by Jeff Abbott
He said he’d been at home, but he had no way to prove that. Partners at major accounting practices did not usually come home for midday lunch and a nap, even if not feeling well, even if he had said he might have caught a bug from his daughter, who was already home sick and bedridden, down with fever and dulled with medicine.
And what an inconvenience to do it on the day his wife vanished. You never knew what small-seeming choice in your life could have a massive ripple effect.
People were still mostly kind, but mostly to Mariah. More than once, parents of her friends said something along the lines of Perhaps it would be better if Mariah came and stayed with us, like what he needed after losing his wife was for his daughter to be taken away. Mariah deeply resented these offers. He considered them in silence, because he didn’t want to be arrested in front of Mariah, if the unimaginable moment came. He could not trust that Dennis would not work in his final, most awful humiliation.
The crime scene techs had scoured the Dunning house for signs of blood, of violence. None. Beth’s red Mercedes, the preciously named Baby, parked by the empty lot, was scoured and eventually returned to him. Nothing. The land where they planned to build their house was searched. Nothing. So, the whispers began. Craig Dunning was either incredibly careful or entirely innocent.
But there were those unaccounted hours. The constant thorn of doubt.
The friendships melted into awkward puddles. He could count on both hands the number of friends he still had who he could count upon, who were unshaken in their belief in his innocence.
“You shouldn’t have come home for lunch,” one of his friends told him. “How different your life would be.”
He went inside, called an eager Leo to him, hooked the leash on his collar. Leo danced in excitement. He walked Leo again. Usually he watched Leo, to make sure he didn’t hoover up any bugs or earthworms or acorns (Leo was not discerning). He headed down the gently sloping hill, let his gaze drift from house to house to house as they walked by them all, wondering what secrets they hid. What accusations against him.
And he played a little game with himself.
So let’s say someone had decided to play with his head. To start the cycle of accusation again. Why? Why now? Who benefited?
Leo stopped to snuffle at a dense bush in a yard; Craig eased him away. He felt the weight of a stare on him and glanced backward. Half a block down was a man in a light jacket and fedora hat pulled low, walking, but his smartphone up. Taking a picture or a video, aimed at Craig’s house at the crest of the hill. Craig glanced away, pretending not to have noticed.
Craig didn’t recognize him. Perhaps a new neighbor.
He walked on. Leo spotted the man and barked twice in warning. Craig pulled him away from the yard and they resumed their walk, more slowly, the man on the opposite side of the street, one hand in his coat pocket, the other still holding the smartphone. Ignoring Craig.
But maybe recording me. And definitely taking pictures of my house. The angle was right.
Craig kept walking. He had been filmed several times on phones: people would post the videos to true crime sites, to local news sites, to social media pages. Sometimes the captions were over the top. Here walks suspected murderer Craig Dunning, having evaded somehow the long arm of the law. He wondered what the man would do if he stopped, turned, and waved.
So he did.
He was raising his hand to wave and the man stopped, for just a second, then went on, hurrying past him on the other side of the street. Walking at a much faster clip than Craig could manage with the elderly Leo.
He was watching me, Craig thought, wondering if he sounded paranoid yet. I don’t know him, but he knows who I am, because of his reaction. Both kept walking, the man studying his phone. Separated by the street, on opposite sides.
Craig glanced at him. Not a neighbor. Not a face he’d seen before, even of the new people moving into the new McMansions that were rising on the bones of the old Bobtail Drive houses.
They walked past two new houses coming up, the man slowing, glancing over for a moment at the construction. Craig felt his own phone buzz in his pocket, but he didn’t look at it. He kept his eyes on the merry Leo and then on the fedora man.
The street made a winding circle. Craig stopped. The man in the fedora kept walking.
“Hello,” Craig said as the man passed him. Leo sniffed at the grass.
The man nodded. The man kept walking. He didn’t glance over again at Craig. He was focused on his phone.
I don’t know you but here you are. Where do you live? He watched the man get thirty feet ahead of him and then he thought, Screw this. Now walking Leo again, moving past the turn to his own house, the man now forty feet ahead of him, fifty feet. The man in the fedora was increasing his pace.
