by Gregg Olsen
“What day did she disappear?” I ask, moving on. “Do you know?.
“I’ll never forget. Saturday, July twenty-seventh”
I was right but I don’t say so.
“Is Hayden there?” I ask.
“Yes, of course”
I hear her hand the phone to my little brother.
“Rylee, did you find Mom?.
“Not yet,” I say. “I will”
“You promise,” he says, a pleading tone in his voice.
“Yes,” I answer. “A true promise”
Hearing his voice makes me tear up a little. He’s so trusting. He doesn’t understand half of what is going on. All he knows is that our mom is gone, our dad is dead, and I’m trying to bring Mom home safely.
“When will you be home?.
I’m not sure. I don’t even know where home is anymore. Aunt Ginger’s, I guess. Hayden is used to “the switch” so he thinks wherever we stay awhile is our new home.
“Soon,” I say. “As soon as I find Mom”
He starts to cry.
“Hayden, it’ll be okay. I need you to be good and tough and strong. I’m depending on you”
He fights his tears and I let him catch his breath. I don’t try to fill his ears with more promises, things that I can never make true.
“For what?” he asks. “What can I do?.
“Nothing now, but later. I’m depending on you to help me and Mom when we get home,” I say. “Especially Mom. She’ll be counting on you just as I am right now. You’re the man of the house”
He sniffs a little and says something about promising to do whatever we need him to do. But he’s only seven and that’s a tall order, I think.
“Love you,” I say, a phrase that I have now said to him on two occasions.
“I love you too,” he says back.
Aunt Ginger takes the phone.
“Be careful,” she says. “Remember, don’t trust the police. That much I know for sure”
I tell her that I don’t trust anyone. That includes her, but I don’t have much of a choice right now.
I hang up and take a breath. The keypad stares up at me. I start with the area code 360 and my chewed-to-the-nub fingertip dials the rest of it.
“Hey?” Caleb’s voice answers.
I am mute. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the fact that I just talked to my brother and his little voice was full of urgency and hope? Tears start down my cheeks and I hear a knock on the door. My heart rate escalates and I pull the phone from my mouth and call out to the intruder.
“Please give me a minute!.
I look down through my tears as I hear him speak.
“Rylee?” he asks. “Is that you?.
My finger hovers over the button to hang up, but I can’t. Not yet. I’ve never had the chance to say goodbye. I don’t know what will happen to me when all of this plays out. I don’t know if I’ll find my mom and kill my bio dad or if he’ll find and kill me. I don’t know if I’ll be arrested and convicted of my father’s murder. I don’t know anything for sure.
“Yes,” I say. My voice feels bunched up. Tight. Like the words are literally jammed deep into my airway and I can only cough them out, one at a time.
“Where are you?” he asks. “Are you all right? I know you didn’t do anything”
“Caleb, I . . . I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. That I lied to you”
There is a long silence, and for a minute I think he has hung up on me. Then he speaks, his voice quiet but imploring.
“What do you mean, you lied to me?.
“About who I am,” I say as I pick through the landmine of excuses, of lies, of truths that I could tell him. “About what I am”
“I don’t understand,” he says.
My tears hit the top of the bathroom faucet and slide into the sink. I wonder if I could fill the basin.
“I don’t really either,” I say, gathering myself a little. “I just wanted you to know that out of a lifetime of deception you were the only thing that was real to me”
I don’t wait to hear his response. I can’t. I hang up. My words to him just then were the truth. But half of what I said to him face to face was a lie. I betrayed him because I figured he was like the others—someone who would fade into the background of a life on the run. There had been others. But no boys. He was the only boy that really mattered.
I splash water on my face. When I look in the mirror it is with a renewed resolve. I take a deep breath. Another. I’ve sufficiently pulled myself together. At least I hope so. When I open the door a little boy doing the pee dance rushes past me.
“I’m really sorry,” I say, words that aren’t really directed at the hotfooted kid, but at Caleb Hunter.
I get back to my place at the counter and return the cellphone. I look down at the map where I’ve placed my water glass. I get an idea.
Actually, two.
Chapter Fifteen
Cash: $20.
Food: No need.
Shelter: The car.
Weapons: Gun, scissors, ice pick, bottle of Xanax, screwdriver.
Plan: Track him now.
THE WATER GLASS. CONDENSATION FROM the restaurant’s moist air collected on its surface, leaving a ring of water on the map. I fish a pen out of my stolen purse and set the glass over the spot where Shannon was last seen and I run the ink around the base of the glass. I do the same thing with Megan, Mom, and Leanne. I don’t know for sure, but something tells me that Alex Rader was a lazy predator. The dumpsites of each of his victims were not far from the location of their abductions. I suspect that he had to live somewhere in the vicinity of where he’d done his hunting. Dogs are not supposed to crap in their kennel but I think so little of Alex Rader that I have it in my mind that he most likely did.
The water glass—well, not the glass itself, but its contents— give me the second idea.
The kid with the phone comes back. I put down $15 for the $6 meal and tell him to keep the change.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says, quickly reaching for the cash.
I wave my hands at the money, letting him know that he should take what he’s already snatched up.
