No Bad Deed

by Heather Chavez

  “The caller reported that the intruder had a gun. After what your family’s been through, I understand why you’d carry one.” His eyes aimed for sympathy, and they came close. But I’d heard somewhere that detectives usually knew the answers to the questions they asked. If true, did Rico have “proof” I had a weapon?

  “Will officers find a gun inside the house, Cassie?”

  Would they? I had thoroughly searched the house, but I wasn’t sure. “If they find a gun, it isn’t mine.”

  I tried to read Rico’s eyes, but they gave away nothing. “The other thing is, the key you gave us doesn’t fit this lock.”

  It didn’t? Then: Of course it didn’t. Uncertain how to respond, I said nothing.

  “You’ve never been here before, right?”

  “I’ve been in the neighborhood when I was looking for Sam, but I’ve never been inside this house.”

  “You mean, before tonight.”

  “Of course.” I realized I’d crossed my arms again. I uncrossed them.

  “Where are your kids, Cassie?”

  I felt the crease between my eyebrows deepen. Not a question I had been expecting. “With a friend.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Of course. Why would you ask that?”

  “I heard Leo was hurt pretty badly playing football.”

  “He has a mild concussion and a torn meniscus,” I confirmed.

  “He can walk, though? And drive?”

  Had Rico learned that Leo had run over Carver? My eyes darted to my rental car for signs an evidence technician was examining the hood, but the car sat untouched under a streetlight.

  Rico noticed. “Need to leave?”

  My heart hammered. “Leo’s injured, but he can walk. As far as driving, he’s only fifteen.”

  “But he has his permit?”

  “What are you asking, Detective?”

  “Just making sure I’ve got the details right. Before you came here, you dropped Leo at his friend’s house?”

  “My friend, not his,” I clarified. “Why are you asking about Leo?”

  My question hung in the air, unanswered. “Does this friend of yours have a car?”

  “Of course she does.”

  “Leo would have access?”

  “What does any of this have to do with finding Sam?”

  The full weight of Rico’s attention fell on me. Sympathy remained in his expression, but it battled with something else—suspicion? “I have a nephew, just graduated college. He was in an auto accident when he was in high school. You know how it can be—inexperienced driver, bad weather. Weather wasn’t so bad tonight.

  “I tell you this because since my nephew’s accident, I’ve become pretty good at reading scenes.”

  My heart sank. “Has Sam been in an accident?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Not yet.” This time, there was no mistaking the suspicion. But, given the nature of his questions, I had a terrible feeling it wasn’t directed at me.

  “The kid who hurt your boy? I heard the play was dirty, and I can understand why that might make someone angry. Does Leo have a temper?”

  I was suddenly terrified of saying the wrong thing. “No more than any teenager. Why?”

  “That kid crashed about an hour ago, hit a tree, but there’s also a dent on the opposite side of his car. I’m guessing when the investigation is done, we’ll find that someone ran him off the road. Like I said, I’m pretty good at reading accident scenes.”

  “Are you insinuating Leo’s involved?”

  “I’m just trying to get to the truth, and he and the boy did have history.”

  The way he said it left no room for doubt: Rico knew about the cyberbullying. I wondered what else he knew. “What were Leo and Sam fighting about the night before your husband disappeared?”

  The texts. There had been two. The first had alluded to the fight. And then the second one: I’m sure Leo didn’t mean the things he said that night.

  I realized then that Rico knew everything. Not everything as in the truth, because if he did, Sam would be home. This would be over. No, what Rico knew was all the “evidence” manufactured by the person targeting my family.

  Anger had been my go-to emotion for years, but I had no room for it now. Fear and confusion forced it out.

  “I don’t know anything about a fight,” I said. “I wasn’t home that night, remember?”

  “You didn’t hear about it afterward?”

  “We had more important things to discuss.” The night air was cold but too still and held an expectant edge. “You know about the social media posts.”

  It wasn’t a question, and he supplied no answer. His broad face betrayed no emotion, his body as motionless as the air.