Leo stopped to attend to his bodily needs, and Craig wanted to hurry him along, but Leo didn’t take long. The man hurried out of sight on another side road. Craig didn’t bother to clean up after Leo and he hurried forward, a protesting Leo dragging him a bit. Down the side road, the man reached a silver SUV and got into it.
He’s not from here. He’s not a neighbor, Craig thought.
The car rocketed off. The license plate was smeared with mud. Unreadable. But there was a Lakehaven High sticker on the back though: a trumpet with the name Sean underneath it.
The trumpet meant a kid in band, right?
The car turned, was gone.
Leo panted, unused to the suddenness of dashing down the road. So, maybe just a guy out for a walk. But what guy walks in a neighborhood where he doesn’t live? Why is he taking pictures of my house? Because I put up the security cameras? And he was a Lakehaven dad. How many Seans could there be in the band?
He turned back to walk home. The neighbor whose yard Leo had used as a bathroom was standing outside, frowning, watching Craig return.
“Well, I hope you went and got a bag,” the neighbor said, an always annoyed man who Craig privately thought of as Tracksuit Guy.
“Sorry. Sorry…I was…” What did you say? Sorry, I was chasing my tormentor?
“No bag?” He gestured at Leo’s mess.
“I’ll go home and get one.”
“You know,” Tracksuit Guy said, “you’re as awful as they say!” And he turned around and went inside.
Craig stood on the sidewalk, Leo snuffling in the grass. Because being delayed in tidying up after your dog was the same as killing your wife. He stood there, for a long moment, the breeze on his face, watching the neighbor watch him from his own front window. Then he turned and walked home and got a bag and came back and cleaned up after Leo and went home again.
Here for a reason. This man was here for a reason. I’m ready this time. I’m ready.
The cameras were in place. He walked next door and knocked on the door. After a few moments his immediate neighbor, Kumar Rajanathan, answered. Kumar and his family had been cool to Craig since Beth vanished, but not overtly unfriendly. He had two children, one in college, one a senior at Lakehaven.
“Hi, Kumar, sorry to bother you. I have an unusual request.”
“Yes?” Kumar didn’t seem to want to open the door wider. His smile was vague, hopeful that maybe Craig just wanted sugar or butter and nothing more.
“There has been a teenager coming around late at night, trying to frighten me and Mariah,” he lied. “Standing at our windows, peering in.”
“I haven’t seen him,” Kumar said immediately. “You should call the police, Craig. They’re here to protect everyone.” The implicit even you need not be said.
“I don’t want to make a big deal. Kids make bad decisions. Except yours, of course.” He tried a neighborly smile.
Kumar’s mouth flexed in answer, but there was no warmth to it.
“I just wondered if I could borrow Anya’s yearbook. Look through it, see if I can identify the boy that way. I can call his parents, and we don’t have to get the police involved.”
Kumar seemed to hesitate.
“Hold on.” Kumar returned a few moments later with a thick Lakehaven yearbook. “Here you go.”
“I’ll return it promptly.”
“Is this why you were installing the cameras?”
They’re always watching you. The murderer next door. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“I understand. I hope…the problem is quickly and amiably resolved.”
“Thanks, Kumar. How are the kids?”
“They’re great, thank you.” Parental pride melted the frost slightly. “Siddharth is doing well at Vanderbilt, and Anya has been accepted at Rice.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. Mariah and I would love to have you and Sonia and Anya over for dinner. It’s been too long.” He couldn’t believe the words spilling from his mouth. An invitation. Are you insane? But the man had spoken to him, offered him the yearbook. It had been so long for any kind of normalcy. “I’m a great cook.”
“Perhaps. Let me check with Sonia. It’s so kind of you to offer. But, you know, we are moving soon.”
“Oh. I didn’t ever see a for sale sign in your yard. Congratulations.”
“Ah, no, we did not need to put it on the market. It sold before that was necessary.”
“Well,” Craig didn’t know what to say. “We’ll miss you.”
