Bring Her Home

by David Bell

“So you’re getting fingerprints and things over there? Other evidence? Just like you did here?”

  Hawkins gave Bill a look that said, I think I know how to do my job.

  Bill said, “Right. Of course.”

  “Have you had a chance to determine whether anything is missing here?” Hawkins asked.

  “No, I haven’t. I got caught up in the cleaning.”

  “Do you mind if we take a look?” Hawkins asked.

  “I don’t,” Bill said.

  The two men walked through the house as Bill tried to remember what he owned that someone would consider valuable. It was easy to show the detective that the appliances were there—the TV, the microwave, the DVD player. Bill checked the china cabinet in the dining room, and the silver candlesticks he and Julia received as a wedding present were still there, covered with dust.

  They started down the hallway, the one filled with the scent of ammonia from Bill’s cleaning.

  “Computer’s there,” Bill said. “And the printer and fax machine.”

  They went on to the doorway of Summer’s room.

  “Anything in here?” Hawkins asked.

  “You all took her computer and her e-reader. I don’t think there was anything else.”

  “No jewelry?”

  “Nothing really valuable.”

  “What about this open drawer?” the detective asked.

  Bill took a step back into the hallway, seeming not to have heard Hawkins’s question. He looked both ways, down toward his bedroom and then out to the family room.

  “What is it, Bill?” Hawkins asked.

  Bill straightened. “Remember that Winnie the Pooh I brought to the hospital? The one Summer sleeps with every night?”

  “The one Haley didn’t want at the hospital.”

  “When I came home earlier, and I saw Adam lying here on the floor, that Winnie the Pooh was right next to him. Where is it?”

  “Probably tagged and taken away as possible evidence. What’s your point?”

  “Why was it right next to his body? Like he’d picked it up and carried it with him?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  “What about that?” Hawkins asked.

  Bill pointed into Summer’s room. “It always sits right there, on top of her bed. Summer made her bed every day—she was good about that, almost anal—and she insisted on putting that bear right on top. And she slept with it every night even when she wanted to get rid of the other stuffed animals she owned. I made sure it looked like that.”

  “It’s a stuffed bear. It probably fell on the floor during the struggle.”

  “It’s not just that. . . . Summer loves that bear. She needs it to sleep and feel safe. That’s always been the case.”

  “Okay,” Hawkins said, looking around the room. “Is there anything else out of place? This drawer is open, and some clothes are scattered around.”

  Bill stepped into the room and looked at the dresser. He saw a jumble of underwear and socks on the floor, like someone had just dropped them there. He lifted his hands in confusion. “I don’t know, Detective. Why would someone be going through her drawers this way and taking clothes out?”

  “How about the closet?”

  Bill pulled the door open and looked at the clothes on the rack, the neatly lined-up shoes and boots and sandals on the floor. Bill pawed through the clothes, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. How many fathers had inventories of their teenage daughters’ clothes?

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. “I don’t know.”

  “Did she keep clothes or personal items anywhere else in the house?”

  Bill backed away from the closet. “No. Just her coats and things. But she was wearing her winter coat on the day she disappeared. Hell, I guess Haley was wearing her coat.”

  “Let’s check your bedroom.”

  But Bill didn’t move. He stood in the center of the room, the closet open before him. He questioned himself: Was he wrong about the bear? Did it matter that it was next to Adam’s body, as though someone—either Adam or the person who killed him—had been carrying it?

  He’d never moved it. Paige wouldn’t, would she?

  And he hadn’t taken things out of Summer’s drawers. So who had?

  “Are you okay, Bill?”

  His mind swirled. His thoughts were tornadic.

  “Someone—Doug Hammond, perhaps—broke in here to get that bear and other stuff for Summer. Why would he do that? A souvenir?”

  “I can’t answer that, Bill. I can’t even agree that it was Doug Hammond who did it. Why don’t we check the last bedroom?”

  Bill practically stumbled along behind the detective, his mind racing with every possibility relating to Doug Hammond and his presence in the house. He looked around the master bedroom, but things didn’t really register in his head. Everything looked as it always did, but it was only when Hawkins prompted him that Bill remembered to look in the closets and drawers for any missing valuables. Again, they didn’t have much. Julia’s engagement ring and other jewelry were in a safety-deposit box at the bank, waiting for Summer to be old enough to use them. Or sell them, whatever she wanted to do. Beyond that, there just wasn’t anything.

  “It all looks fine,” Bill said.

  Hawkins nodded, but he didn’t make a move to leave the room. He considered Bill, his blue-gray eyes showing pity more than anything else.

  “I sense you’re getting your hopes up, Bill,” Hawkins said. “I don’t want you to race ahead of the evidence. All we have are some displaced items, things that aren’t valuable. . . .”

  “No,” Bill said. “No. That man came here to get things that would bring Summer comfort. That’s why the bear was off the bed and on the floor. That’s why the clothes were disturbed.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do,” Bill said. “Summer’s alive. She’s still alive.”

  Part

  Three

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Hawkins’s phone rang, the sound even more shrill in the quiet house. The detective took the call and stepped away from Bill, turning his back and speaking in a lowered voice. So Bill moved closer, straining to hear.

