Cold Cold Heart

by Tami Hoag

  “Wesley,” her mother said, stepping back to allow Roger’s campaign manager into the foyer. “Are you our chauffeur for the evening?”

  “I guess so. I want to go over some talking points with Roger on the way. The opposition is trying to bring up the gay marriage issue again.”

  He glanced over at Dana and came toward her with a serious expression and an outstretched hand. “Dana, I’m Wesley Stevens. We didn’t get properly introduced yesterday.”

  Dana looked at his stubby hand, meeting it reluctantly with her own. Not expecting to see a stranger in her home, she had put on a long-sleeved thermal T-shirt and felt naked now without a hood to pull up and hide inside.

  Stevens was in a dark suit and white shirt with a prep-school striped tie. His jacket didn’t want to hang properly—too snug in the biceps and not quite right in the shoulders—a fit that suggested he worked out more than the average man.

  “I’d actually like to sit down and have a conversation with you, Dana,” he said. “I’m sure Roger has told you we’ve had a lot of interest in you from the prime-time news magazines. They all want to do your story. You can—”

  “No,” Dana said, yanking her hand back. She couldn’t resist the urge to wipe her palm on her jeans. His hand was clammy and soft, and the idea of a stranger touching her made her want to go take a shower.

  Stevens bit down on his professional smile. “I’m sure you’ll want some time to settle in here at home, but when you’re ready—”

  “No.”

  Dana’s mother stepped between them. “Wesley, why don’t you go start the car? We’ll be right out.”

  Wesley looked up as Roger came down the stairs in a charcoal suit and oxblood tie, his crisp white shirt a stark contrast to his tan. He looked successful and confident. He didn’t so much as glance at Dana.

  “Wesley, did you bring those notes we made this morning?”

  “Yes, and I made a few more.”

  “We’d better hit the road, Mrs. Mercer,” Roger said, pulling a topcoat out of the hall closet. “There’s a rubber chicken dinner waiting with our names on it.”

  Dana’s mother kissed her cheek and rubbed the lipstick off with the pad of her thumb. “Call if you need me. Or call Frankie. She can be here in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Dana assured her, following her to the door.

  She watched as they backed out of the driveway in Roger’s SUV and drove away. Glad to have them gone, she shut and locked the door and went to the kitchen to fix her dinner. She turned the oven on, got the ziti out of the refrigerator, put some on a plate, and stuck it in the microwave, then walked away and forgot about it as she stared out the big window.

  Her mind was a kaleidoscope of the memories she had dug up that afternoon after Tim Carver’s visit. Now that she had opened those doors in her mind, she couldn’t seem to close them. Faces, voices, feelings, sights, sounds, all swirled around and around.

  She didn’t want to think about her own story, the story Wesley Stevens wanted her to present to America on prime-time television. She had spent the last nine months living that story every moment of every day. Now that she had rediscovered her past, it was almost a relief to focus on Casey’s story—a thought that came with a mix of emotions that ran the gamut from guilt to obligation. In her own mind, at least, she could turn the spotlight away from herself to her friend, whose story had lain dormant all these years.

  Her mother had told her that Casey had stayed over the night before she disappeared. They had undoubtedly sat at this table and had dinner. Dana sat now and imagined the two of them at the other end of the table, eating and talking and laughing. They would have spent the rest of the evening downstairs in the family room, watching movies, braiding each other’s hair, doing each other’s nails. Roger had spoken to her mother over the phone that night, complaining that two teenage girls were too much for him to handle. Whatever differences she and Casey had been having that summer must not have been that bad.

  It seemed stupid that they would have been fighting about the boys in their lives when their lives were poised to move beyond Shelby Mills and high school sweethearts. The boys would have been moving on as well.

  While Dana had always been the more goal and career oriented, and Casey had ultimately wanted to settle down and have a family, they had always talked about going off to college together. They couldn’t wait to get away from small-town life, to make new friends, to experience campus life, to spread their wings and have adventures. But that fall Dana had gone off alone . . . and made new friends, and immersed herself in campus life, and spread her wings. And Casey had been nothing but a memory. The guilt and shame that came with that thought was palpable and sour in her mouth.

