by David Bell
Bill laughed in what he hoped seemed like a friendly way. “I understand. I lost my cool. It’s the stress. It’s getting to me because I don’t know where Summer is.”
“I don’t know where she is either,” Brandon said.
His words disappointed Bill. They were such a flat statement of fact, such a clear denial that Bill worried it might effectively shut down the rest of the conversation. But then he regrouped.
“What about your friends? Clinton and Todd?”
Brandon stared out the window, remaining silent. Then he said, “I’m not as good friends with them as everybody thinks. I didn’t have anything to do with that stuff with Alicia. I stayed away when they started taking pictures. I wouldn’t do that.”
“But you’re going to get in trouble anyway?” Bill asked. “Right?”
“Maybe. The school is threatening to punish us all. Coach is mad, says I might not be able to practice with the team until it’s all resolved.”
“Right, I think I understand the problem you’re having,” Bill said. He adjusted his body in the seat so he faced Brandon more squarely. “You’re kind of in a bind because of the cross-country team.”
Brandon watched Bill, his eyes cautious, but he didn’t speak.
“You get caught drinking or whatever, violating the team rules, you get kicked off no matter what. Right?”
Brandon still didn’t answer.
“And I know about this contest at school. The one with the sex and counting the girls—”
“I didn’t do that either,” he said. “Not much.”
“Sure. But you could get caught up in all of it and find yourself off the team. You know how these things go. Even guilt by association can get you into trouble at school or with the cops. And nobody will ever look at you the same if your friends did something awful, like hurting Alicia. Or Summer. Or Haley.”
Brandon was shaking his head. “I didn’t do anything.”
“What were you three boys doing the day they disappeared? Did you see them?”
“We’ve talked to the cops. Plenty. There’s nothing else to say.”
“So you saw them?”
“No. I don’t—I don’t want to talk about this. Any of this.” He pushed the door open, letting in the cool morning air. “I’m going to tell my parents you were harassing me. I don’t have to listen to this. You’re not a cop.”
Bill reached out, placing his hand on Brandon’s arm. Brandon pulled away.
“Look,” Bill said, “if you talk first, you can get out of it. You can come out of it clean.”
Brandon folded his long body and stood up from the car. For a moment, he hesitated on the sidewalk, his head turned toward his house, which now had more lights burning. Then he leaned down to the passenger window and said, “Those guys, Clinton and Todd—they’re intense. Clinton mostly. Todd does whatever Clinton wants. He’d be an okay guy, maybe, if he had better friends. Like I said, I’m not really close with them, okay? We hang out from time to time. I just want to run. That’s it, okay? I didn’t hurt anybody.”
“Did somebody hurt them? Someone you know?”
Brandon looked away, back toward his house. “Everybody’s acting weird. I don’t know what to make of it all. Why don’t you ask Teena? She was better friends with Summer.”
“Did she say something?” Bill asked.
“I don’t know. She came by and acted like she was moving away, like something final was happening. She gave me a big hug.”
“Like she was moving? Did she say anything about Summer?”
He shook his head. “Teena’s weird, you know. I don’t need any of it, okay? I didn’t hurt anybody.”
He slammed the door shut and started back to the house.
As Bill was driving home, his phone rang. He managed to extract it from his pants pocket and keep the car on the road at the same time.
It was Paige.
“I know I left without saying anything—”
“Where are you?”
“I’m out. Maybe I’m going to look around. Okay?”
“No, not okay. Hawkins came by here looking for you. Did he call you?”
“No. What did he want? Did that woman give him something good?”
“No,” Paige said. “Haley woke up.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Bill turned his car in the direction of the hospital. The sun was almost up, the sky awash in reds and oranges that promised a clear day. As he drove, a pulse thrummed in his neck. He took deep breaths, reminding himself he needed to be calm, to let the police do their work.
But how could he be calm when the only witness to the crime against Summer was finally awake?
He rushed through the familiar halls and impatiently rode the elevator. As the floors dinged off, he tried to will the machine to move faster, as though he were pedaling a bike and could control the speed. He jumped off at the rehab wing and headed toward Haley’s room.
He saw Rich Rodgers standing in the hallway, wearing a pullover sweater with the collar of an oxford shirt peeking out. His hands were in his pockets as he waited. He looked like a tower of bottled energy. He glanced up as Bill approached, and he offered a faint smile.
“I guess we got some good news,” he said.
“Yes,” Bill said. Rich’s words brought Bill up short. He needed the reminder that Haley being awake was good for more than his own selfish reasons. She had parents who cared. She was a young person who needed to recover. Bill felt some of the tension ease in his own body. “That is good.”
He didn’t know what else to do, so he reached out and shook Rich’s hand. It was a strange gesture, making Bill think of the handshakes he received the day Summer was born. But it seemed like the only thing he could do short of hugging Rich, and he had no desire to do that.
“She’s groggy, you know?” Rich said. “She’d been acting restless the last couple of days. Trying to form more words and things with her mouth while she lay there. We were hopeful things were going this way. Then early this morning, they called to say she’s awake.”