  “They were faked, but most moms would say the same,” I said.

  I could’ve expanded with examples of Leo’s kindness, or argued how the posts displayed a cruelty I’d never witnessed in him. It wouldn’t have swayed Rico, but it would’ve bought me a few minutes before my next confession. Because I knew I’d have to give the detective all the information if he was going to find Sam.

  My cheeks burned, and I had to swallow twice before getting the words out.

  “There was a photo too,” I said. “I’m not sure if you know about that, but I’m guessing you will. Someone will want you to know.”

  I paused to steady my breathing.

  “The number one was written on the back—three days, three numbers. I suppose I should’ve told you about it, but I didn’t want it to sway you in the wrong direction, and, if I’m being honest, I didn’t feel much like sharing a photo of my husband having sex with another woman. But I can get you that photo in the morning.”

  Sam’s reputation. Our marriage. What was the point in protecting any of it at the expense of my son’s safety and Sam’s life?

  Rico waited to make sure I’d finished, then asked, “How’d you get the photo?”

  “My daughter found it in her backpack.”

  “Where was the backpack?”

  “In her cubby at school.”

  “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  Rico studied me through narrowed eyes. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”

  I sighed, so deeply it rattled my chest. “I’m sure there is, but I can’t think of anything right now.”

  He rubbed his eyes, and I sensed his own confession coming. “I talked to the principal at the high school.” He made a show of consulting his notebook. “Chuck Diggs. Principal Diggs said Sam might have been sleeping with his students.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “Sam’s friend, Ozzy Delgado, said the same thing, that Sam would never touch a student.”

  “Because he wouldn’t have.”

  “But Ozzy did say he was sleeping with someone. So a cheating husband disappears. Okay. The story tracks. Either Sam left because he wanted to pursue this adulterous, possibly illegal, relationship, or you found out about the affair and there was a fight. In this scenario, we don’t know where your husband is—a hotel? a ditch?—but we have an idea what led to his disappearance. Which means we know where to look.”

  Rico let his words settle. I couldn’t move. I wanted to leave, but I also needed to hear where he was going with this.

  “See, at first, that’s what I thought happened,” he said. “Then your son gets injured in a football game, and the guy who hit him ends up in the hospital too. The storyline shifts. Leo has a temper. He fights with his dad—about the affair?—and then Sam disappears. Leo bullies this boy online, and then that boy nearly dies in an accident.”

  I couldn’t help myself this time, “Do you really believe my son capable of that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t much like anonymous tips. I prefer when the person making the accusations is willing to stand behind them. That said, I don’t really know your son.”

  “Then let me tell you: he’s not.”

  Rico tucked his notebook insid
e the pocket of his jacket. “I’m married. Twenty-six years, three kids, two still at home. I understand the impulse to protect your husband and kids,” he said. “But I am going to need that photo as soon as possible. If I’m going to find Sam, I’m also going to need you to be straight with me. You can’t hold stuff like this back, even if it shines an unfavorable light on your family.”

  The detective’s tone sounded less sympathetic than it had earlier, and when he walked away, I got the unshakable feeling I had disappointed him.

  29

  After checking in with Zoe, I sat in the car and contemplated my next move. At first, the brisk air seared my lungs, but the interior quickly became swampy with my breath. I cracked the window, then wiped the condensation from the windshield with my sleeve.

  Though Helen’s house had been dark when I had gotten into the car, lights blazed there now.

  Helen’s description of Sam’s lover continued to trouble me.

  Attractive, brunette, and unremarkable.

  It certainly sounded like Brooklyn, but I suddenly seized on the last of the descriptors—unremarkable.

  Midbreath, the memory landed, just beyond reach. I forced myself into stillness, holding my exhalation, afraid the memory would be as easily chased away as a butterfly pausing for nectar.

  Then it hit me, and I released my breath.

  When I had asked Audrey to describe the woman she had seen with her dad on Halloween, Audrey had told me the woman had been wearing a costume. Gray wig. Painted face. Like a broken doll.

