Somebody's Daughter

by David Bell

  “What’s the matter?” Angela asked.

  Twitchell pointed at the computer for Griffin’s benefit. “This is Michael Frazier’s,” he said. He looked at Angela. “What does he use this for?”

  “Mostly for work.” Angela wondered what on earth could be on there that would merit comment by the police? Even if Michael occasionally looked at porn, so what? Didn’t all men?

  “No one else uses it?” Twitchell asked. “You don’t?”

  “Almost never. I have my own.”

  Twitchell spoke to Griffin. “The desktop has almost all work stuff. Reports, spreadsheets, files. None of it seems relevant to us.”

  “But?” Griffin said, prompting him.

  He looked at Angela, his brown eyes magnified by the glasses. “I looked at his social media sites. I guess he’s only on Facebook, right? No Twitter account. No Instagram or Tumblr?”

  “That’s it. Michael doesn’t really like that stuff. He always says he’s going to deactivate his account and walk away. He thinks it’s a time suck.”

  “Well, it is,” Twitchell said. “I agree.” He looked back at the screen. “I checked his search history. Most of it’s pretty mundane. Baseball scores. He must like baseball. It looks like he’s a Reds fan—sorry. They’re not very good these days. Then there’s weather. Stocks. More work stuff.”

  “Is something wrong?” Angela asked. “You didn’t call us in here just to give us a rundown on Michael’s browsing habits.”

  Twitchell leaned back in the chair and folded his arms across his chest. The springs squeaked as he adjusted his weight, tilting his head as though considering Angela in some kind of new light. “Are you sure your husband hasn’t had any contact with Erica Frazier recently? You just told us you thought he hadn’t. You told us he didn’t know about the child, whether she’s his or not.”

  “I’ve told you what I know,” Angela said. She felt the return of the twisting steel worm of doubtful jealousy, a wriggling within her chest.

  Twitchell uncrossed his arms and pointed at the screen. “The only thing that stood out in your husband’s browser history is the number of times he’s visited Erica Frazier’s Facebook page. It looks like it’s a somewhat frequent occurrence.”

  Angela’s feet propelled her forward, around the side of the desk until she stood next to Twitchell. He showed her the history, and she saw the evidence.

  “In fact,” Twitchell said, “when you just type ‘Facebook’ into the search bar, it completes the URL for Erica’s page.” Twitchell did that very thing, and Angela saw the rest of the URL fill in after the backslash with Erica’s name. “That means he must go there a lot.”

  “Are they friends? What have they said to each other?” Angela asked.

  “Well, he’s logged out. But you said you knew the password.”

  “Sure.” Angela leaned down and entered Michael’s log-in information. When she hit the RETURN button, she saw the message pop up, telling her the log-in had failed. She tried again, her hands shaking ever so slightly. And again the log-in failed. “I thought I knew it.”

  “Do you think he changed the password?” Griffin asked.

  “He might have. He must have.”

  “So we can’t tell if he exchanged any messages with her through Facebook. And he’s logged out of his e-mail account. Do you know the password for that?”

  “I . . . Let me try.” She leaned close to Twitchell to type it in. As she did, she smelled body odor and something like fried food, the product of the man spending his entire day running around in the heat while trying to find a missing child.

  When she entered the password she thought worked for Michael’s e-mail account, it also failed. After everything that had happened that day, she still felt surprised.

  She straightened up, feeling the eyes of both detectives trained on her.

  “Would he keep the passwords written down somewhere?” Griffin asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Does he have any other devices?” Twitchell asked. “An iPad? Another computer?”

  “No.” She then added, “Not that I know of. Just a phone, and that’s with him.”

  “You just tried to call him out there in the foyer, right?” Griffin asked. “No answer, I guess.”

  “No. Just voice mail.”

  “Maybe you’d better try him again,” Twitchell said. “We’d really like to know where they are.”

  But Angela refused to move. Her eyes scanned across the screen, taking in all the folders on Michael’s computer desktop. She saw a number of things that held no interest for her, the work items listed by Twitchell. A pair of folders devoted to his fantasy baseball and football teams.

  Angela couldn’t have said what she was looking for. Anything that helped her make sense of the evening. Or her husband’s behavior.

  Her eye stopped on a folder labeled “Photos.”

  She almost turned away. What could she possibly see there?

  But she remembered Erica sharing that wedding photo. If Michael had been visiting her Facebook page, he must have seen it along with the handful of other photos Erica allowed to be seen by everyone. Right?

  She slid the mouse around until she landed on the correct folder. And clicked.

  Twitchell looked on next to her, his face patient, his large gut giving him the aura of a placid Buddha. Angela opened the file of photos, watched them pop up into a grid on the screen. She didn’t know what she was looking for.

  Angela knew she’d gone to Davenport County and got into it with Erica just over a year ago, which meant the wedding photo that set everything off was posted around the same time. She scrolled through the photos to the previous year and looked through them.

  She saw a photo of herself, a casual shot Michael took one morning as Angela made coffee. Her hair was messy and she wore a bathrobe, but her smile was bright and genuine. She loved the way she looked in that photo. Loved the way Michael captured her. The photo felt intimate, a sneak peek at their lives only the two of them ever saw. Seeing the photo that way made her want to shut the computer and turn away, to quit looking for things that probably weren’t there.

  “Mrs. Frazier?” Griffin said. “Maybe we should call your husband again instead of—”

  “Damn it,” Angela said.

  It was there. The wedding photo Erica posted, in Michael’s file of personal photos. He’d captured it from Facebook and kept it.

  Why, Michael? Why?

  chapter

  eighteen

  9:41 P.M.

  “My God, Erica.”

  Michael kneeled down on the floor next to Tolliver, whose body was rigid, his face etched with pain.

  “Oh, my,” he said, over and over. “Oh, my. Oh, my.”

  “Just breathe,” Michael said. “Breathe.”

  Tolliver started huffing, his cheeks puffing out as he took in and let out air like a locomotive engine.

  “That hurt,” he said.

  “You should be okay,” Michael said. “It does hurt, but it shouldn’t have caused you any permanent damage.” Michael leaned over and looked at the spot on Tolliver’s pant leg where Erica had placed the gun and zapped him. “I don’t see anything there.”

  “Oh, my,” he said again.

  Michael looked back over his shoulder at Erica who stood behind him, her face a mixture of confusion and sadness. She still held the stun gun in her right hand, and Michael regarded it the way he would an angry, snarling dog. “Could you put that away?” he said. “Back in your pocket.”

  She looked down at her hand. It appeared she didn’t recognize herself, as though the hand and the stun gun belonged to someone else, something detached from her own body and mind. She finally moved and slid it back into her pocket. “I’m sorry, Michael,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. He’s not answering our questions
. He’s not helping us. And time is a-wasting.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Tolliver said, his voice regaining strength. “I don’t.”

  “Why don’t you go get him some water, Erica? And maybe a pillow to put under his head. Or a cold washcloth.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.

  “Just go get those things. Please?”

  Erica moved slowly, her feet shuffling over the carpet. The use of the stun gun seemed to have taken something out of her. Maybe it served as the last powerful act of a long day, a moment when she was able to summon a final reserve of energy and lash out at someone. Anyone.

  Or maybe the violence of her action disturbed her so much—as it disturbed Michael—that she couldn’t process it. Michael saw the way she looked at her hand and the stun gun, the sense of dislocation and detachment.

  None of it felt real. None of it.

  When Erica was gone, Michael placed his hand behind Tolliver’s head and helped him to a sitting position. Color started to return to the man’s face, and Michael felt relieved he hadn’t suffered a heart attack or stroke when the stun gun jolted his body.

  “Better?” Michael asked.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  From the kitchen, Michael heard the sound of a cabinet opening, followed by water running out of the tap. He took that chance to lean in close to Tolliver and speak in a low voice. “What were you going to say before she did that to you? You started to say something about the past few days.”

  Tolliver reached down and gently rubbed his thigh where the gun had made contact with his body. “I don’t know. This isn’t worth it.”

  “Just tell me. A child is missing. A nine-year-old child. That’s why I’m here, to help find this girl. That’s it. It’s urgent. She’s been gone all day, and that’s not good. If you might know something, please share it with me. She won’t do anything else, I promise. I won’t let her.”

  Tolliver considered Michael, giving him a sideways glance. The tap shut off in the kitchen, but Erica didn’t reappear. “Felicity has missed her last three rehearsals,” he said. “It’s summer, I know, but she’s never missed so much before. I called the house after the second missed one, and Erica said Felicity wasn’t feeling well. But then she was out with Erica this morning, walking the dog in the park.” He leaned in closer. “Where no one saw the girl.”

  “Are you saying—?”

  “Michael?” Erica called from the other room.

  “I told the police this,” Tolliver said.

  “Michael! Come see this.”

  Michael stood up, leaving Tolliver sitting on the floor.

  But the music teacher reached up and grabbed Michael’s arm.

  “I’m worried about Felicity. About the environment she’s in.”

  Michael pulled free and went to find Erica.

  chapter

  nineteen

  9:45 P.M.

  The room grew silent, awkwardly so.

  Even the detectives, cops who had probably seen a little bit of everything in their careers and who were there because a child had disappeared, seemed not to know what to say or do in the face of Angela’s discomfort.

  “I don’t think I understand any of this,” Angela said.

  She thought back over the past year, over the months in which, yes, things in their marriage hadn’t always been roses and sunshine. But never once did she think they would split up or look elsewhere. They’d planned their vacation to Georgia for that very reason, to get away, to achieve a sense of renewal. Both of them looked forward to it. Or so she thought.

  She shook her head, aware that the police officers were still there, considering her.

  No, she said to herself. No doubt. Michael looked forward to the trip too. They’d talked about it, made plans together—quiet dinners, walks on the beach. Time alone for an evening drink.

  Time after that to try to conceive a child.

