by Barry Lyga
Boom.
Eighteen years old. A girl, but a woman, and truthfully the law tied G. William’s hands to a degree. He could investigate, sure, but if it turned out Cara Swinton had finally just done what ninety percent of all kids in the Nod dreamed of doing—getting the hell out—there wasn’t much he could do about it. Most cops would have put the word out through the usual channels and called it a day.
But something about Cara’s disappearance poked and jostled at G. William’s psyche. If he’d been ready to admit it, he would have acknowledged that he was spoiling for a case, a real case, something difficult, something to take his mind off Joyce and the too-empty house waiting for him each night. He wasn’t ready for that admission, though, so he told himself he was just being thorough, just doing his job, just doing what he was elected to do when he stayed at the office until three, four each morning, eventually slumping into sleep at his desk.
The evidence arrayed before him on the corkboard was as thin as orphan’s gruel. Photos of the tufts of hair and the torn swatch of sweater. A pinned-up statement from the parents. Most damning of all: a photograph of a purple-brown splotch on an old, defunct train track roughly a half mile from the post office. Lab analysis (report pinned up right next to the photo) confirmed that it was blood and it was human. Give it another week or so and the state lab would send the DNA report, which he expected to clinch that it was Cara Swinton’s blood.
Still not proof of foul play. That small an amount, she could have gotten a nosebleed. Or cut herself on a prickle bush and bled onto the tracks.
Then they found her iPhone. Crucially, it was bare. According to her parents and friends, Cara had designed her own custom case for it, screen-printed with an image of herself superimposed onto a Vogue cover.
No further evidence. But G. William knew. Knew somewhere in his gut: Cara Swinton was dead. Someone had killed her and left the phone behind, probably worried about being tracked through its GPS.
And he (it was always he) had taken the cell phone case. G. William wouldn’t let himself acknowledge why.
It was thin evidence for murder, nothing that a prosecutor would risk filing charges on. It was persuasive proof of foul play, sure, but for all they knew, Cara Swinton was tied up somewhere.
But G. William had been a cop a long, long time. And he knew.
Officially, she was still a missing person.
Officially, she could show up any day. Any hour. Any minute.
Officially, he had done everything he could do.
But officially meant nothing to people who had that squirmy knowledge down in their digestive tracts, where the deep thinking takes place, the thinking that happens without thoughts.
WHO TOOK CARA? screamed the local paper, with that son of a bitch Doug Weathers’s byline. That article was on the corkboard, too. A burr purposely placed by G. William to goad himself into action.
But action was tough to come by. Dead or missing, there were no further clues, no more evidence to plumb. A cop is only as good as the facts at his disposal, and G. William had damn few of them.
Who took Cara, indeed? If she’d just run off, she would have most likely popped up somewhere by now. There would have been a credit card hit or a call to a friend or something. So she’d been taken then, and sure, there were the occasional, exceptional cases where a girl is taken and is recovered after weeks alive and unharmed. Those cases got lots of attention precisely because of their rarity, like the media orgy following a big Powerball winner. Just because something could happen didn’t mean it would. Or that it was at all likely.
The first disappearance in the Nod in ten years. The first time in more than twenty that someone had vanished without being found within a week.
And if Cara Swinton was, in fact, dead…
The first murder in the Nod since G. William had become sheriff all those millennia ago.
The Upstart from Calverton (G. William refused even to think his name) was having a field day with it. He wouldn’t reference Cara directly, but he took oblique shots in that direction. Maybe the sheriff is a little distracted these days. As if Joyce dying had led to Cara’s abduction. Maybe we need someone who won’t let things slip through the cracks. Yeah, because Cara Swinton was a minor detail G. William had neglected.
Maybe it’s time to sweep in the new.
And what got swept out when you swept in the new?
The old.
That much was true. Staring at the corkboard for the ten thousandth time, G. William felt very old indeed.
“Sheriff?”