  Hardly unremarkable.

  Helen had lied. More than that, she had described Brooklyn as she normally was, not how she had appeared on Halloween. So Helen had seen more than she had admitted.

  I got out of the car, taking the blazing lights as an invitation. Not that I required one.

  With the side of my fist, I knocked on the door. Immediately, it opened—but instead of periwinkle hair and a creased brow, I was greeted by a middle-aged man wearing a knit cap, a thin robe, and a scowl.

  “What do you want?” The man pulled his robe around him. At this hour, it likely offered inadequate protection against the chill.

  “I’m looking for Helen.”

  The man’s expression shifted from annoyance to confusion. “Who?” He tugged on the edge of his knit cap, his nose red from the cold.

  I repeated myself, this time describing Helen. Seeing no reaction, I added details as if the man wouldn’t know an elderly woman lived in his home unless I chose just the right word to describe her.

  Ah, yes, I wasn’t sure, but since you mentioned her snub nose . . .

  The man in the knit cap and thin robe shook his head. “My wife and I have lived here for four years.” His tone was apologetic, but he closed the door a fraction. For all he knew, I could be connected to the trouble across the street. Which, I guessed, I was.

  It hit me then that I had first met Helen on the street, and, earlier that night, on the doorstep of the abandoned house. I had never actually seen Helen leaving or entering the house she claimed as hers.

  “Maybe she’s a neighbor?” I asked.

  “Never seen anyone like that.” His eyes drifted across the street. “So—do you know what’s going on over there?”

  I reached for my phone, for photos of Sam, before realizing I had nothing to show this man. Per Perla’s instructions, I couldn’t even give him my new number. “They’re looking for a man who disappeared last night.”

  Before I could describe Sam, the man in the robe said, “Oh, it’s about that teacher? Yeah, the police were asking around about him earlier.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Honestly? My guess is that guy ditched his family.”

  The man’s face grew weary, his tone wistful, as if such a thought had occurred to him too.

  I felt suddenly dizzy. “Why would you say that?”

  “Isn’t that always how it happens? Either the guy left, or the wife killed him?”

  He moved to shut the door, but I stretched my arm across the threshold. With my other arm, I gestured toward the house where Rico and his team still milled.

  “Do you know who lived there?”

  The man furrowed his brow, considering how helpful he should continue to be to the persistent stranger on his doorstep. He must have recognized my level of persistence and that giving me a name was the only way to be rid of me, because, finally, he answered.

  The name he gave me was not Gardner.

  While talking to the man who wasn’t Helen, I had missed a call from Zoe. When I called her back, she rushed through her first piece of news: Perla had texted Zoe asking that I stop by on the way home. Nothing urgent, she’d texted.

  Zoe quickly moved on to her second announcement, delivered without pause for breath or breaks between the words. Still, I understood it clearly enough: she had found Hannah, or so she hoped. Zoe forwarded to my phone a photo from the yearbook and an address.

  I checked the time. Though it was late, it was a Friday night. Hannah would likely be awake. That’s if she was home.

  First Hannah’s house, then Perla’s, I decided.

  I started the car, rolling down both windows. The cold air served the dual purpose of defogging the windows and keeping me alert. On the way, I stopped at an ATM, then I headed across town to confront a teenage girl who had started rumors about sleeping with my husband.

  A couple of blocks from Hannah’s house near a twenty-four-hour market, I spotted a teen couple on the sidewalk. The boy wore jeans and a sweatshirt, hood pulled over his head. The girl wore the same, though her jeans rested lower on her hips and her sweatshirt fit more snugly.

  They were easy to spot, especially the girl. She reminded me of a colorful moth—maybe an elephant hawk-moth with its yellow wings and pink spots—as she flitted from streetlight to streetlight, laughing, weaving, casually flirting with the boy who walked beside her. She moved from one pool of light to the next, unconcerned about the darkness beyond and of the creatures in it that could grind her wings to dust.

