Bring Her Home

by David Bell

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Taylor Kress,” she said.

  “This is my sister, Paige,” Bill said. “She’s staying with me.”

  Paige still looked uncertain about the whole thing, as if Bill had opened the door to some kind of wild animal or demonic force. Paige took the full measure of Taylor Kress, from head to toe, and clutched her phone like a life preserver.

  “Why don’t we sit at the kitchen table?” Bill said. “I’m going to get something warm to drink. And then Taylor can tell us what she knows.”

  “The police are patrolling the neighborhood,” Paige said. “Maybe we should call them in.”

  “They don’t go by as much as you’d think,” Taylor said.

  Bill and Paige looked at her, waiting for further explanation.

  “I’ve been by the house before.”

  “We know,” Paige said.

  “I thought there’d be more cops around, given what you all are going through.”

  Bill felt unsettled by her statement, but not entirely surprised. He doubted the police in a town like Jakesville could devote their limited resources to babysitting his house full-time. And what proof was there that whoever had harmed Summer was likely to come along and injure him? Why would a person who preyed on young women want to hurt him?

  Bill started coffee brewing while the two women settled around the table. Taylor pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands, and Bill again tried to determine her age. She looked older than him and, if possible, even more tired and worn.

  “Her daughter’s missing,” Bill said.

  “Oh.” Paige straightened up a little, the information making her reassess. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  The coffee started gurgling, emitting a rich odor that Bill happily inhaled. He wanted to get the stale scent coming off Taylor out of his nostrils.

  “Her name is Emily,” Taylor said. “My daughter. And I haven’t seen her for a year or so. She ran away, I guess you could say. We had a falling-out, and she went to live with her stepfather after he and I split up. My ex-husband.”

  “In Jakesville?” Bill asked.

  “No. We’re from Ariel. Over in Sweetwater County.”

  Paige looked at Bill, seeking clarification.

  Bill said, “About an hour east of here. Right, Taylor?”

  She nodded. The woman started digging around in the pocket of her jeans, contorting her body in the chair so she could reach something. Paige moved back a little, as though she expected Taylor to pull out a gun or a live snake.

  But the woman brought out a phone. She tapped it a few times and then sighed as she stared at something on the screen.

  “This is her,” she said. “My Emily.”

  She turned the phone around so Paige and Bill could see.

  And then they understood why Taylor Kress was there.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Paige took the phone from Taylor’s hand. Bill noticed a slight tremble as Paige moved closer to Bill, turning the screen so he could get a better look at the girl in the picture.

  She stood outside a building, her weight leaning back against a brick wall, her arms crossed. She wore a short skirt and a black top, her right hand resting on her waist, her elbow at a forty-five-degree angle to her body. The way every young girl posed in every photo on social media.

  She looked to be a little older than Summer. But she had blond hair the same shade and length. If Bill had seen Emily strolling into his house one day, trailing behind Summer and Haley, he wouldn’t have batted an eye. He’d have simply assumed that the girls had added another look-alike to their group, another girl who to a stranger would be interchangeable with the other two.

  “You think . . .” Bill didn’t know how to go on. Here he was, sick and tired of people tiptoeing around difficult subject matter with him, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words he needed to say. “You think she’s dead? That she’s the girl they found in the park next to Haley?”

  “I hope I’m wrong.”

  “But why would you think that?” Paige asked. “There are obviously a lot of young blond girls running around the world. The police have already mixed up two of them. Do you have reason to think someone hurt your daughter?”

  “Hold on,” Bill said, waving his hands in the air. “I’m calling the police. I don’t care how late it is. I want Hawkins involved in this. We need to hurry up on all of this.”

  “Just wait a minute on that,” Taylor said. She looked stricken. She held her hand out, gesturing to Bill to stop. Her fingers were bony, the knuckles pronounced. “I’ve dealt with them already.”

  “You mean here? Detective Hawkins?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve spoken to the police in Ariel, trying to convince them something is wrong with Emily, that she’s been hurt or taken.” She pursed her lips and looked around the kitchen. “Do you think I could have some of that coffee?”

  Bill filled three mugs. His hands shook as he poured, and he bit back on the impulse to spin around and scream at the woman, to get her to tell them everything she knew. The house was quiet, and he heard the soft, steady ticking of the kitchen clock above the sink. Time passing. Summer was somewhere and time was passing.

  He handed the filled mugs to Paige and Taylor, then nodded at Taylor to go on.

  She sipped tentatively from the mug and then drank some more.

  “Do you want cream or something?” Paige asked, nodding at Bill, the gesture telling him to be a better host.

  But Taylor shook her head. “Black is good for me. I’ve been living on a lot of fast food and soda the past few days. Microwaved burritos at the convenience store. This tastes really good. And warm. The heater doesn’t do as much to keep the cold away.”

  “Were you sleeping in there?”

  “No. I got a motel room. But still . . . it’s cold to be driving around.” She shivered. “I saw you on the news tonight. Boy, those kids fixed your wagon, didn’t they? A guy roughs up his daughter and then she disappears. Nice.”

