by Janice Kay Johnson - Cop by Her Side (The Mysteries of Angel Butte)
He was dialing before he could have second thoughts.
Jane answered on the second ring. “Clay?” Her voice rang with anxiety.
“Nothing new,” he told her hastily. “I just, uh, thought I’d check in. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“No. Of course not.” She hesitated. “I’m at Lissa’s with Alexis. So Drew could stay at the hospital.”
“He’s planning to stay all night?”
“I don’t know. He shouldn’t. He has to get some rest sometime. But I offered to pick up Alexis and tuck her in. She’d already had dinner with the neighbor.”
“Did you have dinner?” he asked, leaning back against the knotty pine kitchen cabinets.
There was a moment of silence. “I’m not hungry.”
“I know it’s hard when you’re scared, but you should have something.”
“Maybe.”
He sought for something else to say. “Alexis okay?”
“Not really. It was—” She broke off, or maybe her voice had broken. “Um, she wanted to talk about why her mommy hadn’t opened her eyes, and she was hoping I’d promise to bring Bree home tomorrow.”
“She’s five, right?”
“Right. She’s supposed to start kindergarten in...wow, not much over a week.”
“Bad enough at that age having something scary happen to one member of your family. But two...” He shook his head, remembering something he hadn’t thought of in years. His mother had had breast cancer when she was in her forties. Really scary shit, even if he was an adult. Sort of an adult, he amended, doing some mental arithmetic to decide he’d been...nineteen? Twenty? Anyway.
“What are you thinking about?” Jane asked. “You’ve gotten really quiet.”
So he told her. “All they did was remove a lump. They were confident they’d caught it early. But we all watched her like a hawk for years. I don’t even know when I quit getting this sinking feeling every time I saw her and thinking, what if it comes back?”
“Maybe after the magic five years?”
“Maybe.” What did this have to do with anything? He wasn’t sure. But he said, “My dad’s a hard-ass. You know? That’s the only time I can ever remember seeing him emotional. Scared. And gentle with Mom. That’s not his style.”
He’d never actually thought of his parents and the word love connected until that scare. Then he’d known. His father might not be good showing it, but he loved Clay’s mom. It was plain he’d have been lost without her.
Clay had liked his father a little better after that.
His mouth twisted. A little summed it up. Increasingly, he felt distaste for a man he’d once admired. A man who’d loved his sons and always had time for them while he taught them everything he believed a man should be.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I told you all that.”
“Maybe because it came out all right?” Jane suggested. “Your mom is fine?”
Was that why? He’d wanted to remind her that, yes, scary shit did happen and most often everyone came out safe on the other side?
If so—that was dumb as hell. Jane and he were both in a good position to know how often when things went to shit they stayed that way. Faces flashed through his memory, too many to catch one and stop it—the faces of accident victims, battered wives, kids who did something stupid and paid the ultimate penalty. Murder victims.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
What could he say but “You’re welcome.”
“Have you gone home?”
“Just got here.” He kneaded the back of his neck. “With the Amber Alert out there, a bunch of phone calls came in from people who thought they might have seen Bree. You know how it is. We had to follow up on all of them, but nothing panned out.”
She made a sound that might have been an “oh.”
“Didn’t really expect they would,” he continued, “but you never know.”
“No. Maybe tomorrow. I mean, she can’t have just vanished from the face of the earth.”
Thinking of the miles of empty country around Angel Butte, Clay knew she was wrong. A little girl’s body could go undiscovered for a long time. Even forever. But he wasn’t about to say anything like that to Jane. Didn’t have to, he realized; she knew. But she was trying for hope, too, and that was okay.
“You should get some sleep,” he told her gently. “Don’t wait up for your brother-in-law. You know he’ll call if anything changes.”
“You will, too, won’t you?” she said with sudden urgency. “This is really hard, being on the sidelines. I don’t care if you wake me up. If you hear anything. Anything at all.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I swear.”
“Okay.” There was a pause. “I’m glad you called. Thank you, Clay.”
“You’re welcome,” he said again. “Go on. Hit the sack.”
“You, too.”
They said good-night and his phone went dead. Clay checked to be sure he’d put the milk back in the fridge, then flicked off the overhead light and made his way through the dark to the stairs. He thought he might be able to sleep now. Talking to Jane had...settled him. No real reason, but he felt better knowing she was hanging in there. He liked the softness in her voice when she said his name, too.
He hoped she went to bed before Drew came home wanting to weep on her shoulder.
* * *
JANE WOKE TO the sound of voices down the hall. She grabbed the second pillow and slapped it over her head. She wanted desperately to sink back into sleep. An uninterrupted hour or two. That was all she asked.
But of course it was hopeless. The light slipping through the blinds in this guest bedroom told her it was morning. Anyway, once she was really awake, she was awake.
She dragged herself to the bathroom and groaned at the sight of herself in the mirror. Given that she had no change of clothes, without borrowing something from Lissa—and she shuddered at the very thought—there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about her appearance. She did use the girls’ hairbrush—with a sparkly pink handle, no less—to try to restore order to her wild locks. Her mouth felt gummy, but a brief search of the drawers for a spare toothbrush came up empty. She really had to make it home today to pack that bag.