  Yeah, I was in a foul mood.

  The girl was only a few years older than Leo. Legally an adult, but not by much. I recognized her from the yearbook photo. Hannah Zimmerman.

  The boy moved in a straight line that Hannah bobbed around, touching first his right elbow, then popping up on his other side to brush her fingertips against his left shoulder. The boy was mesmerized by her, and her carelessness became his own.

  They seemed on a course for the market, so I pulled in the lot and waited. The couple stopped in a puddle of light twenty or so feet from where I was parked. I got out of the car and leaned against the door, preparing to call out Hannah’s name in my best nonthreatening mom voice.

  Before I could, the young woman approached me. As she did, she pulled her boyfriend along by the hem of his sweatshirt.

  Hannah turned up the wattage on her smile. Dark and pretty, Hannah was probably used to getting what she wanted. Right now, I apparently had something she wanted. I figured it was either drugs or beer, and the location made me guess the latter.

  Hannah nudged her boyfriend forward. Hands thrust in his jean pockets, he flushed as he kicked at an invisible mark on the asphalt with his right sneaker. I had no doubt whose idea this was.

  “We were wondering if, like, you know, maybe you could buy us some beer.” The boy’s face flushed, his words nearly lost in his mumbling.

  The mom in me couldn’t help it. “Do you think it’s really a good idea to be approaching strangers in convenience store parking lots?” Or, for that matter, drinking beer.

  The boy looked chastened—I got the feeling he wasn’t as committed to this as his girlfriend—but Hannah looked irritated.

  She switched off her full-wattage smile. “Who are you, my mother?”

  So . . . pretty, but not very original with the comebacks.

  I reminded myself that I wanted something from this girl. “Your name’s Hannah, right?”

  The girl draped a hand on her boyfr
iend’s shoulder, nails sky blue and filed to points. She tried for flippant. “Buy us a twelve-pack and I might answer that.”

  I considered threatening to tell her parents, but that seemed a sure way to end what I hoped would be a productive conversation.

  “Let me rephrase: Your name is Hannah Zimmerman, and you claim your art teacher pressured you to have sex with him.”

  I kept my tone as neutral as my mood allowed.

  “Mr. Larkin? Yeah, that’s what happened.” Hannah seemed unconcerned that her boyfriend was within earshot. “I was, like, failing, and Mr. Larkin asked me to stay after class. He said if I gave him a hand job, he’d give me a B. And if I had sex with him, he’d give me an A.”

  I allowed myself a second of relief. That she had called him Mr. Larkin made me doubt the rest of her story. “Just like that?”

  Her smile was predatory. “Totally. I guess his wife’s a bitch or whatever.” Even though I hadn’t introduced myself, I had no doubt Hannah knew who I was. Who else would be here, in a convenience store parking lot on a Friday night, asking these questions?

  “So, did you accept his offer?”

  Hannah looked at the boy, while he stared at the pavement. “Mr. Larkin’s hot for an old guy, so the hand job, sure. But, like, I have a boyfriend. I wouldn’t have sex with him.”

  “And then Mr. Larkin gave you a B?”

  “Actually, he gave me an A.” Her smile edged toward a snarl. “I guess he really liked it.”

  She was eighteen years old, but she was also pretty much a kid, so I decided against punching her.

  “How much?” I asked.

  Her face scrunched in on itself—the pert nose, the perfect brows, the glossed lips—so she acquired that just-sucked-a-lemon look. “What?”

  “Let’s cut the crap. You didn’t sleep with my husband.”

  “I told you, it was just—”

  “No, it wasn’t. Not even that. So you got something out of it, and my guess would be money. How much?”

  She aimed to look offended, but the sneer ruined it. “I’d never do that.”

  Coming here, I had intended to make a play to Hannah’s conscience: Mr. Larkin could lose his job. You wouldn’t want that, would you? But I realized Hannah wasn’t the kind of girl who had a conscience.