by David Bell
Hawkins reached past Bill and pulled the door to Taylor’s room shut. The detective’s coat was unbuttoned, and he seemed unaffected by the cold temperature.
“She say anything interesting?” Hawkins asked.
“She apologized for jerking me around.”
Hawkins just nodded. He didn’t really seem focused on what Bill had told him.
Bill asked, “Do you think that Doug Hammond has Summer somewhere? That he beat the other two girls and then did something else with Summer?”
“Haley’s saying a girl picked them up.”
“Emily. She took them to Doug. Maybe Doug was in the car, and Haley doesn’t remember.”
Hawkins rubbed his thumb against his chin. “Maybe. So, he gets ahold of these three girls, he beats two of them, including his stepdaughter, dumps them out in the park after two days, but not before bundling Haley up because she’s still alive. Meanwhile, where’s Summer this whole time? Why keep her alive, if that’s what you’re arguing?”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“Hammond doesn’t have a house nearby. But then he comes to your house to get these items, to make Summer feel better, but he gets into it with Fleetwood and kills him.”
“And leaves without what he came for.”
Hawkins nodded his head slowly, and Bill could tell there was more on his mind, something else he needed to say.
“We’re looking for Hammond,” he said. “All over. We have officers sweeping Dunlap Park right now. But I don’t want to fixate on him too much at the expense of everyone else. After all, no one saw him in your house. He didn’t know Fleetwood, at least not as far as we can tell.”
Bill waited for more, and when it didn’t come, he asked, “What else are you thinking?”
“You said Fleetwood was moving, a job transfer. And that his ex-wife and kid live down there. He wanted to be closer to them. Right?”
“Sure.”
“We’ll be looking into all of that as well.”
“He’s the victim here, Detective.”
Hawkins nodded. “Right. But when a crime is committed, we tend to get to know the victim first. Make sense?”
“It does.”
“Do you know anything else about Adam Fleetwood? You told me about the phone call your wife made to him the day she died.”
“I don’t see how that phone call, or my wife, could somehow lead to his being dead in my house. Do you?”
“You told me you were out driving around before you went home and found the body in your house,” Hawkins said. “Did you kill him?”
Bill stammered. “Of course not.”
“But you suspected him of having something going on with your wife.”
“I didn’t kill him. He was my friend.”
Hawkins’s breath puffed in the night air, a cloud that floated away and disappeared. “Let’s get you a ride back while I talk to Ms. Kress.”
He clapped Bill on the shoulder, took a deep breath, and pushed open the motel room door.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Bill returned home and tried to sleep.
He undressed and lay in bed as the minutes turned into hours. He stared at the ceiling, watching the lights of passing cars flash across the walls of his bedroom. Every time a car passed, a stubborn and persistent hope rose in Bill’s chest. He listened carefully, his ears tuned to the outside world like antennae, and wished one of the cars would stop, that Summer would jump out of it and run across the lawn and into the house.
He pictured the reunion. Yes, she’d look a little battered and worn, dirty and tired from the hell she’d been through. All the sweeter for them both as she came through the door and jumped into his arms . . .
The fantasy caused Bill to smile and cry at the same time. If only the world were so easy. If only it were all wish fulfillment . . .
He dozed for a short time, a restless sleep. Images rushed through his mind. He ran down a darkened alley, but his mind couldn’t make it clear whether he was the pursuer or the one being pursued. It didn’t matter. He felt panic either way, a sense that something was slipping through his grip.
Like Summer.
Or . . . like Doug Hammond.
He came out of the dream and sat up in bed.
It was just before four a.m. An insufferably cheerful bird sang outside the window, but no light came through. It was still too early for that.
“Shit,” Bill said.
He scrambled in the dark, pulling on jeans and a long-underwear shirt. In the back of his closet, he found a pair of running shoes, a leftover from a brief flirtation with daily exercise the previous spring. But they had good tread and allowed him to move quickly if needed. He made a stop out in the hallway, pulling open the utility closet door. The hot-water heater ticked inside, but Bill reached around on the shelf until he found a flashlight with batteries in it. He tested the beam against the darkness of the closet. Satisfied, he grabbed his coat and left.
On his way, Bill made a call. Given the time, he wasn’t surprised when it went straight to voice mail. He left a message.
“Look, I know you’re still asleep. And you probably have the phone off so it doesn’t wake you. But I’m about to do something either really brave or really stupid. Or both. But I want you to make me a promise, Paige, even if you just hear this on the recording. Promise that if something happens to me, now or at any other time, you’ll keep searching for Summer. I know you have a family and you can’t devote your life to it, but could you just do whatever you can to see the world doesn’t forget about her?
“Thanks. And, you know, I love you. In case you didn’t know.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Bill kept the flashlight off as he walked along the gravel path. He wanted to save the batteries until he needed them. And he didn’t want to advertise his approach to everyone in the park.
