Crash & Burn

by Lisa Gardner

  If Tessa hadn’t been irritated with him before, then this oughta do it.

  “Why did you call, Wyatt?” she asked quietly.

  “Gotta start somewhere.”

  “So you thought your best move would be to ask your girlfriend to violate the confidentiality of her clients?”

  “No. Not what I’m asking.”

  He was rewarded with more silence. Then Sophie’s voice from the back: “Mom, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” An automatic reply spoken to the child. Followed by a more direct tone, delivered straight to him: “Wyatt. It’s late. It’s been a long week. I know you’re only doing your job, but I can’t help you. You know that.”

  “She doesn’t remember.”

  “Who?”

  “Nicole Frank. The driver. Our perpetrator. Or our victim. Hell, I don’t even know. She’s suffered three concussions, remember? It’s messed her up, deleted some items from the hard drive. Which is starting to scare her. The husband, remember? The one even you worried might be the cause of three accidents? I gather things are a little tense on the home front, and Nicky has decided she needs answers. She’s out with us tonight, trying to retrace her final drive. Except she can’t remember the details. She knows she received a call. She remembers she had to get out of the house. The rest remains a mystery to her.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I know you can’t answer my question directly—that would betray confidentiality. But what if I got her on the line? Or had Nicky call in to Northledge? Maybe you could arrange for the right person”—because it was a large firm, with many investigators other than Tessa—“to be there to receive her call. Answer her questions.”

  “That might be possible,” Tessa finally conceded, but he noticed that her voice remained cool. “Assuming she’s a client. Could be she was contacted as part of another investigation.”

  “True.” Wyatt hadn’t actually thought about that. “You’re right. But she received the call late on Wednesday. And afterward, she felt she had to leave immediately. Sounds to me more like someone who received information—important information—and had to respond to it.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “A liquor store.”

  “News that drove her to drink?”

  “Or maybe news that drove her to meet. I’m still working on that one.”

  “She’s with you,” Tessa asked abruptly.

  “In the back of the SUV as we speak. But she’s not in any condition to talk at the moment. Headache, nausea, that sort of thing.”

  “So you want me to talk to her, but she can’t talk?”

  “I have to start somewhere, Tessa.”

  “Wyatt, I can’t deliver potentially confidential information to you. That’s not who I am and not who you want me to be.”

  “Okay.” Wyatt didn’t press the point. He wasn’t surprised by Tessa’s refusal. She did take confidentiality seriously, as well she should. And yet, he did have to start somewhere, and it wasn’t unheard of for an investigator to help out another investigator, let alone two investigators with a personal relationship . . .

  He was disappointed. But mostly, he was still trying to understand his girlfriend’s distant tone. Right from the beginning of the conversation. Even before he’d waded into forbidden waters.

  “You okay?” he spoke up at last.

  “Boundaries, Wyatt. Given our jobs, both of us have boundaries. I can respect yours, but if this is going to work, I need you to respect mine as well.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course. Tessa—”

  “It’s late. I need to go. We can catch up in the morning. Maybe I can work out something for you then. Good night, Wyatt.”

  “Okay. Um, thanks. I’ll touch base tomorrow.”

  Wyatt ended the call. But he remained uncomfortable. Boundaries, his girlfriend of six months was telling him. Except suddenly, he was worried she wasn’t speaking about professional issues at all.

  * * *

  WHEN HE RETURNED to the SUV, Kevin was standing near the driver’s door, making notes on his little spiral-bound pad.

  “You’re still alive,” he observed, having no illusions about the dangers of pissing off Tessa Leoni.

  “That much faith in my charms? Tessa would be totally delighted to help us out.”

  Kevin gave him a look.

  “Fine. She argued confidentiality, with a sidebar on respecting her professional integrity. But she might be willing to talk to Nicky directly in the morning, assuming Nicky’s recovered by then.”

  Kevin shrugged philosophically. In other words, Northledge was currently a dead end.

