Heartstopper

by Joy Fielding

  The normally dark house was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. All the lights in the place appeared to be on, although the blinds were down, as always, and two cars were parked in the driveway, as well as several more on the street. John recognized the white van that had picked up Tanya McGovern from the doctor’s office, as well as Joey Balfour’s old blue Pontiac and the red Chevy that Ray Sutter had recently driven off the road not far from where Liana’s body was later unearthed. What was everybody doing here?

  “Sheriff,” he heard a woman call softly as he headed up the walkway.

  His first thought was that it was Fiona Hamilton, that she’d returned home to find her house ablaze with lights and filled with strangers and had been hiding in the shrubbery ever since, waiting for everyone to leave. But when he turned around, he saw that the woman tiptoeing toward him in her bare feet wasn’t Cal’s missing wife but rather Sandy Crosbie, his next-door neighbor.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, tucking her chin-length hair behind her ears. She was wearing yellow pajamas under a long, pink cotton robe. “Have you found Fiona?”

  John shook his head. “May I ask how you knew she was missing?”

  “Are you kidding? Cal stormed over here about an hour ago, asking if we’d seen her. I told him Delilah Franklin had been by yesterday, asking the same thing, and he just took off. Naturally, my kids were on the Internet the minute he left. And a bunch of people are in there now, trying to organize a search party. Everybody’s talking about a serial killer.”

  Jesus, John thought. A search party. In the dead of night. “Look, the fact that Fiona’s missing doesn’t mean she’s dead. There’s a very good chance she left of her own accord.”

  “Do you really believe that? She’s such a meek little thing.” A phone rang in the distance. Sandy spun toward the sound. “Oh, dear. That’s my phone again. It’s been ringing all night. Everybody wants to know what’s happening.”

  “Please tell them that any speculation at this point is both premature and counterproductive. Now, if you’ll excuse me …” John broke from her side and approached Cal’s front door. He rang the bell several times, then knocked loudly. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he barked as Greg Watt opened the door.

  Greg Watt, dressed all in black, stepped back and allowed John entry. “Sheriff’s here,” he announced without answering the question.

  “About time,” Cal barked from the living room. “Get your ass in here, Sheriff, and tell me what we’re going to do about finding my wife.”

  “We’re not going to do anything,” John said evenly, although the sight of Greg Watt, Joey Balfour, Peter Arlington, and Ray Sutter forming a protective circle around Cal Hamilton was enough to make him want to scream. What were these guys doing here? He knew they were all regular patrons of Chester’s, and that Cal, Joey, and Greg had been part of the search team that had discovered Liana’s body, so maybe it made sense that Cal had contacted them to ask for help in finding his wife, but was that really Gordon Lipsman sitting off by himself in the corner? “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked his daughter’s drama teacher.

  “I was in private rehearsals with Greg and Peter for the school play when Joey called him and said Fiona Hamilton had gone missing,” the teacher explained with an indignant stiffening of his back. “Greg said they’d meet him here, and I decided to tag along. In case I could be of assistance.”

  “And you?” John asked Ray Sutter. “Please tell me you haven’t been driving under the influence again.”

  Ray Sutter, roughly forty years old and in need of a good shave, turned his droopy eyes toward the sheriff. He had a long, lived-in face and a head of unruly brown hair and always looked as if he’d either just crawled out of bed or was looking for one to climb into. “I heard about Fiona,” he said, the slight slur in his voice capsizing his valiant attempt to sound wounded by the sheriff’s suspicions. “Thought I’d stop by, volunteer my services.”

  John’s gaze shifted toward Peter Arlington.

  “Obviously, if Mrs. Hamilton’s disappearance has anything to do with Liana’s murder, then I want to be involved,” the boy offered without waiting to be asked.

  Talk about the blind leading the blind, John thought, motioning to Cal Hamilton. “Okay, that’s it. You’re coming to the station with me.”

