“It’s all right,” he said softly. He pulled back, even more slowly than before, “all you have to do is fuck me back and it’ll be all right.”
He wasn’t sure why it was happening but he had more control than ever before, felt he could go on for a long time. He slid slowly back inside her, watching her face. She was trying to rearrange her expression into something that would save her, and finally she moaned quietly and for the first time he could feel her hips push up against his, her legs at first rigid but then opening a little more, even flexing a little. He kept his eyes on her face. She watched him, and her lips parted as she rocked against him again. She’s trying to make me come, he realized, get this over with, and it won’t work, not yet. She was, after all, a whore just like the rest of them—there was experience in her movements—and in spite of his disappointment and disgust it all felt too good. He buried his face in the side of her neck. Her hands moved across his shoulders and down his arms. She was writhing now, her buttocks slamming against the hard metal floor of the van. He could feel it all welling up inside—he was hurting her now, but she kept rocking underneath him, even as her hand moved down his forearm and tried to snatch the knife off the floor where he’d put it to one side.
He’d been expecting that, too.
25
Frank was conscious that he’d lost a lot of time, although he knew he would have been derelict not to check on Watts and Dunning right away. As soon as he started back to town he called Adrienne to see if Emily had followed the laws of probability and just walked in the front door unscathed.
“Any word yet?”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to ask you?” Adrienne’s voice had a brittle edge to it. He let that pass, asked her to have a list of Emily’s friends and acquaintances ready when he came by the house.
“I’ve called them already,” she told him, “or at least the ones I know about. Her cell phone’s with her,” she anticipated the obvious question, “and yes I’ve called her a dozen times. It’s turned off—and probably there are some other names and numbers on that.”
He thought of stopping by her house to pick up the list, then changed his mind—it would take more time. He didn’t think he could get in and out of there in just a couple of minutes, so he told her to email it to Lori at the station and gave her Lori’s email address.
“Did you talk to those men?” she asked.
“Yeah. They didn’t know anything about it.”
“You just believed them?”
Basically he did believe them. He’d gone back to the sawmill and looked up the co-workers who they’d been drinking with, and they’d confirmed the story. Watts and Dunning were working in an area where the cell phone reception was spotty at best, and he doubted if they’d been able to warn their co-workers he was coming back. He told her so, saying nothing of his reservations concerning Watts and Dunning’s friends and how truthful they were. He’d drawn his own conclusions, was sure they hadn’t done it. He knew she’d see it differently and that would ultimately be a distraction, cost them time they didn’t have.
He was driving with his left hand, talking to her on the cell with the other. The right side wheels sank into the soft shoulder and he nearly lost it, just correcting in time. The car swayed the other way.
“Look, Adrienne, I’ve gotta go. Just send us that list, okay? I’ll talk to you soon as I can.”
Frank didn’t want to, but he knew it was better to talk to Emily’s friends at the school than wait and chase them all over town after school hours. He called Karen Edwards, the principal at the high school, and was only part way through his explanation of what was going on when she filled in the rest of it. Adrienne’s phone calls to Emily’s friends and the school had already kicked off the rumor mill.
Karen was in her fifties, smart, and not into red tape at all. She knew Adrienne Simmonds, but only as the parent of one of her students—they’d met when she and Emily had come in to get Emily enrolled in school. Adrienne taught at the elementary school—while the high school was in an entirely different building close to a mile away. She agreed to let Frank have the use of her office and asked him to email her the list of Emily’s friends—she’d set it up from there.
He ended the call, then called Lori, told her to expect the list from Adrienne and then send it on to the high school. He knew the odds still heavily favored Emily simply having gone AWOL, no harm done, but he also knew that there was a tipping point in these things, a place in time where events could go from mundane to tragic. The problem was that the only time you ever knew for sure was afterward.
The school had been built about fifteen years ago, back when everybody still thought they had money. Frank looked around at the beige and grey cinder block walls. The institutional effect was relieved only by the high windows that admitted a lot of afternoon light. Otherwise it reminded Frank of a medium security prison.
True to form Karen Edwards had made things happen in a hurry. He was given a small meeting room in the administration area and there was already a ragged line of puzzled and apprehensive teenagers sitting on a row of chairs outside the door.
Most of Emily’s friends had talked to Adrienne already, so he didn’t expect any revelations. There were only two boys in the group, and they were both a surprise. He’d expected the local football or basketball heroes—it was abundantly clear she could pretty much get the pick of the litter—but instead the first one, Jason Williams, was the quintessential nerd—turned out Emily had been picking his brain about physics and math. Apparently she wasn’t very good at either. He knew he was being used, he told Frank, but...he just smiled, sheepish.
The other boy was a stoner, and scared shitless. Frank had to smile when he walked in. They’d met before.
“Sit down, Larry.” The boy shuffled to the chair as if it had electrodes attached to it. Frank knew the kid, knew the parents. They couldn’t, as the saying goes, do a thing with him.
“I haven’t seen her,” he blurted.
“Okay,” Frank said easily, “Tell ya what, why don’t you let me ask the questions before you answer them?”