  “Is this what you came for? To remind me of my failures?” He took a seat between the two women at the round table, his hands cradling his mug. “So, you’ve tried to talk to the police?”

  “Emily is nineteen. Older than your daughter, I know. But she’s small. Petite. And she looks younger than she is. Since she’s nineteen, the police don’t quite take it as seriously. I mean, she’s an adult. If she doesn’t want to have anything to do with her mother, she doesn’t have to.” She looked at both of them, her eyes shiny with emotion. “Do you have children?” she asked Paige.

  “Two boys.”

  “Maybe girls are worse. They fight with their mothers. Emily and I fought all the time.” She looked over at Bill. “I guess girls fight with their dads too. We really fought. That’s why Emily left me and went to live with my ex-husband. His name is Doug Hammond. My first husband, Emily’s dad—we split up when she was five. He doesn’t have much to do with her.”

  “Does this Doug live here?” Bill asked.

  “No. But he has family here. He comes to Jakesville all the time.” She put her mug down and stared into the dark liquid, as though an answer waited there. “I have a feeling about this. A bad one.”

  Paige lifted her hand to her face and wiped her eyes. Taylor continued to stare into her mug, and Bill saw hints of gray roots at the crown of her head. He tapped his index finger against the top of the table, counting in his head until what seemed like a reasonable and respectful amount of time to give Taylor to gather herself.

  He asked, “Is your ex-husband violent? Do you think he might have hurt Emily? Or Summer?”

  Taylor’s hand shook as she spoke. “He’s been in trouble with the law recently. He moved in when Emily was fourteen, so he didn’t raise her or anything. He was a good guy when we met. Stable. He
had a job. But he started behaving erratically a few years ago. He fought with people at work and got fired. He fought with me. He drank a lot. He just . . . went off the rails in a way I couldn’t have foreseen.”

  “When’s the last time you saw Emily?” Bill asked.

  “Last year. Which wasn’t odd. Like I said, we had a falling-out. But she always called me on my birthday. Every year, no matter what. Mother’s Day, Christmas, all of it. I heard from her. Well, my birthday was last week, and I didn’t get any call. And I’d heard all about this story. About the two girls being found beat-up, and then the one turning out not to be your daughter but another girl the police couldn’t identify. I saw the pictures of Haley and Summer, and I saw the description of the other girl, the dead one, online. So I drove down here.”

  “Why did you drive by the house and not say anything?” Bill asked. “You’ve been driving by here, and no one even knows if your daughter’s involved.”

  “I had a feeling. A bad feeling. I thought maybe whoever hurt your daughter and that other girl might have hurt Emily. I just wanted . . . I didn’t know what else to do. I felt helpless. You understand that, right?”

  Bill understood all too well. “Why didn’t you talk to the police?” His voice rose, and he felt Paige’s hand on his forearm, telling him to calm down. But the caffeine made his heart race, and he felt like he wanted to jump out of his own skin. “All this time. They could have been looking for this guy. For Summer.”

  “Easy, Bill.”

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “Because nobody knew there was a third girl involved until now. I found out when everybody found out.”

  But he was up, reaching for his phone. “I’m calling Hawkins. Right now.”

  “Bill, it’s late.”

  “I don’t care.” He hit the SEND button and listened as the distant, tinny ringing began. “What did this Doug Hammond do? You said he’s off the rails? Is he violent?”

  Hawkins answered, his voice groggy.

  But Bill waited to speak because of the look on Taylor’s face. She had something to say, but hesitated to say it.

  “What is it?” Bill said to her.

  “He’s been arrested before. Domestic violence. He beat up his ex-wife before he and I got together.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Bill couldn’t sleep after the police left. He lay awake most of the night, staring at the ceiling and glancing at the slowly changing red numbers on the digital clock. The wind kicked up outside, rattling the windows and making a low keening sound that took up residence in Bill’s head.

  Screaming. He told himself it wasn’t the sound of Summer screaming.

  Hawkins had arrived thirty minutes after Bill’s call, his hair more disheveled than usual, his shirt half-tucked into his pants. But he offered no complaints as he asked Taylor Kress a few preliminary questions while she remained sitting at Bill’s kitchen table. And then Hawkins announced that it might be better if they finished their conversation at the station.

  Bill saw a look of fear cross Taylor’s face, her eyes shifting as though she wanted to find the nearest door she could run through. So Bill stepped in.

  “Taylor,” he said, “are you worried that Doug might hurt you if you talk to the police?”

  “Not enough to stop me from talking,” she said, “but Doug, you know, he’s not really a bad guy. He’s just . . . He can be sort of unpredictable.”

  Then she followed Hawkins out of the house.

  Bill dressed quietly in the dark. It was five thirty, and in another hour the sun would be coming up. He walked softly past the office where Paige lay sprawled across the futon, her body wrapped in a tangle of sheets and blankets.

