I walk him to the door, but there’s no question that he’s going to kiss me. His gaze doesn’t find or linger on mine, and walking to his truck, his shoulders are stiff. I want to shout at his retreating back that he’s a coward, that he’s probably glad to have an excuse for us not to be together. At the same time, I want to run after him, to somehow make things right. He’s gone before I do either.
THIRTY-SIX
Paige
After Jalen leaves, I look for my dad and nearly collide with him striding out of the kitchen. His face is pale, his lips thin and bloodless. “I’ve got to go out for a little while,” he says.
“What’s wrong?” Did he overhear Jalen and me? Does he know we found the book?
Keys jingle from his restless hands. “Nothing. I… There’s just something that needs to be taken care of.”
“Dad, before you go we need to talk.”
He cuts me off with an impatient wave of his hand. “Later. Lock the door behind me.” He starts to move around me.
“It’s about Emily,” I say, and he freezes. “Were you having an affair with her?”
He turns and his eyes lock onto mine. “Absolutely not,” he says emphatically. “My God, she’s your age.”
“We found a book in your office. It has a missing page.”
He starts to dismiss what I’ve said, and then he stops. “What?”
“We found The Corn Maiden.”
He shakes his head impatiently. “I don’t know that book. You said it’s missing a page?”
“Not just any page. The first page.”
He glances at his watch, frowns deeply. “We’ll talk more about it when I get back.” He reaches past me for the doorknob.
“Dad,” I say sharply as if he’s fallen asleep and I’m trying to wake him. “We need to call the police. Now.”
“We will. Trust me—this is important, or I wouldn’t leave you.”
“Important how? Where are you going? What are doing?”
He pushes the door open. A furnace blast of heat, as if he is stepping into hell, flows through the opening. “I’ll tell you everything when I get back. I’ll only be an hour. Lock the door behind me,” he says, and then he’s gone.
But he doesn’t come home in an hour and doesn’t pick up when I try his cell. I’m pacing the living room when headlights slide across the blinds. My heart pounds when I pull the curtains aside and see the police car idling in our driveway. Then it drops when, moments later, Detectives Rodriquez and Torres step out of their car and give the house a long, assessing look.
At the front door, Detective Rodriquez greets me with a question. “Where’s your father?” Under the porch light, the officer’s heavyset features are stoic and unyielding. Next to her, tall, thin Detective Torres stands slightly hollow-eyed, as if he has seen this scene play out a thousand times and never once has it had a happy ending.
“He isn’t home.”
“Where is he?” Detective Rodriquez’s deep-set eyes lock onto me. There’s an eagerness in them I have never seen. A sick feeling spreads through my veins.
“I don’t know.” My heart thumps so hard it’s distracting. “Why are you here?” I ask, even as the answer seems clear. Jalen must have called them right after he left. He said he’d wait, but he didn’t.
“When will he be back?” Detective Rodriquez keeps her gaze locked onto mine, and I have to fight the feeling that she can read my mind.
“I don’t know.” Dead silence. “He didn’t say.”
She shakes her head as if I am her best student but I’ve given the wrong answer to a very basic question. “You don’t have to keep doing this, Paige—lying for him.” She gives me a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “This is a search warrant,” she says, and for the first time I notice the papers in her hands. “It gives us the legal ability to search your house. Please step aside.”
“What are you looking for?” But I already know the answer, and it’s sitting on the desk in my father’s office. They move past me without answering.
I try calling my father’s cell, but it just rings into voicemail. Why doesn’t he pick up? Why didn’t he tell me where he was going? When I can’t reach him, I do the only thing I can think of—call Dr. Shum.
He’s assuring me that everything will be okay when I hear Detective Rodriquez shout from my father’s office, “Torres, come check this out.”
I follow Lieutenant Torres into the room, where Detective Rodriquez is holding the copy of The Corn Maiden.