  “What for? We can talk here,” Cal said.

  “You’re under arrest, Cal.”

  “What?”

  “What are you talking about?” Joey Balfour pushed a lock of dark, greasy hair away from his forehead. John immediately noticed a cut above his left eye and a small bruise by the side of his mouth. “You’re arresting a man because his wife is missing? On what charge?”

  A few days ago, John might have been upset at the effrontery of a punk kid mouthing off to him in this fashion. But tonight he found such teenage posturing amusing, even comical. “Assault,” he barked, watching Joey take a step back. “Speaking of which, what happened to your face?”

  Joey raised a hand to his chin. “Walked into a door,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

  “That bitch told you I assaulted her?” Cal demanded.

  “What bitch?” Gordon Lipsman asked, the color draining from his face.

  “You found her?” Ray Sutter said.

  John ignored them both. “Do you deny barging into Kerri Franklin’s house and striking her?” he asked Cal.

  “I barely touched her, for Christ’s sake. Did she tell you that psycho kid of hers threatened to shoot me?”

  Greg laughed.

  John shook his head. The evening was moving beyond the ridiculous into the surreal. “Let’s talk about this at the station, shall we?”

  “Shall we? Shall we?” Cal mimicked. “Are you crazy, Sheriff? My wife is missing and there’s a killer on the loose.”

  “We’ll talk at the station,” John repeated.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re going to do to find my wife.”

  “Exactly how long has your wife been missing?” John asked, trying to diffuse the situation before taking Cal into custody.

  “I called her from work. She didn’t answer the phone. I came home. She wasn’t here.”

  “So, you’re saying she was here when you left for work,” John reiterated.

  “Yes.”

  “Which means she’s only been gone a few hours. She could be at the movies.”

  “She’s not at the movies.”

  “You seem awfully sure.”

  “I am sure.” Cal Hamilton began angrily pacing back and forth in the confined space. “She hates movies. She doesn’t have any money. She doesn’t like crowds.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t like you.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That we need to continue this discussion at the station.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’m not giving you a choice.” John placed his hand purposefully over the gun in his holster.

  “Shit,” Cal said. “Another gun.”

  “Come on, Sheriff,” Ray Sutter intervened. “The guy’s upset. Surely you can understand that.”

  John recalled how upset Ray Sutter had been the night he drove his car into the ditch not far from where Liana’s body was later discovered. And now, here he was again. “Oh, I understand that. What I can’t understand is what you guys are still doing here. I’m tempted to arrest the lot of you.”

  “We’re just trying to help,” Gordon Lipsman said.

  “What’s that old show-business expression?” John asked pointedly. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you?”

  Gordon Lipsman blanched. He looked toward his brown, tasseled loafers.

  “Look, there’s not much anyone can do tonight,” John continued. He didn’t want trouble. Not from the town drunk, a couple of teenage toughs, and a wimpy, high school drama teacher. Where was his backup anyway? He’d called for another car on the drive over. What was taking so long? �
�Go home, people. Get a good night’s sleep. If you feel you have to do something, you can check out the mall on your way home.”

  “My wife isn’t at the goddamn mall. I’m telling you—”

  “And I’m telling you: You’re under arrest. Now turn around and put your hands behind your back,” John instructed, unhooking his handcuffs from his belt to show he meant business. He’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but clearly some show of force had become necessary. “Come on, Cal. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”

  “Fuck you,” Cal said, even as he turned around and extended his arms behind his back.

  Thank God, John thought as he slipped the cuffs around Cal’s thick wrists. He made a mental note of the scratches on Cal’s hands, wondering if they’d come from tearing up Kerri’s place or something more sinister.

  “Is that really necessary, Sheriff?” Gordon Lipsman asked, his eyes still on his shoes.

  “Go home,” John said again, waiting until they’d left the house before ushering Cal outside. A police cruiser pulled up as the last of their cars departed. About fucking time, John thought, leading Cal to the curb. What he said was “Read Mr. Hamilton his rights and take him to the station. The charge is assault.”