“That’s fantastic.” Bill wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing there, intruding on a private family moment. When Hawkins called looking for him, he didn’t say anything about going to the hospital. He just wanted to give Bill an update. But what else was Bill supposed to do? “I guess the police are in there now?”
“They are. Detective Hawkins and a doctor. Plus my ex-wife. I was in there for a while, but I’ve been out here calling relatives to let them know.”
“Do you need anything?” he asked, trying to be helpful.
“Me? No. We’re fine. The people from Candy’s church have been coming every day and bringing food to her house. That’s been our home base.” He looked like he wanted to say more, so Bill waited. “Say, maybe I can ask you something.” Rich tilted his head, so Bill followed him.
They walked down the hall and around a corner, putting them well out of earshot of Haley’s room and the nurses’ station. When they stopped walking, Rich looked around and then said to Bill, “Do you think they ever considered you a suspect in what happened to these girls?”
Bill suspected that Rich, like everyone else in town, had heard the story about him grabbing Summer on Halloween. “I think fathers are probably always suspected when something happens to their kids.”
“Right,” Rich said, looking thoughtful. The lights above shone off his freshly shaven head. The skin of his scalp looked pink and clean. “They made me give a DNA sample.”
“Me too,” Bill said. Rich looked relieved to hear that from Bill. “I want them to take DNA from those kids, but Hawkins says they need more evidence against them first.”
“I guess they tread lightly with juveniles.”
“Weren’t you in Arizona when this happened?”
“I was. Yes.” Rich leaned in cl
oser. “See, I had bought a plane ticket to come out here, and the dates of my planned stay happened to coincide with the time of the attack. Candy didn’t even know about it. Remember what I was saying the other day about using a firmer hand with these girls?”
Bill nodded, remembering it all too well.
“Well, I thought Haley needed that. So I bought a ticket. It was kind of an impulsive move on my part, and because I didn’t tell anybody . . .”
“It looked suspicious.”
“Exactly. But I’m glad to hear they treated you the same way.”
Bill waited for a moment, expecting Rich to say more. When he didn’t, Bill had to ask.
“So, did you come here? At the time of the attack?”
“No, I didn’t,” Rich said. “Something came up at work, and I couldn’t. But they looked into all my records, and they saw that purchase, and it got them worked up for a while. You can understand that, right?”
“Yeah.”
Rich clapped Bill on the shoulder as though they were coconspirators, a brotherhood of misunderstood fathers. Bill wasn’t sure he wanted to be in the same club as Haley’s dad.
Caleb, Candy’s pastor, stuck his head around the corner of the hallway. He looked surprised to see Bill, but then smiled at him in a moderately friendly way. “The police are finishing now, if you want to come back,” he said to Rich.
“Was she able to tell them anything?” Bill asked.
Caleb hesitated before answering, then said, “I think Detective Hawkins can fill you in on that.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Hawkins emerged from Haley’s room and looked surprised to see Bill. The detective stopped in the hallway, still as disheveled as he had been the night before. Bill doubted the man had slept at all.
“You didn’t have to come,” Hawkins said. “There’s nothing for you to do here.”
“I was in the neighborhood.” When Hawkins looked at him without saying anything else, Bill asked, “So, what happened in there? What did Haley tell you?”
Hawkins looked around at Rich and Caleb and then placed a meaty hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Look, Bill, I’m sure you came here because you were hoping for something big, some kind of important revelation from Haley. But all along we weren’t sure if she’d be able to remember anything.”
Bill felt deflated before Hawkins even delivered the news he knew was coming.
“So you didn’t get anything?” Bill asked.
Hawkins’s tired eyes grew sympathetic. “She’s groggy, Bill. Very groggy. She can barely hold her head up or open her eyes.” He shook his head. “She’s not ready yet. So, no, we didn’t get anything.”
Hawkins’s hand was only resting on top of Bill’s shoulder, but to Bill it felt like the detective was holding him up. Bill wanted to let his body go slack, to slide to the floor, his bones and muscles becoming a human puddle. He knew Hawkins was right in assessing the difficulty of getting anything out of Haley, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been hoping for the past week. If she didn’t see or remember anything, who would? Who would then hold the key to everything that had been happening?
“But all is not lost,” Hawkins said. “The doctors have told us it’s possible her memory will return as time goes by. We’re early in the process here, so we have to give Haley time to get better. Waking up is a big step, but it’s still an early step. They’re going to do therapy and everything else they can think of.”
Hawkins sounded more calm and reassuring than at any time since Summer’s disappearance. Bill wondered if exhaustion hadn’t added more syrup to his voice.
“Can I go in and see her?” Bill asked.
Hawkins shook his head again. “Her mother’s in there now. And Haley needs to rest. I’m coming back later today.”
“Just a minute, Detective. Just let me . . . Let me see her and find out what she knows. Let me do it. For God’s sake, Hawkins, you know how precious every moment is right now.”
Bill looked at the other faces arrayed around him: Rich, Caleb, a nurse. They all looked sympathetic. They all knew how much rode on Haley’s fragile recovery.