“I really appreciate the use of your phone,” I say. “The doctor warned me to take better care of myself and told me to get some homeopathic vitamins. Do you know where Nature To Go is?.
He narrows his brow and shakes his head.
I make a disappointed face. “Mind if I look it up on your phone?.
With the money in his pocket, he doesn’t hesitate. “Sure,” he says, sliding it across the sticky counter. I open a browser window and locate the water utility that services the area where the rings intersect.
Suburban Water District No. 4—a dot in the dead center.
Dead center.
That’s where I intend to shoot Alex Rader.
I return the phone and take the map. Fifteen minutes later, I arrive at the utility’s address. A woman named Sue is helping a customer. Actually, trying to quiet a customer. It seems that his water’s been cut off and he has no money for a connection fee and a back bill. She tells him there’s a “Sunshine” fund and he can apply for assistance. The man is in his twenties, wearing an oily pair of jeans and tousled brown hair that could definitely use the benefits of shampoo. He wants no sunshine. He slams a fist on the counter and Sue sighs as he storms out of the place.
“Good timing,” I say. “I’m here to help out my neighbor.
They’ve run into some financial problems and I want to pay their water bill. You know, a kind of neighbor-to-neighbor Sunshine fund”
She smiles and lets out weary breath.
“People do it all the time,” she says. “You know, summer water consumption is at a year-long high and demand spikes the cost. Nice of you to help out—especially with you being so young, and all. Wish more people did that than come in here and complain to me. I don’t set the price, you know. I only work here”
I nod at her when the p
hone rings.
She glances at me and lets out another sigh. Sue the Sigher is how I’ll remember her. “Short staffed today. Short staffed every day,” she says. “You’d think with what we charge for water we’d pay enough around here to keep more people from leaving for better paying jobs”
I nod like I care. But I don’t. I care about only one thing right now.
The phone continues to ring.
“Name on the account?” she asks, with another sigh. I can imagine that it is more than the low-paying wage that keeps people from sticking around Sue.
“Rader, Alex,” I chirp, as though an upbeat attitude would rub off on this Eeyore of a woman who rolls on her chair from her computer to the phone on the other side of her desk like a sidewinding crab. She puts the super-irate caller on hold.
Sue clacks out the name on her keyboard. I lean closer but I can’t read the screen. She has one of those privacy screens covering it—as though water was such a secret elixir and its users must be protected.
“Right here, Alex and Marie Rader.” She looks up at me with a strange look on her face. “But they’re current”
“Really?” I say. “Are you sure it’s them?.
She nods. “2424 Summer Hill Road?.
I shake my head. “I’m so embarrassed. I must have the wrong neighbor. I just assumed it was the Raders that were having problems”
“Nope,” she says. “Never a second late”
I thank her. She sighs again and I hurriedly retreat to my car. My heart is pumping a little faster. Alex Rader, you bastard, I’m coming for you. You think you can hide. You think your policeman cronies can cover your tracks? You think you can hide from Google? From the water company.
Like all living things, you need water.
But not for much longer.
I APPROACH THE SUMMER HILL ROAD address provided by Sue the Sigher. It wasn’t what I expected at all. As I ease Aunt Ginger’s car past the neatly manicured lawns, the hedges sculpted to Disney perfection, I am dumbfounded at my own foolishness. Somehow I had expected Alex Rader to live out in the country in some dank little hideaway, not in a suburban development. I thought he’d be holed up in some, well, dank hole somewhere. This scene is so utterly ordinary. It’s so benign. The Rader home is a two-story blue and white Cape Cod with dormers that are in perfect scale with the rest of the house—not a kind of architectural afterthought Mom deplored whenever we settled into a new rental.
“If we’re not going to stay long, we might as well stay in a place that has some appeal. Being on the run doesn’t mean we have to live like we’re homeless,” she said to me one time.
And yet, I always knew we were homeless. Not houseless.
A basketball hoop hangs over the Raders’ garage. Since they don’t have children, at least as far as I know from my internet searches, I imagine that Rader himself played there. The thought of his severed head going through the hoop crosses my mind. I don’t know why, but it does. An apple tree laden with hundreds of green apples stands next to an arbor that almost looks supported by the massive wisteria vine that encircles it. I think how the vines might be wrapped around his neck as I gag him with an apple, like a roasted pig. He is a pig, I think, which is a total insult to real pigs. My eyes quickly scan the rest of the house. It is well cared for. It is unremarkable in every single way but one.
A cement ramp runs parallel with the steps to the front door.
Someone who lives at 2424 Summer Hill Road needs the benefit of a wheelchair. I hope that it is the man, or rather, the scumbag of the house, but I know better. My money, what’s left of it, is on Marie, his wife.
I bring the lost cat poster that I yanked from the community board at the library the day I stole the reporter’s business cards. The flyer is a prop too. I know that props can be everything to a successful lie. It isn’t necessarily the prop itself, but the illusion that something tangible provides. I remember the time Mom kept men’s work boots by the front door before Rolland came into our lives. She actually muddied them a little every once in a while and stamped a few footprints onto the entryway.
She also draped a hunting jacket over the back of a chair and she moved the thick, heavy garment now and then.