That damn querying voice again. Hanson stood in the doorway, his expression grim and frightened all at once, his skin pallid. His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Jesus, Hanson, it ain’t been but ten minutes. They even cookin’ the burgers at Grasser’s anymore?”
“Sheriff, I…” Hanson shook his head violently, as though he could subdue some wanton thought by tossing it to and fro. “Sheriff, there’s been…they’ve found—”
Cara? G. William’s heart jerked. But no. There would have been some kind of sad relief in Hanson’s voice if they’d found Cara’s body and closed that case.
Not Cara.
Another one.
Chapter 2
This time, there could be no doubt. Her name was Samantha Reed, and she was definitely dead because G. William was looking right down at her body. Her eyes were still open wide, staring up at the broad, clear October sky. Spiderwebs of vessels crawled across those eyes, ruptured when she died, probably of strangulation. He’d have to wait for the medical examiner’s final report for the particulars, but nearly four decades of policing had taught G. William something, and he was sure the Reed girl had been throttled.
Dead in a ditch. Clothing in disarray. Skirt hiked up to an indecent shortness, and something about the stillness of the body and the shortness of the skirt rankled him. Probably because he knew that, in life, Samantha Reed would have tugged down the hem, against the cold, if not the stares. But now—frozen in rigor mortis—she wouldn’t be moving at all. Ever again. And her skirt was damn near pulled up to her panties (which, G. William noted with something like relief, she still wore). That image of her would be preserved forever in the crime-scene photos: her skirt up, her underwear visible, her legs akimbo. It was just wrong.
Sixteen years old. Sixteen years old and dead.
WHO TOOK SAMANTHA? the headline would read. Or maybe, WHO TOOK HER AND WHO KILLED HER AND WHY AND—
He shook his head to stop the scroll of words.
“I want this processed yesterday, got it?” G. William told Hanson, who bobbed his head like it was on a loose spring, taking notes the whole time. “Get the county team down here ASAP so that we can scour for foot impressions.” Not that there was much hope of that. The ground was cold enough—just barely—that the average man wouldn’t sink into the soil. There was a broken pattern of grass nearby, but the grass was too sparse for there to be a meaningful trail. The killer could have come from anywhere and disappeared in any direction he liked without leaving a sign.
Like cancer cells slipping from the ovary to the fallopian tube to…
“Sheriff Tanner! Hey, Sheriff!”
Ah, hell. It was Doug Weathers. Local gadfly, local pissant, take your pick of the insect analogies. He’d ducked under the crime-scene tape already and was making his way toward Tanner. G. William growled in Hanson’s general direction, and the deputy immediately snapped out of whatever sorrowful fantasy world he was living in (Hanson had been staring at the dead girl with horror on his face) and stepped over to Weathers, holding a cautioning hand out. “C’mon, Doug. Crime scene. You know.”
“Sheriff!” Weathers shouted over. “Sheriff Tanner! A dead girl and a missing girl! Do you think they’re connected?”
“Go away, Weathers. I’m busy.” G. William didn’t even turn to look in Weathers’s direction. Hanson hustled the reporter back behind the tape; G. William studiously ignored the hollered ques
tions that pelted him like early hail.
Later, in his office, he stared down at the early crime-scene photos on his desk.
“Do you think they’re connected?”
Well, honey? Joyce asked. Do you?
“They can’t be,” he muttered. “They better not be.”
The photos on his desk and the ones on his wall stared too accusingly for him to bear, the pain of them greater than the pain of being at home. G. William left his office before ten o’clock for the first time since before Joyce’s death.
Home was no better than the office, though. He made the mistake of turning on the TV partway through the local news.
“…murder victim in Lobo’s Nod, sixteen-year-old Samantha Louise Reed, a junior at Lobo’s Nod High…”
He stood captivated and horrified and unable to move enough to switch the channel as he watched Doug Weathers (tonight’s “special guest”) talk about the crime scene, as if that jackass had actually seen anything worth reporting at all. That didn’t stop the local anchor from asking a series of increasingly ridiculous questions, obviously cribbed from an episode of CSI. Expecting a small-town police department to have some of the equipment and expertise the anchor was asking about—
“Did you notice them collecting insect samples?”
