The Stolen Hours

by Allen Eskens

  “Other women?” Reecey turned a shade whiter. “What other women?”

  “None—never mind.”

  “Are there others? No, wait. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

  “Of course there’s not, Leo. I didn’t kidnap Vauk, but they’re accusing me of that, aren’t they? So who’s to say they won’t try to tag more on for good measure?”

  Reecey accepted Gavin’s answer with the blind eye of a politician taking a bribe. “We have a fighting chance tomorrow,” he said. “But don’t be disappointed if the judge keeps the lineup in. Even if the judge kicks it, they’ll bring Ms. Vauk in at trial to point at you. We’ll use the faulty lineup to show how they planted your lisp in her head. We’ll turn their best evidence against them.”

  Gavin was barely listening. He didn’t want to hear the man’s glass-half-full assurances. This had to end the way Gavin had planned it. If the case made it to trial, he would lose. Jack had to put an end to it.

  The guard opened the door and ushered them into court, Gavin doing his best not to acknowledge that Lila Nash sat at the prosecutor’s table. How far down that path had the detectives traveled? They hadn’t charged him, so there had to be a hole in the case. Were they re-interviewing witnesses from the party? Had they talked to Jack yet? All he needed was another twenty-four hours. If things could go his way for one more day, he’d be golden.

  Gavin stared at the wood trim on the judge’s bench for the entirety of the proceeding, hearing very little of what was said. It was a sideshow as far as he was concerned. Leo Reecey was a joke. The man had few skills and could do no more to set Gavin free than the Tooth Fairy.

  The lead prosecutor, Andrea Fitch, handled the hearing that day, and the confidence in her voice raked across Gavin’s nerves. He calmed himself by fantasizing about that moment when her case would fall apart. The thought of her smug face crushed in defeat as he walked out of court pleased him. He would smile at her but not say a word, letting his silence echo off the walls as a final fuck you.

  As he listened to the two attorneys drone on, something pulled his attention to the left, to the table where Fitch stood in argument and Lila Nash sat in obedience. He wanted to look at her, but he kept his focus on the courtroom’s outdated woodwork. What was she thinking? Was she looking at him? How much did she remember—if she remembered anything at all? If he looked, he might know.

  Don’t do it, he thought to himself. She has to believe that she means nothing to you.

  “All right,” the judge said, after the thrum of attorney prattle died away. “It looks like discovery is completed and we’re set for a contested hearing tomorrow at three o’clock. Is there anything further, Mr. Reecey?”

  One glance, Gavin thought. Just a peek.

  “Nothing further,” Reecey said.

  Look at Fitch and then a quick glance. She won’t even notice.

  “Anything further, Ms. Fitch?”

  Gavin snaked his eyes to Fitch, standing at counsel table with the poise of a show horse. Next to Fitch, Lila Nash sat sideways, facing Gavin. They locked eyes for only a second, and where he had hoped to see confusion—or maybe even fear—he saw something else, something deep and powerful.

  He saw resolve.

  Chapter 51

  At the status hearing, Lila had put all of her concerns about getting fired aside and studied Gavin Spencer, paying particular attention to the way he stared straight ahead like a man not wanting to be noticed. She watched his head veer in her direction a couple times, his eyes leading the way, only to return front and center. It wasn’t until the proceeding waned to its final seconds that he looked at her.

  The connection lasted barely a second, but in his eyes she saw that same strange flash of recognition she’d seen in the jail video. And behind that spark, Lila thought she saw something that looked an awful lot like fear.

  He turned his head back sharply, but Lila didn’t look away. She kept her eyes locked on the man who she now believed had raped her.

  But how was that possible? How had Gavin found her that night? Had he been at that party in Uptown? What about his alibi? And if Gavin had not been the one to choose her, then it had to have been his accomplice. Gavin’s partner was still out there, and if she could find him, she could destroy Gavin’s alibi, attack his flank where he had no defense.