But Hawkins was firm. “It’s not a good idea, Bill. She can’t even speak. And you’re getting agitated. She needs calm right now.”
“You know how long I’ve waited for this. It’s all we’ve got right now.”
“I do.”
Bill went past him. He didn’t think. He didn’t weigh options. He brushed by Hawkins and pushed against the door of Haley’s room, breezing inside.
But then he saw her.
Haley sat propped up against a stack of pillows, Candy by the side of the bed holding a cup of water. Haley’s eyelids looked heavy, her facial muscles slack. Bill saw no sign of the beautiful girl he knew so well. He saw a tired, sick kid, someone who had been to hell and back.
“Haley.” Bill managed just the one word. He felt like an intruder.
He’d come in so fast and so boldly that Candy just stared at him, her mouth open slightly.
Haley managed to move her head to the right, her eyes still not fully open. She seemed to be trying to place Bill, to figure out whether he was someone she should know.
As he stared at the girl, Bill remained frozen in place, realizing how long the road to her recovery might be.
Hawkins came through the door and stopped beside him. “Bill, let’s go.”
Bill turned and left without saying anything else.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Bill walked down the hall, heading for the elevator like a man in a daze. He couldn’t shake the image of Haley in the bed, and he remembered again the words the doctor had told him on that first day in the hospital, back when he thought his daughter lay in the ICU unit, beaten and battered.
“Brain damage. Vision loss.”
How badly was Haley hurt?
Bill played a ridiculous game of “What If” in his mind.
What if it really had been Summer in that hospital bed? She’d be awake now, perhaps on the road to a full recovery.
But then Haley? What would it mean for Haley? Could he, even in a mental exercise, trade his daughter’s life for the life of another child?
And what if he had to care for a severely injured child the rest of his life as Haley’s family might have to?
Bill didn’t hear Caleb come up next to him. The pastor wore a neatly pressed button-down shirt and khaki pants. His cell phone was still clipped to his belt, and his neck bore the telltale signs of razor burn. Caleb must have been an early riser to be that cleaned up so early in the morning.
“Can I disturb you for a second, Mr. Price?”
Bill turned to the man and didn’t feel like he could generate an answer. He nodded, barely moving his head.
Caleb pointed to two chairs near the elevator, and they sat side by side. Bill rested his hands on his knees and stared straight ahead. “You saw her, right?” Bill asked. “Haley?”
“Yes. She’d just woken up. She’s very out of it.” The man licked his lips and then looked over at Bill. “In fact, I was in the room when the police were first trying to talk to Haley. They didn’t get anywhere, but Candy wanted me to be there, and since . . . well, since Rich’s presence sometimes upsets Haley, we thought it was best that he wait outside. It was pretty crowded anyway. It was maybe more disturbing seeing her that way than unconscious.”
Bill thought of the firmer hand and the plane ticket, Haley’s bruised and battered face as she muttered, “No no no no no,” when Bill came close to her and said the word “Dad.”
Caleb looked uncertain about going on, but he did. “She’s been unconscious for more than a week, right? But when the detective was asking her the questions he asked her, trying to talk to her, I saw something else on her face and in her eyes, something I thought I’d bring to your attention.”
“What was that?�
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“She looked . . .” Caleb paused, choosing his words carefully. “She looked scared. But that’s not quite the right way to put it. You could expect her to be scared after waking up in the hospital with those horrible injuries, a police detective standing over her and asking her all sorts of questions.” Caleb winced a little bit. “What I’m saying is, we might have to go over what happened to Summer again. I’m not sure what we were saying really sank in. That she’s still missing.”
“For over a week now,” Bill said, reminding himself of the awful march of time, the clock ticking against his daughter. “I guess that will be a shock. But not as bad as if you were telling her Summer was dead.”
“That’s true.” Caleb patted Bill on the knee. “We do need to remember the positives, even if they’re small victories.”
Caleb didn’t seem poised to say anything else, so Bill prompted him. “About this look on her face.”
“Yes, right. Well, I’m going to continue to pray for her to remember more.”
“She looked really awful when I saw her,” Bill said.
“True.”
“And the cops would probably scare her under the best of circumstances,” Bill said. “Imagine waking up to that.”
Caleb shook his head slowly, and the effort appeared to pain him. “I think she’s also afraid of me. And her mother to some extent. I’m sure you know Candy can be . . . demanding. And so can I. Haley’s been raised in a religious household over the last few years, ever since her father left. So there may be certain topics she wouldn’t want to discuss with us nearby.”
Somewhere up the hall a machine beeped rapidly. And then a nurse at the desk laughed, the sound echoing through the hallway. Bill looked over at her and saw she had her hand cupped over her mouth, another nurse nearby smiling and turning red about some private joke.
Caleb said, “Haley was acting differently in the weeks leading up to the disappearance. More secretive. Missing curfews. Candy was concerned to the point she made an appointment for Haley to come and meet with me at the church about a week before the girls disappeared. I think Candy wanted me to give Haley some kind of stern talking-to, you know, a warning about where her behavior could lead. But when Haley showed up, she didn’t really talk about herself.”