Kumar could not bring himself to say the same. “Take care. You can leave the yearbook on the porch when you’re done.” Kumar couldn’t close the door quite fast enough.
“I’ll bring this back,” Craig said to the closed door. He had forgotten himself, forgotten his place in this world. His face was aflame with shame and amazement at his own stupidity. No, they weren’t coming to dinner, not in a million years. They were selling their home, hoping to escape his proximity. He walked back to the house, the yearbook under his arm. Did shame ever have an expiration date?
Who needs them, he thought. No one. Not him. Not when he had a daughter to protect.
Craig sat down at the table with a legal pad and a pencil, and began to page through the yearbook, looking for the band section, looking for names.
19
MARIAH HAD DECIDED she needed to go to her mother’s former employer, Acrys Networks, to see if they had a record of whether or not she’d attended WebCon. One thin thread, but it was all she had. She wasn’t sure she’d talk to Andy again if she didn’t have to. She didn’t want to design an app for him while dodging his hands. She decided to swing by Sharon’s house first to tell her what she had learned and to ask a few more questions. She’d gotten two text messages from Sharon, asking how the talk with Andy had gone. Anxious.
Mariah parked in front of the Blevins house. She walked to Sharon’s front door and noticed it was ajar. Her heart rose into her throat; Sharon did not seem the type to leave open doors. She knocked, called out “Mrs. Blevins?” and got no answer. She pushed open the door and it stopped halfway, hitting a weight. She peered around the door. Sharon lay on the tile floor of the entryway, collapsed.
Mariah knelt by her. She was still breathing, her eyelids fluttering.
“Mrs. Blevins!”
Sharon opened her eyes, trying to focus. “Oh…oh…Bethany?”
“No, it’s Mariah Dunning. I’m calling an ambulance for you…”
Sharon’s eyes focused; she grabbed Mariah’s hand. “No, no, no…Mariah…oh, I got dizzy…no ambulance. Please. Ambulances are so expensive. I promise, I’m OK.”
Mariah relented, because Sharon was already climbing to her feet, holding on to Mariah. “OK.” Mariah brought Sharon to the couch. She arranged a pillow under her head, got her a glass of water.
“Thank you,” Sharon said after sipping. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“What happened?”
“I guess I fainted. Just a lot on my mind today. I forgot to eat or drink water. I forgot some medicine I have to take. For my anxieties.”
“I still think I should call an ambulance. Or take you to an urgent care clinic.”
“Really, honey, I’m fine. I’m fine.” Her gaze seemed steadier.
“Well, then you need to eat, let me fix you something.”
“Oh, goodness, don’t go to trouble, Mariah.”
“It’s no trouble. You just take it easy.” In the kitchen she found eggs, Swiss cheese, mushrooms, a fresh bell pepper. She made omelets, and toasted sourdough bread in the oven. She made two cups of hot herbal tea, brought it all to the table, and helped Sharon walk in and sit.
“Oh, this is so lovely. Thank you.”
“Of course. This is my fault. I’ve upset your day.”
“It’s not your fault.” Sharon steadied her voice. “Sometimes the grief just hits you so hard.”
“Yes. It does.”
Sharon said a quick grace, Mariah politely keeping her head bowed, and then they ate in companionable silence. “This is wonderful, thank you. How…how was Julie? You didn’t say much about your talk with her.”
“She was all right.” Mariah decided to choose her words carefully, so as to not further upset Sharon. “She said Bethany had gone through a very rough time.”
Sharon frowned. “If she’d kept her life in order, prayed more, gone to church with me…she would have stayed in the guardrails, made better choices.”
She’s dead most likely, so what good is parsing her choices? Mariah thought. “Drinking, embezzlement, it’s a lot of symptoms, but what did you think was the key problem?”
“She was lonely. Jake worked too much. She got involved with the wrong people.”
“She mentioned a new friend named Lizbeth who she went drinking with a lot.”