He’d passed one police car, driving in the opposite direction as he came in. He expected—hoped, really—to see more, but there was no sign of any. If they’d already been through, as Hawkins said, maybe they’d be coming and going throughout the night. Bill hoped so. He thought about the police the way he thought about his night-light as a little kid—an amazing form of comfort in the dark.
Bill judged himself to be about halfway to the memorial when something rustled to the right of the path. He stopped. He held the flashlight in his right hand, and his left slipped into his coat pocket where he’d stashed a pepper spray canister he’d brought along. He didn’t even know if it worked anymore. On an impulse, he’d bought it for Summer two years earlier, encouraging her to carry it with her when she walked to the bus stop or school or rode her bike to her friends’ houses. He didn’t think she’d ever picked it up; instead she’d chosen to leave it in a junk drawer in the kitchen.
Bill waited. The rustling came again, and he knew it was too loud to be a small animal. It was either something big—a deer, most likely—or else a person. And given how skittish deer could be, he bet it was a person.
Bill flicked the light on, shining it in the low brush on the side of the path. It took a moment, but two figures slowly emerged. First a man and then a woman. They both looked ragged and homeless, their clothes dirty, their hair matted and greasy where it spilled out from beneath wool caps. They squinted in the light, and Bill angled it away, giving them a break. The man zipped his pants, his face revealing no embarrassment.
They came toward him, Bill holding his ground with the pepper spray in his left hand inside the pocket.
When the man came abreast of Bill, he said, “Not a cop, for a change.” And kept walking.
The woman looked Bill up and down, a sneer crossing her face. “Some creep,” she said.
Bill waited while they continued down the path behind him and back toward the parking lot. He knew he’d locked the car and had made sure to leave no valuables exp
osed. When he was sure they were gone, he flicked the light off and kept going.
Bill turned the light back on when he reached the memorial. The beam played across the fading flowers and rain-streaked notes, illuminating the dead, marble eyes of stuffed animals that stared unseeingly into the night.
He shivered despite the warmth of his wool coat and long underwear. He turned away, orienting his body in the direction where he’d seen and then chased Doug Hammond. There was no path, so he could only approximate in the dark, but he felt as if he had a pretty solid sense of where he wanted to go. With the flashlight beam leading the way, he started off.
The woods were quiet. It was too early in the season for crickets and other bugs. Only the occasional call of a night bird and the light crunch of his shoes over the ground made any noise.
Every nerve ending in Bill’s body jangled. He expected at any moment for other broken and haunted-looking figures to emerge from the darkened trees, the kind of people Bill never saw in his daily life, the kind he found himself bumping against only because someone had kidnapped his daughter.
And maybe she was out there as well. Would it make sense that whoever took Summer and left the other two girls in the park also lived there? Wouldn’t it be likely that everything happened in close proximity? Bill knew the police had searched the park several times, but it covered a lot of acres. In Kentucky there were any number of rock formations and creeks, small caves and overhangs. Could the police and a load of volunteers really cover everything?
The beam from the flashlight cut through the trees. After a few minutes, Bill saw a blue tent and, next to it, a lean-to constructed of rough boards. He moved in that direction, his heartbeat thrumming in his ear. When he got closer, the beam played across the openings of the two structures. Bill saw legs and dirty sneakers trailing out the end of the wooden lean-to. The figure didn’t move at all, and he moved the beam up the body until he saw a ragged gray beard and a bulbous red-veined nose. The man didn’t flinch.
He angled the beam to the opening of the tent. The flap was closed, secured with a long piece of string. Bill hesitated, unsure of how to proceed, but before he needed to act, a hand came through the opening, pulling the string loose. The flaps parted, and a young guy with a tattoo on his neck stuck his head out, blinking against the light.
He and Bill just stared at each other, and Bill moved the light away from the man’s eyes. A woman spoke from behind the man, inside the tent, and the guy, still looking at Bill, said, “I don’t know if he’s a cop or not. He doesn’t look like one. He looks like a suburban dad playing like he’s a hiker.”
“Who’s the girl in there?” Bill asked.
“He wants to see you,” the guy said. “Are you making an offer?” the guy asked Bill.
It took a moment for Bill to understand, and then another to decide if the man was joking about pimping out his lady friend. But the man smirked, letting Bill know how little regard he had for him.
Some rustling came from inside the tent, and then a woman stuck her head through the flap. She had bleached blond hair and wore a large hoop in one of her nostrils. She smiled when she saw Bill, and her teeth looked perfect and white. “Are you a social worker or something?” she asked. “They used to come out all the time and give us condoms and shit.”
“I’m not,” Bill said. “I’m looking for a man named Doug.”
The guy withdrew into the tent, and the girl stared at Bill a moment longer. “My boyfriend in kindergarten was named Doug. But I don’t know where he is now.”
“Is there a guy in this area named Doug?” Bill asked.
“I have to go back to sleep. The cops came through here twice tonight already. They’re harassing us.”
“They let you stay,” Bill said.
