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What Lies Below: A Novel

Page 15

by Barbara Taylor Sissel


  “My mother has always discouraged me from seeing anything, whether it’s dreams or visions. She acts as if it annoys her, but really, I think it scares her. She thinks it’s why I never had any friends. You know how kids are—if you’re odd in the least way you’re ignored, or worse, bullied. I really tried not to do it, not dream, not see things. A lot of the time I was wrong anyhow.”

  “Are you sure of that? Maybe your mom’s influence has undermined your confidence. Maybe you’ve had more visions—more correct visions—than you’ll allow yourself to remember.”

  Gilly lifted her shoulders slightly. “I don’t know.” It was a jumble in her head, and she was tired now. She thought if she were to lay her head down on the table she would fall asleep.

  “You did accurately see the location of Jake’s wallet,” Julia said.

  “I wish I hadn’t. I think without that he’d never have thought twice about the dream, but with the two together—”

  “He’s desperate.”

  “The dream isn’t like the vision of his wallet, though, and he doesn’t understand that I don’t—I can’t control what comes, or how it comes—” Gilly brought her fist to her mouth, fighting tears, her misgivings. “I don’t usually talk about this. I don’t like people knowing. They get ideas, and usually what I know—it’s just useless.”

  “Oh, honey.” Julia patted her arm.

  “Jake thinks I should be able to give him—give the police—something, a lead that would take them somewhere. I wish I could. I wish it worked like that. I’m as desperate to find Zoe as anyone.”

  “I can only imagine how difficult this is.”

  Gilly cradled her mug in her hands, looking into it. The coffee had grown cold, and the cream she’d added had congealed into a milky scab. “I dreamed Brian would be murdered before it happened. We didn’t pay attention.” Her throat narrowed, and she swallowed, and when she could, she went on, wanting Julia to hear it all. “After Brian was shot, when I told Carl Bowen, the detective who’s working the case—when I said I’d dreamed the whole thing the night before, he was like Jake. Even like you.” Gilly flashed a glance at Julia. “Carl thinks if I would let it come, my memory of that night, if I would really focus on it, I would see Brian’s murderer in enough detail to give a description.”

  “I’m surprised a detective would give a dream so much credence.”

  “It isn’t only that I dreamed it. I was there, and I saw the guy who murdered Brian when he ran out of the store. He went directly in front of our car. The light was nearly as good as if it had been eleven in the morning instead of eleven at night, but when I try and see him, the image is all blurry, the same as the dream image of him. Carl thinks I’m being stubborn. He doesn’t understand—” Gilly stopped.

  “Understand?”

  Gilly didn’t answer. The truth was that sometimes she did catch glimpses of the man, Brian’s murderer, hulking in the dark behind her eyes. She would feel him there, wanting her attention, the power of her gaze, her acknowledgment. She looked at Julia now. “Carl says they have a new lead on the guy. They could find him, arrest him.”

  “Well, that’s good, right?”

  “They’ll put him a lineup, and ask me to identify him. What if I’m wrong? Brian wasn’t the only one shot and killed that night. The clerk was murdered, too. He was only eighteen, a high school basketball star, valedictorian of his graduating class. Everyone loved him. The neighborhood where it happened—people were—they’re still shocked and angry and scared. They want him caught.”

  “Yes, I would, too. Don’t you?”

  “If it’s the right man.” Gilly said the only thing she was sure of.

  “You’re afraid if you push it, if you let yourself remember, your memory won’t be accurate.”

  “What if the person I see in here”—Gilly pointed to her temple—“is just someone I’ve conjured from imagination? Or what if he’s a guy I passed on the street, or someone from my childhood? I couldn’t live with it, if an innocent person were arrested and went to prison based on some vision I’ve had.”

  “But suppose it’s your fear that’s cutting off—”

  “It probably is, but as my mom likes to point out, I’ve been wrong more times than I’ve been right.” Gilly pushed her mug away.

  “You said you saw him. Did he see you?”