  The sight of him being led away drew her rage to a fine point. It made her want to drive a pen through his neck, and at the same time it made her so sick, she could barely stand up. She wanted Gavin to look at her. She wanted him to see that she knew.

  As she walked back to her office she pondered her strategy. Once there, she again stared at Gavin’s picture, trying to place him at the party, or anywhere in her past, but it was like trying to grab smoke.

  She stood and paced. Maybe she was coming at this from the wrong direction? Don’t think about Gavin. Think about the party.

  Up until a few days ago, she could only remember two people there that night: John and Sylvie. But now she believed that Silas Jackson had been there, and she knew that Sean Daniels was there. If she tracked down more people from that night, she might be able to color in enough of the scene to make a picture. It would take time—weeks, maybe months—but what were a few more months after living a nightmare for eight years? Besides, she would have plenty of time on her hands once Frank pulled the trigger on her termination.

  Lila wrote Sean Daniels’s name on her legal pad. Maybe he could remember a few names from that night, fresh bread crumbs for Lila to follow. It may lead nowhere, but at least she wouldn’t be sitting on the sidelines. She would start with Sean.

  * * *

  Lila made it to quitting time with no message from Dovey, leaving work a little early to avoid running into him at the elevators. She drove to Sean Daniels’s house in Lake Elmo, a quiet little burb on the outer ring of the Twin Cities, having found the address online. On the drive, Lila tried to remember everything she could about Sean. He had been a smallish boy who hung around the fringe of the conversations, piping up at the oddest moments with jokes that weren’t funny. Wasn’t he on the yearbook staff? She seemed to remember him taking pictures at high school events. He was a photographer?

  And then there was his senior picture. She had kept it in her car after leaving her mother’s house and now glanced at the inscription as she moved it to her pocket. Every dog has its day. What the hell was that supposed to mean? She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed important that she surprise him—capture his honest reaction to her showing up out of the blue.

  She parked in his driveway and paused before getting out of her car. His house was one of the largest on a street full of large houses: two stories, a stone façade, a three-car garage, and at least an acre of land. Clay pots filled with flowers framed the front door, suggesting a woman’s touch, and on the driveway, a toy horse lay on its side. Children?

  She walked up, rang the doorbell, and waited as footsteps approached. An amiable woman in her midtwenties opened the door and smiled at Lila.

  “Hello,” Lila said. “Is Sean here?”

  “He is, and who can I say…?”

  “Could you tell him that it’s Lila Nash…from high school?”

  Curiosity passed across the woman’s face, but she smiled and invited Lila inside.

  The home was lovely, full of windows and light. An open staircase in the entryway rose in a graceful curve to the second floor. Lila remained at the door, admiring the grandeur of the home as the woman left to get Sean. The sound of at least two children, young ones, came from somewhere beyond the foyer. A minute later, Sean emerged from a long hall.

  “Lila?” Sean looked legitimately confused. He hadn’t changed all that much since she’d last seen him, although he had put on some muscle weight and his acne had cleared up.

  “Hello, Sean.”

  “This is…Well, ‘a surprise’ doesn’t quite seem to cut it.”

  “I’m sorry for dropping in unexpected like this.” It was a
sentiment that Lila had planned to express even if she didn’t mean it—which she now did. “This is going to sound strange, but I was wondering if I could talk to you.”

  “Sure. I have an office back here.”

  As he led her through the house, she took in not only the size but the simple pleasantness of the home. She had been in nice houses before, but not one owned by someone her own age.

  The office was bigger than her bedroom back at the apartment, and held a drafting table and a desk made of what she thought might be mahogany. Sean pointed at one of the two leather chairs in the room, and they sat down.

  “I gotta tell ya, Lila. If you gave me a million guesses, I never would have thought that was you at the door.”

  “And again, I’m sorry for not calling. My coming here was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. Is that your wife?”