“Fuck off,” the girl said.
She went back in, and Bill wondered how far in over his head he really was.
• • •
Bill passed a couple more makeshift dwellings. Some of the people inside were awake and treated him with either indifference or outright hostility. The woods seemed to be a landing place for an eclectic collection of young and old, the broken and the defiant. He wondered about the parents of the young people. How many of them were lying awake at that very moment, wishing they knew the whereabouts of their sons and daughters?
Or, worse, how many of the parents simply didn’t care?
Bill then saw a white square in the darkness. He took his time approaching, moving slowly through the night, but the closer he came, the more certain he felt that he was coming upon the makeshift tent he’d seen the day he chased Doug Hammond. It looked the same and appeared to be in about the same place.
Bill stopped about twenty feet away. He listened to the quiet of the night. He took a quick look above and saw fast-moving clouds passing over the moon and stars, pressing down like the lid on a pot.
Someone stirred inside the tent. Bill moved closer, the light shining on the opening.
“Hello?” he called. “Doug?”
A woman emerged, standing up and blinking as the light hit her in the face. Bill angled the light down, revealing dirty jeans and bare feet, the toes covered with mud.
“What the fuck?” she asked. “Cops again?”
“I’m looking for Doug Hammond. Do you know him?”
The woman crossed her arms. She looked to be about thirty, and the sweater she pulled around her body had an enormous hole in one elbow. Her hair was dyed pink, and she considered Bill with big eyes in a pale face.
“Who the fuck are you?” she asked.
“I’m looking for Doug. Does he stay around here? I’m supposed to talk to him.”
“The fuck,” she said. But she didn’t go back inside. She studied Bill, shifting her weight so one dirty foot rested on top of the other, giving her the appearance of a flamingo. A pink-haired, very thin, and very dirty flamingo. “Are you another cop? Are you the guy who chased him? He told me some dickhead guy came and chased him.”
“I might be. Is he around?”
“It’s about that girl. Those girls, I should say. The ones they found up there.” She gestured with her head in the direction from where Bill had just come. “The cops have been all over the place here. They chase us out, and we come back, and then they chase us out again. It’s been terrible.”
“Where’s Doug?”
The girl shook her head. “He hasn’t been here. We’re all here, but no Doug. Just pushy cops and us. He doesn’t live here. He doesn’t live anywhere.” She gestured with her head again, this time in the other direction, off in the woods. “Sometimes he stays with a bitch over there. Sometimes he meets a woman in a bar and goes to her house. He comes here every so often, I guess. He’s been acting sketchy lately. Different.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Nervous. Something went down, right? Something he’s in trouble for?”
“When was he last here?”
She shrugged. “A day ago, I guess. Maybe less. He passed through.”
Bill played the beam across the girl’s dirty feet and through the tent opening. “Does he keep stuff here?”
“Some.”
“Like what? Can I look?”
“It’s nothing. Just some bullshit he brought back.”
Bill was already moving forward, coming up next to the woman and approaching the opening to the tent. He shone the light inside. “Then if it’s just bullshit, he won’t care, right?”
“He’s going to be pissed if you fuck with anything,” she said.
“Did the cops look through this tent?” Bill asked.
“No, they just shone their lights in our eyes and hassled us. What the fuck, man?”
It was all fruitless, he thought. Everything he tried, every idea he had, every gesture he made. Fruitless.
Would he ever see Summer alive again?
Bill wiped his nose. His eyes darted around, looking for something. Anything.
They landed on the woman’s wrist.
His eyes opened wider. “Shit.” He reached for her arm.
“What are you doing, jerk?”
Bill didn’t explain. He tugged on the bracelet on her arm, working against the woman to get it off her wrist.
“That hurts,” she said, trying to pull back. “What do you want?”
Bill gripped the bracelet. He managed to slide it over the woman’s hand, yanking it past her fingers and pulling it free.
“My daughter’s,” he said, the words coming out in huffs and puffs. “This bracelet belongs to my daughter.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Bill held the flashlight in one hand, the bracelet in the other.
The woman was saying something, going on and on about Doug bringing the bracelet back and letting her wear it. But Bill felt like he was underwater, all sound and external stimuli muffled and hazy.
“Have you seen her?” Bill asked. “The girl this bracelet belongs to.”
The pink-haired woman squinted a little, staring at Bill. “I’ll tell you what I told the cops. No. Never. They asked me like fifty times.” She looked at his hand. “What’s the big deal about this stupid bracelet?”
Then Bill understood something else. “Wait a minute. . . . He just took this earlier this evening. He was here, sometime recently. He was here. You said he hadn’t been here for a day.”
“Okay, I lied. Sue me. It was before midnight, I guess. Before the cops started swarming. Then he left again.”
Bill dropped to the ground and started pawing through the other items on the bottom of the tent. The ground was covered by a dirty blanket, and he rummaged through the loose items scattered around the small space.
“What are you doing?” the woman asked. “That’s my stuff.”