When You Find Me

by P. J. Vernon

  More flashbulbs. More shouting. More strobing lights and reporters shouldering this way and that. Climbing over one another like panicked lobsters in a tank. Locked in some frantic fight. Clawing at me, desperate to rip me apart limb from bloody limb.

  Someone bumped my elbow, and a bolt of pain shot through me. I winced. Pressed on all sides, the sharp burning had nowhere to go. Everything turned claustrophobic.

  “Make way,” Mamma shouted, indignant. “Move out of our way!” Her knotted pearls swung wildly.

  When we reached the car, Charlotte leapt into the front passenger seat. Mamma swung the rear door open, thrusting me inside and stepping in behind me. The door slammed hard, muting the clamor. Tires squealed. Cora appeared nervous, face dancing from one direction to another then back again.

  “Run them over if you have to,” Mamma shouted. Cora fidgeted behind the wheel as though unsure if she should take the order seriously. I bounced in my seat as the car struck speedbumps at high speed.

  “Where are we going, ma’am?” Cora asked, her voice catching. “Home?”

  “No,” Mamma replied, her tone still fiery. “The police station. Take us to the police station.”

  * * *

  I sat at the same conference room table. The place I first sat with Mamma to report Paul missing. A lifetime ago now. How quickly things had changed in a week. I didn’t have the mental fortitude to keep up with the changes. It was probably for the best.

  A numbness from deep inside my chest extended down my limbs and swathed by fingers and toes in tingling pricks. AA had given me a strange high. Like I no longer wanted a drink, and better yet, that I didn’t need one. But as good as the feeling had been, it’d vanished.

  “Here, Hummingbird.” Mamma took one of my pain pills from her purse and placed it in front of me. “Take this.”

  The sight of it set my shoulder throbbing. What kind of state was I in? To not even know I hurt? Before me sat a cup of orange juice, but I imagined the bitterness of that pill slipping down with a cool grapey white—both making the other more potent. My quaking hands rippled the juice as I gulped, chasing the Percocet.

  A wool blanket, thick but scratchy, covered my shoulders and upper back. Nina had placed it over me as I exited our car. She and her partner—Sammie—ran out to meet us in the parking lot. They’d brought a handful of uniformed officers with them to tame the pack of journalists that had gathered and roiled out front.

  I sat frozen in my chair. Charlotte and Mamma took seats on either side. Nina watched me from across the table. Her tensed jaw muscle suggested the situation pained her, but she kept her face mostly vacant.

  “Do we,” Mamma spoke, paused, “do we need to identify him?”

  “No, Joanna,” Nina answered. “That won’t be necessary. We matched the DNA to samples we obtained from Paul’s personal belongings.”

  “I see.” A relieved sigh escaped Mamma. “So, there was no kidnapping?”

  “It appears not,” Nina replied. “Or, if there was, the scheme was abandoned.”

  “Kidnapping?” Charlotte’s voice grew edgy and terse. “What do you mean kidnapping?”

  My vision blurred around the edges. Everything moved in slow motion. Words dulled then sharpened then dulled again. People talked over me, across me. No one spoke to me.

  Joanna shifted in her seat. “Detective Palmer…” I watched her eyes meet Nina’s. Mamma appeared to retool what she planned to say. “Detective Palmer indulged a theory of mine. I thought Paul might’ve been kidnapped. She was kind enough to humor me, but it would seem I was mistaken. Gravely so.”

  Nina gave Mamma a nod and a small, closed-mouth smile.

  “Humor you?” Charlotte asked, incredulous.

  Mamma stiffened. “She heard me out, my theory that is. Made mention that she’d come up with options to pursue it. But before she could, well, this happened, I suppose.”

  “That’s correct,” Nina added.

  Charlotte leaned back in her chair. Judging by the way she bit her lip, I doubted her concern was satisfied.

  A sudden burst of curiosity sprang from me. “How did it happen?” I asked. My dry eyes burned. I knew they were bloodshot. “How did Paul die?”

  Nina glanced down for a moment before speaking. “He was murdered, Gray.” She steadied her voice. No doubt her profession required her voice to be steady when delivering bad news. Steady and utterly devoid of feeling.