Drew sat slumped at the kitchen table. Alexis had scraped her chair as close to the corner of the table as she could get it. As close to her daddy as she could get.
“Can I have ’nother waffle, Daddy?” she begged in her piercing little voice. “I think I want jam on this one.”
“What? Oh...sure,” he agreed, voice dragging. He started to push his chair back, and she bounced out of hers to follow him. Drew saw Jane then. “Hey. I’m sorry if we made too much noise.”
He was hardly recognizable. His brown eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Deep lines had somehow carved themselves between his nose and mouth and across his forehead. Jane would have sworn he’d aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. Twenty years.
Of course, she didn’t look so sharp this morning, either.
“I’ll put her waffle in the toaster,” she offered, having seen the box on the counter. Thank goodness Drew hadn’t felt obligated to make some from scratch, not after the night he must have had. “Did you get any sleep at all?” she asked.
He sank heavily back into the chair. “Couple hours. How about you?”
Jane bent down to hug Alexis. “Your daughter had nightmares.” Lots of nightmares. “But we survived, didn’t we, pumpkin?”
“Uh-huh. I didn’t want to be alone last night.” Alexis and Bree had their own bedrooms now, but they’d shared a room until about a year ago. “So finally I went to bed with Auntie Jane.”
Drew gave her a wry smile. “Lucky Auntie Jane.”
“She said she couldn’t sleep, either.”
Alexis followed Jane. “I can have jam, right?”
“You bet. Can I have some of those waffles, too?”
The little girl nodded. “But what if they’re all gone?”
“Then we’ll grocery shop today.”
“Or you’ll eat cereal for breakfast tomorrow,” her father said, giving her an admonitory look.
She looked mulish. “I only like waffles.”
While the waffles toasted, Jane asked what the plan was for today.
“I think I’ll take Alexis to her day camp,” he said.
His daughter let out a wail, threw herself from her chair and ran to him. Her arms clamped around his waist and she buried her face in his torso. “No! I don’t want to go. Don’t make me go, Daddy. Please. I want to be with you.”
The look he cast Jane was so hopeless, she felt an anguished pang.
He smoothed his hand over his daughter’s hair, the same brown as his. “I have to go back to the hospital. And Jane has a job.”
“I can go to the hospital, too, can’t I?” Alexis pleaded. “I’ll be good. Really, really, really good.”
The waffles popped up and Jane began buttering. “Lots of jam or a little?” she asked.
Alexis ignored her. “Please, Daddy.”
Jane slapped huckleberry jam on both waffles, stuck two more in the toaster, then carried the plates to the table.
Alexis had lost interest in the second course of her breakfast. She kept weeping and pleading. Drew kept explaining that he couldn’t take her, that she wouldn’t be allowed back where Mommy was and she couldn’t stay by herself in the waiting room.
Jane wanted to do something truly useful today. Scour the woods around the accident site again. Knock on doors. Go on TV with a plea. Something. “You can stay with me today, Alexis,” she offered instead.
Her niece sobbed wildly. “I want to go with Daddy!”
He rose abruptly, pulled her arms from around him and almost ran from the room.
Alexis dropped to the floor and began to drum her heels while she cried. Wow. Jane hadn’t ever seen a kid actually do that. She knew how her father would have reacted if she or Lissa had ever tried it.
Jane looked after Drew, wanting to follow him, but what he needed most from her was for her to take care of Alexis.
Which did not necessarily mean rewarding a temper tantrum with sympathy, no matter how well Jane understood a little girl’s terror and need to cling to her one remaining parent.
The two waffles in the toaster popped up, and Jane hadn’t even taken a bite of her first one. She had an attack of guilt for being such a pig. Poor Drew probably hadn’t had a bite, and here she was wanting to stuff her face to make up for missing dinner.
“I’m going to eat your waffle, too, if you don’t want it,” she said, pitching her voice above the wails.
Alexis cried harder.
Jane sat down, staring at her breakfast and discovering suddenly that her stomach was churning. Sighing, she pushed the plate away and stood, going to Alexis and picking her up.
* * *
DÉJÀ VU.
With no windows in the small room where Clay assumed family members were brought when the news wasn’t good, day could just as well be night. He had used this same room to interview Drew yesterday evening. Now they were at it again.
Seeing his ravaged face, Clay felt some sympathy for the guy. But not so much that he wasn’t going to push today, and push hard. Clay couldn’t get the missing little girl out of his mind. If Drew Wilson had a secret, he was, by God, going to spill it.
“Let’s talk again about what your wife said before she left. Had she told you in advance that she needed to do an errand? Say, the evening before, or that morning?”
The chair scraped as Drew lurched back. “I’ve told you and told you!”
“Tell me again.”
“No! Why would she give me a lot of notice that, oh, gee, she needed some hair gel and tampons and she was going to run to the pharmacy?”
“Is that what she said she needed?” Clay asked thoughtfully. “Was it that time of month for her?”