  “How she’s doing?” Wyatt asked, gesturing to the backseat of the vehicle.

  “Hasn’t moved a muscle.”

  “Have you checked on her? I’m pretty sure it’s bad for taxpayers to die while in our care.”

  “Checked. Frankly, she’s pretty out of it. Probably time to take her home.”

  Wyatt didn’t argue. On the other hand, he had a feeling once they returned Nicky to her husband, they’d never get her out again.

  “Why do you think she came here?” Wyatt asked Kevin. “Gets a call. Has such a sense of urgency she grabs her closest pair of shoes, sneakers, even though they’re a lousy choice for a rainy night, while forgoing a coat. Then proceeds to drive nearly an hour to a liquor store well beyond her closest shopping center. Then, according to the sales clerk, Nicky spends another fifteen, twenty minutes wandering the store, before finally grabbing a bottle of scotch.”

  “Didn’t know what she felt like drinking?”

  Wyatt’s turn to give his partner a look. Then again: “Why an eighteen-year-old bottle of Glenlivet? Pretty specific, not to mention expensive, choice, if you’re just looking to get drunk.”

  “Good memories?”

  “She doesn’t have any. Except . . .” Wyatt paused, collected his thoughts. “What if she was meeting someone? That’s what the phone call was about. The liquor store is the designated spot, so first she looks for the person in the store. Then when she can’t find them . . .”

  “Buys the person’s favorite bottle of scotch?”

  “Or something significant to both of them.”

  “And heads out into the parking lot.”

  “Where she must ultimately locate him or her, right?” Wyatt continued. “Because she purchases the scotch at ten, but her accident isn’t until five A.M. Meaning there’s seven hours unaccounted for.”

  Kevin looked around. At the relatively quiet plaza, near-empty parking lot. “According to cashier Marlene, the liquor store was busy that night. But the plaza as a whole, the mall parking lot . . . Bet it was mostly quiet. Bet you could sit in a car, chat all you wanted without anyone caring.”

  “So who’d she meet?” Wyatt asked him.

  “Lover? Long-lost friend? Used some social media site to reconnect with a former flame, then came out here to take things up close and personal?”

  Wyatt shrugged. “What woman grabs old sneakers and a baseball cap for a booty call?”

  “One I’d like to meet,” Kevin assured him.

  “If that’s what it was about, they’d pick a hotel, someplace more . . . suitable. This feels more . . . Magnum, P.I.”

  “Magnum, P.I.?”

  “You know. Meet with the undercover investigator in the parking lot of the grocery store to receive the surveillance photos of your cheating spouse. That sort of thing.”

  Kevin rolled his eyes, then gestured with his head toward their out-of-commission charge.

  “We should take her home,” he said again.

  But Wyatt just couldn’t do it. They were pushing their luck. With the case, with Nicky’s fragile mental state.

  He still heard hims
elf say, “Not just yet.”

  Chapter 18

  VERO IS IN the closet. She is wedged back as far as she can go, knees clutched tight against her chest, while the woman piles blankets on her.

  “Don’t make a sound,” the woman orders, voice low, tone fearful. “He’s had a bad day; that’s all. Temper’s a little hot. So be good. Stay out of the way. Understand me, child?”

  Vero nods. She’s afraid of the dark. She doesn’t want to be trapped alone in a cramped, smelly closet. But by now she understands there are worse things than abstract terrors. For example, why worry about the monster beneath the bed when a very real bogeyman sleeps on top of it?

  I want to comfort her. I feel her growing dread as my own. But when I reach out my hand, nothing happens. I’m here, but I’m not here. I’m the outsider looking in. And I keep my attention on Vero because the woman . . . the woman hurts too much.

  The woman steps back. She’s done the best she can. It won’t be enough; I know that. But at least she tried, and for a woman leading her life, that’s something.

  Footsteps, down the hall. The sounding board of my life, I think. Footsteps thudding down corridors, menacing me.