  Ironically, like me. Like the pain in my shoulder, news of Paul’s murder hardly registered. My ability to feel anything had shrunk to almost nothing. Of course, I had assumed murder to be the case. Annie had no doubt killed Paul, but all sorts of questions stemmed from that fact. I asked only one. “How did he die?”

  Drawing in breath, Nina answered. “Stabbed. He was stabbed once in his neck with a small knife. His passing was … very fast.”

  The last bit was meant to assuage me. Nina intended to ease my grief, but when I became aware that I didn’t care—that I felt nothing but apathy towards Paul and his suffering, however little or much there had been—I realized something else.

  Paul’s disappearance may have shaken me to my core, sending me into fits of panic and depression and self-destruction, but it wasn’t my affection for him that spurred this. Not love or admiration or any other feeling of attachment. It was the jarring change to my world that had unmoored me, when denial was snatched away by events beyond my control. Abrupt change, pure and simple.

  I’d never handled change well. And for all our problems, for the way Paul made me miserable day in and day out, I had treasured the routine my life had fallen into. The structure Paul provided. He’d given me a refuge from home and the hurt that surrounded it. And his emotional distance gave me the space I’d needed to drink my pain into numbness. Paul enabled my denial, and when he vanished, my vulnerabilities flared up like a recurrent infection.

  As it turned out, I didn’t really care that Paul was gone. And now I didn’t care that he was dead.

  As Nina and Mamma discussed the circumstances of Paul’s murder—Charlotte chiming in with questions of her own—I couldn’t help but think something morbidly ironic. At first, I blamed it on the painkiller—the lack of alcohol and the head-squeezing void it left—but the more I dwelled on it, the more I actually believed it.

  Maybe Annie had done me a favor.

  37

  Nina

  Hidden from reporters, the station’s back doors closed behind the King family, and thoughts of Matthew persisted again. I couldn’t seem to break from them. Not that a pedophile was a thing to be disregarded. To the contrary, I believed him to be a danger to the people of Elizabeth.

  “I’m so very sorry for your loss,” Burton had offered the Kings as they left. What would he say about Matthew and the danger he posed? Joanna had called the police that night. What did Deputy Sheriff Jim Burton know?

  If I wanted to take down Matthew—and whoever else was involved—I needed to determine what had happened to Paul. I needed to confront Charlotte with evidence. If I could get a confession out of her—maybe in a moment of heated emotion—then I could close Paul’s case with three accounts of Matthew’s crime in my back pocket: Gray’s allegations and whatever Charlotte might know, plus the statement I’d taken from Auntie Tilda. Those first two—a reckless alcoholic and an alleged murderer—might not scream reliability, but at least one of them was a victim. And victims always deserved to be heard. No exceptions. Besides, a jury would see Auntie’s corroboration and know a woman at death’s door had nothing to gain by lying.

  And if I spoke with the doctor, if I could get tangible proof the STI tests for Auntie had contained Gray’s samples—

  “Autopsy report’s in,” Sammie announced.

  I rubbed my temples. “That fast, huh?”

  He threw a folder down, thick with pages stapled and paper-clipped every which way. “Paul’s career, priority number one—all that jazz.”

  Judging from the size of the report, the ME h
ad been thorough. That was nothing to complain about. The more airtight the case against Charlotte, the greater our chances of getting her to comment on Matthew.

  Sammie noticed I’d yet to even touch the folder. “You don’t want to have a look?”

  “Does it say anything new?” I asked. It needed to be read. But I’d only be wasting my own valuable time if I went through it with my head somewhere else. If I could avoid reading it thoughtlessly, I would.

  “Mostly confirms what we already know, but I thought you’d like to get a start on digging in. You enjoy this sort of thing, don’t you?” I consumed details, and Sammie knew this better than most anyone. Details were why I became a detective. Details and the fact that folks quietly said I couldn’t. Burton most of all.

  I sighed, rubbing my head again. “I still can’t shake it, Sammie. I can’t get Matthew out of my mind. Paul’s case unmasked Gray’s allegations.”