The other man let out a hoarse sound. “How would I know? She didn’t say, I didn’t ask. We didn’t—”
Clay watched for every twitch on that face. “Did you sleep together the night before?”
“Yes!” A flush spread on his cheeks. “We just didn’t—”
Was the embarrassment because this guy was too repressed to talk about sex, or had he and his wife not had sex in so long, he’d lost track of anything like monthly cycles? If it was the second, that had a whole lot to say about the state of the marriage.
Clay made a point of relaxing in his chair, letting that subject go, if only temporarily. “Okay. So when did she tell you she needed to run an errand?”
“Five minutes before she went.” A nerve twitched beside his eye. “Longer than that, I guess,” he said reluctantly. “She and Bree went at it for a while.”
Clay walked him through the scene. Melissa had already had her purse over her shoulder and her keys in her hand when she announced that she was going out for a few things. Drew had asked where. Rite Aid, she said. Had she asked if he needed anything? Drew claimed not to remember, which meant no. He’d been the one to say, “Will you buy me some athlete’s foot powder?” Right after that discussion, their daughter had pounced. She wanted to go. Mom said no. Bree pleaded. Drew had finally asked his wife why she couldn’t take Bree since it was just a short errand. Clay saw the way his face tightened. His answers became more and more terse. Something about that squabble had bothered Drew, or the whole thing had blown up into a major fight. But the more Clay drilled, the more evasive Drew got.
Clay circled back with more questions about the guy’s job hunt, his wife’s job, how she felt about the possibility of selling their home and moving. Had all this created some tension in the marriage?
Jane’s brother-in-law conceded that there had been some tension. Lissa loved her job and didn’t want to give it up. He didn’t like knowing she was having to carry the financial burden right now. The kids might have overheard enough to guess their parents weren’t happy.
When had he lost his job? April. Since he was home daytimes anyway, and their budget had to be a little tighter, had they considered not putting their daughters in the summer day camp? Of course they’d talked about it, but both of them were sure Drew would be getting a job any day, and then it might be too late to find quality day care. Besides, Lissa had been sure the girls needed the socialization with other kids their age. How much did it cost? Clay winced at the answer. It was a major chunk of change, in his opinion.
They went on and on, Drew’s answers terse while his eyes got wilder, until he suddenly jumped to his feet. “None of this has anything to do with where my daughter is! Why are you here instead of doing your job?”
“Mr. Wilson, I understand it’s distressing having to answer these kinds of questions, but I am doing my job in asking them.” Clay kept his tone deliberately soothing. “Part of any investigation is making sure family members don’t play a part. We are looking hard for your daughter, I promise you. Finding Bree is the first priority of the entire sheriff’s department.”
Drew stared sullenly at him. “Well, I’m done.” He pushed the chair away and walked out. By the time Clay followed, all he saw was Drew’s back as he disappeared through the double doors into ICU.
Clay leaned a shoulder against the door frame and mulled over the conversation. None of the answers had been surprising in any way, but he still felt a tingle that told him there was something there. Drew Wilson knew or suspected more about his wife’s errand than he was letting on. And maybe he had deliberately pushed her to take their daughter because he thought having her along would mean Melissa indeed went to Rite Aid instead of wherever she’d int
ended.
An affair?
That could be interesting, Clay thought. But if so—why hadn’t Melissa changed her plans and done the routine errand instead? Maybe called her lover and said, “Sorry, can’t make it?”
Clay didn’t know, but he was wondering. He was wondering about a lot of things.
For instance, her job. She was a bookkeeper. Nothing fancy like an accountant. Nonetheless, bookkeepers up on QuickBooks and whatever other software they used nowadays were surely in demand enough that she could get another job easily. Drew, on the other hand, was a mechanical engineer. His skills had required considerably more training, and were more specialized. There wasn’t a lot of the kind of manufacturing that required mechanical engineers in these parts. He’d be bound to earn a hell of a lot more than his wife when he was working, too. How could they not move so that he could find a job in his profession?
This time the tingle was tantalizing enough, it seemed to raise fine hairs on the back of Clay’s neck.
Visiting Melissa Wilson’s workplace had just risen to the top of his list of priorities.
* * *
CLAY DIDN’T MUCH like James Stillwell, Melissa’s boss and the owner of Stillwell Trucking. Of course, there were a lot of people he didn’t like, yet who were nevertheless law-abiding citizens.
Stillwell was a little older than he’d expected, at least if Melissa was sleeping with him. Fifty, maybe, although not bad looking for his age and if a woman liked the type. Five foot nine or so, he was lean and fit. Tanned as if he spent time out on a boat. Silver threaded his salon-cut hair and shone at his temples. His eyes were as blue as Clay’s, but projected sincerity in a way Clay didn’t trust.
“Heartbreaking,” he declared, shaking his head. With a surprisingly resonant voice, he’d have made a hell of a disc jockey. “I’ve stopped by the hospital twice now, but they won’t let me in to see her.”
That would be on Clay’s orders, even assuming Intensive Care staff would otherwise have been willing to allow people who weren’t family to troop through.