Thread of Fear

by Jeff Shelby

  “We're about halfway through,” she said. “At least, I am. I don't think most of the other kids have even started it. Or if they have, they're just using Spark Notes or whatever.”

  “I'm glad you're liking it,” I said. “Maybe I'll have to read it again.”

  “Yeah, you should,” she said.

  There was a pause. “How is your mom?”

  She cleared her throat. “She's okay, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “She's just kind of grumpy,” Elizabeth said. “She was asleep when I got back from running. I took a shower and woke her up because I didn't know what we were doing for dinner. She got all mad that I woke her up and said she wasn't hungry. So I just made a sandwich for dinner.”

  “You said earlier that she wasn't feeling great,” I reminded her. “So it may just be one of those days.”

  “Yeah, probably. I just don't wanna bug her.”

  “You aren't bugging her. She's just got a lot going on with work and the baby and me being gone. It's not you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is she still up?” I asked.

  Elizabeth hesitated. “Well, her light's on. I told her I was gonna call you and I asked if she wanted me to bring her the phone when I was done. So you guys could talk. But she said no...”

  I sighed. “That's alright, kid.”

  “I didn't want to tell you.”

  “Not your fault,” I said. “That's just sort of how she works.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when she gets mad, especially at me, she doesn't talk,” I explained. “She doesn't like to argue and if she's mad, or if I am, we argue. We did a lot of that for awhile,” I didn't elaborate because I knew Elizabeth would put two and two together, would realize that the reason for most of our fights had revolved around her disappearance. And even though none of it had been her fault, she would internalize and assign herself blame. It was the last thing she needed to do.

  “Are you okay with that?”

  I chuckled. I wasn't. I'd always hated it. I never wanted to leave things unsettled. I wanted to talk them out until we'd figured out whatever we'd needed to figure out. But Lauren was the opposite. When she was pissed, she wanted to cool off and get in her own head to clear it before we talked about whatever we were struggling with. She would shut down and as stubborn as she was, I'd learned that I wasn't getting anything out of her until she was ready. Given that she'd seemed irritated that I was staying in Vegas for the night, it wasn't a total surprise that she didn't want to talk to me. Disappointing, but not a surprise.

  “I guess it has to be,” I said to Elizabeth. “I don't want you to have to pin her down and hold the phone to her ear. That might be awkward for you.”

  She laughed softly. “Yeah, maybe. I could probably take her, though.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “You think?”

  “I'm tougher than I look.”

  Understatement of a lifetime. “Yeah, you are.”

  “You want me to ask her again?”

  “No, that's okay,” I said. “We'll let her rest and I can talk to her tomorrow when I get back.”

  “You're for sure coming back tomorrow?”

  “Yep. I'll be home tomorrow,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Okay good. And we can run?”

  “For sure.”

  “Okay.” She paused. “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She's not mad at me, right? Mom, I mean.”

  “No. Guaranteed, kid,” I told her. “She's mad at me. For being gone. I promise it's not you.”

  The line buzzed for a moment.

  “When I was...in Minnesota, my...Mrs. Corzine,” she said, stumbling over the name of the woman who'd illegally adopted her after she'd been abducted from us. “Sometimes, she would get mad at me and I didn't know why. I'd ask if I'd done something wrong and she'd just blow me off. I'd sit in my room and wait for her to, like, not be mad. But it always felt like it was me or my fault.”

  My stomach clenched for a moment. It was always the same reaction when she shared something from the time she was gone. It didn't matter what it was. It always made me tense up, anger flaring inside me, nearly nauseous. I hated that she'd been taken from me and that anyone had tried to take mine and Lauren's places in her life. And when I heard things like that, where she'd had a rough moment or something bad had happened, I wanted to go back in time and never have walked away from her in our front yard.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your mom is not mad at you,” I said, suddenly realizing I was squeezing the life out of my phone. I relaxed my hand. “This isn't the same as that. Your mom is frustrated with me. It has nothing to do with you. I promise you. When your mom has a problem with you, she'll tell you. You won't have to wonder. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I couldn't read her, but I hoped she believed me. And I wished I was there to sit with her and hug her.

  “I'm gonna read for awhile, then go to bed,” she said.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “I love you, Dad,” Elizabeth said. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Love you, too,” I said, trying not to choke on the words. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

  We hung up and I tossed the phone on the bed. The lights out on The Strip glowed on the other side of the curtain. I leaned back against the headboard and folded my arms across my chest. I stared at the TV screen.

  And wished I was back home, sitting with my daughter.

  TWENTY FOUR

  “Patrick traveled a good amount of the time,” Kathleen Dennison said. “But I couldn't possibly tell you everywhere he went.”