The kid shifted uncomfortably in the chair.
“You must have talked to her at some time or other.”
“I mean I haven’t talked to her since—since a couple of days ago.”
“You’ve got two classes with her, Larry.”
“I mean besides that. I...haven’t talked to her in a while.”
“You been out with her? She your girlfriend?”
“No... I thought maybe for a while, but no...” he wouldn’t meet Frank’s eyes.
“What happened, Larry? She meet somebody else?”
Larry looked embarrassed.
“Larry, this is serious shit. Right now we don’t know where she is. Her mother’s going nuts, and I don’t blame her. If you know anything this would be a good time to tell me.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Frank gave him the cop stare, waited him out. The kid squirmed. He had a serious acne problem and it wouldn’t get any better if he kept scratching his face. It looked like he was trying to grow some designer stubble but it wasn’t taking.
“Maybe she just ran away,” he blurted.
“Maybe...can you think of any reason she’d do that, Larry?”
The kid shrugged.
“She didn’t like it here. Thought we were all a bunch of hicks.”
“That what she told you?”
“That’s what she told everybody.”
“Couldn’t have made her too popular around school.”
Larry shrugged.
“She didn’t care about that stuff.”
I bet she didn’t, Frank thought. He changed gears.
“Where were you last night, Larry?”
Larry’s eyes widened.
“Hey—I didn’t have anything to do with this—”
“Answer the question.”
“I shot some pool for a while, then I was home.”
“I know. That’s where I was.”
“If I went down the hall and into your locker right now—what do you think I’d find?”
The kid started to squirm again, then caught himself and stopped. Too late.
“You have a car, Larry?”
“No.”
“Driver’s license?”
“Yeah.”
“Your parents let you drive theirs?”
“Sometimes.”
“What kind of car do they have?”
“Dad has a Ramcharger and Mom has a Neon. An old one.”
Frank sighed. That would have been too easy.
“Here’s what I need, Larry. No bullshit. A while ago Emily’s mother saw her with some kid in an old muscle car. Doesn’t know who he is, except he looked a little old for high school—small guy, skinny. I think maybe you can tell me about him. Or I can go take a stroll by your locker, get it opened up, see what I can see...”
He had Larry’s full attention now, the kid’s eyes hunting nervously as he tried to remember if he had anything stashed in there.
“... and even if I don’t find anything, I can get my guys to stop you every time you step outside your door.”
Most of the threat was bullshit but Larry didn’t know that.
“You think this guy had something to do with it?”
“Right now I don’t think anything. I want to talk to him same way I’m talking to you.”
Larry drew out the inevitable, made a show of thinking it over.
“If I tell you who he is ...”
“Larry, I’m not gonna tell him you told me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Larry shifted in his seat, his eyes moving over the pictures and diplomas on the wall, made a decision.
“Jimmy Nesbitt. Hangs around with Kenny Langdon.”
Frank knew who Jimmy Nesbitt was. He was one of the dirtbags who orbited Kenny Langdon like minor asteroids—no wonder Adrienne Simmonds had gone ballistic. Frank didn’t know very much about Emily Simmonds but from what little he did he couldn’t see a girl like her giving Jimmy Nesbitt the time of day. The doubt must have shown on his face.
“I told her she was crazy, but she wouldn’t listen to me,” Larry volunteered, happy to have Frank’s attention shifted to somebody else, “she said I was just jealous.”
“And were you? Jealous?”
Now he looked like what he was. An embarrassed seventeen year old kid.
The girls Frank interviewed—five of them, one after the other—weren’t embarrassed at all. Two of them described themselves as ‘best friends’ with Emily, one was feuding with her about something and didn’t understand why she was being called in at all, and the other two seemed flattered by the idea that somebody, anybody, saw them as being part of her circle of friends.
Frank was careful not to mention Jimmy Nesbitt’s name—but two of them brought it up anyway.
Karen had gone to a considerable amount of trouble to set up the interviews on short notice, so he stuck to protocol and sought her out before leaving. She was in her office talking to a couple of teachers, the door open. He knocked lightly and she looked up, then came to the doorway, her raised eyebrows a question.
“Just wanted to thank you for setting this up,” he told her, “it saved me a lot of time running around.”
“Any luck?”
Frank decided to be circumspect about it.
“A couple of possibilities, anyway. At least I know more now than I did when I came in here.”
“It’s a school,” she smiled, “That’s what we’re here for.”
26
The Nesbitt kid wasn’t home—no surprise there—and his parents weren’t either. The next best thing was looking up Kenny Langdon. Frank sighed, frustrated. It would mean another time—consuming drive out of town. Langdon lived in an old place on the side of the river, probably less than five miles from where he’d buttonholed Watts and Dunning. He could have done it all at once, if he’d known.
It was already late afternoon. He thought of calling Adrienne but decided against it. She had his cell number. He decided that maybe he could save himself a trip by trying the pool hall first.
Conversation didn’t exactly stop when Frank walked in but he certainly had everybody’s attention. There were already quite a few customers, predominantly male and anywhere from sixteen or seventeen years old to much, much older.