  Dinner forgotten entirely, Dana left the kitchen and went back downstairs to her room and brought the computer screen to life with a jiggle of the mouse. Dr. Burnette wanted her to have a direction, and Dana felt the need for it as well. She wanted the comfort of a task, something to focus on that wasn’t herself. Researching a story was something she had always been good at. Digging for details and gathering facts made her feel like she was moving toward something, like a bloodhound on a scent. If ever she had needed to feel some small sense of accomplishment, it was now.

  She sat down at the desk and called up one of the old news articles about Casey’s disappearance, one she had read earlier, scanning for the name of the detective in charge of the case—Dan Hardy. The photo from one of the news conferences showed Hardy, a big, heavyset man with a formidable frown set beneath a bushy mustache. What Dana remembered most about him as she browsed the articles was that he was intimidating. He had a way of looking at a person that would make them feel guilty of something even if they weren’t.

  Tim had said Hardy retired and another detective at the sheriff’s office had taken over the case. But, while that detective would have all the files and reports, Hardy would be the one with firsthand memories of what had happened.

  She grabbed her phone and stared at it while she tried to screw up her nerve—or talk herself out of it. When she was a reporter, cold calls had been an everyday task, but even as she dialed information and asked for Dan Hardy’s phone number, her nerves were jangling so badly she thought she would probably just hang up if he answered. But then the phone on the other end of the call was ringing, and suddenly a low, gruff voice said, “Hardy.”

  Dana swallowed hard, her mouth instantly as dry as a desert. “Detective Hardy, my name is Dana Nolan,” she began. Her heart was pounding. “I don’t know if you remem—”

  “I remember you. I’m retired, not senile.”

  “Oh, good, um,” she stammered, embarrassed that she was nervous. “I have some questions for you. About my friend Casey. Casey Grant. The girl who—”

  “I know who Casey Grant is,” he said. “You have questions. Ask them.”

  Oh God. Where did she begin? “I’m having trouble remembering what happened to Casey, and—”

  “We don’t know what happened to Casey.”

  “I mean, I don’t have a clear memory of the things that went on,” Dana corrected herself. “I’m hoping you might be willing to talk to me. Or if I could read over my interview with you—”

  “All right. Come over.”

  “Oh. Uh . . . um . . . Thank you,” she said, surprised he had agreed so easily when he seemed like such a disagreeable person. “When would be a good time for you—”

  “Now. Tonight.”

  “Um . . . uh . . . ,” she stammered. “I was thinking maybe tomorrow—”

  “I won’t be around tomorrow. I’m here now. Come tonight.”

  Unable to stammer out an excuse, Dana scribbled the address he gave her on a pink Post-it. Hardy hung up before she had a chance to thank him or put him off.

  She set her phone aside and stared at the address, her heart thumping. He wanted her
to come to his house. The idea brought a wave of anxiety—not because she was afraid of him. Dan Hardy was—had been—a trusted law enforcement officer. He was hard-nosed and intimidating, but she didn’t think he would harm her. It was the getting to him that put a fist of panic in her chest.

  If she was going to see him tonight, she had to get herself to his house. Her mother wasn’t here to take her. Frankie was teaching classes at the gym. She needed to go now, before she could lose her nerve or change her mind, or before her mother could talk her out of it.

  She had argued with her mother earlier in the day that she should be able to drive herself around. This was her chance to exert her independence and prove that she was capable. Her car was sitting in the garage. She hadn’t driven it since the day she was abducted. But she had driven her mother’s car home from Dr. Burnette’s office, and that had gone well enough. There was no reason she shouldn’t be able to drive to Detective Hardy’s house ten minutes away.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she entered Hardy’s address into the navigation app on her phone. She pulled on a hoodie over her T-shirt, grabbed a notebook and pen off the desk, and headed for the garage.

