They continued on this way, Ellery walking, and Reed following, until they had disappeared entirely from the neighborhood of the crime scene. It was black as coal under the trees and Reed did not see any nearby houses. “Are you going to just keep following me?” she said finally, without slowing down.
“Yes,” he admitted. “I have to. I haven’t the slightest idea where I am right now.”
She halted when he said that and allowed him to catch all the way up with her, but she looked at the ground and did not meet his eyes.
“That was an intense scene back there,” he offered finally. “I gather you knew the family?”
She nodded. “They’ve been on our radar for a couple of years now. Long enough that we should have seen this coming. We should’ve found some way to stop it.”
Mosquitoes buzzed around them. Nearby, he could smell some small body of water—a creek, maybe—with its damp vegetation and earthy mud. Frogs were croaking out a late-night song. “The law doesn’t always work that way,” he said.
“Then screw the law! If the law can’t find a way to protect a woman from getting shot in her own home, then it isn’t worth the tinder it’s printed on.” She pulled off her shield and hurled it into the dark. “What good is this? What power does it have at all? I joined up thinking I could be the one to make a difference, that I wouldn’t let this sort of thing happen, not on my watch. I went over to that house a dozen times. I begged. I pleaded. I did everything I could to get Rosalie to press charges, but obviously it wasn’t enough. Whatever it was—whatever the one thing was that could have stopped this—I didn’t see it. I didn’t do it. The law can do its thing now, sure. But that won’t save Rosalie. It won’t help Anna. The law…” She said it like the word caused a foul taste her in mouth. “The law is just one person too late.”
She stalked a few feet away from him so that he could just barely make out her silhouette in the darkness, but her words burned inside his head. One person too late. All these years, he’d been congratulating himself on being the person to save her, for snatching this one girl back from bloody grip of Francis Coben—a narrow but clear and joyous victory. He hadn’t really stopped to consider that if they had caught Coben just a few weeks earlier, Ellie would never have been taken at all. From her perspective, he was one person too late. “You’re right,” he told her, feeling his way cautiously toward her in the inky shadows. Long grasses tickled at his legs, rustled under his feet. “Sometimes the law is about as useful as tits on a bull. Good people end up hurt. It’s probably the worst part of the job, but you can’t blame yourself for this. You didn’t shoot her—her husband did.”
“My job was to stop him. I didn’t. I can surely blame myself for that.”
Reed dropped his chin to his chest. “You can,” he conceded. “It just won’t help anything. It won’t help this woman—Rosalie?—and it won’t help the next one who needs you either.”
“Right. That’s really rich, coming from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“One bad case and you up and quit the FBI. I don’t think you’re cut out for motivational speeches right now, Agent Markham.”
“I … I didn’t quit. I’m on leave.”
“Same difference.”
He was trying to form a protest, to illustrate how their situations were different, when he heard a powerful engine roar to life. They were standing by the edge of a road, so an engine sound might be expected, but Reed felt fear immediately, sensing danger before he could even identify why he felt threatened. This car appeared at full force out of nowhere, indicating it had sneaked up at low speed with its lights off. “Look out!” he hollered at Ellie, just as the bright lights came toward them.
They both dove toward the trees, branches crackling under the force of the sudden attack, as a large vehicle came sideways at them, veering right off the road. It clipped something because Reed heard the thump just before he hit the ground. The awkward landing knocked the wind out of him for a moment. He lay disoriented and struggling for breath as the SUV/truck that had hit them sped off into the night. “El—Ellie?” They’d rolled down into a ditch of some sort, he discovered as he sat up. He tasted blood in his mouth, and branches scratched as his face. He batted them aside and tried to find Ellie amid the skinny trees. “Ellie, are you okay?”
“I’m here,” she said, and he turned toward the sound of her voice perhaps ten feet away. “I’m okay.”
They crawled out of the ditch and walked back toward the road, and he could see she was limping. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. My hip. I think I got hit on the left side.”
He peered down at her, trying to assess. “Your arm is bleeding.”
“Is it?” she asked with some surprise. “I guess it is.”
“You should see a doctor.” He looked around, trying to guess which way was back to the truck.
“No, it’s not that bad.” She took a few steps to prove it. “See? I’m fine.”
It was difficult to determine the extent of her injuries in the dark, but he wasn’t convinced by her show of bravery. “I think you should get checked out at a hospital.”
“No,” she said sharply. “I’m not going to a hospital.”
“Just to make sure you’re all right. I’ll go with you.” He could imagine she might have negative associations of hospitals and doctors, given her extended stay after Coben had brutalized her.
“I said no hospital,” she snapped at him.
He folded his arms. “I’m afraid I insist.”
“Yeah?” she said, her breathing unsteady. “We go to the hospital together and when they ask me how we’re related, I’ll say you’re the guy who broke into my house earlier tonight.”
Reed considered this for a long moment. “Okay, then. No hospital.”