The Shums arrive just after Lieutenant Rodriquez has called in an APB for the arrest of my father, who they think has gone on the run. Stepping inside the house, Mrs. Shum hugs me as Dr. Shum demands to know what’s going on.
The police answer his questions with their own. Did Dr. Shum realize my father was spending time with Emily outside the park? Did he realize they had an inappropriate relationship? Had he ever read The Corn Maiden?
Dr. Shum sputters in indignation. “What are you talking about? Duke is a friend of the family and is a respected member of the academic community. He would never…” His blue eyes blaze with fury. “How dare you denigrate the reputation of a world-renowned archeologist?”
Although shorter than Dr. Shum by nearly a head, Detective Rodriquez meets his gaze with a steely one of her own. “I’ll ask you again. Did you ever see Dr. Patterson alone, outside the park, with Miss Linton?”
Dr. Shum looks down at her coldly. “This is a witch hunt,” he says. “Any questions you want to ask me or my wife will have to be done in the presence of my attorney.”
The corners of Detective Rodriquez’s plump, pink lips curl up knowingly. “Consider it done,” she says.
We all look up at the sound of a car door slamming. We step onto the front porch in time to see my father jogging toward the house. “Paige!” he shouts. “What’s going on?”
He doesn’t make it to me. The two officers intercept him. Within seconds, he is spread-eagled against the wall in the dining room. They pat him down and then cuff him. As they start to read him his rights, I feel dizzy, disoriented, as if I am here, watching this, but also apart from it.
Mrs. Shum tucks her arm around me. “Honey,” she murmurs, “it’s going to be okay.”
But it isn’t. Moments later, Detective Rodriquez charges my father with probable cause in the disappearance of Emily Linton. Detective Torres opens the back door to the squad car and puts his hand on my father’s head as he gets in. For a moment, my gaze locks with my dad’s.
“Call your mother. Tell her to come get you.” My father’s voice cuts off as he loses his balance and almost stumbles into the car.
Mrs. Shum’s arm tightens around me as the car backs down the driveway. She smells of paint and turpentine and something slightly sweet, like roses. “Don’t worry, Paige,” she murmurs. “Your father’s lawyer will meet him at the police station. They’ll work it out.”
Dr. Shum’s blue eyes rest gently on me. Under the porch light his rugged features reflect concern. “Your father is a good man,” he says gruffly. “The police do this sometimes. They’re under pressure to make an arrest, so they have to charge somebody.”
I don’t say anything, but the lump in my throat swells. I take a deep breath, and it cracks into a thousand gasping little pieces.
He doesn’t know that the police have new evidence. He doesn’t know about the book or that my dad no longer has an alibi. And he doesn’t know that I have been betrayed by the one person I thought I could trust. In the space of a few hours, I have lost everything.
Dr. Shum’s broad brow furrows, and he pats my shoulder in a gesture that’s formal and yet oddly comforting. “Ah, little one,” he says gently. “You’ve had yourself quite a night, haven’t you? Are you hungry?”
Mrs. Shum brushes my hair back from my face. “We should stop at Jack In The Box,” she says in the false, cheerful tone of someone who has no idea that she’s saying the entirely wrong thing. “I know you girls like those black-and-
white shakes.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Paige
The next morning, the sadness is still there, but something else as well—anger.
Dr. Shum can hardly drive me to the park fast enough. I barely pay attention to Mrs. Shum, who tries to distract me by talking about the ongoing construction of her exhibit. She doesn’t seem to realize that I won’t be in Arizona long enough to see any of it. If my mother has her way, I’ll be returning to New Jersey with her and Stuart as soon as the police let me leave the state—something Stuart promised last night would happen very quickly.
In the conference room at the information center, Dr. Shum holds the morning briefing. As he announces that he will be assuming my father’s responsibilities for the next few days, I scan the room, looking for Jalen.