“No, Ron.”
“What about a forensic analysis of the soil?”
“Not that I noticed, Ron.”
—was like questioning the town’s dedication to the space program by pointing out its lack of a launchpad.
“My people do their damn jobs!” G. William shouted at the TV. “She wasn’t killed at the scene, so soil analysis ain’t gonna prove anything, you idiots! And it’s too cold for insect migration!”
He paused, realizing his breath was coming in hard, harsh gasps, realizing it wouldn’t do well for the neighbors to remark on the sheriff screaming in an empty house late at night. Trembling with rage, he went into the kitchen, where the odor of stale coffee hung in the air. When had he last made coffee at home? When had he last eaten or cooked or done anything other than grab his medicine or a glass of water in here?
His meds sat in the pill-reminder doohickey on the table. Before her illness, Joyce had been hale and healthy, never taking anything stronger than Pepto-Bismol. But he’d started on the blood-pressure meds early on, and she’d teased him about his “old-man medicine.” The reminder thingamabob—a plastic, lidded grid of Sunday through Saturday, marked off in little pockets of morning, afternoon, and evening—had been hers, the ultimate acknowledgment that she wasn’t just sick: She was Sick.
He popped the pills and washed them down with water straight from the tap. Back in the living room, the TV was still chattering, this time showing G. William’s opponent in the election.
“…just want to ask one question. Just one. What on earth is going on over there in Lobo’s Nod? There hasn’t been a murder there since—I looked this up—since 1977. Nineteen seventy-seven! Jimmy Carter was president! And now we have this missing girl—and I hope and pray she comes home safe—and today’s murder. What is going on over there?”
“Obviously, you think it’s time for someone new in the sheriff’s department, but does the recent disappearance of Cara Swinton and now this murder make your case for you?” a reporter asked.
Translation: If the current guy was competent, this wouldn’t have happened, right?
“Look, what’s happened is a tragedy. And I’m not going to exploit it for political gain. No. This isn’t about politics. This is about safety. About protecting our children. It transcends politics. And the people of Lobo’s Nod—the people of this county—deserve to be safe. They expect it, and it’s their God-given right.”
With a snarl, G. William shut off the TV. His arms and legs had gone numb and tingly. It happened sometimes. His doctor claimed the pills had his blood pressure under control, that the numbness and tingling sensation were symptoms of anxiety. G. William believed him, but every time it happened, it still caught him off-guard and his first thought was This is it. This is the heart attack. The big one I’ve been putting on layaway for years. It’s finally been bought and paid for and it’s coming.
Talk about anxiety.
He slept that night on the sofa, as usual. He tried not to go into the bedroom they’d shared, usually doing so only to get a change of clothes. He would not even sleep in the bed they’d shared. A bed—a real bed—had been a succor he could not permit himself.
Halfway through the night, he woke to the sound of sobbing—quiet, pathetic, choking tears floating in the still night. At first he thought he’d left the TV on, but soon enough realized—as wet fingers came away from his cheek—the true origin of the sounds. He lay there on the sofa, not knowing why he was crying or for whom. Was it for Joyce? For the Swinton and Reed girls? Or was it for himself? For poor old G. William Tanner, who only wanted one more term, one more chance to do something meaningful before shuffling off to a lonely, uncompanioned retirement?
It didn’t matter, he decided, and drifted back off to sleep.
Chapter 3
He woke early, with first light. An old habit, unabated by age or fat.
He was in the bathtub. Clothed, at least. The tub dry, at least.
And yet…
You’re losing it.
He struggled out of the tub. Not the first time this had happened. Sleepwalking? Maybe. Grief and lack of sleep did strange things to people. He pushed the thought away. It surged back at him, tidal, and he shoved until it retreated.