  “You’re not coming?” Cal asked John as the second officer pushed him into the backseat of the cruiser.

  “I think we could all use some time to cool off and calm down,” John said. “I’ll see you in the morning. Maybe by then, Mrs. Hamilton will be back to bail you out.”

  “And if she isn’t?”

  “We’ll file a missing persons report and start looking.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t be so relaxed if it was your wife who was missing,” Cal said from the backseat of the cruiser, and John might have smiled had Cal not added ominously, “Or your daughter.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just thinking out loud.” Cal Hamilton sank back in his seat, stared out the front window, refused to acknowledge the sheriff further.

  “Lock him up,” John directed the other officer with a loud knock on the hood of the car with the palm of his hand.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” he heard the deputy say as he threw the car into gear.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cal said dismissively as they pulled away from the curb.

  For several minutes John stood staring at the pavement, debating whether he should go down to the station and question Cal further. But he doubted he’d learn anything more of value tonight, and he knew he should probably go home, try to get a good night’s sleep. If Fiona Hamilton was, in fact, missing, then he had an exhausting day ahead of him. It wouldn’t take long before the press got wind of her disappearance, and pretty soon he’d be up to his eyeballs in reporters from neighboring counties, and the mayor would be on his back again, deriding his instincts, his dedication, his ability. John had been in law enforcement almost twenty years, and twits like Sean Wilson were still questioning his worth. Maybe because he routinely questioned it himself, John realized, understanding that if a serial killer was indeed in their midst and he apprehended him, then he’d no longer be regarded as an overweight, over-the-hill sheriff of a backwater, little southern town. Was that really how others saw him? he wondered. And did he have the strength to alter that perception?

  A woman’s voice sliced through the night air. “Sheriff?”

  He turned toward the sound. “Mrs. Crosbie.”

  “Please call me Sandy.”

  He tried to smile. “What can I do for you, Sandy?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “For now. I may need to speak to you again tomorrow.”

  “Of course. Anything I can do to help. Sheriff,” she began again before he could turn away.

  “Yes?”

  “That phone call I had before …”

  “Yes?”

  “It was from Rita Hensen.”

  The school nurse, John thought, picturing the tiny woman. It had been John who’d unwound the cord from around her husband’s neck three years ago, and the sight of his lifeless body hanging from the shower rod was something he doubted he’d ever be able to completely erase from his memory. “Is there a problem?”

  “Well, I’m not sure whether I should be telling you this …”

  “Telling me what?”

  “I don’t want to get Brian into trouble. He’s a very sweet boy, very sensitive, and I’m sure he hasn’t done anything wrong, but with everything that’s been happening …”

  “Mrs. Crosbie … Sandy,” John corrected. “What is it you’re trying to tell me?”

  “Rita just called. She’s very upset.”

  “Has Brian done something?” This was like pulling teeth, John thought. Except more painful.

  “That’s just it. She’s not sure. He won’t talk to her.”

  “So what makes her think anything’s wrong?”

  Again Sandy hesitated. Then the words tumbled out in a rush, as if spilled from a glass. “Well, he’s been very uncommunicative ever since Liana’s vigil. Clearly something has been bothering him, but he wouldn’t discuss it. At first Rita thought the whole thing had just churned up memories of his father’s death. He hasn’t been sleeping well. He’s up at all hours. Sometimes he leaves the house in the middle of the night.”

  “What happened tonight?” John asked, knowing there was a more specific reason for Rita’s call.

  “Brian went out earlier without telling her where he was going. He was gone for well over an hour, and when he came back, he headed straight for the bathroom. Rita heard the water running for the longest time, and when he finally came out, she saw that he’d rinsed out his shirt, and …”

  “And?”

  “And she thought that was very curious because he never does stuff like that, and that’s when she saw a few red drops on the floor and realized it was blood.”