  “Don’t forget about Charlotte. If our hypothesis is correct, she’s Annie. There’s a chance she might also have been victimized by Matthew,” he added. “At the very least, she was left unsupervised with him as a kid.”

  “That complicates things quite a bit. Did Charlotte confirm? For our interview later today?” I bit my lip and looked at the folder again.

  “She did.” Sammie lowered his voice, circled back to Matthew. “You know he’s got a little girl himself, don’t you?”

  My heart sank. “No. I didn’t.”

  “She’d be about Gray’s age when…”

  I shook my head as a new discomfort spread through me. I made fists by my side and tightened my jaw. I had to do something, but what?

  A thought—born from the bottled rage building in my chest—struck me. I could put him on notice. I could let him know we were closing in and that it was only a matter of time until … There would be consequences for confronting him, no doubt. Despite some of the deepest roots in Elizabeth, it could send him running. He had the cash for it. And I could only imagine what Sheriff Burton would say. But what about the consequences of doing nothing? I had seen those flare up time and time again. In horrifying ways.

  If I put him on notice, it might startle him. Prevent him from hurting his little girl or anyone else’s for that matter. Paranoia might protect them until a real case could be made.

  “Where are you going?” Sammie asked as I stood and began to pack my things.

  He took a step backwards, clearing a path from my cubicle. “I’m going to clear my head.” I stuffed the folder in my book bag. “So I can give this report the attention it deserves.”

  * * *

  I pulled up to the law offices of King, Floyd, and Powers. The second two names were alphabetized, but every alphabet in Elizabeth started with “King.”

  As I slammed my car door, I noticed my awful parking job. I’d angled my way into the space, back tires stretched over into the next slot.

  Stay cool, Nina, I repeated to myself.

  The downtown office occupied a Georgian-style townhome, narrow and leaning to one side atop its centuries-old foundation. A receptionist greeted me as I walked in through the front.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am.” She smiled through bleached teeth. “Can I help you?”

  In other places, it might appear odd for an officer to visit defense counsel, but in Elizabeth, familiarity permeated all facets of life.

  “Detective Nina Palmer. I need to see Matthew King.” Impatiently, I added, “I don’t have a scheduled appointment, but tell him it’s important. Urgent.”

  The woman frowned. “Unfortunately, Mr. King isn’t here at the moment. Is there something I can help you with? Perhaps, I could take down a message for you or you could speak with another attorney?”

  “I’m afraid I have to speak with Matthew, specifically,” I replied. “Can you tell me where he is, please?”

  She withdrew, guarded. I easily imagined Matthew chastising the woman for revealing his whereabouts. The man never struck me as the sort to handle interruption well.

  “Um,” she stuttered and fumbled through a calendar on her desk.

  I tapped my badge, scattering any doubt the woman held onto.

  “Of course, detective,” she said, relenting. “Let me just check his schedule.” She turned to a computer, clicked the spacebar a handful of times, then whipped around. She grinned as though she hadn’t done anything worth second-guessing.

  “It looks like he’s taken his family to lunch,” she announced. “At the country club.”

  Ah. There it is. She assumed he’d be protected within the gilded halls of a club house.

  “Thanks.” I smiled, turning to leave. Unfortunately for her and Matthew, I rarely played by the antiquated rules of a small southern town. Not when they worked against me. And not when I was angry.

  * * *

  “Ma’am, I’m afraid I can’t allow you inside,” a balding man in a dark blazer announced as I approached the club house. The gold crest stitched into the front of his jacket must’ve given him a profound sense of authority.

  But I had my own gold crest. “Police,” I told him, flashing my badge as I strode by.

  “Ma’am,” he called from behind. “Ma’am! There’s no denim permitted!” I brushed the front of my jeans with my palms and swung the front door open.

  Inside, I followed elegant signage to the restaurant, the heels of my boots clacking against the white and black checkered floors. The paneled walls and mahogany pillars smelled like money.

  The maître d’ guarding the restaurant’s entrance called out, “Miss, can I help you? Miss?” His voice dwindled as I made my way from table to table, scanning for Matthew.