  The next morning, I woke, dressed, found coffee and a breakfast burrito that cost too much from a small kiosk in the middle of a bunch of shops off the casino floor. I ate it quickly, then drove back out to the Dennison home. I'd texted Kathleen to let her know I was coming and she'd immediately responded that she would be there. Her hair was damp when I got there and she wasn't wearing much make-up, clad in a pair of cotton sweat pants and a pink T-shirt. She ushered me into the living room, offered me coffee, which I declined. She sat on one of the couches and folded her hands in her lap, anxious. I'd started by asking her about Patrick's travel habits.

  “But it was business, correct?” I said. “He wasn't traveling with buddies or anything like that?”

  She shook her head. “No. He doesn't really have friends. I mean, he does, but not the kind he'd take off with for the weekend or anything like that.” She thought for a moment. “And I know this might sound odd, but I didn't always know where he was.”

  “How so?”

  “There were many times he went to multiple places on one trip,” she explained. “To Chicago, then on to Kansas City and then to Miami. After awhile, I just adjusted to him being gone. I knew when he was leaving and when he was coming home, but I didn't always know where he was in between.”

  “Did you talk while he was gone?”

  She shifted on the couch. “Not always, no. Maybe every other day? There wasn't a consistent pattern.” A thin smile cut across her lips. “As I mentioned before, it's not that there was anything wrong between us. I think a gap just sort of developed over time. And I don't really mean that in a negative way. It's just how we are. We're both independent. We've developed separate lives, in some ways.”

  I nodded. I'd seen that a lot with people who'd lost children. They forgot how to talk to one another, what they had in common. It was easier to be alone than it was to be together. It had happened with Lauren and me.

  “Did he ever go away just by himself?” I asked.

  She seemed baffled by the question. “You mean for fun? Not for work?” She shook her head. “Not that I can recall, no.”

  I knew I needed to ask her a couple of tough questions, but I didn't want to. I had no idea what her reaction would be and I didn't want to introduce more anxiety into her life. But I didn't
see any way to avoid those questions, though.

  “You told me before that things between you two weren't good or bad,” I said, trying to recall her exact words. “That they just kind of were, for lack of a better word. Am I getting that right?”

  “Yes, I think that's how I put it. And I think that's fairly accurate. We certainly aren't twenty-year-olds in love, but we weren't having huge blowout fights or anything like that, either.” She ran a hand through her damp hair. “I'm not sure I know how else to put it.”

  “You don't have to,” I said. “I think I understand. But I have to ask. Did you have any reason to think your husband might have... had another relationship?”

  She stared at me for a long moment, then pursed her lips. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “In a situation like this, it's a question I normally ask,” I told her.

  She stared down at her hands in her lap for a moment. “The police were here last night.”

  “Because of the report you filed?”

  “No, because of a dead girl.” She looked up from her hands, toward me. “The one whose name you asked me about. Did you know she was dead?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Did Patrick do something to her?”

  I thought it was an odd question. It hadn't even occurred to me that Patrick might have killed Carina Armstrong. It probably should have. Still, I thought it was an odd question, coming from his wife.

  “Not to my knowledge, no,” I said. “Do you think he might have?”

  She looked down at her hands again. “No, not really.”

  I waited.

  “Are you telling me he had a relationship with this woman?” she asked.

  “I don't know,” I said.

  “But he knew her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “They had some dealings through work.”

  She sat up and wrapped her arms around herself, like a cold wind had blown into the room. “Wonderful. Well, at least I know he's not with her.” She shook her head. “I'm sorry. That's a terrible thing to say.”

  I didn't say anything because it was. But I could understand where it was coming from.

  Kathleen took a deep breath, exhaled and tried to gather herself. “No, I did not know that he might've had another relationship. No, I did not know the dead woman.”

  “I don't know the particulars,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  I nodded. “I did, yes.”

  “And did she tell you that they had a relationship?”

  I worked for her. She was paying me to find her husband. Any information that I uncovered during the investigation, she had a right to hear. But that didn't make it any easier to tell her. “Yes,” I said. “She indicated that they did have some sort of relationship. I didn't get details.”

  She didn't flinch and she didn't frown and she didn't cry. She just sat there for a minute, her arms wrapped tightly around her own body, staring just past me, like she was thinking.

  “It makes sense,” she finally said. “I couldn't even tell you the last time we had sex. He's been gone a lot.” She shook her head. “I should've known.”

  “Why did you ask if he'd done something to her?” I said.

  She closed her eyes, then slowly reopened them. “I don't know. You're looking for him. They had something going on. She's dead. I just wondered.”

  “Do you think he could've hurt her?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, not really. He has a temper, but I've never seen him get physical with anyone. Not with me, not with Aaron when he was here. No one. He's not a violent person.”

  I didn't think he was the one that killed Carina Armstrong, either. I thought it was far likelier that the rival organization Anchor told me about was responsible. But it was at least worth thinking about.

  “Did Patrick camp at all?” I asked. “Was he an outdoorsman or anything like that?”

  Her head tilted. “That's an odd question.”

  I shrugged.

