatever it had been about, Julia had come through it unharmed. Now, she was herself again. They had their daughter back.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow, first thing,’ Tom said. ‘Make an appointment as soon as you like.’
He shook hands with the editor and thanked the members of her staff who had done everything they could to help him. It was as he was leaving the building that he heard a busy patter of feet behind him, as though someone was hurrying to catch up with him. He turned to see a slight figure, a woman he would have guessed was in her seventies. She was bustling, slightly stooped, but with an alert and lively face.
‘Pardon me,’ she said, ‘it’s Mr Freeman, isn’t it?’ She glanced right and left, as though anxious to be sure their conversation was not overheard. ‘Did you find what you were looking for, Mr Freeman?’
‘Well, no, as a matter of fact I didn’t,’ he answered, intrigued by her interest.
‘Please don’t think I am in the habit of eavesdropping – nothing could be further from my intention. But I work on the switchboard . . .’
She gestured to an open door, through which Tom could see the chair she had just vacated and the headset on the desk in front of it.
‘Only two days a week now, but they’ve been very kind to keep me on. I’ve been here thirty-nine years . . .’
She rattled on, unable to come to the point even though obviously pressed for time: Tom could see lights flashing on the switchboard she had abandoned.
‘I knew you were in the building today and yesterday, because I happened to overhear the call from Sergeant Edwards to say why you were coming. I would have spoken to you at once, but as I mentioned, I am here only two days a week, which means that I hardly know many of the newer members of staff . . . of course, when I was full time I—’
A Memory of Demons Page 11