  I could almost feel his presence. Maybe it was all the expensive cologne and perfume, but my heart thumped inside my ears as I drew nearer.

  “Stay calm,” I whispered under my breath. “Stay collected.”

  Maintaining some sort of composure was crucial. After all, no one in their right mind would’ve advised me to come here. Burton would bench me if he knew. Someone like Matthew would misconstrue it later. Later when he sat before a jury of his peers.

  “This was entirely personal,” I imagined him stating from the witness stand, eyes darting from one hapless juror to the next. “All of it. Every bit. My Uncle Seamus made a mistake years ago when he said those things to Matilda Palmer. But the man’s dead now. Detective Palmer needs to let it go.”

  That’s when I envisioned him turning to me—seated somewhere in the gallery—and pressing, “But you couldn’t let it go, could you, Nina? And when you found Mr. Godfrey’s abandoned vehicle, what did you do? You sat on it. While Paul’s body decomposed beneath the water, pride prevented you from reaching out to my family. It’s almost like you got off on causing us pain. Is that what you’re doing to me now? Getting off?”

  He’d turn to the judge next. “And you should’ve seen her, your honor. The way she hunted me down at lunch with my family at the club. Blinded by rage. A reckless bull in a china shop.”

  A high-pitched giggle sharpened my focus. The squealy laughter of a young girl. Ahead, Matthew sat before a white linen tabletop, arrogant in his seersucker suit.

  I slowed my pace, taking note of everything. They’d finished lunch by the looks of it. Dirty silverware was strewn about, but the plates had been cleared. He swirled his martini with a skewered olive—of course, he’d feel entitled enough to drink at lunch.

  A woman, I presumed his wife, sipped an after-meal espresso from a tiny bone china cup. Her blonde hair was loosely curled and shoulder-length. Her floral sundress, perfect.

  Something sour spread through me. The source of the spritely laughter. Her hair had been wrapped in a French braid. Her small hands held a crayon which she used to color on a notepad. The crayon was red. She wore a school uniform, too. A pressed skirt and polo. The color had changed over the years, but the embroidered insignia was the exact same. Elizabeth Baptist School.

  It was a uniform like I’d worn years ago. Like Gray had
worn.

  “Detective Nina Palmer.” Matthew met my eyes as I approached the table. He smiled with cheeks full of color. Hair coifed and kept, he looked nothing like he had when I last saw him, fresh from Gray’s bedside. In the corridor of the hospital, he’d appeared wracked with guilt and shame.

  I gave a subtle nod.

  Polishing off his martini, he placed the olive between his teeth and slid it from its spear. Still chewing, he nodded to the woman next to him. “Have you met my wife, Ellen?”

  “No,” I whispered.

  The blonde turned to me. “Pleasure to meet you. Nina, is it?”

  A second nod.

  Matthew appeared to note my silence. With a creased brow and eyes lingering on mine, he motioned to the little girl. “And this is my daughter. Susannah,” he said warily. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “No,” I answered tersely. “There’s not anything you can do for me.”

  He cocked his head, perplexed. “But you made a beeline right for me. I watched you come in.”

  I held my silence. I could almost see his mind working. Neurons firing to determine my purpose. If my presence alone hadn’t knocked him off-balance, my odd behavior likely would.

  Everyone knows getting away with something can only be measured by time. A thing is true until it isn’t any longer. You’re hidden until you’re found.

  Tiny beads of sweat collected on his brow.

  “Nina?” He leaned forward. I’d gotten to him already. Seeing Gray the other day must’ve done a real number on him, instilling paranoia. I planned to stoke it further.

  “I know what you’ve done, Matthew,” I finally said. “I know what you did to Gray.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t understand—”

  “At Piper Point. She was nine. You were seventeen.”

  His wife, Ellen, turned in her seat. “Darling, what’s she—”

  “The cellar? Going on a hunt for the Devil down there? Is that little detail correct?”

  His cheeks reddened. A vein cutting vertically down his forehead swelled. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said through a clenched jaw. “I’m having lunch with my family. If you’d like to schedule some time to chat, you can contact—”