A scruffy looking kid—maybe underage, maybe not—turned around and tried to make himself small in a corner. Another guy, close to Frank’s age, ambled toward the washrooms, ignoring Frank and trying to look as if he’d been heading in that direction all along.
Frank had never been too interested in the pool hall and whatever evils the town elders figured went on in there. He had guys on the force who wanted to roust the place virtually once a week, but Frank figured all that would do would be to collapse the place’s business and drive them all somewhere else. This way he knew where to find everybody when he had to. Most of them were wannabes anyway and as harmless as ground squirrels.
It was hard for a cop to walk into a place like this without appearing as if he was playing the sheriff in some old time duster. In spite of yourself—Frank knew the younger cops did it for dramatic effect anyway, back in the day he’d done it himself—you had to pause just inside the door to get your eyes accustomed to the light and get a fix on where everybody was. The owner—old guy named Ted Saunders—kept the place pretty dark, other than the shaded lights hanging over each table and the lit area behind the bar. It wasn’t so much for ambience as to save money on the power bill.
Saunders looked up as he walked in and grinned. Another advantage of leaving the place alone. He could talk to Saunders, and he knew Saunders would level with him.
Unless he had a good reason not to.
“How ya doin’, Chief?”
Saunders kept a coffee pot behind the bar and he was already reaching for it. The usual suspects were scattered around the tables but Langdon wasn’t one of them. Saunders poured out coffee for both of them and shoved one cup in front of Frank.
“You think I can be bought?” Frank forced himself to grin.
He’d been in Saunders’ place a few times by now, almost always on police business, and on one of the visits he’d noticed a stack of battered paperbacks on the back counter, near the place Saunders usually sat—presumably for the times when business was slow. His surprise was compounded when he’d squinted at their spines and realized they were mostly detective novels. Saunders hadn’t noticed Frank’s scrutiny and Frank hadn’t said anything. If Saunders was a closet cop buff that might give Frank an edge some day.
“Worth a try. You looking for that girl?”
“Seen her in here lately?”
“Oh yeah. Once. She looked around the place like it smelled bad and then she left.”
“It does smell bad.”
“True.”
“I heard she might have been seeing this Jimmy Nesbitt kid. I figure if I can find him I might be able to find her.”
Saunders just looked at him.
“C’mon, Ted, gimme a break... I’ve been up all night looking for her. Neither one of them’s in any trouble.”
Saunders seemed to come to some kind of a decision.
“The night I saw her I think that’s who she was with. They didn’t stay here very long, though—bringing a girl like that in here is like throwin’ a pork chop into a school of piranhas.”
Frank gave him one of his business cards, his cell phone number on the back of it.
“If you see either one of them I want you to call me, okay?”
Saunders looked at the card and then grinned at Frank.
“Don’t I have a couple of these already?”
“Probably. Was Nesbitt in here last night?”
Saunders sighed theatrically.
“Isn’t this the part where you take out a twenty dollar bill an
d stick it in my shirt pocket?”
“Nope. She’s underage and you let her in here. Along with a couple of other kids I can see in here right now. If the mood strikes me I’m pretty sure I can get you a fine, maybe even close you down for a couple of nights...”
“Jeez, you’re subtle, Chief. You learn how to talk that way in the big city?”
“On the other hand I can just forget about it this time.”
Saunders sighed again.
“He comes in and out, Chief—I don’t keep track of him. My guess, you want to find him go out to Langdon’s.”
Kenny Langdon was a bit of a local legend. From what Brent told him he’d been on the radar since he was around fourteen, well before Frank took over. He’d been away only once, to a ‘Youth Correctional Facility’, and all accounts said that by the time he’d gotten out he was running the place. He’d learned well—best finishing school there was—and had made enough connections to kick start his return to town, cement his reputation as a badass.
Frank wasn’t as impressed with him as the locals were, but he still considered bringing somebody along as backup. That would send a signal to Langdon, though, maybe a couple of signals. Right now all Frank wanted was to find out where the girl was, and it was beginning to look like Langdon’s might be the place.
Wouldn’t that make her mother happy.
Adrienne sat down and stared at Emily’s laptop, chiding herself for her hesitation. It had to be done, and in fact she should have done it already. Her compulsive sense of privacy, even where her own daughter was concerned...Adrienne was very good with computers, and knew her only obstacle would be whatever password or words Emily was using.
It took her only about ten or twelve tries to figure that out—it was surprisingly sentimental, the name of their first and only dog, a Lab that Emily had adored—before Adrienne had found her way in.
It took much less time to see what Emily had written.
Langdon’s place was more of a farmhouse than a cottage—two stories, white frame, with a covered porch that went around three sides. It fronted on the road overlooking the river. There was one outbuilding, on the blind side of the house, and a couple of cars in the dirt clearing that served as a driveway. One of them was an eighties Camaro—a nice looking car, well kept, no trace of the rust or cheap aftermarket bling that usually adorned vehicles of that vintage. The other one was an older Toyota, a more recent model year but nowhere near as pristine as the Camaro. A strong breeze was coming in off the steel grey water and riffling the tops of the fir trees.
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