He isn’t there, so I head for the cliffs. I’m out of breath and sweating by the time I finish the long climb up the ladders. In front of me, the exterior wall of the ruins looms. Its blackened windows stare at me like empty sockets in a ruined face. In the ringing silence they seem to say, Go away. There’s nothing inside here but death.
I slip sideways through the T-shaped entrance and into the small, dark chamber. It’s noticeably cooler inside and very quiet. I don’t linger in this room with its round opening to the basement chamber and memories of Jeremy Brown pinning me to the floor, shoving his slimy tongue into my mouth.
I climb the wooden ladder up the wall and through the chimney-like opening in the ceiling. More than ever, the space seems decayed and rotting, claustrophobic in the darkness. I emerge in a chamber on the third level and wind my way through the broken rooms and narrow passages. It doesn’t take me long to find him.
He’s standing in the small chamber where the skeletal remains of a Native American child were once found in the interior wall. Jalen’s back is to me, and he’s sliding his hands along the wall as if checking for cracks. His head all but touches the domed surface of the ceiling.
“Jalen,” I say coldly.
He turns, wipes his forehead with his arm. His always-serious face studies me for a few seconds before he speaks. “Did you talk to him?”
I make an ugly, scoffing noise. “Like you don’t know.”
He shifts his weight. “Know what?”
We look at each other for a long moment. He is so physically beautiful that I want to run to him, but he betrayed me. The image of my father’s face when they handcuffed him flashes through my mind. “That he was arrested. Last night.”
Jalen’s straight black brows pull together. “Arrested? What are you talking about?”
My hands straddle my hips. “The police showed up with a warrant two hours after you left. You told me you would give me time to talk to my dad. You lied to me. I didn’t even have time to call his lawyer.”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Then how did the police know to show up?”
“I don’t know.”
“So it was all a bad coincidence? How stupid do you think I am?”
His jaw tightens. “You’re not stupid. But you’re drawing the wrong conclusions.”
“How, then, did the police know to come?”
He stays silent.
I ask, “Were you ever really into me?”
I want war, but his brow unfurrows and his features go still, unreadable, as if he has been carved from mahogany. Staring at the purposeful blankness of his face, I wonder suddenly if I have fantasized everything about our relationship.
“Were you,” I repeat, “ever really into me?”
His nostrils flare slightly. “What do you think?”
I clench my fists. “How long have you suspected my father?”
“What?”
“How long have you thought my father was having an affair with Emily Linton?”
He shakes his head. “It crossed my mind. But I didn’t call the police.”
“Liar!” My mind and heart race, trying to put all the clues together. I feel sick at the conclusion.
“It’s Emily you really liked, isn’t it? That’s why you kept pulling back. Not because of your uncle. You were only with me to stay close to my father. To get evidence against him.”
He stares at me in stunned silence. “Do you honestly believe that?”
I’m rolling down the hill now, faster and faster with the spin of a story that grows more credible by the moment. “It’s a lot more believable than a story about a crazy uncle who thinks I’m going to die. What kind of illness allows someone to see the future?”
It’s a fair question, made cruel by the edge of sarcasm in my voice.
His eyes turn flat and cold. “You’re upset, but you don’t get to talk about my uncle like that. You don’t get to denigrate something you don’t understand.” Slowly, deliberately, he turns his back to me and resumes sliding his hands along the cracked surface of the masonry wall.
I look at the stiffness of his shoulders, the set of his head. The architecture of hurt. Yet I’m not sorry. “I never want to see you again.”
For a moment, Jalen’s hands stop moving. I wait for him to turn around and fight for us, to tell me I’m wrong, but then those fingers start skimming the surface of the wall. Part of me wonders what he’s looking for, but mostly I feel sick with the thought that he’ll never touch me again, that we’ll never kiss again. I broke up with him—I told him I never wanted to see him again. Yet now that it’s happened, I feel more empty and lost than I have ever felt in my entire life.