  Upstairs, turn left, go through the kitchen, go through the laundry room . . .

  Her car keys were hanging on the key rack beside the door from the laundry room into the garage. She recognized the big white plastic Hello Kitty on her key chain. She grabbed the keys and went into the garage, looking for and finding the buttons that opened the big doors.

  The dark-green Mini Cooper—her college graduation gift from Roger and her mother—sat in the farthest bay. It had been so long since she’d been in it that it felt strange to slide behind the wheel. She took a moment to look over the gauges and find the ignition. She started the engine and sat there listening to it purr.

  Heart beating a little too strongly, she turned on her navigation app on her phone and set her mind on following the voice commands as she backed slowly out of the garage. That was all she had to do, she told herself—follow instructions—and she would get there. No big deal.

  To the end of the street. Turn right. Proceed point seven miles. Turn right.

  She was so intent on following the orders given by the faceless female voice, she didn’t realize she was going only about twenty miles an hour. A car behind her honked and pulled out and passed her, the driver giving her a dirty look as he passed.

  Dana kept her attention on the road. The disembodied voice was sending her away from town rather than toward town. She didn’t like that. The streetlights ended at the next left turn. And suddenly there was no more pavement, no more planned developments, and she was driving up and down the hills of a gravel road with heavy woods on either side, going toward the river.

  Anxiety stirring in her gut, Dana began to question her impulsivity. It was one thing to get lost in town. It was something else to get lost out here. She was going to the home of a former sheriff’s detective, but it wouldn’t matter that she trusted him if she ended up taking a wrong turn and found herself in the secluded yard of a drug dealer.

  People lived out here for a reason: because they didn’t want to be bothered. There were marijuana-growing operations out in these backwoods. Abandoned hunting camps were sometimes taken over by meth dealers as cookhouses. And then there were the men who lived alone for the simple reason that it wasn’t safe for other people to live with them.

  The anxiety built and turned and swelled up the back of her throat. The woods seemed to loom up on either side of the road, the tree limbs reaching up and out like bony arms with skeletal fingers. Dana gripped the steering wheel until she could feel her pulse throbbing in her hands. Turn around, go back, turn around, go back—the words bounced and echoed inside her head.

  She jumped as the voice of the navigation app said, “In point four miles, turn left.”

  Another turn. How many times had she turned? How many lefts? How many rights? What the hell had she been thinking, coming out here?

  But even as she questioned her judgment, she made the left turn, as instructed.

  “Your destination will be on your right,” the voice said pleasantly.

  Dan Hardy’s modest log home sat in a clearing, a small oasis of warm light shining through multipaned windows. The detective stood on the front porch like a sentry, with a massive dog standing at attention on either side of him.

  Dana sat in the car looking at the man and the dogs, wishing she hadn’t come. Once she started this, once she got out of the car and engaged this man, she felt like there would be no turning back.

  “You have arrived at your destination,” the navigation voice said.

  And then she was getting out of the car, her notebook clutched against her.

  The photographs in the old newspaper articles she had found online showed Hardy as a big man, heavyset, with a ruddy face that suggested he might be just one big, bloody steak away from a massive heart attack. As Dana stopped at the foot of the steps, she realized that the man standing on the porch bore little resemblance to those photographs. In his sixties now, he was easily fifty pounds lighter, his face much narrower and pale under the yellow bug light. This man was bald. The mustache looked similar but was heavily peppered with gray.

  What if this wasn’t the man? What if this wasn’t the place? It wouldn’t have been the first time the navigation app had taken her to the wrong address. What if she had just put herself in danger because she hadn’t taken the time to think through the possibilities?

  She stood frozen as her heart raced and her brain flooded with emotion and confusion.

  “You’ve got the right place,” he said in that same low, gruff tone she remembered from the phone. “I look a little different from the last time you saw me. Cancer,” he said by way of explanation. “I’ve got chemo tomorrow. That’s why you had to come tonight. Once they pump me full of that toxic shit, I’m no good for days after. Come on in.”

