—It becomes public, Keith is saying. There’ll be a lot of attention. It’s a whole other level. That’s not something I want to do if I can avoid it. And we think you can help us keep from having to do it.
—Help us, Will says. Tell us where she is.
—Do you know? Julia Flax asks her son.
He shakes his head.
—We think you do.
—Why? Julia asks, turning back to face Keith. Why do you think that?
—Will, he says.
Will tells her.
—You two ran off together? she asks. Eloped?
—No, ma’am. We broke up. I haven’t seen her today. I swear to God.
—Did she change her mind? Will asks. Is that it? Maybe she made you mad and . . . Anyone would understand that. You didn’t mean to hurt her, but . . . it happens all the time. We’ve all lost our tempers. Made mistakes.
—Takes a man to stand up and own them, Keith adds.
—Julian, his mom says. Look at me. Did something happen? What are you not telling us?
—Mama, I swear on your life I haven’t even seen her today.
—That’s good enough for me, she says. He wouldn’t swear on my life if he were lying. Call your CART.
—I already have, Keith says, but I just feel like there’s some things you’re not telling us. It’s not too late to tell us the truth.
—If she’s in trouble and you didn’t do all you could to help us find her, Will says, to help her . . . You could get in a lot of trouble. Maybe even go to jail.
—Do you know where she is? Keith asks. We’ll help you—no matter what’s happened. We’ll take care of you. We’ve just got to find her and take care of her too.
—I swear I haven’t seen her. I swear I don’t know where she is. I’ll take a lie detector test. I’m telling the truth.
—Test him, Julia says. He’s telling the truth. No doubt in my mind.
22
White.
Plush.
Large.
Lacey.
Immaculate.
Shelby’s bedroom is a spotless, colorless, seemingly soulless fortress of solitude and whiteness.
White carpet. White drapes. White linen, atop of which are white polar bears and poodles. White dresser and vanity. White laptop on a white desk.
—Any idea what her password is?
Taylor sits in a white chair, Shelby’s laptop open on the desk in front of her.
Marc shakes his head.
—No idea. What’re you doing?
—Gonna check her computer.
He nods, realizing it’s a violation that wouldn’t even occur to her under any other circumstance.
Standing in the white room, Marc is struck again by just how pathologically white it really is. Is this Taylor’s doing or Shelby’s? If Shelby’s, is she making a statement about her overly pristine, overprotected, hermetically sealed existence?
But perhaps he’s being too harsh. It’s not as if she has no color in her life. She has both a rec room and an art studio of her own, full of color and life and vibrancy. Still, her bedroom is always so perfect, so something from a Hollywood set or out of an interior design catalog. It means something.
No wonder she ran.
Or if she didn’t, why didn’t she?
Savannah. Has to be. She submits to her mother’s insanity and won’t let herself really live because of what happened to Savannah, because of what it would do to Taylor if something happened to her.
—What have you tried? he asks.
—Our zip code, her birthday, variations of pet names over the years. It’s five characters.
He thinks about it.
What’s she into?
He can’t come up with much, and it hurts his heart that this sweet, smart, sad, artistic kid he’s been getting to know is still such a mystery to him.
Is she not into much or do I really not know her that well?
—Favorite book? Character? TV show? Movie? Band? he offers.
She tries a few. Comes up empty.
Don’t just think about Shelby, he tells himself. What are teenage girls into?
One word. Boys.
—Try Jules, he says.
She does. And she’s in.
—Am I right to try this? she asks. I’ve got do something—besides destroy another room.
He nods and gives her a small smile.
—She’ll understand, he says.
She nods, and begins her search in earnest.
Regardless of its ultimate fruitfulness, he’s grateful she has something to occupy her.
As she clicks and scrolls and navigates, he thinks about how responsible he feels for her. And not just now, not just during a serious crisis like a missing child, but all the time. At differing times, when it looked like their relatively new relationship was going to be stillborn or die in infancy, she had been devastated, utterly and completely shattered, unable to function, feeling the full futility of what she was convinced was going to be her future—a life lived alone. Marc was her best last hope of making it work with a man, and she knew it. This often led to serious contemplations of suicide.
How can he not feel responsible for her? How can a novelist, an empathetic man whose life is spent channeling the emotions and experiences of others, not be distraught when she’s distraught, hopeless when she’s hopeless? How can he not feel as if he would die if anything he did in any way led her to kill herself?
—Anything? he asks.
She shakes her head.
—Oh my God.
—What is it?
—She’s deleted everything.
—Everything?
—Everything. All documents, all communications—email, IMs, webmail—even her journal.
He steps over and looks for himself—and confirms that all Shelby’s data is missing.
—Why would she erase everything? she asks.
—To hide something, he says.
—What?
He shrugs.
—No idea.
—From me?
He doesn’t answer, and they fall silent.
And then, out of the vacuousness, a truly terrifying thought surfaces.
What if it wasn’t Shelby at all, but her abductor?
23
Lanier Landing.
Late afternoon.