  “Mallory. Going on four years now.”

  “And did I hear kids?”

  “Bill and Kelly. Four and three. But I suspect you didn’t come all this way just to catch up.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Lila had planned a dozen ways to ease in to her questions, each determined by her read of Sean, but now she struggled to remember any of them. It all came down to one thing: What did he remember?

  “The weekend before graduation I was at a party in Uptown. That’s the night that…” She watched Sean’s face fall, and she knew he understood which night she was talking about. “I’ve been trying to re-create what happened. I know it was a long time ago, but—”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

  “Thank you. What exactly do you know about…what happened to me?”

  “Just what people said—and what the cops asked about.”

  “You took a picture of John Aldrich holding my arm.”

  “I remember. I gave it to the police after I heard what happened.”

  “Why? I mean, what was it that made you feel like that picture was important?”

  “I don’t know. I remember him treating you like that, and I…” Sean shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “It’s important, Sean. My memory of that night is pretty much missing, so if there’s anything you can tell me about the party, I’d really appreciate it.”

  Sean stood, closed the door to the office, and returned to his chair, his face tinged in melancholy. “I don’t know if you know…how I felt about you back then.”

  Lila swallowed but didn’t answer.

  “I had a bit of a crush on you.”

  Lila felt her face go flush, and nodded. “I had my suspicions.”

  “It tore me up to see you with assholes like John Aldrich. To hear people talk about you—the things they called you behind your back.”

  And just like that, the memory of those taunts came rushing back. “Yeah, I know about that.”

  “I used to ask myself, ‘Why not a guy like me?’ But I guess I always knew the answer.”

  “I had a lot of issues back then.”

  “I didn’t like the way Aldrich treated you. I think that’s why I took the picture. You were so…”

  “Drunk?”

  Sean nodded. “I thought that if I had a picture, I could show you later—show you what a dick he was, and with Sylvie right there.”

  “Did you see who I left with?”

  “I think I left before that.”

  “Have you ever heard the name Gavin Spencer?”

  “Um…I don’t think so.” Sean’s eyes showed no hint of a lie.

  “Did you know anybody back then who had a bad lisp?”

  “A lisp? Not that I can remember. Why?”

  “Just a shadow I’m chasing. How about the name Silas Jackson? Does that name ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “Was anyone at the party acting weird toward me, besides John, that is?”

  “It was a long time ago. I honestly don’t remember, but…that picture I gave the cop wasn’t the only one I took.”

  “You have more?”

  “I think I still have ’em.” He went to a cupboard and started pulling boxes out.

  “Didn’t the detective ask to see them?”

  Sean paused and turned to Lila. “The guy I talked to asked me about you and Aldrich—asked me if you were dating. When I said no, he said…” Sean dropped his eyes as though embarrassed.

  “He said what?”

  “He said that dating was the wrong word—hooking up was what he meant. When I said I didn’t know, he said…” Sean looked at Lila and she could see pity in his eyes. “He said he was trying to get a handle on all the guys you’d been with. I got the impression he was just going through the motions. When I gave him that picture of you and Aldrich, he acted like I was bothering him.”

  Sean lifted one of his boxes onto his desk and began digging through it. The box held external storage drives, each drive with a date written on it in Sharpie. Sean smiled. “I’m a pack rat when it comes to pictures.”

  “You took pictures for the yearbook, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you a professional photographer now?”

  Sean held up one of the drives and squinted to read the date on it. “Oh, God, no. I’m a computer coder. I wrote an algorithm that tracks buying habits.” He looked up from his box and smiled at Lila. “Bought this house with the money Amazon paid me for it.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Lila said.

  Lila slipped his senior picture out of her pocket and held it out.

  “Holy crap!” His face lit up with a smile. “You still have that?” She turned it over so he could read the inscription, and his smile fell away. “Yeah, I was a bit of an asshole back then.”

  “What did you mean by ‘Every dog has its day?’”