  The woman closes the closet door. Not all the way; she leaves a faint sliver of light because once Vero had panicked in the pitch-black and had started to scream. The man hadn’t liked that. He’d beaten them both until their faces were bloody and Vero had lost consciousness. The woman had had to wait until he finally rolled over, snoring loudly, before she could ease out of the bed and curl up around her daughter’s motionless form.

  She’d held her all night long, rocking soundlessly, begging her baby girl not to die, because she was all she had, her only hope, her one bright light. Without her, she’d be lost in the dark, and though the woman couldn’t say it out loud, all of her life, she’d been afraid of the dark, too.

  Vero had survived. Another night, another day, another week, another month. The woman survived, too, and so they rolled along in this seedy little apartment, both living in dread of footsteps down the hall.

  Tonight, the man staggers into the bedroom. His shirt is already off, his hairy belly rolling over the waistband of his sagging jeans.

  “Woman,” he roars, reaching for his belt. “Why the fuck aren’t you naked?”

  In the back of the closet, Vero whimpers.

  I’m sorry, I try to tell her. You shouldn’t be seeing this. You shouldn’t be living this.

  But we both know this is nothing new, and the worst is yet to come. Outside these walls. In an entirely different place with scores of footsteps tramping down floorboards. The woman isn’t perfect, but at least she tries. Soon, sooner than Vero realizes, the woman will be gone and all she’ll have is a rosebush with bloody thorns climbing up a wall. Then this dirty closet will seem like paradise, if only Vero had known it at the time.

  The woman strips off her stained blue housecoat. Best to do as he says. No only makes things worse.

  The man grunts in approval. Kicks his pants off. Demands the now-naked woman come over, get to work.

  Vero closes her eyes. She doesn’t like to see, but there is nothing she can do about the sounds. Once she tried humming, but he found her and beat her again.

  “Kids are to be seen, not heard!” he’d roared at her, which Vero had found confusing, because best she could tell, she wasn’t allowed to be seen either. She reappeared in the apartment only once the man went to work. Then she and her mother were together, and briefly, all was well. Until the sound of footsteps in the outside hall. The jiggle of a key in the apartment’s front door.

  This is Vero’s life. At six, who is she to argue?

  The noises finally stop. The woman is crying softly, but that’s nothing new. Vero is rocking back and forth. She’s hungry. She needs to pee. But she waits for the sound of snoring. That’s the all clear, the signal it’s safe to come out.

  Eventually, after it seems forever has passed, the man falls asleep. The closet door eases open. The woman stands there.

  Her right eye is swollen. She moves gingerly, as if her entire body aches. But neither she nor the girl comments. This is the woman’s life, too, and she learned long ago not to argue.

  The woman helps Vero out of the closet. They tiptoe out of the bedroom, into the cramped family room, the tiny kitchenette. Vero finally pees, but doesn’t flush the toilet. For the next few hours she and the woman share the same goal: Don’t wake the slumbering beast.

  The woman makes Vero a bowl of cereal. She doesn’t eat herself, just lights a cigarette, stares tiredly at the far wall. Sometimes, the woman goes quiet for so long, Vero worries she’s dead, eyes open but unseeing.

  Then Vero will climb onto the woman’s lap and hug her tight. And generally, after a moment or two, the woman will sigh. Long and sad. Like she has years, lifetimes, oceans, of sad to let out. Vero cannot make the sad go away. She just sits there and lets it envelop her, too, until eventually, the woman gets up and lights another cigarette.

  Vero eats her Cheerios. She carries her bowl to the sink, rinses it carefully, places it in the drying rack.

  “Can we go to the park?” Vero asks.

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Mommy. Love you.”

  “Love you, too, child. Love you, too.”

  * * *

  SHE IS GONE. Six-year-old Vero disappears. Six-year-old Vero never stood a chance. And now it is me and old and wiser Vero, back in the princess bedroom, drinking scotch out of teacups, watching the roses bleed.

  “You should’ve killed me sooner,” Vero says.