* * *
They located her shield by feeling around blindly among the grasses and then retraced their steps back to her truck, which was sitting where she left it, half over the curb outside the Franklin home. Reed insisted on driving, partly because the cut on her forearm was bleeding heavily and partly so that he didn’t have to ride with the dog on his lap. Bump seemed to sense the change in mood because he curled his body close to his owner and licked her chin. At the house, Reed followed her into the black-and-white bathroom to survey the damage, genuinely worried that he might have to stitch her up himself. Under the bright light now, he saw the scrapes on his own arms and one on the side of his face, but Ellie had taken the worst of it: she had a deep laceration on her arm about two inches in length. “You should really get that looked at,” he said as she washed it off. He found bandages and tape inside her medicine cabinet.
“It’s fine,” she said dismissively. She took some gauze and held it to the wound to try to stop the bleeding.
“It’ll leave a scar.”
“Then it will match the others.”
“You could get tetanus.”
“My shots are up to date,” she replied, eyeing him. “Why do you care so much, anyway?”
He spread his hands, feeling helpless. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
“Oh,” she said after a moment. “It’s much too late for that.”
She pushed past him out of the bathroom, and he stood alone, studying his exhausted reflection for a few minutes. He splashed water on his face and watched as it dripped down like tears. Elsewhere in the house, he could hear Ellery picking up nails from the floor. He wiped the last of the water from his chin and went in search of her. She froze when he arrived at the doorway, and he stood there for a moment, uncertain what to say. “I want you to know…” he began. “I want you to know I’m sorry for breaking in here and disturbing your things. I was … I was wrong.” He forced a wry smile. “I’ve had a lot of practice being wrong lately. One could say I’m beginning to be something of an expert at it.”
Ellery said nothing. She simply resumed plucking nails from the floor and placing them in her palm. It hur
t just to watch her.
“Ellie…” He still hadn’t conveyed what he wanted to say. He waited until she stood up and turned around to look at him, her expression unblinking. “I wish there were some way to change what happened to you. I wish we could have stopped him sooner.” He said it sincerely, with feeling, but there was no way for her to know all that was contained inside that wish—his fame would be gone, certainly, but without it, he would never have met Sarit and there would be no Tula. His heart lanced at the thought of a world that was missing his precious gap-toothed little daughter. But the world was missing sixteen daughters already, those dead at the hands of Francis Coben, and maybe in some ways, Reed was beginning to see, maybe the loss included one more: a girl called Abigail Hathaway, who was rescued but never really came home.
“Yeah? That’s nice and all.” The woman now called Ellery shrugged at his words and did not appear eager to grant him any grace. “If wishes were horses…” She set the loose nails on her dresser and dusted off her hands. “I’m going to make tea. You can have some if you like.”
“Okay, sure. That would be nice, thank you.” He supposed this was as much of an acceptance as he was likely to get, and perhaps more than he deserved.
They drank the tea in her living room—the front room, she called it. With the windows opened, the cooler night air could circulate and the atmosphere wasn’t so oppressive. If you don’t look toward the black woods outside, it’s almost pleasant, Reed thought, although it was difficult not to imagine a figure lurking amid the trees. He propped himself up in an armchair and tried to stay awake, although his face was cracking with fatigue. Ellie curled far away from him, at one end of the sofa. He could see purple shadows under her eyes as well. “Do you mind if I put on some music?” she asked.
“It’s your house,” he said solicitously, and she shot him a withering look.
“How kind of you to notice at last.”
She got up and slipped a CD into the stereo. He expected something soothing, perhaps jazz or classical, something instrumental that did not jangle one’s nerves. Instead, he got loud, lurching chords and some male singer who sounded British wailing away. The man was going on about the temperature rising, something about daffodils, and then he got to the chorus: “I’m going slightly mad … it finally happened.”
Reed looked over at Ellery, who was deliberately not making eye contact with him. He almost smiled. Damn the woman, she was tweaking him with music now. Well, touché, my dear, he thought. Aloud, he ventured, “Pink Floyd?”
She looked askance. “Queen.”
“Ah.” He paused. “Fitting selection.”
“I thought you would like it.”
He sighed and set aside the tea. “I could apologize again if you thought it would help.”
“It wouldn’t, though, would it?” She put down her cup as well. “Why would someone use my DNA on the birthday cards? What would be the point?”
He ran a hand through his hair, trying to rub his brain into function. “Could be a message to you of some sort. Or possibly it was for this kind of contingency—so that if the DNA analysis was run, it would implicate you in these disappearances.”
“So someone is setting me up.”
“It’s possible.”
“If I’m supposed to be the fall guy, then why run me off the road tonight?”
“You have a point. It doesn’t make sense from our vantage point.”
She considered. “Maybe they were aiming for you.”
Reed sat forward, suddenly more alert. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know.” She squinted at the wall. “But if this guy knows Coben, then he certainly knows you. He’s been sending me these cards all these years, but I don’t believe he’s favored you with any special correspondence, right?”
“Uh, no.”
She nodded. “So maybe he doesn’t like the fact that you’re here. Maybe you’re messing with his plans somehow.”