  “I wrote that on all my pictures.” He gave a self-conscious shrug. “I know what people thought of me—the annoying twerp with bad social skills. But I never saw myself that way, and I wanted to prove you all wrong, stroll into my ten-year reunion like a boss. That’s all.”

  Lila dropped her head a touch. “I’m sorry for my part in all that. I wasn’t a very good friend back then.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” His smile returned, and he handed the picture back to Lila. “I found a woman who…Well, she’s everything to me. I got two great kids, and at the end of the day, I don’t really care anymore what you guys think— No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  He returned to his search and soon held up an external drive about the size of a cell phone. “I think this is it.” He attached the drive to a cable on his desk and opened a file to show a picture from the party, although not the picture of John and Lila.

  “May I?” Lila asked, and Sean slid the mouse to her.

  She clicked through the pictures slowly, looking at each one carefully. Three pictures in, she came to the one of John holding her wrist. She moved on, slowly, until she came to a picture of a boy shotgunning a beer. He had his head tipped back, and his face was mostly covered by the beer can, but Lila could see enough to know that it was Silas Jackson.

  Lila inhaled sharply. “Do you know that guy?” she asked.

  Sean looked closer and shook his head. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”

  “Can you email me a copy of this one?”

  “No problem.”

  Lila clicked on the next picture, and her heart nearly stopped. It showed two girls in a red-faced argument. Lila saw herself at the edge of the crowd, a beer in her hand. But it wasn’t the two girls fighting that caught her attention—nor was it seeing herself standing half drunk at the edge of the fray. What made Lila’s blood freeze was the image of a boy in the background. He sat on a cushioned chair alone, invisible to the rest of the partiers, and he wasn’t watching the fight like everybody else. The boy stared at Lila.

  It was Gavin Spencer.

  Chapter 52

  When the jailers called Gavin’s pod to dinner that evening, he stepped into line with the other men.
The guy ahead of Gavin looked like he belonged there, tall and broad-shouldered, his greasy hair dangling down between his shoulder blades. He glanced over his shoulder at Gavin and gave a sneer—then a smile. Gavin should have trusted his instinct and moved to the back of the line, but he hadn’t.

  They marched, single-file, into a concrete hallway, one jailer at the head of the group, one at the tail, the odor of forty unwashed men filling the small space. Gavin hated chow time. He needed to eat, so he made that walk three times a day, but he loathed being lumped in as just another dreg in an orange jumpsuit, no different from the toothless meth heads and the idiots who blew their snot to the floor when there was a tissue within reach.

  But he took comfort in knowing that unlike the rest of them, he would be out soon; he was only there for the alibi.

  The line turned a corner, placing Gavin out of view of the guard in back, and the man ahead of him suddenly turned and punched Gavin in the stomach—once, twice, three times. It happened so fast that Gavin didn’t have time to react. He dropped to the floor, his body curling in upon itself, his lungs empty, and his stomach heaving bile up into his throat.

  The man did not continue the attack, but simply turned and walked on as though nothing had happened. The men behind Gavin stepped around him as if he were a pile of dog feces.

  By the time the rear guard got to him, Gavin had worked himself up onto his knees. The man radioed to the control center, telling them to look at the security footage to see if anything was caught on tape. He lifted Gavin to his feet and asked what had happened. Gavin wasn’t sure he could explain it even if he wanted to, so he simply shook his head.

  In the mess hall, Gavin took a seat far away from the long-haired man. The attack had beaten the appetite out of him, but he cut a piece of Salisbury steak and put it in his mouth anyway.

  As he was cutting a second piece, Gideon Doss took the seat across the table from him. “That was quite the tumble you took back there,” he said.

  Gavin didn’t answer. At first his silence was because he wanted to be left alone with his thoughts, but then it occurred to him that Gideon had been one of the men to step around him as he lay on the hallway floor, trying to breathe.