  I pick up my china cup, take another sip of scotch. And I remember. The woman. The park. What will happen next.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Then we sit in silence, one lost child and woman, twice returned from the dead.

  * * *

  A KNOCK ON the window. It forces me to open my eyes, get my bearings. I’m lying across the bench seat in the back of the sheriff’s SUV. My mouth tastes chalky and foul, and I’m clutching the yellow quilt against my chest. It makes a crinkling sound as I sit up, set it on the seat beside me.

  The other detective, Kevin, is standing outside the vehicle, looking in. “You okay?” he asks through the window.

  I nod. He pops open the door, and now both him and the sergeant in charge, Wyatt, study me.

  “Can we get you something?” Wyatt asks.

  “Water.” I hesitate. “I think I’ll go inside. Freshen up in the ladies’ room.”

  They don’t outright exchange glances, but still take a minute to consider my request.

  “I’ll walk you in,” Wyatt says at last. “Kevin can buy you a bottle of water.”

  “Don’t trust me in a liquor store alone?” I ask him.

  He says, “No.”

  When I get out of the car, my legs are shaky. If I’m being truly honest, my head still throbs dully and the glare from the overhead parking lot lights makes me want to scream. I’m weak, faintly nauseous and completely disoriented. I have to focus on the cold to remember I’m now in New Hampshire and not in some tower bedroom. I have to study my shoes to remind myself I’m a fully functioning adult and not a child, still crammed into the back of a closet.

  “Headache better?” Wyatt asks, as if reading my mind.

  “No.”

  “What works best?”

  “An ice pack. A dark, quiet room.”

  “Well, we’ll get you home soon enough.”

  We’re back at the liquor store. The automatic doors swoosh open. I wince immediately at the influx of too many lights.

  Wyatt takes my arm and physically guides me along one wall toward the sign that reads RESTROOMS. I can’t help myself; I look for the cashier, the one who was nice to me before I threw up. I want to see her again. I’m running low on acts of kindness tonight.

>   But I don’t detect any sign of her. Some bored kid is manning the register now. I wouldn’t buy scotch from him, I think immediately. I wouldn’t want to deal with his knowing snicker.

  Wyatt stands outside the family restroom while I clean up. My color is horrible, completely washed out, except, of course, for the nasty patchwork of stitches and bruising. I look like a crack addict. This is your brain on scotch, I think. Except I haven’t had a drink in at least . . . forty-eight hours? I wonder, if I’m truly an alcoholic, shouldn’t I be detoxing? Maybe that’s why I got sick, why my head hurts so damn much.

  But I associate sweating and trembling with detox, and I don’t see any beads of moisture dotting my skin. I’m mostly tired. A woman with a battered brain who should be resting, not gallivanting through liquor stores.

  I rinse out my mouth. Splash water on my face. Wash my hands again and again. Then, this is it. I open the door, face my police escort.

  “Are you going to take me home now?” I ask Wyatt.

  “We’ll work our way there,” he says.

  Which means he’s not.

  * * *

  KEVIN SITS IN the back of the SUV with me again. He purchased three bottles of water, one for each of us. Wyatt has his unopened in the cup holder up front. Both Kevin and I sip our bottles, riding in silence. From time to time, I run my hand through the folds of the yellow quilt, feeling the edges of something that shouldn’t be there.

  But now is not the time or place. Later, when the detectives finally leave me alone . . .

  We wind our way through long, looping back roads. No streetlights. No guardrails. No center divider. Welcome to northern New Hampshire. None of us can see beyond the glow of the headlights. We could be driving through deep woods, past scattered houses, through tiny villages. Anything is possible.

  Wyatt is talking on his cell phone, but the words are too muted through the barricade for me to follow. I’m uncomfortable, though. The longer we drive, the deeper we head into the night, the more I think nothing good will come of this.

  Finally, a gas station looms ahead. The vehicle slows. In the rearview mirror, Wyatt glances at me.