“Yes. I never met her. Bethany had no reason to ever bring her around me, although it would be nice to meet her friends. But once I saw Bethany eating lunch at a restaurant, when I’d gone there with a church friend. I went over to say hi. I thought she was alone, but she wasn’t, Lizbeth was there…but Lizbeth never came back to the table. She’d gone to the ladies’ room and then she’d left Bethany with the check. Anyone who is spending that much time in the ladies’ room and walks a check…she has problems.” Sharon lowered her voice. “Drugs, I think.”
“Bethany never said that?”
“Oh, she wouldn’t. But there had to be a reason I never got to meet Lizbeth.”
“I understand there were pills in her car that weren’t Bethany’s.”
Her face flushed with embarrassment. “Yes. Anxiety meds, painkillers. I think those all came from this Lizbeth. She gave them to Bethany.”
“Could Lizbeth have drugged her?”
“Why would she? There would be no point. I mean, this Lizbeth might have given my girl drugs…oh, this idea Bethany got that someone was poisoning her? It’s silly. If she had drugs in her system, Bethany put them there.” She cleared her throat. “That’s hard for me to say, I hope you know. It was a way for her to dodge personal responsibility.”
“Julie is worried about you.”
Sharon made a noise. “I’m sure she’s not.” She put a hand over her eyes. “Julie’s always been best at taking care of Julie.”
“I don’t think you should be left alone tonight. Is there a friend I could call? Or a relative? Or even Julie? I’m sure she’d come.”
“Really, no. Bethany was my only family that was left. I’ll be fine.”
“What about a church friend?”
“You know…I never talk about Bethany at church. That’s my refuge from thinking about it or talking about it…and I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t want to have to explain why I forgot to eat.”
Mariah felt terrible. “Then…would you let me stay? Just for tonight. I’d feel better if you weren’t alone, in case you faint again.”
“Mariah. That is kind of you.”
/>
“I don’t want it to be weird, I know we’ve just met…”
“But you feel like we know each other. From what we’ve lost.”
Slowly Mariah nodded. “Yes. Is that odd?”
“Similarity of experience.” Sharon closed her hand over Mariah’s. “I read about it in a book. Why don’t you stay, if it puts your mind at ease? I’d…I’d welcome the company.”
“It would. Thank you.”
Mariah cleared up the plates and suggested that Sharon go watch TV or read and relax. In the kitchen she texted Julie: Hey it’s Mariah Dunning. Mrs. Blevins fainted at her house today, I found her, she’s OK but she was groggy and refused to see a doctor. I’m staying with her tonight just to be sure she doesn’t get worse. Would you check in on her tomorrow, at least a phone call? Thank you.
She had just finished loading the dishwasher when Julie texted back: Sure, sorry to hear, sweet of you to stay. We’ll swing by, maybe we can talk her into a doctor visit.
We. That probably meant her and Andy.
She then texted her dad: I’m staying with a friend tonight, she’s sick and I want to be sure she’s OK. All right?
Craig texted back: Who’s your friend?
She wanted to say I don’t owe you an explanation, but instead she gently bent the truth: A woman who’s helped me, a colleague, she doesn’t have anyone else to help her. But I want to know you’re okay alone at the house.
Craig wrote back: I’m fine. I love you.
Mariah sent him back a heart emoji and trembled a little at the lie.
* * *
Craig frowned at his laptop screen, rereading the messages. Mariah sometimes used subcontractors on her website work. He knew he should be glad she had a friend who would count on her for help. Unless this was all a lie.
He went to a website. His car—the one she was using—had a beacon that could tell you where it was on a map. He pinged the car; it was in a north Austin neighborhood, not terribly far from Anderson High School and Spicewood Springs Road.
He wondered who this woman colleague was.
He had gone through the band members photos in the yearbook—he discovered they were helpfully broken out by instrument. The trumpets had, annoyingly, three Seans. He had written down their names, searched for them on social media and on the news site at the Lakehaven papers. He had also looked at their surnames and not found them in his neighborhood directory, at least from two years ago. He’d need to find their addresses and see if the car he’d spotted matched one. He felt foolish; this was probably a useless lead, and here he was wasting time on it.