  “He could have. I used to worry about it, but it’s been so long now.” Carl was still uneasy. Stay vigilant. Don’t let your guard down. He, and other law enforcement types connected to the case, had issued the warnings from the early days of the investigation, but Gilly couldn’t live like that, always looking over her shoulder. When she was drinking and on dope, she felt brave. After downing a couple of shots, or a handful of Oxy or fentanyl or what have you, it was easier to pretend she hadn’t lost the loves of her life and her future to a killer who might be gunning for her. A fellow reformed addict in her Twelve-Step group in Houston, a war vet who’d lost an arm and a leg in Afghanistan, had told her when he drank enough, he could fool himself into believing he still had all his limbs—until he fell on his ass. Dark humor. Addicts thrived on it.

  Gilly drew in a lungful of air and let it out. “I’m sorry to load you up with this.”

  “No, I’m here to listen. I wish I could do more.”

  “I’m so tired of myself, you know? So tired of fighting to stay sober. I came pretty close to blowing it today.” She pointed to her head. “The monkey almost won against Miss Goody Two-shoes.”

  “I don’t have to tell you Miss Two-shoes has got the right answer, hands down, every time.”

  Gilly shifted her glance. “I’m sick about Zoe. It’s terrifying, and I’m scared for her, but I don’t want to be involved. I wish Jake could understand I can’t help him.”

  Julia didn’t offer a response.

  Gilly said, “I’ve been thinking I could leave Wyatt, find someplace else to start over. Maybe even move out of state.”

  “You could, but the trouble is that you can’t leave yourself.” Julie might have said more, but she was distracted—she and Gilly both were—by a young woman passing their booth, who paused abruptly.

  Doing a double take, her eyes locked on Gilly. “You work at Cricket’s in Wyatt, right? I’m Marybeth Cargill, Joni’s daughter? We come in every Thursday. Mother-daughter lunch date. We order the same thing every time.”

  Half a chicken salad sandwich on wheat with fruit and a cup of tortilla soup.

  “You were on TV. Did you see? The six o’clock news, KTKY. Suki Daniels was doing a story about that little girl, Zoe Halstead, who’s gone missing in Wyatt. She showed your picture. I didn’t know you were psychic!”

  Gilly stared at the girl.

  “You heard, didn’t you? They found Zoe’s mom.”

  15

  You found Stephanie?” Jake jerked the wheel of the truck, getting it off the road. “Where?”

  “Dallas. She’s in jail up there. She says she’s got no idea where Zoe is.”

  “What about the boyfriend? Duchene? Andy Duchene. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to get information on his whereabouts now. But, Jake, you know what this means.” The words were a warning, a caution.

  Jake had the impression Clint was trying to prepare him. If Jake had thought the situation was bad before, it was about to get a whole lot worse. He stared through the windshield. He didn’t know if he could handle worse.

  “The investigation’s got to go to a whole nother level now we know Zoe’s not with her mom. You realize that, don’t you? I’m in contact with the FBI. Wyatt, even Madrone County—we just don’t have the resources.” Clint paused, and then he said that with Jake’s permission, law enforcement would run a tap on Jake’s cell phone and his landline. “In case there’s contact from whoever has Zoe. We’d want to try and trace the call—”

  “Call?” Jake repeated the word faintly.

  “They might want money, a ransom. It doesn’t happen that often, b
ut you never know.”

  “What? Like I’m Warren Buffet? Jeff Bezos? I don’t have that kind of money. Not even close.” He’d get it, though, lay hands on it somehow.

  Clint said, “Money’s just one possible motive.”

  Jake sat back, unable—unwilling—to sort it out.

  “Madrone County—Sheriff Wiley—he’s still looking for you to come in and take a lie detector.”

  “It’s bullshit, Clint.”

  “Yeah, I know, but the quicker they can rule you out, the better, you understand?”

  “I’ll go in the morning. They aren’t after Mom to take one, are they?”

  “Not so far as I know, but you might warn her.”

  Jake said he already had, that she was prepared.

  Clint said, “Do you know of anyone who’s got a grudge against you? Maybe an ax to grind? A customer? A vendor? Someone more personal than that?”