At the office, the local daily paper waited on his desk, facedown. When it was facedown, that always meant bad news. Whichever deputy on the ass-end of the midnight shift had left it was trying to spare his feelings. No one ever realized that making him turn the paper over just made it worse. The anticipation. Hadn’t any of these yahoos ever ripped off a single damn Band-Aid in their lives?
TWO??? was all the headline said.
He stared at it for a moment. Just three letters and three punctuation marks (overkill that, he thought) poised above two yearbook-quality photographs of smiling, fresh-faced girls. He had nothing to prove it but statistics and gut, but he was sure Cara was as dead as Samantha. Dead Girl One and Dead Girl Two, he thought of them now; they had probably never looked better in their lives, and would certainly never look anywhere near as good in death.
Byline by Doug Weathers, of course.
For the second time in as many weeks, the town of Lobo’s Nod—
“Let me guess, Doug,” G. William said aloud, covering the rest of the story with a fleshy hand. “The town of Lobo’s Nod has been rocked by a senseless crime.”
He peeked under the hand.
—has been stunned by a senseless crime.
Close enough. He ambled into the outer office for a cup of coffee. Early in the morning—shift change—the place was busy, but it fell silent when he emerged. Par for the course. A cop shop under stress has a thousand eyes, ten times as many ears, and no mouths. No one wanted to be noticed. No one wanted to be the object of G. William’s wrath.
That’s assuming you’ve got any wrath, honey, Joyce said. Are you going to bite someone’s head off this morning?
No. Not this morning. He filled his cup and retreated to his office, closing the door.
The leftover coffee from the midnight-to-eight went down like paving tar on a July afternoon. Still more pleasant than Weathers’s screed (he couldn’t think of it as a story). He read the whole thing, dutifully turning to page A7 when instructed, there to witness fulsome quotes from his electoral opponent, as well as comments from local citizens who had clearly spent too much time watching cop shows on TV and didn’t understand how real police work functioned. Weathers didn’t come right out and say that Cara Swinton was most likely dead, but he paced the perimeter of the idea long enough for people to get the gist of it. “On the question of whether the two girls could somehow be linked,” he finished, “the Lobo’s Nod sheriff’s department
has offered no comment.”
He read the story a second time and then called the editor of the paper.
“Tommy? G. William.” He’d known Tommy Shanahan for thirteen years, back when he was a wet-behind-the-ears assistant editor right out of J-School.
“Let me guess,” Tommy said.
“Your boy Doug sure does understand the meaning of objectivity, doesn’t he? I half expected a bumper sticker for my opponent to fall out of the paper.”
“Your opponent’s opinion is relevant.”
“Really? You think if someone else was sheriff none of this would have happened?”
Tommy hesitated. “No.”
“Funny, ’cause that’s not what your paper says this morning.”
“I guess if you read between the lines…”
“These days, seems like that’s all people do. Could have at least let me get my side out there, Tommy.”
“Doug says he tried to talk to you, but you no-commented him and had him dragged off.”
G. William pinched the bridge of his nose and counted to three, slowly. He didn’t have the patience to get to ten. “I was at the damn crime scene, Tommy. I was staring down at a dead girl. Not the time or the place for an interview.”
“I’m sure Doug would be happy to come right over for an exclusive.”
“Not a chance.”
“If you’re worried about appearing defensive—”
“No. I just don’t like that guy, Tommy. He’s more interested in being the story, in ginning up the story, than in telling the story. We’ve had run-ins.”
“I know. But this is his story, G. William. He’s been on it from the start, and I’m not taking him off just because you guys don’t get along.”
G. William huffed and nodded. Being beat up in the paper wasn’t conducive to good police work, but that was the job.
“Well, thanks for listening, Tommy.”
“Sure. Hey, G. William?”
“Yeah?”
“How are you holding up? Not the murders. I mean…”