Reed had, of course, considered that the killer might recognize him, but he hadn’t fully appreciated that he could be a target. Normally he flitted in and out of cases, dropping in midway to dispense advice and then leaving before the investigation was resolved. This one did feel rather more personal. “Well,” he said, trying to put a positive spin on it, “maybe, then, my arrival could drive him out of his comfort zone—force him to make a mistake.”
“Hmm,” she said, sounding skeptical. “As long as the mistake doesn’t get us both killed.”
The stereo switched to a new song, this one more recognizably Queen, at least to Reed: “Can anybody find me somebody to love?” Ellery curled in on herself, a million miles away from him despite being in the same room. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. He thought of Sarit, and the way her dark hair spread across the pillow like strands of silk. He heard Tula’s effervescent giggle as he swung her around and around in the air. He drifted in memory all the way back to them, the people he loved.
* * *
When Reed opened his eyes, it was morning, although still early, with the weak light of dawn shafting in on the floor. He rubbed his scratchy face with one hand and looked over at the couch. Ellery lay curled asleep in the same spot she’d chosen the previous night. Reed sat forward and used this unguarded moment to study her. Strands of her hair had come loose in the night, curling over her cheek. She had lovely long lashes and her soft mouth was parted in sleep. He noted, with a guilty flush, that Coben had been right about her hands: they were beautiful, with perfect, tapered fingers. Reed could also see the scars because he knew where to look for them, and he saw they had faded with time. You would have to get close to her to notice them. Ellery, however, would see them constantly, and he supposed this was just one more difference between them: he could pick and choose when he engaged with the Coben case. A lecture here. An interview there. Ellie wore it on her body every moment of every day.
Still, as he looked at her sleeping, took in the gentle rise and fall of her body, he felt a stirring of hope. He remembered the panic, the certainty among the law officers that she was already dead. They’d had no right at all to expect any kind of happy ending, and yet here she was. Abigail Ellery Hathaway had fought for her life and won. He couldn’t see this as anything less than a victory.
Maybe it was this sliver of renewed faith, this idea that sometimes you can come back from the brink, that made him rise, cover her gently with a blanket, and then step into the kitchen to phone home. He and Sarit had not signed any papers yet. Nothing that couldn’t be undone. Maybe he could convince her to wait, to put off the lawyer’s meeting on Thursday, and they could talk together, just the two of them. They used to be so good at talking. That first night together, they’d talked until his voice was hoarse and his throat was raw. The next night, there’d been less talking, and so different parts of him went home sore.
He was smiling at the memory when the line rang through. It was early on Sunday morning, but Sarit was usually up and getting ready for church by now. “Hello?” A man answered on the other end.
“Sarit?” Reed said, although clearly it was not she who answered.
“Sorry, one moment.” He heard footsteps and murmuring and then his wife came on the line.
“Reed,” she said, and the emotion in her voice—regret, apology, pity—told him everything he needed to know. “How are you?”
“Who was that?”
She took her time with her answer. “His name is Randy. Randy Cummings. His daughter Amanda goes to school with Tula.”
Randy Cummings? Reed thought. That’s not a real person’s name. That’s a porn star.
“I’m sorry,” Sarit continued, “I’ve been meaning to mention him, but it just never seemed like the right time.”
“Yes, I can understand where it might be awkward, telling your husband that you’re fornicating with Randy Cummings.”
Sarit’s silence was icy. “For the sake of our future relationship, I am going to pretend you did not say that.
Now, what can I do for you? Why are you calling?”
There were so many possible answers to this, a veritable tableau of replies, all of which had the power to strike out at her and bring the kind of pain he was himself enduring right that moment. I was just calling to say I love you. That I wanted to be a family again. Oh, by the way, someone tried to kill me last night. Not that you’d care. “I, ah, I think with the developments in the case, I am going to need to stay on here awhile longer. I was wondering if we could postpone the mediation on Thursday.”
He supposed he should be grateful for Randy Cummings answering the phone because it had the effect of making Sarit very cooperative. “Sure, that’s no problem,” she said smoothly. “Do you want to pick a new date now, or shall we reschedule when you are back in D.C.?”
Back to his empty one-bedroom apartment with the blank walls. Reed leaned against the wall and shut his eyes. “I’ll call you when I get back. Is Tula there? Can I talk to her?” He desperately needed a friendly voice.
“I’m sorry, she’s in the bath.” Sarit really did sound apologetic. “I can have her call you later?”
“Sure.” He swallowed. “Yeah, okay.”
“Good-bye then, Reed,” she said gently, and clicked off before he had the chance to reply.
He was standing there, shattered but still somehow upright, when Ellery appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. She was yawning, and she had the blanket he’d given her wrapped around her like a cape. “Were you on the phone?” she asked.
He waved his cell weakly. “Just checking in at home.”
“Oh. Nothing bad, I hope?”
“No, everything’s fine.” Especially if your name was Randy Cummings. “Maybe I could wash up and make us some breakfast,” he suggested, trying to shake off the conversation with Sarit.
The Vanishing Season Page 17