Sinking sun.
Keith and Will stand not far from Shelby’s car, watching as Keisha Bowers pulls up in the white DOC truck and parks at the end of the short driveway.
From inside the truck comes the squawk of amplified ten-code transmissions from Potter Correctional Institution, while on the back, bloodhounds in dog boxes pace and turn and whimper in anticipation.
—Can’t help but think we should’ve done this a lot sooner, Keith says.
—We haven’t wasted a single second, Will says. We’ve done everything we could as fast as we could.
Leaving the truck running, Keisha climbs out and marches toward the two men.
In black boots, fatigues, and a short-sleeve prison polo, the thick, square, flat-chested woman looks more like a man than most of the male correctional officers at PCI, her corrections ball cap and large dark shades adding to the effect.
Her caramel and cinnamon skin, visible only on her face, neck, and arms, glistens beneath a thick sheen of sweat, and she wipes her face often, steepling her fingers over her nose, sliding down and over, then drying them on her sleeves.
—Sheriff, she says. Will.
They nod at her.
—Thanks for coming, Keith says.
—This the little Summers girl’s car?
—Uh huh, Will says.
—She the last one to drive it?
—Not sure. No way to know for sure.
—Best guess? she says.
—We really have no idea, Keisha, Keith says. Why?
—Gotta obtain her scent. Took a couple a scent articles from her house—pillowcase and a shirt she wore yesterday, but if she was th
e last one to drive the car, I’d swab the steering wheel and seat for the freshest trace.
—Can you use both? Will asks. What happens if it’s two different scents?
—If I had the one here that I don’t want them following for a scent discretion that’d be fine, but since I don’t they wouldn’t know which one to follow.
Ten years the junior of the two men, Keisha had worked with them at the sheriff’s department before becoming the K-9 lieutenant at PCI. Tough, with no tolerance for foolishness, Keisha, who had practically raised herself, had the respect and good regard of everyone who knew her—and their appreciation for leading Tupelo High’s softball team to a state championship.
She scans the area, taking in the surroundings, the terrain.
—If she got in a boat, I can’t help you, she says, but if she went in the water, I can probably figure where she came out—if she came out. Problem is, moving water carries the scent away, so I’ll have to work to keep ’em on the real one. If she’s in the swamps, we’ll find her, but my dogs can only go about two miles before I switch ’em out—something I usually do on dirt roads or loggin’ trails. Have someone drive my truck ahead and switch ’em when we reach it. But ain’t no roads out there.
They follow her gaze across the wide river to the thick, green swamp on the other side.
—Goddamn, I hope she’s not in there, Keith says.
—Amen to that, Will says, shaking his head.
—I’ma find her wherever she is, Keisha says. Bet on that.
24
As Taylor continues to search futilely through Shelby’s empty computer, Marc slips into Shelby’s studio, her real room, and looks around.
Opposite the white room in every way, Shelby’s den is a chaotic explosion of color, an expression of an idiosyncratic soul. Intelligent. Interesting. Irreverent.
If she’s left any message behind, this is where it will be.
The smallish room has a leather loveseat on one wall, a home theater system with a huge wall-mounted TV on another, and built-in bookshelves on the remaining two with far more books than they were designed to hold. Stacked. Packed. Crammed. Stuffed.
In between and around and on top of everything are exquisite environmental and wildlife posters, printouts, and framed photographs. Among them, the slogans she’s now known for—some on bumper stickers and T-shirts, others angrily scrawled by hand.
Spill Cum, Not Blood.
No Drill, No Spill.
Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.
WWND? What Would Nature Do?
Ignore it and it WILL all go away.
Can you hear that Eco?
Love Your Mother!
Where do you think the environment is?
This is the real Shelby. Passionate hippie-chick environmentalist. Fire-breathing. Fuck the man and mouth-breathing fundamentalists.
Sinking into the soft, cool leather sofa, he studies the room, taking her in through it.
The sweet smell of candles and incense lingers in the air, every single fragrance, object, experience in the room an expression of who she is.
Mixed in among it all is Last Night in the Woods by Remington James, a stunning collection of North Florida photography. Each incredible image carefully and loving matted and framed and affixed to the walls.
The collection is extraordinary and he can see why Shelby so reveres Remington James—both for his photography and what he did in the woods to save lives and stop a pack of psychopaths that fateful night a while back.
Glancing toward the shelf to his right, he spots Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, and retrieves it, then returns to his seat. Flipping through the well-worn paperback, he smiles at the many dog-eared pages and underlined passages. When he reads the subtitle, Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, he realizes that’s something she’s mostly done herself.
She’s been saving herself in so many ways for so long. Not that Taylor’s been a bad mom, but her own not-inconsiderable deficits, not to mention the absence of a dad, have forced Shelby to at times parent herself.
Unbidden, unwelcome, he thinks he may never see her again, and it’s unbearable.
Standing quickly to return the book to the shelf, getting lightheaded and blinking back tears as he does, he notices, through the gap of the missing volume, something on the shelf behind the row of books.