Around lunch time, my mother calls to say that she and Stuart are still at the Newark Airport. Bad storms in the Northeast have delayed and canceled flights. She thinks they might get out sometime in the next hour or so, but they’re going to have connect through Chicago, which means she won’t land in Phoenix until late tonight.
“But don’t worry, honey,” she says, “Stuart and I will be there tonight. Just try to hang in.”
The soothing tone of her voice enrages me. She doesn’t ask about Dad. Doesn’t care that he’s been arrested or if he’s guilty. All she wants is to reclaim me like I’m some kind of prize. After everything that’s happened, it makes me want to scream. What about how I feel or what I want? I think about how she cheated on my father and want to confront her, but long distance isn’t how I want to do that.
“I love you, honey,” she says.
You know nothing, I almost shout. The anger boils so hard there are no words. For the first time in my life, I hang up on her. When she calls back, I don’t answer.
Walking out of my father’s office, I pass Mrs. Shum in the museum section. She’s supervising two workers in the process of bolting a railing to the wall. It fits perfectly with the wall-length canvases she’s painted.
Mrs. Shum smiles. “What do you think?”
“I want to see my father. Will you take me?”
Her smile fades. “Why, Paige? What’s happened?”
“I need to talk to him.”
She studies my face. “Isn’t your mother landing in a couple of hours? Why don’t you wait until they get here?”
I explain about the delay, and she fingers a long silver earring. “Of course. We’ll talk to Dr. Shum just as soon as I’m finished,” she promises.
I can’t wait that long and storm off to break my vow and make my second trip of the day to the ruins.
In the late afternoon sun, the rungs are hot, but not unbearable. The sun draws vertical lines of sweat that race each other down my back and dribble between my breasts. Higher and higher, I climb. I try not to think about Jalen, but I can’t help it. Accusing him of having a thing for Emily was a long shot, but he didn’t deny it. After all, he was the one who found that book in my father’s office. What if he’d planted it there? What if he was the one who’d hurt her? He would be physically strong enough to move her, and his father has a key to the front gate of the park. Jalen could have borrowed it. His beauty is so strong I wonder if it’s blinded me to the truth. Has anyone asked him where he was the night Emily
disappeared?
The thought is so horrible that I don’t notice someone else on the ladders until we meet on the ledge. Our eyes meet, and the dread fills me.
“Hello, Paige,” Jeremy Brown says as if he actually is glad to see me.
I stare the look on his face, and it all comes back—the tang of his saliva and the bite of his fingers. “Jeremy.” I have to push the word out of my suddenly dry lips.
Unless one of us retreats, we’ll have to pass each other on the stone ledge between the two ladders. The thought of him sliding up against me—accidentally rubbing against me—makes my stomach roll. As far as I can see, we’re alone.
I think about retreating, but then remember something else about that time in the basement chamber. The moment he realized I was scared, the more excited he got and the more he enjoyed what was happening.
“I heard about your father.” Jeremy’s face shines with sweat, and a lock of black hair lies lank on his face. I can’t read his eyes behind his sunglasses. “I’m sorry.”
“What do you know about my father?”
He shrugs. “An article in the paper. For what it’s worth, Paige, I don’t think he had anything to do with what happened to Emily.”
I wet my lips. “Why?”
He shifts his weight. “Well, for one, he was with you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” I hold his gaze and wonder if I imagined the sarcastic note in his voice.
“So it can’t be him, then,” Jeremy says. “But in the meantime, do you need something? A place to stay? A ride anywhere?”
The sweat drips down the front of my tank top. Doesn’t he realize he’d be the last person I’d want to stay with? “I’m staying with the Shums.”
“The Shums,” he repeats. “We have a guest house and a pool. You could stay with us.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I’m not the creep you think I am. What happened between us was a mistake. I see that more clearly now. I’d heard you liked to play games, and I thought you were into me. I never meant to scare or hurt you.”
Bone Deep Page 20