Illusion.
It was the same thing I’ve seen neighbors do with the lights they set on automatic timers whenever they went on vacation. They wanted to create the impression that they were home. My mom wanted someone—and now I know who that someone has always been—to think there was some big, strong hunter in our house, protecting her.
Protecting me.
I draw a deep breath and steady myself before I make one more pass past the Rader residence. My instincts tell me the cover of darkness would be smarter, but I’m doing a daylight recon because there isn’t any time to waste. I park and get out. A woman next door to the Raders is watering her fuchsia baskets and calls over to me. She’s in her late fifties, I guess, though it’s actually kind of hard for me to determine just how old someone is once they are on the far side of their thirties. That whole middle section is difficult. She’s heavyset with Kool-Aid red hair and a sunhat that might be perfectly functional but it and her bad hair make her look like a second grader’s dream of a circus clown.
“May I help you?” she says. Her tone is a little hard so I know I have to lay it on thick to win her over.
“Looking for my lost cat,” I say, putting on a sad face. “I live a few blocks that way.” I wave in some vague direction and hope she’s just a busybody or helpful at best, and not the neighborhood-watch captain.
I approach and flash the flyer.
“Name?” she asks, still a little coolly.
I almost say Rylee, but then I realize the woman wants the name of the cat.
“Thor,” I say, repeating the name on the flyer. I kind of like the ridiculousness of the missing cat’s name. So much better than Mr. Fluffy or something along those lines. If I had a cat, I might actually name it Thor.
Boy or girl.
“He’s pretty tough for a cat,” I say, “but even so we’re worried”
She squints into the sun and examines the flyer. “Haven’t seen him. You should put a notice on Craigslist or in the ‘Lost’ section of the newspaper”
I pull the paper away. In case I need it again. I only have one flyer.
“They do those for free, right?” I say, straining to look past her to the garage next door. The Raders’ garage. It’s a two-car garage with a large window that runs the length of it. And from where I’m standing, it appears one car is missing. Next to this empty space is a large, bronze-colored van.
“I thought I’d knock on a few doors. To get the word out. I guess no one’s home next door,” I say.
She shuts off her hose. “Marie’s home,” she says. “She’s always home. Unless her husband takes her somewhere, which isn’t all that often. Maybe once a month. And that’s if she’s lucky”
The words come from her mouth, leaving her looking as though she’s eaten something foul.
I go with it.
“Is she disabled?” I ask, indicating the ramp.
The woman nods and prepares to whisper a reply—her manner and tone suggest that she likes to tell the story, though she pretends not to.
“Car accident, years ago,” she says, rolling the hose a little and moving to another plant. “It’s really kind of a sad story”
I know without a doubt that she’s not going to make me beg for it. This watering woman lives for this kind of gossip. She pretends to be sad, concerned, but really she enjoys gossiping so much that she cannot hide the slight smile that curls the corners of her mouth.
“What happened?” I ask anyway.
She stops what she’s doing and shakes her head.
My heart is thumping, but I stand there casually. I want nothing more than to know everything I can about Alex and Marie Rader.
She tugs at the hose, stuck on a rock. “High school sweethearts, those two,” she says. “Promise rings and
all of that. Alex is a couple years older. Marie was a competitive swimmer. Stanford University scouted her. Anyway, he takes her to a kegger out in Issaquah to celebrate her birthday and well, you can almost guess the rest”
She doesn’t make me guess, of course. I have a hunch as to what will follow. And I see no need to ask what birthday Marie was celebrating.
“Anyway,” she goes on, “he got drunk and wanted to drive home. She insisted that he give her the keys but he told her to take a hike or something like that. I mean, not literally. Anyway, halfway home on the Issaquah-Hobart Road the car rolls and she ends up paralyzed. Waist down. Can’t have kids”
The last three words are uttered with an extra dose of sympathy, to ensure that I understand that this lady next door is very concerned and definitely on Team Marie.
“That’s terrible,” I say. “So sad”
She nods. “Yes it is. Beyond terrible. He married her out of shame or guilt or something. I don’t think he ever really loved her. Treats her like a doormat on wheels.” She stops herself and assesses me. Her eyes run over mine. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you’ve really got a way of making me open up. I feel like I’m really talking out of school here”
A can opener could open her up. That is, just looking at one.
“You’re very nice,” I say. “The lady—Marie—she’s lucky to have you as a neighbor. Sounds like she could use a friend. You know, given all that she’s been through”
She crosses her arms and pauses. She’s pretending to hold back. I wait only a beat.
“You don’t even know the half of it,” she says. “I’m not saying this to be unkind or anything, but you’ve got me going big time and I just can’t stop. Alex is a cop with the King County Sheriff’s Office. So you’d think he’d be more discreet”
I’m not sure what she means and I’m not sure how to frame a question to ask. Of course, I don’t have to.
“He used to come and go at all hours of the night,” she says. She should be a newscaster. Or at the very least run some kind of online blog. Her strange clown-like appearance would undoubtedly make her a YouTube star. “Seeing prostitutes,” she goes on, no longer feigning to struggle with the shade she’s throwing on her neighbor. She hates him. That means I like her.