It turns out to be instructions for cleaning oil off pelicans printed from an environmental web site, and most likely unintentionally slipped behind the books, but it gives him an idea, and he begins to search the shelves.
Within a few minutes, his violation of Shelby’s privacy nets an assortment of pictures, mementos, date memorabilia—movie ticket stubs, photo booth strips, a couple of concert tickets and programs—her vibrator, which made him regret even more having to do what he is doing, and two items that actually hold promise of helping: a small blue netbook computer and a New English Dictionary book safe.
He starts with the netbook.
Unlike her laptop, it has no password protection, so he’s inside looking around in moments, but it appears to be relatively new and has only the beginnings of a poem about the Apalachicola River and an impassioned essay on protecting North Florida in general and the Gulf and Apalachicola Bay in particular.
As ever, he is challenged and convicted by her dedication and tirelessness, and feels a mixture of admiration and guilt.
I’ve got to do more. Hell, just help her more. I will. As soon as she’s back, I’ll help her. It’d give me a chance to make a difference and us more time together. Please come home, angel. Please.
Inside the book safe, which he is able to open because he searched all the shelves—the safe itself was beside real dictionaries and writing books, while the key was hidden behind a teenage vampire series—he finds condoms, cash, two joints in a pill bottle, and a jump drive in the shape of an oak leaf.
Inserting the drive into the computer, he finds a file titled Journal.
Rejoining Taylor in Shelby’s room, he shows it to her.
—What is it? she asks. Her journal?
—Not just. Everything she wiped off her laptop, she pasted in this one file. She must’ve done it fast too. It’s a mess. Out of sequence. Out of context. But it looks to be everything—all her communications. Email, IMs, webmail, texts. I think her journal entries are still there too.
—You haven’t read it? she asks.
—No.
—I can’t. You’ll have to.
—Me? he asks, his voice rising.
—I can’t violate her privacy like that, she says.
—And I can?
—It’s different if it’s you. She’ll understand. It’s what you said.
He wonders if she wants him to read it because he’s expendable, because his days in their lives are numbered anyway.
—At least skim it, she says. See if anything in it might tell us where she is and who has her. Sit here. I need to pace.
She stands and he sits, and as he begins to examine the secret confessions of the teenage girl increasingly feeling like his daughter, she starts to pace around the room behind him as promised.
25
If you’re reading this, you’re a fucking creep. I mean it. This is private. Okay, sure, if it was truly private I wouldn’t be writing it down, and who knows, I might publish this one day, but that’s different, and you know it. Put my journal down and back away slowly you mental rapist motherfucker!!!!!!!!
Could my mom be any more ridiculous? I mean, god to the damn. I know she’s got serious childhood trauma, but why does she keep trying to make mine so traumatic too? I am so sick and tired of living in Taylor Sean Penitentiary. Will I EVER get paroled? I feel like the biggest douche on the little blue dot for even thinking it, but was Savannah’s early release a blessing? Is she the lucky one? Shit. Now I do feel like a fist full of douches. Makes me wonder again. How did it happen with me right there? Who took her and why? Why her and not me? Why
not both of us? What’s wrong with me? Did I really just ask that—why wasn’t I abducted? Really? REALLY? What the fuck is wrong with me? Of course I’m the lucky one. I’m sorry. Help me be better and more grateful and not such a lamo loser. Who was that directed to? Whoever’s listening!
Real. Random. Raw.
He’s glad Taylor’s not reading it.
As he scrolls through Shelby’s rants, he gains an even greater appreciation for and admiration of her. She’s pouring out, processing, feeling, experiencing, really working through things. It reminds him of why he writes, of just how therapeutic it really is.
There are no dates, no way to tell context or relation to anything else, and he’s truly trying to skim, to do as little violation as possible—all of which makes it all the more difficult to decipher.
He stops at some email exchanges with Julian she’s pasted into her journal. Having just inserted the text from the bodies of the messages, there’s no way to know when they were sent, but they seem old—going all the way back to when they first started dating, even though they appear late in the relative order of entries.
What’re you doing messing around with me? You lose a bet? Seriously, I want to know your intentions young man! :-) If you’re just fucking around, do it with someone else. Okay? No harm. No foul. Stop now. Let’s not go down this path if you’re not sure (and I mean certain) you want it. What’s the point? You know? Why start something we’re not going to finish? Why put ourselves through the hassle? I think we could be great friends. Let’s not fuck that up. Cool? Agree? Good.
WTF? I’m not messing with you. You know my intentions. I’m very serious about this, want to see where it goes. I thought you did too. I’m certain. Have you changed your mind? Where’s this coming from? Tell me. I don’t understand.
McKenzie told Santana you were still hung up on Rylee. Just using me since you couldn’t have her. That I’m either rebound girl or worse that you’re just trying to see if you can get me to give it up. I can answer that. No. You can’t. I won’t be rebound bitch. And I won’t be just some fuck holes.
The Remington James Box Set Page 46