  Light leaked in from the outside, and a sliver of it fell across Paige’s face. She still looked like a little kid to Bill, even after the passage of so many years. He understood that the protective instincts he had for his daughter were simply an intensification of the feelings he had for his baby sister while they were growing up. Intensified to an exponential degree, but still with their origins in the same place. Even if he had hit her with a stick once and frequently tormented her, he would never, ever tolerate anyone else hurting her.

  He went quietly out the back door into the cold night and started the car.

  He’d looked up the address before leaving the house. He didn’t have far to go, and he doubted his trip would pay dividends. It was a long shot.

  He’d hoped meeting Taylor Kress and learning what she knew about her ex-husband would ease his mind, at least for a short time. But it hadn’t. He felt more restless than ever, as if coming closer to an answer only made the not knowing more intense.

  And what if Taylor Kress’s information meant nothing? Just another suspicion and dead end?

  Bill couldn’t just wait and do nothing. He was tired of doing nothing.

  He found the neighborhood about three miles from his own house. It was a subdivision built in the nineties, good-size houses but not mansions, the cars an assortment of minivans and sedans. Most of the windows were dark, the families sleeping another hour or so before alarms summoned them to rise for their Sunday.

  Bill made two turns and then eyed the house numbers on the even side of the street. He stopped two doors away from his destination and cut the lights. And then he waited.

  He yawned. His eyes felt like they’d been scrubbed with bleach. He felt the weariness of the whole ordeal in his joints and bones, like he’d aged twenty years over the course of one week. The heat blew out of the vents, the lights of the console casting a soft green glow against his body. Thirty minutes passed. Then forty. The sky started to lighten above the row of houses, the stars disappearing one by one like extinguished candles.

  A light came on upstairs in the house he watched. Bill perked up, coming erect in the seat. He waited, his body tense. A few minutes passed before another light came on near the front of the house on the first floor. Then the porch light.

  Bill turned the car off, reached for the door handle.

  The door of the house swung inward, and a figure, tall and thin, wearing red shorts and a hooded sweatshirt, stepped out. He paused and did some cursory stretching in the front yard, then started running up the street. Toward Bill.

  When he came even with the car, Bill opened the door.

  “Brandon?” he said.

  The boy stopped, his eyes squinting at Bill in the half-light of morning.

  “Do you remember me?” Bill asked.

  The boy took a step closer, and then uncomfortable recognition crossed his face. He looked like he wanted to back away, to retrace his steps and go back inside his nice, safe suburban house.

  But he didn’t move. He stood still while one hand played with the string attached to the hood of the sweatshirt.

  “Mr. Price,” he said.

  “I’m sure you need to train,” Bill said, “but I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  Brandon looked down the street toward his house and then up the other way, his eyes following the path he meant to take on his run.

  “You’re right. I do need to train. And I probably shouldn’t talk to you. Mr. Bateman said—”

  “Come on,” Bill said, nodding toward the car. “Let’s sit inside. It’s warm.”

  Brandon looked like he might bolt, and if he did, Bill knew he’d never get another chance to talk to him.

  “You seem like a nice kid, Brandon,” Bill said. “You always did. Maybe nicer and more polite than your friends. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I’m sure you didn’t do anything to hurt Summer.”

  “I wouldn’t,” he said quickly. “She was cool. A little bossy with the girls but cool.”

  Bill nodded. “Five minutes?”

  Bill opened the driver’s side door. For a moment, everything hung in the balance. Then Brandon walked arou
nd the front of the car and got in the other side.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Brandon was taller than Bill. His head reached the ceiling of the car, and his long legs looked cramped in the front seat. But the boy also seemed painfully young. His chin was marked with acne, and his hands and feet appeared to be too big for his body. He twiddled his thumbs for a moment, and then he stopped and rested his hands on his knees as if he hoped to still them.

  “I hear you might go to state,” Bill said.

  “It’s looking that way. That’s why I have to get out early and train.”

  “Of course. Dedication.”

  “The police also told me not to talk to anyone about this. And my parents.”

  “Detective Hawkins?” Bill asked. “He’s a good man.”

  “He’s all right.” Brandon shifted in his seat, his eyes trailing toward the house again.

  “You understand where I’m coming from, right? My daughter is missing. Summer. You’re friends with her—I know that. You’re friends with those other kids who know her. You know Haley.”

  Brandon nodded. “Yes. Summer liked to talk about stuff I didn’t understand. She was smart, you know? About every subject. She was all into student council and other causes. Like when she arranged that fund-raiser for Syria. Remember? That bake sale? But she was cool.”

  “Think of what it’s like for me not to know where she is. I thought she was hurt and in the hospital. Then I thought she was dead. Now I don’t know anything.” Bill sighed. “I’m going to level with you, kid. I can’t sleep. I don’t eat. I feel like a ninety-year-old man, you know? The worry, the grief, it just eats me up. She’s out there somewhere, lost, maybe hurt. Maybe hurt bad. Maybe some maniac has her.”

  “You said all that stuff on TV,” Brandon said. “You made it sound like we were guilty. My parents were really pissed about that. My dad was talking about suing you.”