  Dana looked from Hardy to one stone-faced guard dog to the other.

  “Don’t mind them,” Hardy said, holding the front door open. “They’re on duty. A person needs a couple of good dogs out here. The neighbors leave something to be desired.”

  The dogs watched her intently as she climbed the steps to the porch but made no move toward her. But as she passed them, they jumped to attention and charged down off the porch, their barking like cannon fire.

  Dana gave a little involuntary shriek and dashed into the house, banging into Hardy’s back. He turned and caught hold of her by the shoulders, and she realized that, despite the extreme weight loss, he was still a big man, big boned, with big hands that felt strong enough to crush her like a soda can. He looked down at her with fierce dark eyes, and she jerked backward, out of his grasp, banging her head against the doorframe.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she stammered, scrambling to regain some semblance of her composure, fighting the urge to bolt out the door and run back to her car. She clutched her notebook to her chest as if to keep her heart from leaping out.

  Hardy’s expression didn’t soften. He made no effort to put her at ease. He studied her, his hard gaze making her feel naked and exposed. She pulled her hood forward around the sides of her face.

  “You came looking for me,” he reminded her. “I didn’t drag you out here.”

  “Yes,” Dana said, her voice too breathy. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  As much to escape his scrutiny as anything, she glanced around, taking in the large open space of the main room. A stone fireplace took up one end, with the head of a trophy elk mounted above the mantel. Dead animals of all descriptions adorned the log walls—ducks, pheasants, deer, antelope, wild boar. All seemed to stare back at her with the same cold, black eyes as the man who had killed them.

  “As I recall,” Hardy said, “your daddy was a hunter.”

  “You knew my father?”
r />   “I investigated his death,” he said. “You were hardly more than a little girl then.”

  “It was an accident,” Dana said, uneasy. “Why were detectives involved?”

  “Just because something looks like an accident doesn’t mean it is,” he said. “A man ends up dead at the bottom of a cliff, somebody had better make sure he didn’t have help getting there.”

  “Did you think someone murdered him?”

  Dana felt like she’d fallen down a hole into a surreal alternate universe. She had come here to talk about Casey, not her father. She had never questioned the circumstances of her father’s death. She didn’t remember anyone ever suggesting his death hadn’t been an accident.

  “There wasn’t any evidence of foul play,” Hardy said. “No witnesses. Looked like he just got too close to the edge of that bluff and lost his footing. It was real dry that fall. The ground was hard; the shale was loose.” He set his hands at the waist of his baggy jeans and shrugged. “Shit happens. I’d say you know all about that concept. If you didn’t then, you do now.

  “Always did find it strange, though,” he added. “We never found his dog. What the hell happened to that dog?”

  Dana had no answer. The trauma of losing her father had taken precedence over everything else at the time, but not only had she been a child who had lost her father; she had also lost a treasured pet, the dog that had provided a shoulder for her to cry on over the small hurts of childhood. She remembered asking her mother at one point what had happened to Moose, and Roger had scolded her for thinking about the stupid dog when they had just lost her father, her mother’s husband, and his best friend and partner.

  Eventually the assumption was made that the Labrador retriever had run off when her father had fallen to his death. Moose had been a gorgeous, big, obviously purebred dog. Someone had probably picked him up on the road and kept him, ignoring the tags on his collar. But Hardy’s question threw a sinister light on the disappearance of Moose.

  Dismissing the topic, Hardy led the way down a short dark hall and turned right into a small home office crowded with file boxes, filing cabinets, a gun safe, a desk, and a long folding table loaded down with more boxes and files. The wall above the desk displayed framed commendations, certifications, diplomas—the remnants and mementos of a long career in law enforcement. The wall above the folding table was covered in whiteboard. The whiteboard was crowded with photographs and news clippings and what looked like the manic scribbling of a madman.