  “The Knotty Pine?” Hawkins said. “And they’re sitting on her? Okay, okay. I can get there.” Hawkins listened for what felt like a long time. “Oh, boy. Really? She said that? Why?”

  Bill moved even closer, and Hawkins took a half step away. The detective let out a long sigh and rubbed his forehead with his left hand while his right gripped the phone. “Okay, okay. We’ll get there as soon as we can.”

  He hung up and slipped the phone back into his coat pocket.

  “What’s that all about?” Bill asked. “Who’s at the Knotty Pine?”

  Hawkins seemed to be contemplating a professional answer, one with all the appropriate qualifiers and modifiers, but the late hour and long day combined to make him give in and speak directly to Bill.

  “Taylor Kress,” he said. “A couple of our officers found her at the Knotty Pine about twenty minutes ago.”

  The combination of excitement and relief Bill felt made him unable to speak. He tried to form words but couldn’t.

  It didn’t matter. Hawkins said all that needed to be said.

  “She’s insisting on seeing you,” he said. “It’s not my favorite thing to have to do, but I’m going to try it. Get your coat and let’s go.”

  • • •

  They pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Knotty Pine, a cheap motel located on the bypass among a series of fast food restaurants, car dealerships, and, farther along, Jakesville’s lone strip club. The Knotty Pine didn’t seem to be the kind of place Taylor Kress would choose to stay given the more reputable chain hotels in the area, but maybe that was why she went there. To stay out of the way. The cops found her by searching the few hotel
s and motels in town, and when Hawkins stopped the car in the lot, two patrol cars were already parked near the open door to what Bill assumed was her room. Two uniformed cops stood outside, their arms crossed, their breath puffing in the cold air.

  The motel’s neon sign cast a green glow over the two men as they drove through the lot. Each room had a red door illuminated by a single, sickly yellow bulb. When the car stopped and Bill reached for the door handle, Hawkins told him to stop.

  “Wait here a minute,” he said.

  “I thought she wanted to see me.”

  “She does. But I need to talk to her first. I’ll leave the heat on, okay?”

  Bill started to say something but stopped. He’d never seen quite the look of determination—or was it something else?—on Hawkins’s face that he wore in the motel parking lot. His brows and chin seemed to jut forward, but his eyes were glassy and distant, almost sad.

  So Bill kept his mouth shut and watched Hawkins approach the two cops, exchange a few words and a couple of nods, and then step inside the motel room.

  Bill leaned back in his seat, watched the two cops tilt their heads toward the door of the motel room as though they were listening in on whatever Hawkins was saying to Taylor. Bill’s hand crept toward the door again, but he stopped. He turned on the car radio, spinning the dials in search of a song or a show, anything that might take his mind off whatever was going on in that room. But he found nothing comforting, just a twangy minister spouting Bible verses, and loud, crass music he couldn’t understand.

  He tried to believe the moved stuffed animal and scattered clothes meant something good for Summer. Why else would someone break into the house and disturb Summer’s things? Wouldn’t they have to be trying to comfort Summer, to make her feel better, wherever they had her?

  The voice in his head was frank: Who would bring a stuffed animal to a dead girl?

  The heat in the car grew to be too much. Bill felt a trickle of sweat forming on the back of his neck. He dialed the heat down and then pressed a button to lower the window by an inch. The cool air brushed his face, easing his physical discomfort. He didn’t want to be in the car. He didn’t want Hawkins to be in the motel. He wanted the two cops in their dark uniforms to jump into their cars and go somewhere, anywhere they might find Summer.

  More than ever.

  It took fifteen minutes for Hawkins to emerge. He came through the doorway, his big body filling the frame, the bright light from inside the room outlining him. He looked to the car and made a waving gesture toward Bill, a summons to approach.

  Bill hesitated, wondering if he really meant him, or one of the other cops. But then Hawkins waved again, his gesture more energetic, and Bill pushed the door open. His feet crunched against the gravel, his gloveless hands feeling the cold first.

  Hawkins took a last look inside the room and nodded, and then he came out and met Bill about ten feet from the door, his big hand held out.

  “I need to tell you something before you go in,” Hawkins said. “It’s the reason I had to go in there first.”

  Bill tried to look around the big cop, to see past him. “What is it?”

  “We got those dental records from the other town, the ones for her daughter. Emily Kress is the girl found at the scene with Haley. And I just had to give her mother the official word.” Hawkins stepped aside, his eyes downcast. “She’s ready to talk to you now.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Bill stepped through the doorway of Taylor’s room. She lay on her side on the queen-size bed, her knees pulled up to her chest, a crumpled tissue held to her face. Her cheeks were red, her face contorted with grief.

  Bill remained frozen in place, like an intruder. Even as his mind scrambled for a way to graciously back out the door and into the cold night, a more intense feeling, a stabbing and twisting of his own heart, compelled him to stay. He couldn’t turn his back on this woman in her time of desperate need.

  “I’m sorry, Taylor,” he said.

