What Lies Below: A Novel

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  “I’m here to pick up my daughter, Zoe Halstead,” he said. “I’m late.”

  The girl blinked, looking nonplussed, like he was speaking in a foreign tongue. She put a hand to her hair, and he noticed she had a tiny bee tattooed between the first and second joints of her right ring finger.

  “Jake? What’s going on?”

  He looked around at Kenna. “I’m here to pick up Zoe. I’m late. I’m really sorry. I got stuck at the job site. Is she with you in your office?” Jake knew Kenna often kept the children with her there when their parents were delayed.

  But now there was something in the glance Kenna exchanged with the tattooed girl that twisted Jake’s gut into a knot. “Where is she?”

  “Zoe’s gone already.” The way the girl’s voice rose, it was almost as if she was asking.

  “What do you mean gone? With who?” Jake was gruff.

  “Her mom picked her up,” the tattooed girl said.

  “No, I’m the only one authorized—” Jake turned back to Kenna. “Is she with you?” He repeated the question as if he might get the response he wanted.

  “You know which little girl Zoe Halstead is, don’t you?” Approaching the counter, Kenna addressed the young woman behind it. “Marley’s new,” she explained, glancing at Jake.

  “She always has the blue ribbon,” Marley answered. “She was wearing the little skirt with butterflies on it that she wore yesterday. She was on the playground when her mom came for her.”

  “There’s a note in her file—” Kenna began.

  “There’s a goddamn court order, and you know it.” Jake locked Kenna’s gaze. His heart was pounding furiously in his chest. “Did she say where she was taking Zoe?” he asked Marley, but before she could answer, he was back in Kenna’s face. “You know Steph doesn’t have so much as visitation, not without supervision. What kind of car was she driving?” He stopped, trying to think. “Her car was repo’d,” he said more to himself. He figured it must have been, because when Steph had called the last time, weeks ago now, and asked for money to make the payment, he’d refused. She’d hit him up for money one too many times. She spent every dime he gave her on dope anyway. He struck the counter with his fist. “How did this happen?”

  Kenna backed off a step. “Marley was working dismissal today. I thought she had it under control—”

  “I got distracted—the gate back there was open—”

  Jake barely heard Marley. His focus was on Kenna. “You’re in charge. This is your school. You know the routine, the danger Zoe could be in from Steph.” He had told Kenna about his former wife, the drinking and drug use—how he’d had no choice but to have his lawyer petition the court to set limits on Stephanie’s visits with Zoe. He turned to Marley. “What exactly did Zoe’s mom say?”

  “She was early. Like I said, I was on the playground when she came up to me and said she was Zoe’s mom, she was there to pick her up. She went right to Zoe. There didn’t seem to be any problem, and I was busy, getting the rest of the kids lined up—” Marley looked at Kenna. “That’s when I saw the gate was open and went to close it. I told you. Remember?” Marley switched her glance to Jake. “It’s not supposed to be open unless we’re on a field trip.”

  “Did you see Zoe get in the car with her mother?” he asked, striving to keep his cool.

  “No,” Marley answered, and his heart constricted. She went on, describing a scuffle that had broken out among some of the boys. Jake caught about every third word. The upshot was Marley had been distracted, and by the time she looked for Zoe again, she was gone.

  “You don’t know what happened, do you?” Jake heard himself, how he sounded, loud and menacing. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t dial it back. He thrust his face at Marley. “You don’t know if she got into a car, or walked away, or what the hell happened. For all you know, she and her mother could have walked through the goddamned gate that wasn’t supposed to be open.” He hammered the counter with his fist.

  The momentary silence they shared simmered with distress.

  “There was something . . .” Marley offered this bit timidly.

  “What?” Jake bent over the counter.

  “I thought it was odd, the woman—Zoe’s mom—was wearing a hoodie. Dark blue. She had it zipped all the way up, the hood pulled over her head. It’s so warm out. It seemed strange—”

  Jake hooted. “Yeah, she gets cold when she’s stoned out of her mind.”

  “Maybe one of the other parents waiting out front saw Zoe. At least then we’d know she left with Stephanie.” Kenna rounded the reception counter. “Can you pull up the student roster?” she asked Marley. “Who was the first to leave after Zoe? Do you remember?”

  “Katie Dunhill,” Marley answered.

  Kenna dialed the phone number Marley read off the computer screen. “Corinne?” she said, and turning away from Jake, she questioned Katie Dunhill’s mom, keeping her tone light and pleasant.

  Jake waited. His gaze bored into her back.

  Kenna ended the call and turned to face him, white around the mouth, brow furrowed. “She says she’s pretty sure she saw Zoe get into a light-blue sedan with a woman in a hoodie.”

  “Pretty sure,” Jake echoed.

  “I know it’s not a lot of help—”

  He pulled out his cell phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Kenna asked.

  “The police. I need Clint to put out an APB—whatever they call it. If Steph’s drunk, on dope, God knows what could happen.”

  “Maybe she just took Zoe home. To your house, I mean,” Kenna suggested.

  But when Jake checked there a half hour later, at one o’clock, there was no sign of Zoe or Stephanie, no indication either of them had been there.

  He tried Steph’s cell number and got a message that it was no longer in service. Surprise, surprise. Undoubtedly, it had been cut off, repo’d like the car.

  He reported everything he discovered to Clint when the police captain called him from the school. “She wouldn’t stay in town,” Jake said. “She’d be afraid of being caught.”

  “Yeah,” Clint said. “That’s my feeling, too.”

  “I’m going to Houston,” Jake said. “My gut’s telling me that’s where Steph is headed with Zoe, but if she thinks she’s going to take our daughter, she’s got another thing coming.” Jake adjusted his Bluetooth, turned left out of his subdivision.

  “Jake, no. Let me handle it. I know a couple cops down there. Let me get hold of them. They can go by her place—”

  “Sorry, I’m losing you.” Jake ended the call, pulled out his earpiece, tossed aside his phone. His head felt on fire. A voice inside his brain exploded, harsh, accusing: How could you let this happen? Let yourself be late—for no reason? Nothing’s more important than being there for Zoe. Nothing! An image of her in the arms of a stranger filled his mind. Even if that person was a cop in a uniform, she’d be so scared.

  He shot up the freeway on-ramp, dropped his foot down hard on the accelerator. He had to get to her. Now.

  5

  What do you mean, missing?” Cricket addressed Clint Mackie, wanting the police captain to spell it out, what Gilly already knew. Even in the moment, images of her dream were rising from the floor of her mind.

  Clint said, “She wasn’t at school when Jake went to pick her up at noon. He’s pretty sure Stephanie got there before he did and took her.”

  “Stephanie?” Cricket sounded perplexed.

  Zoe’s mother, Gilly thought. Her supposedly unstable, alcohol- and drug-addicted mother.

  “You haven’t heard from her, have you?” Clint was looking intently at his wife.

  “No,” she said. “I would have told you.”

  She seemed defensive.

  Why? Gilly wondered.

  “How did it happen?” Cricket asked. “Everyone at that school, in this town, knows only Jake is authorized to get Zoe from school. There’s a court order—”

  “Kenna hired a new teaching assista
nt. Marley Waits. She didn’t know the routine. She says no one told her.”

  “She let Zoe go with her mom.” Cricket said what was obvious.

  “Marley let Zoe go with a woman claiming to be Zoe’s mom, but when we showed Marley a photo, she couldn’t say positively it was Steph. The woman was wearing a dark-blue hoodie and sunglasses that covered half her face.”

  “That doesn’t sound like anything Stephanie would wear.” Cricket glanced at Gilly. “She’s a fanatic about clothes. She was a fashion designer in New York before she and Jake married.” Cricket looked back at her husband. “Did Zoe go with her willingly?”

  Yes. The word blared in Gilly’s brain before the police captain confirmed Zoe hadn’t made a fuss.

  “You’ve got your answer then,” Cricket said. “Zoe knows not to go with a stranger. She knows to yell her head off.”

  “The mom, she’ll hurt Zoe? She’s abusive?” April sounded affronted.

  “Not on purpose,” Cricket said. “It’s a sad situation,” she added, and Gilly thought she wouldn’t say more, but then she sighed as if in resignation. “Steph had a hard time after Zoe was born, really suffered from postpartum depression. I—Clint and I—tried to help her and Jake with the baby. So did Jake’s mom. Justine and I traded days, staying with them.”

  “Stephanie’s been drinking and taking drugs for a while, since before Zoe,” Captain Mackie said. “She won’t stop.”

  “She tried,” Cricket said. “She went to rehab. Once a sixty-day program, then a ninety-day program, but neither one took.”

  The police captain huffed a derisive breath. He wiped his hand over his face in a way that made Gilly glad she had chosen to attend Twelve-Step meetings in Greeley and not in Wyatt.

  “I told you the other day I was worried about her.” Cricket addressed her husband. “She hasn’t been back to Wyatt in months. When I called last time, I got a recording that her number’s not in service—”

  “I don’t know why you keep trying,” he said. “Some people are just hell-bent on destruction. You can’t save them.”

  A phone—what turned out to be April’s—jingled, and she pulled it from her apron pocket, walking away a few steps to answer.

  Cricket got out her cell phone and tried Stephanie’s number, shaking her head when there wasn’t an answer. “Still dead,” she said.

  “That was Nick.” April rejoined them. “He got an Amber Alert for Zoe on his phone.”

  “An Amber Alert? Really, Clint?” Cricket was dismayed. “She’s with her mother.”

  “My gut is telling me otherwise. But even so, if Stephanie does have Zoe, she’s in violation of a court order, and her intent may be to take her out of the state, or out of the country. Not that any sort of an alert is going to do much good in this case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s so little to go on—a woman in a dark-colored hoodie and sunglasses, the car she might be driving might be blue—” He broke off with a shrug.

  Gilly wanted to clap her hands to her ears; she wanted to run. What the captain described—the woman in her hoodie, the blue car—were straight out of her dream.

  “Jake must be frantic,” Cricket said. “Justine, too. I should call her.”

  “No, don’t. Jake is on his way to Houston—against my advice. He’s hoping he can catch up with Steph and get Zoe back before his mom has to know.”

  “But the media could get hold of it, couldn’t they?” Cricket said.

  Gilly said, “Stephanie lives in Houston?”

  “Yes. Last we heard. Why?”

  Gilly held Cricket’s gaze. “Zoe isn’t with her.”

  6

  Jake was halfway to Houston when he got hold of his family law and divorce attorney, Andrew Hargrave, and filled him in on the reason for his trip. Ordinarily the most careful of drivers, Jake seldom talked on the phone when he was behind the wheel, and when he did, he used his Bluetooth. But ordinary was out the window, and while he’d managed to locate his phone after tossing it into the passenger seat earlier, he hadn’t been able to grab the Bluetooth.

  “I’ve got to say it, Jake.” Andrew had waited for Jake to finish recounting the morning’s events before speaking. “If you had only gone ahead as I advised last year, when Stephanie wanted to sign away her parental rights . . .” Andrew paused. It was his tendency to be diplomatic, but he and Jake had a history, going back to Jake’s divorce from Stephanie, the early days when Jake had been determined to keep Stephanie in Zoe’s life, if not his own. Andrew had hammered away, insistent that neither he nor Jake could force Stephanie into a role she had no desire to play. Andrew had seen the reality, not Jake’s deluded fantasy, but nothing about cutting Stephanie out of Zoe’s life had felt right or good to Jake.

  “What difference would it make?” Jake changed lanes, shooting around a slower traveling eighteen-wheeler.

  “Zoe missing with her mom, who has parental authority, however restricted, isn’t as critical as if she were abducted by a stranger. The FBI would be all over it if that were the case. They may get involved anyway, if Stephanie tries to take Zoe across state lines or out of the country.”

  “But she wouldn’t do that—she can’t be planning—” Jake broke off. He’d heard stories about parental kidnappings, but the noncustodial parent—the one who took the kid—was usually frantic about their child’s well-being, convinced they were the better parent. That wasn’t the case with Steph. Even she knew that as a mom she was a nightmare. “Why now?” Jake asked as if Andrew would know. “It makes no sense, does it, that she would take Zoe now when she’s given her up in every way except on paper?” His objection was the reason Steph hadn’t been able to go through with it. The whole idea of a mother rejecting her kid sickened him. What would it do to Zoe if she were to find out? He couldn’t stand thinking how it would crack her heart in two.