  “No. What are you saying? That this is revenge? Some bastard took my little girl out of revenge? It doesn’t make sense—”

  “What about your dad? That lawsuit—”

  “That was five years ago, before Zoe was even born.” A former employee had brought the suit the year before Jake’s dad died. After showing up drunk on the job on numerous occasions, Carlos Hernandez had claimed discrimination was the cause for his termination. No one had believed Hernandez. Jake’s dad hadn’t had a biased bone in his body. The suit had been tossed by the judge. As far as Jake knew, his dad had never heard from Hernandez again.

  “What about Stephanie?” It was more a suggestion on Clint’s part than a question. “Do you know of anyone who might be angry enough with her to take Zoe?”

  “The life she’s been living the past couple of years, who knows?” Jake checked the rearview for traffic, and pulled back onto the highway. “I’m going to Dallas. I’m pretty sure Zoe talked to her mom recently. I want to find out what that was about, what Steph was planning. Maybe there’s a connection.” He was thinking of Duchene. What if Steph had left Zoe with him, and he was waiting somewhere for Steph to get back? What if he got fed up when she didn’t show? Ditched Zoe? Jesus.

  Clint was talking caution. “Let the Dallas police question her. You should get some rest. See Sheriff Wiley in the morning, like you said.”

  Jake could have laughed. “Steph won’t talk to the cops up there, Clint. You know that. I need to see her, see for myself the shape she’s in.” Hearing himself say it, he was surprised he cared. “She’s Zoe’s mom, for God’s sake.”

  Clint didn’t argue.

  “If she’s not involved, the shock has got to be—” Jake stopped again, feeling the ragged edges of his terror, his anguish and denial. It saved him, being out here, being able to act, do something, anything to find his daughter. He didn’t know what in the hell he would do if he were locked up. Squat in a corner and howl. Bash in his brain.

  Take himself out.

  Would he?

  Would Steph?

  “What jail is she in, do you know? What’s she charged with?” Jake was thinking drunk and disorderly, something like that.

  “She got into it with a dealer, pulled a knife on him, cut him up pretty good.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m thinking Duchene was there. He may have been the 911 caller, but he took off as soon as he saw the cops. Drove down some back alley and left Steph there like the rat he is.”

  Jake had no words, no insight, nothing of value to offer. Only disgust, a sense of futility bitter enough to burn his throat.

  “I don’t know how she took the news about Zoe,” Clint said. “I didn’t talk to her directly.”

  Clint sounded fed up, irked. He would have given up on Steph long ago, but Cricket wouldn’t let him. Jake wondered what Cricket thought now, if she would still welcome Stephanie into her home, her heart. He didn’t ask.

  Jake took Clint’s advice when he said that if Jake was determined to go to Dallas, he should wait until morning. He went home and ate a little of the chicken soup his mom had made. He told her about Steph.

  “She’s going to kill herself, or someone else will do it for her one day.” His mom took their bowls to the sink. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but you didn’t need to marry Stephanie to keep Zoe. That relationship—it was so like the obsession you and Karen had for each other, and we both know how that ended up.”

  With police involvement and heartbreak. She didn’t need to say it for Jake to get her meaning. “You’re right, Mom. It’s not a subject we need to discuss.”

  “I know. I’m just scared.”

  “Me too,” Jake said. “What if Steph and Duchene had Zoe, and she saw it, her mother knifing a drug dealer? What if Duchene’s got Zoe now?”

  “But Clint would know that, wouldn’t he?” His mom shut off the water. She picked up a towel. “The police in Dallas would have told him if they had a little girl with them.”

  “Not if Duchene took off with Zoe before the cops got there.” Jake kept his mother’s gaze.

  Anyone might have Zoe. Some creep. A monster. A pedophile. A murderer. The possible horrors shimmered in the air between them.

  Jake got up after a moment and helped his mom with the dishes. She washed, and he dried.

  Letting the water out of the sink, she said, “I saw you on TV when you talked to Suki Daniels earlier. You did a good job. I recorded it, if you want to watch.”

  “Thanks,” Jake said. He didn’t. He stowed the soup bowls in the cabinet. They were printed with a variety of insects—honeybees, mantids, and butterflies. Zoe had chosen them. She loved bugs. She was his bug. He called her that sometimes. Bug. Jake cleared his throat.