  He walked across the stained carpet and sat on the edge of the lumpy, uneven mattress. The bedspread was dark green and years out-of-date, covered with a variety of stains and cigarette burns. Taylor’s shoes were off, revealing pink socks, and she still wore the Bengals sweatshirt. Bill placed his hand on her knee and gave her two pats he hoped were comforting. He was stuck for anything else to say, so he repeated himself.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  Taylor sniffled. She made a shuddering sound from deep in her chest. “Thank you,” she said.

  Bill looked to the door, hoping Hawkins or one of the other cops had come back, but no one was in sight. “Do you need anything?” he asked. “Water or something?”

  “The detective, the big one—he got me water.” She sniffled again. “And another cop brought me tissues.”

  “Is there someone you want to call?” Bill asked. “I’ve got my phone right here. Maybe there’s someone back home—”

  “I’ll call them soon,” she said, her voice raw. “My brother and his wife will want to know. They’ll help me with everything. I want to bury her back home, of course, close to where I live.”

  “Naturally.”

  Taylor lifted her head off the flat pillow and stared daggers at Bill. “There’s nothing natural about it. Do you think it’s natural you don’t know where your daughter is? Is it natural mine’s dead?”

  “Of course not.”

  Her head dropped back to the pillow, and she let out a sigh. She seemed to be finished speaking, as though the small outburst had drained all her energy.

  Bill shifted his weight, causing the mattress to squeak. He looked to the door again. No one. “Was there something you wanted to tell me?” he asked.

  Taylor moved her head around, like a restless sleeper trying to get comfortable. She fluffed the pillow and then settled back in. “I was wrong,” she said. “When I dragged you out to where they found my baby’s body and let Doug come up to you, I was wrong.”

  “So you did set me up out there?”

  “He wanted to meet you. He knew I had come to town, accusing him of hurting Emily, and he wanted to set the record straight. He knew the cops would be looking for him eventually, just as soon as I gave them those dental records and they identified Emily. He convinced me he hadn’t done it, told me not to turn over the records. He tried to convince me Emily might still be alive. Or at least that he hadn’t hurt her. When I stopped hearing from her, I flew off the handle. I wasn’t rational. And I knew Doug had talked to her more recently than I had. He’d seen her. He’d spent time with her, but when I asked him, he was evasive. I couldn’t get anything out of him. I thought he knew something. I wanted him to know something. He convinced me he hadn’t harmed her.”

  “How?”

  “He reminded me of how much he cared for her, of everything he did for her. He used to get up with her when she was sick or scared during the night. He’s good at math. He used to help her with homework, stuff I didn’t know.” She sniffled. “We were a family, for a little while. We all had something. . . .”

  “You said he beat his ex.”

  “Yes, he did. She ended up withdrawing those charges. Look, he gave me hope, just a little. And I needed that.”

  “You wanted to believe him that she might be alive.”

  “Of course I did,” she said, her voice sharp. “Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you cling to any thread you could? That’s why I didn’t want them to have those dental X-rays. I wanted to stall and hope it was another girl instead of Emily. I feel like a fool now, hiding from the truth. Like a child.”

  Bill nodded. He knew all too well. “So you got me out there to talk to him, but he ran away. Why?”

  “You ran after him, like a crazy person. You should have seen yourself. You looked like some kind of banshee.”

  Bill spotted a box of tissues on the floor a few feet from th
e bed. He leaned down, picked it up, and held it out to Taylor. She pulled a few out, and then tossed the crumpled one from her hand in the direction of the trash can. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Okay, so what are you thinking about Doug now?” Bill asked. “Did he hurt Summer?”

  “That detective told me something happened at your house tonight. Something awful?”

  Bill could still see the blood smear, Adam’s body facedown on the floor. The mess he cleaned up afterward. The bloody rags, the disgusting water. “Yes. My neighbor was killed. In my house.”

  “Doug was going there—”

  “They don’t know that it was Doug.”

  “I think it was him. He was desperate to talk to you, to clear his name. He felt like he owed you, like some kind of debt. It’s a guy thing, a father thing. He actually understood what you were going through because we couldn’t find Emily.” She burrowed into the pillow, obscuring her face from Bill’s view. Then she looked up again, her eyes glassy and red. “I’m sorry. If I’d behaved differently, if I’d been honest with you, then maybe you’d know what happened to your daughter by now.”

  Bill stared down at the woman, her body and heart crumpled by grief. She’d been right, and manipulation or not, he couldn’t blame her or anyone else for reaching for a lifeline that said their child was alive. “It’s okay, Taylor. I get it.” He patted her leg again, letting his hand linger longer for a final squeeze of sympathy.

  Then Hawkins was in the doorway, knocking lightly against the jamb. He looked sheepish, reluctant to interrupt. Or perhaps reluctant to go on with speaking to a broken, grieving mother.

  “I have to talk to Taylor more, Bill,” he said. “Are you finished?”

  “We are,” Taylor said.

  Bill stood up and started for the door, and rather than stepping aside to let Bill go, Hawkins backed out, and he and Bill stood beneath the pathetic bulb, the cool night air swirling around them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE