Somebody's Daughter

by David Bell

  The morning lightened around them as the sun rose. A chorus of birds chirped from the trees. A beautiful day except for everything else going on.

  “I told him about the music teacher and the woman he was with,” Mary Beth said.

  “They came here looking for Erica. Or Felicity. Or both. I’m not sure.”

  “Who were they? What were their names?” Angela asked. Despite the warming morning, she felt a chill on her back. Her lips felt cracked and dry.

  “I don’t know who the woman was,” Mary Beth said. “She sat in the car the whole time. But the guy is Felicity’s music teacher.” She looked around. At her feet. At the trees. At the sky. “Wayne. That’s his name. Wayne . . . Oliver?”

  “Tolliver?”

  “That’s it,” Mary Beth said. “When I told Jake, he got into the car and took off.”

  chapter

  sixty-five

  5:45 A.M.

  Griffin sat in the passenger seat of the car, the door open, her legs out, feet planted on the spongy grass. The sky continued to lighten, shifting from inky black to lighter gray with smears of purple and orange beginning to appear. At some point, someone had placed a warm paper cup of coffee in her hand—she had no idea where it came from—but she sipped it gratefully, feeling soothed and comforted by the drink.

  A pair of crime scene technicians entered the house accompanied by someone from the coroner’s office. Curious neighbors ringed the property and the street, summoned by the flashing lights and the sirens, their voices murmuring in the night. Across the way, Randi Friedman sat in the back of an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, while an EMT checked her blood pressure and other vital signs. Randi looked stunned, haunted, her stare distant and vacant. Griffin understood. She really did.

  As much as she wished to erase the image, Griffin could still see Todd Friedman place the gun beneath his chin, pull the trigger. . . .

  She could still see the red spray, the crumpling body. . . .

  She felt ill and tried to think of anything else. Her cats. A baseball game. A trip to the zoo.

  But she knew the pictures would always be there. She’d seen dead bodies before. Car accidents. Homicides. Even other suicides. But she’d never seen a head explode before her very eyes. Never felt the very life spraying out of another person.

  Twitchell separated himself from a knot of cops and walked over to her. He leaned against the top of the car, his posture a forced attempt at casualness. His tie hung loose and swung in the light breeze.

  “Feeling okay?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He nodded. “Did you remember anything else? Anything he said that would help us?”

  “I remember the smell of blood. And I’m pretty sure Friedman evacuated his bowels as he expired.”

  “But he didn’t say anything else?”

  “I told you everything I remember. Twice.”

  He nodded again, looking around. “They’re bringing in a team to search. They’re going to get into the crawl space, check the yard. See if it looks like anything was recently dug up. They’re already examining his car.”

  “Where did Phillips and Woolf go? They were here, and now they’re gone. Are they acting on a lead about Felicity?”

  “There’s something else,” Twitchell said, again trying to sound casual. But he couldn’t keep the curiosity and wonder out of his voice. “Get a load of this. We got a nine-one-one call from Erica Frazier’s house. Some kind of disturbance.”

  “Really?”

  “And guess who made the call. Michael Frazier.”

  “Is it about Felicity? Is she there?”

  “No idea. They’ll let us know soon.” He looked around the yard again. “They’re going to take those photos in, start trying to identify where they were taken and who the kids are. None of them appear to show the children in compromising positions. They look like they were taken from a distance, like he was spying on them and taking the pictures to look at later.”

  “You don’t know if that was his plan,” she said.

  “No, we don’t. And if a person of interest shoots himself when the police come by, we pay attention. It moves him up to being a suspect.”

  “And he has a history with the family,” Griffin said.

  “Yup.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about—”

  Her words were cut off by the trilling of Twitchell’s phone. He took it out of his pocket and checked the screen. “I have to take this.”

  He walked a few steps away, leaving Griffin alone with her thoughts again. She wished he’d stayed nearby.

  She drained the coffee in the cup, feeling the soothing warmth spread through her torso, and looked over at Randi Friedman again. The EMT was out of sight, leaving Randi alone as well. Griffin pushed herself out of the car and started over, hoping to offer a reassuring word to the shaken woman. Or, short of that, to offer the comfort of being with someone instead of just sitting alone.

  As she passed Twitchell, the phone still pressed to his ear, he snapped his fingers in her direction, an unusually harsh summons from her partner. She stopped and walked his way. She heard the last few words he spoke into the phone.

  “She’s here, yes. . . . I understand. . . . I’ll talk to her about it.”

  And then he ended the call. For a moment he stood there, the phone still clutched in his hand. Griffin imagined the worst.

  They’ve found the girl. . . . They’ve found her body. . . . All of it has been fruitless. . . .

  “That was Woolf,” he said. “Over at Erica Frazier’s house.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened?” he said, repeating her words. “Your little emotional, ill-timed jaunt to visit the Flowers family paid off. Big-time. The two of them broke into Erica Frazier’s house and attacked her. Congratulations. You really stepped in it this time. Up to your eyeballs.”

  chapter

  sixty-six

  5:53 A.M.

  The police made Michael and Erica wait inside the house. They retreated to the family room, Trixie at their feet, while the uniformed officers took the two women outside and placed them in the back of one of the cruisers. Michael heard one of them say a detective was on the way, and in the meantime, everyone should remain calm.

  They asked Michael and Erica if they needed medical attention, and they both declined. Michael’s back felt a little sore from crashing against the floor, but he didn’t think it was anything to worry about. His heart rate finally felt close to normal, and he looked forward to sitting down someplace safe. They’d already given a preliminary statement to the officers who arrived first, telling them how the two women burst in, accusing Erica of kidnapping. The officers listened with stoic calm and assured them the detectives would want to know even more when they arrived.

  Erica sat across the room while Michael slumped down on the couch. His mind raced. He wanted to look up at Erica but wasn’t sure he could without unleashing a barrage of questions. He was intensely aware of everything he wanted to know, while at the same time trying very hard to respect the hellish and emotional twenty-four hours she’d been through.

  But he couldn’t hold his tongue.

  “What’s that you were talking about back there?” he asked. “With those women? Were you just lying to them about a miscarriage? Tell me you were lying.”

  “I really want that cigarette now,” she said.

  “Erica, what miscarriage?”

  Erica looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. “No, I wasn’t lying.”

  “You had a miscarriage when you were married to me? My baby?”

  She nodded her head slowly, a barely perceptible movement.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Either that you were pregnant or that you’d miscarried?”

  “I didn’t know I was pregnant until . . .” She looke
d up. “It was a surprise to me. I kind of suspected, but I wasn’t certain. And I didn’t tell you because I wanted to be sure. And we were having so many problems.”

  “You were on the pill.”

  “I didn’t . . . You know I wasn’t always reliable with those things.”

  “And you didn’t tell me when it happened?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want you to think I was using that to hold on to you.” She kept her eyes trained on his, her gaze unwavering. “I may have wanted you to stay, but I didn’t want to be a charity case. I wasn’t going to have a husband who saw being with me as the same as handing a dollar to a homeless guy on the street. So I didn’t tell you about the miscarriage. And I didn’t tell you about Felicity. Look, the doctor told me it might be tough to get pregnant again after a miscarriage. Some women struggle, so I thought it was a long shot when we kept having sex up until the end. I must have gotten pregnant about six weeks or so before you left.”

  “So, what these women are saying isn’t true?” he asked. “You didn’t . . . kidnap or whatever their baby?”

  The moment stretched out with Erica saying nothing. Michael wondered if they were on the brink of a big revelation, a breakthrough, or a confession of some kind. But then Erica started shaking her head. “You have the nerve to ask me that,” she said. “To suggest I would do such a thing to a child.”

  “I don’t know, Erica. You had a miscarriage and a pregnancy I didn’t know about.”

  “That’s it with you, isn’t it?” she asked. “When push came to shove, you always had such low regard for me.”

  Michael wished he hadn’t asked her about the kidnapping accusation. It sounded insane as he said it, but he needed to know, to hear the denial from her own mouth. After every other revelation, he needed reassurance.

  But he couldn’t disagree with Erica’s assessment. He’d never seen her in the same light he saw Angela, never saw her as a full-fledged adult. He had to admit that based on what he saw and knew—the house, the child, the job—she must have changed in some ways, and he could no longer so easily place her in a box.

  “Okay, you’re right.” He felt chastened, but it didn’t ease his anger over being deceived about the two pregnancies. His children.

  “And you put up our wedding picture,” he said. “You said things that hinted . . . you weren’t over it. I saw that stuff even though we weren’t Facebook friends. Hell, you made it possible for everyone to see it.”

  “That was the tenth anniversary of our divorce, okay? I do have my weak moments. I’m not sitting around pining for you. You know me. Something comes into my mind and I share it, so I shared the photo.” She lifted her hands, indicating the room and the house they sat in. “It’s a lonely life here sometimes, even with a kid around.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “And now . . . I may be on my own in a way I could never have imagined.”

  chapter

  sixty-seven

  6:01 A.M.

  Angela told the two students she had to make a phone call, and they seemed more than happy to go back inside. Before they left, Katie offered to give Angela a ride on her way to work. She just needed to shower and dress and drink a few mugs of coffee in order to fully wake up. Angela thanked her, amazed at how easy and simple their lives seemed, and she wished she could go into the house and spend the day with them, losing herself in their carefree routines. But she knew she couldn’t.

  She was very glad to have her phone back. And Jake gone. She immediately called Michael, hoping to get a response.

  She did. He answered right away.

  “Where are you?” she asked before saying anything else.

  He paused briefly, then said, “I’m at Erica’s house. Actually, I’m outside of her house. We had a bit of a problem.”

  “A problem? What kind of problem?”

  “Angela, that can be explained. . . . It just got . . .”

  But Angela didn’t hear the rest. She felt a tightening knot in her chest, a not-so-gentle increase of pressure against her rib cage. “What are you doing at her house?” she asked.

  “It’s all about finding Felicity,” he said. “We needed to stop here on our way somewhere else. Erica is exhausted. She’s . . . Well, you can imagine how emotionally spent she is.”

  “Okay,” Angela said. “Fine.” She didn’t want to be a bitch, didn’t want to try to claim her problems were worse than those of a mother with a missing child. Even if the mother of the missing child was her husband’s ex and was spending time with him. “Are you safe? That’s what I’m concerned about. I haven’t been able to get ahold of you.”

  “I’m safe,” he said, but she could tell there was more. “Someone attacked Erica. And me. Kind of.”

  “Attacked?”

  “It’s a long story. Really. But this person saw Erica on the news or heard about her from the cops and found her address online. It’s not clear to me what it’s all about. But she blames Erica for her own daughter disappearing. Apparently she thinks Felicity is really her kid, who disappeared right after Erica and I split up.”

  “I’m not even going to pretend to understand that,” Angela said. She walked away from the house toward the alley, her shoes crunching over fallen leaves and twigs. A squirrel scattered at her approach, dashing up a thick tree trunk.

  “Well . . . I’m learning a lot of things.”

  “Join the club.”

  “She . . . Erica . . . Look, she just told me she had a miscarriage before we split up. My baby. That’s why these people—the mother and the grandmother—think Erica took their baby. Erica had miscarried and was distraught. Can you believe I didn’t know that?”

  “Are you really asking me that?” she said. “You didn’t know about Felicity either.”

  “You’re right. I know.”

  “Michael, there’s . . .” She stopped herself. Did she want to be that person, the one who told her husband everything she knew about his ex-wife? Did she want to fight dirty? “I’m not home, Michael. I went out looking for you. Or for Felicity. I needed to do something. I’m in Trudeau now, near the university.”

  Michael said nothing. She imagined she could hear the gears grinding in his head as she held the phone to her ear. “I can’t believe you did that. What if something happened to you? And you called Lynn and got her on me too?”

  “You get to have an adventure, and I don’t? And I’ve learned some things.” She decided to play her cards. She just wasn’t sure which order to play them in. It seemed too cruel to let him know that Erica may have been cheating on him at the end of their marriage. After all, how did she know she could believe Jake when he said it? He wanted Felicity to be his child, so wouldn’t it make sense for him to claim to be involved with Erica back then? But the news about Michael’s mother, she had that right from the source. Gail. “Did you know your mother was giving Erica money in the past year?”

  “Excuse me?” he said. “I don’t understand.”

  Angela explained about Felicity’s health scare and Erica’s request for money from Gail. “Your mom went along and gave her money. She even went and saw her from time to time. And do you know what made Erica cut off the relationship? Do you know when she stopped taking your mom’s calls or having anything to do with her?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t know they were talking to each other.”

  “Your mom told me she never told you about it. I guess she didn’t want to get you worked up over nothing. She didn’t want to disrupt our lives.”

  “She did not tell me,” Michael said again, trying to emphasize the point.

  “Erica stopped talking to your mom when your mom asked for a DNA test,” Angela said. “Your mom wanted to know, needed to know, that Felicity was really her grandchild before she got too attached or involved. And that’s when Erica cut her off.”

  A few exasperated, sputtering noises came thro
ugh the phone. Angela took a deep breath, trying her best to keep her cool.

  “I’ve never heard any of that,” he said.

  “I believe you,” Angela said. And she did. “But if Erica is right there, why don’t you go ask her about this? Why don’t you find out what game she’s really playing?”

  “Angela, I will. It’s all chaotic here—”

  “Wait. What’s the name of the guy you went to see? The teacher or whatever?”

  “Wayne Tolliver. Why?”

  “He was here, Michael. He came to this house. I’m at Felicity’s babysitter’s house. Never mind why. But he came here just two days ago, and he acted upset, like he was unhappy with Erica. Did he tell you anything? Does that make sense to you?”

  “I don’t know. He acted strange. He said Felicity had missed some music lessons, so maybe he was worried about that. He also ran away from us a couple of times.”

  “Ask Erica about all of this. Your mother. Everything. I’m going to call the detective and tell her this stuff about Wayne Tolliver.”

  chapter

  sixty-eight

  6:17 A.M.

  The cops remained outside. When Michael was off the phone, he looked out the front window, moving the blinds apart with two of his fingers. He saw the two women who had come through the door intent on attacking them sitting in the back of a police car. The detectives were standing outside, arms crossed, engaged in a discussion.

  The blinds snapped back into place.

  Erica was at the kitchen table, the dog at her feet. She sipped from a mug of coffee, the color still drained from her face. She looked like she’d aged five years since the previous evening when she appeared on his doorstep. But he told himself not to fixate on that, not to feel any more empathy for her until he understood what was really going on.

  Trixie’s tail thumped against the floor as Michael approached. The dog had decided she liked him, had tried her best to protect both of them when they were attacked.

  “Erica?”

  She looked up from the mug, her eyes bloodshot, the steam rising past her face. She didn’t say anything but waited for him to speak.