  “I should have been there,” his mom said, shaky-voiced. “People—whatever horrible person has Zoe, they should know how badly I want her back, too.”

  Jake glanced at her, but she kept her eyes on the dishcloth, wringing the water from it, white-knuckled.

  Her mouth trembled.

  “You can’t be everywhere at once, Mom.” Jake flattened his palm between her shoulder blades. “If you hadn’t gone door-to-door and talked to the neighbors, we’d never have found Zoe’s trike.” It had turned up at Tulia Henderson’s. Tulia’s mother had finally called back to say it was at their house. Zoe had gone off home, leaving it behind, when the girls had played together on Tuesday, two days before Zoe went missing.

  “But it’s hardly reassuring, is it? That trike you found, it belongs to some little girl, but no one has come forward to claim it. What was it doing there?”

  Jake didn’t have an answer, not one he wanted to look at anyway.

  His mom’s persistence had uncovered another bit of unsettling information, a possible lead. In the course of hunting for Zoe’s trike, a few of Jake’s neighbors had mentioned seeing an unfamiliar, metallic-blue sedan with a woman inside it parked at the curb near Jake’s house in the days before Zoe vanished. Helen Vanderslice, who lived three doors down, said she’d seen the woman outside the car, taking photographs of several houses, Jake’s included. Helen, who was eighty-one and sharp as a tack, had said she thought the woman was a real estate agent, maybe gathering information for a prospective buyer or seller.

  Helen had described her as slender, five foot six or seven, wearing jeans, western boots, and a blue work shirt pulled over a white tee or tank top. She’d had her hair—dark blonde or maybe light brown, Helen wasn’t sure—tucked under a plain black ball cap, and her sunglasses had been dark and big. Jackie-O big was how Helen had characterized them. It had seemed a little odd, but Helen hadn’t really thought much of it.

  Jake’s mom might have dismissed Helen’s sighting of the woman, too, but on hearing Helen’s description of the car, knowing it was a match to the car Zoe had last been seen climbing into at the school, she had alerted the Wyatt police before Jake got home. Dispatch had indicated an officer would be sent to Helen’s house to take her statement. Helen hadn’t been the least bit upset to hear the police were com
ing to talk to her. Anything I can do, she had said. Anything at all.

  How many times had Jake heard that in the last thirty-six hours? He’d lost count.

  He doubted Helen’s information would come to anything. Who knew how many metallic-blue sedans passed through town on any given day? There were a lot of real estate agents coming into the area, too. Wyatt was growing. There was a lot of activity in real estate these days. It’s the lead that won’t lead anywhere. That’s what he’d said when his mom told him about it.

  “I always wonder if it does any good,” she said now. “I mean when a family member goes on television asking for their child, or wife, or whomever, to be given back. You’ve seen them, other families—”

  “I never thought we’d be one of them.” It had been surreal, standing with Suki Daniels, in the white-hot media light, addressing an audience he couldn’t see, pleading with them. If you’ve seen my little girl, if you know anything, if you’re the one who took her, please, just give her back. We—her family loves her. We need her to come home . . . He’d choked out the words. He’d never know how. Afterward, people had come up to him. They’d shaken his hand, or hugged him. Even some of the men had hugged him, tears in their eyes. I’ve got a kid Zoe’s age, they’d said. A niece. A granddaughter. If everything folks said was true, the entire county was praying for him and for Zoe, her safe return. We’ll find her. We’ll bring her home.

  Jake picked up the dish towel and folded it over the oven door handle, and then as quickly, he ripped it off. “Goddammit, where is she? Where?” His voice broke. He stared at his mother, and when she came to him, when she put her arms around him as best she could, he bent his head to her shoulder, and the sound that came, something between a sob and a groan, raked his ribs.

  He was flat on his back on the sofa in the living room, staring, sleepless, at the ceiling, when his cell phone vibrated. Jerking upright, he grabbed it from the side table, righting the lamp before it tipped off the table’s edge. It was dark in the room, but he could read the number glowing on the phone’s face. It wasn’t one he recognized.

 

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