  No. Michael was all in. She knew him too well, knew how honest he was. When she first met him, almost ten years ago, she had admired how forthright he was about his marriage to Erica. He said they’d met when they were young, married quickly after college. A mistake, Michael told her, a starter marriage. An attempt to feel like grown-ups when they really weren’t. He never ducked the blame with her, never tried to shift things by demonizing Erica. He said they weren’t compatible after all, that they were so temperamentally different, a long-term relationship wouldn’t end up working. Too much drama, not enough stability and reliability. Erica zigzagged through the world, contemplating career changes, wanting to move constantly, never settling on one thing for very long, whereas Michael wanted life to go in a straight line. He developed goals and pursued them. He hated distractions and detours.

  She also came to know over the years that Michael seemed to want to pretend the marriage to Erica never happened. Angela understood why he acted that way. The world saw him as competent, levelheaded, intelligent. The marriage to Erica failed to jibe with the way others—his family, his work associates, their friends—saw him. Angela didn’t care about the marriage most of the time, hadn’t thought about it much since her ill-fated trip to Erica’s workplace.

  But Michael was clearly still thinking of it to some extent.

  Was that why he wanted to help Erica now?

  Angela sighed. Whatever struggles they worked through, they’d always been honest with each other.

  But she looked at the computer screen, the photo of Michael and Erica. Had they really been as honest as she’d thought?

  And hadn’t she kept her own secrets? Not telling him about her run-in with Erica?

  Relief came for all of them when Twitchell’s phone rang. He stood up, his stomach bumping against the edge of the desk. He eased himself around Angela and went out in the hallway, the phone pressed to his ear.

  Angela sat in the vacated chair, letting it take her weight while she leaned back as far as it would go.

  Griffin remained standing, and she offered Angela a sympathetic smile, one that looked much more real and authentic than the one she’d delivered on the porch. “Is everything okay in your marriage?” she asked. “Any changes in your husband’s behavior lately?”

  “Besides different passwords and a photo of him and his ex-wife, no.” She picked at a loose thread on her jeans. “That’s just it, Michael never changes. He really doesn’t. He’s rock steady. We started dating just a few months after he left Erica, just about a month after the divorce was final. Michael never really played the field, never cheated. On me or her. He’s a serial monogamist. He works hard for his dad’s company. His company now. He never colors outside the lines.”

  “Maybe that got boring. For him.”

  Angela shook her head. “No. He’s fun too. He and I laugh all the time. This past winter, he surprised me with a weekend in St. Thomas. He arranged it all. Champagne in the room, flowers.” Angela smiled at the memory. “We had a good time, I promise.” She pointed at the computer screen. “This just isn’t like him.”

  “And you’re happy with everything?” Griffin asked.

  “I am. We both work too much. We sometimes go in opposite directions.” She felt comfortable opening up to the female detective. “We’re trying to have a child. We’ve been trying for a while. It’s kind of been a struggle.”

  Griffin nodded, her lips pursed in sympathy. But then the detective’s eyes roamed over Angela’s head and studied the photos hanging on the wall behind her. Angela spun around in the chair, trying to see what could have caught Griffin’s attention.

  The detective came closer, her index finger raised as she looked at the photos. “That’s . . . Is it?”

  “What?” Angela asked.

  “Lynn Frazier. In the picture there with your husband. I heard from Erica they were related.”

  “Yes, she’s Michae
l’s sister. Do you know her?”

  “Not personally,” Griffin said. “I’m sorry. I know her band. Lantern Black. Before today, I knew Lynn Frazier from Lantern Black was from Cottonsville, but I didn’t make the connection until Erica told me. Michael’s sister is a rock star. I thought they were going to be the next Arcade Fire or My Morning Jacket, but then they broke up out of the blue. What does she do now? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I don’t mind,” Angela said. “The band officially broke up a few years ago. She has a house here in town. She still does session work. Nashville, even LA. She writes songs for other artists. She’s been talking about starting a new band or making a solo record, but I’m not sure where she is in that process.”

  “I guess she doesn’t have to worry about money.”

  “Definitely not. She made enough to live on the rest of her life before she was twenty-five. I’m not sure how her dad felt about it.”

  “How so?”

  “He was a buttoned-up businessman, so he didn’t really get the rock and roll lifestyle. Michael went into the family business, and Lynn followed her own path. She had a little of the black-sheep thing going on.”

  “How does she get along with your husband?” Griffin asked.

  “Well. I think they were close as kids, especially in high school. Michael has told me about the times they spent talking late at night, the way they tried to help each other navigate life with their parents. We don’t see her as much as we should now, but they talk pretty regularly. Text or phone call. Their dad died suddenly last year, so that brought them closer. Unfortunately, when you grieve with someone, you feel a tighter bond with them.”

  “How do you get along with her?”

  “We get along well. She had a health crisis about five years ago. Cervical cancer. The whole family rallied around her, and she was very appreciative of what we all did for her. We’re family, so of course we’d do it. But, again, that’s one of those things that makes people closer. I got to know her well when she was recovering from surgery. It’s funny. . . .”