  “He used to be,” she said. “Before Aaron disappeared. They went camping a couple of times. Up in Michigan, I think. It wasn't my thing, so they just went. But he never went after Aaron was gone.” She squinted for a moment, like she was trying to remember something. “You know what's weird, though?”

  “What?”

  “He'd mentioned maybe going again,” she said. “About six months ago. One afternoon, we were out at the pool. He said he was thinking about trying it again. I actually thought it was a good thing, like he'd gotten past some hurdle with Aaron or something.” She shook her head. “So stupid.”

  “So then did he go?”

  “No,” she said. “Or at least, I didn't think he had. But he ordered camping stuff. A tent, a sleeping bag, that kind of thing. A couple of books, too. Nothing crazy, just the basics.”

  “He bought them?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Maybe a week later? I can't recall exactly. But a couple of boxes showed up from UPS and I didn't know what it was because I hadn't ordered anything. I opened them up and saw everything. Again, I thought it was a good thing. So when he came home that night, I told him it had come.” She unfolded her arms and laid her hands on her thighs. “I think he unpacked it the next day, put it all in the garage.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “The camping stuff?”

  “Yeah. The books, too.”

  She shrugged. “Sure.”

  She stood and I followed her to Patrick's office. She went to the tall bookshelf and scanned the shelves, then pulled three trade paperbacks from the middle shelf.

  She handed them to me. “These were the ones. I remember because I opened the box and thought we'd gotten them by mistake.”

  I thumbed through each of them. The spines on the first two hadn't been broken and it didn't look like they'd been looked at. The third one, though, had a small crease in the cover and the pages were spread apart. I paged through it and found multiple pages with folds and small notes in pencil. I went to the section on California and looked for listings in Salton Sea. An x had been penciled in next to both of the listings that had been earmarked in the book I'd found at Carina Armstrong's. I paged back to Arizona. An x was next to the listing in Yuma.

  I handed the books back to her. “Can I see the gear?”

  She set the books back on the shelf and I followed her out of the room, past the kitchen and through a very large utility room. There was a door on the opposite side of the room and she opened it, holding it for me. We descended three steps into the garage and she punched a glowing button on the wall and the garage lit up.

  A red SUV and a white convertible were parked in two of the three spaces in the oversized garage. The concrete floor was immaculate and there was very little clutter. A massive shelving unit ran along one wall, housing boxes and bins, all color-coordinated and labeled with what they contained. Two mountain bikes hung from the rafters.

  Kathleen walked over to the other side of the cars and opened a tall storage cabinet. She stared into it for a moment, then leaned in closer. She stepped back, puzzled.

  “It's gone,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “The stuff he ordered,” she said. “The tent, the sleeping bag. It was right here in the cabinet.”

  I walked over to where she was standing. The top two shelves in the cabinet were bare.

  “When was the last time you saw it?” I asked.

  “A couple months ago?” she said. “I'm not sure. I'd put that box of books down there in here.” She pointed to a banker's box on the bottom shelf. “I know it was in here because the sleeping bag rolled out when I opened the doors and I had to put it back.”

  “And he hadn't used them before that?”

  “I didn't think so,” she said. “Everything still looked new, you know? I don't know.” She frowned, like she was doubting her memory of things. “He never told me he was going camping, but I guess he could've.�
�

  I stepped closer to the cabinet. “And everything was unpacked?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “When he pulled them out of the shipping boxes, he'd taken everything out just to make sure it was all there. He put the tent together on the lawn just to make sure it worked.”

  I ran my hand along the top shelf that was just above my eye level and then the one just beneath it. I pulled my hand back and looked at it.

  “What?”

  I showed her my palm, now covered with tiny dots. “Sand.”

  She looked at my hand, then looked back at the shelf. “The cabinets are brand new. I put them together maybe a week before he got the stuff.”

  I nodded.

  “So you think he took them out?” she asked.

  I brushed off my hand and looked at her. “Yeah. I do.”

  TWENTY FIVE

  I told Kathleen I'd be in touch and walked out to my car. I sat inside for a few minutes, the motor running, the radio playing softly from the speakers, my hands on the wheel.

  She'd been blindsided by the idea that her husband was having an affair. Even though she admitted that she should've seen the signs, it had still taken her by surprise. She'd done a good job of not losing it when she'd put it together and I wondered if she was inside crying and screaming now, breaking things and wondering what had gone wrong.

  Lauren and I had never gone through that. We fought and we argued and we finally realized that we needed to separate in order to deal with Elizabeth's disappearance, but we'd never gone through the betrayal crap. We may not have been able to solve how each of us needed to deal with our own grieving, but we'd never let the other down in that way.

  I shifted the car into drive. I wanted to see Lauren. I wanted to see Elizabeth. I still had work to do, knew I had to keep going with what Anchor had tasked me to do, but I missed my family and I wanted to see them. I'd promised them that I'd be home that day and I was going home, even if it was only for the day.