  “You’re the one who says you can’t rationalize what’s irrational,” Andrew answered. “But I wish you’d let the police handle her. Clint’s in touch with the HPD, isn’t he? They’re sending an officer to her apartment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why not wait, see what they find? You should know pretty quick what the situation is.”

  “Zoe’ll be scared out of her mind, seeing cops everywhere.”

  “Okay, but how can you be so sure that’s where Stephanie is taking Zoe? She must know you’ve contacted law enforcement.”

  “I’ve got to do something, Andrew, start somewhere,” Jake said. “God knows what shape she’s in. She could be hitting the booze, downing pills. Suppose she gets arrested? I don’t want CPS taking my daughter.” Naming his fears raced Jake’s heart.

  Talk about children and family—talk of any kind—hadn’t been high on the agenda the times he’d gone to New York to visit Steph after meeting her there at the wedding of mutual friends. They’d stayed at her apartment, a funky, five-hundred-square-foot walk-up in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, where they’d spent most of their time in bed. Jake’s dad had been annoyed. He’d kept calling, wondering when Jake was coming home. There was work to do. Jake had put him off. The relationship with Steph was the first he’d had since his divorce from Courtney. He’d been in lust, sick with desire. Steph was all he could think about, or that’s how it seemed when he looked back. There were times when remembering shamed him. His mom had accused him of acting like a hormone-crazed teenager. She’d tried getting him to see it, how his obsession with Stephanie was the same as one he’d had going on with a classmate, Karen Clayton, their senior year. Except you’re thirty-six now, his mom had said. She had taken his face in her hands. I don’t think you love Stephanie any more than you did Karen, she had said.

  He should have listened.

  “You said earlier Clint’s got some doubt that it was Steph who got Zoe—”

  Andrew’s voice cut across Jake’s thoughts. “No.” He cut the lawyer off. He couldn’t look at it, the possibility that someone other than her mom had Zoe.
She’d been taught that if a stranger approached her in a way that made her uncomfortable, she was to yell her head off. They had practiced dozens of times until he’d thought her ear-splitting shrieks would crack his skull open. But Steph was no stranger, and the fact that Zoe hadn’t yelled proved it. “That’s just the way cops are, never satisfied with the simple answer,” he told Andrew, and he remembered something now, Zoe’s question from this morning: Does my mommy know where I am? He repeated it to Andrew and said, “I thought she asked out of the blue, but it’s possible Steph called her on the landline.”

  “Without you knowing? Zoe wouldn’t tell you?”

  “Not if her mom asked her to keep it a secret, and if Steph timed it right, I could have been in the shower or outside. I don’t keep moment-to-moment tabs on Zoe.” Jake didn’t want to be one of those parents—the sort that hung around their kid’s neck like a ball and chain. His mom said the trick was to watch without looking as if you were watching.

  His mom . . . God, unless he found Zoe in Houston, he was going to have to tell her . . .

  Andrew said, “You think Stephanie arranged with Zoe to pick her up today?”

  “Why not? I’m betting they’re at her apartment right now. You know—it’s Steph in her ‘trying to make it up’ mode. It’s what she does sometimes when she’s high; she goes on a guilt trip, starts feeling sorry for herself. Look”—Jake changed lanes—“when I get back, let’s wrap it up—the paperwork, whatever has to be done to get her out of our lives. I’ve had enough of her bullshit. She can’t just show up and be Zoe’s mom whenever she gets stoned and feels like it.”

  “Yeah, all right. But, Jake, when you get to Houston, don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

  Jake said he wouldn’t, but as soon as he ended the call and dropped the cell phone onto the truck’s passenger seat, he set his foot down hard on the accelerator, pushing the truck to eighty-five, then ninety, then ninety-five, and he waited to hear a siren.

  He prayed to hear one.

  Once he’d explained his urgency, he’d get a police escort. He and the cop would go to Stephanie’s door together. What could she do then but give Zoe back? If only she would, Jake thought. If she would just give Zoe to him, he wouldn’t make a big legal deal out of this. He wouldn’t press charges. Wouldn’t risk Zoe seeing it: her mother handcuffed and stuffed into the back seat of a patrol car.