  “She’s sure it was blood?”

  “That’s what I said. She said she’s a nurse, she knows what blood looks like. She also said there were bruises on Brian’s hands and scratches on his face.”

  “He could have tripped. He could have gotten into a fight. He could have walked into a door,” John ventured, thinking of Joey Balfour. What a night this was turning out to be. “There are any number of reasonable explanations. We shouldn’t go jumping to conclusions.” But even as he spoke the words, John was wondering if it was possible that Brian Hensen was somehow involved in Fiona Hamilton’s disappearance, that he’d somehow managed to lure her from her home, that he might actually have killed her, that this shy, sensitive seventeen-year-old boy whose father had committed suicide three years earlier could also have murdered Liana Martin and Candy Abbot. Was it possible?

  “That’s what I tried to tell her,” Sandy said.

  “What?”

  “What you said—that there were any number of explanations, that she shouldn’t go jumping to conclusions.”

  “What was Brian’s explanation?”

  “There wasn’t one. When Rita questioned him about it, he called her a bunch of names and stormed out of the house.”

  “Does she have any idea where he went?”

  Sandy shook her head. “He took the car. She’s beside herself because she thinks he might have been drinking.”

  “Shit,” John said. How many times had he said that tonight?

  “I didn’t know whether to tell you.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “I don’t want to get Brian into trouble.”

  “Sounds like he’s already in trouble.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Find him,” John said simply.

  “And then what?”

  John shook his head. He hated conversations that ended with And then what?

  TWENTY-THREE

  He spent the better part of the next hour driving through the carelessly laid-out grid that was Torrance. Whoever had designed this place should be shot, John thought,
knowing no formal planning had been involved in the town’s creation, that Torrance had more or less designed itself, beginning as a few widely scattered homesteads and expanding as its population increased. It followed no particular course, spilling like loose flesh from the top of a girdle into whatever empty spaces it could find.

  John executed another perfect three-point turn at the end of yet another dead-end road, shaking his head in bemused wonderment at his ineptitude. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know his way around. He did. But it was late, he was getting tired, there were no streetlights, and the starless sky was the kind of dark your eyes never got used to. How was he supposed to find anyone?

  It was ironic, he thought, that he’d begun the evening searching for one man and was ending it looking for another. On one end of the search was Cal Hamilton, a brute and a bully, all balls and no brain. On the other was Brian Hensen, smart, shy, and sensitive. Could one be more different from the other? And was there a link between the two? Was it possible that Brian Hensen was in any way connected to Fiona Hamilton’s disappearance, and by extension to Liana Martin’s death? God, he hoped not. Surely that family had suffered enough already.

  Once again his thoughts returned to that afternoon three years ago when he’d answered the phone to hear the flat tones of a fourteen-year-old boy summoning him to a modest house on Cherry Drive. “Sheriff Weber,” the voice had said without inflection, “this is Brian Hensen. Could you come over, please. My father is dead. I can’t cut him down.”

  The senior Brian Hensen’s face was remarkably similar in shape and bone structure to that of his son, although Brian’s face was delicate where his father’s had been coarse, his hair lighter, his skin fairer, his eyes a paler shade of blue. Neither could be considered handsome—their noses too broad, their chins too weak—but they were perfectly respectable faces nonetheless. There was just something missing, a focus perhaps, and in its place lingered a sense of distraction that had been passed from father to son.

  The senior Brian Hensen had suffered from depression all his life, succumbing to its ravages three years earlier, as one succumbs to any terminal illness. Some people had turned up their noses, called him a coward, said he chose the easy way out. But mental illness had robbed Brian Hensen of choices. Would people be so judgmental about someone who died of pneumonia, John wondered, or gave in to the constant and debilitating pain of cancer? Pain was pain, he thought, his eyes searching the deserted roadside for any sign of Brian’s black Civic.