Bring Her Home

by David Bell

  “So someone just took them,” Bill said. “A maniac pulled over and grabbed them. That happens, doesn’t it?”

  “It happens, yes,” Hawkins said. “But it’s rare. We’re not ruling anything out at this point.”

  Bill closed his eyes. He told himself it was foolish to keep hoping for a break, but he couldn’t turn his mind off. It worked to make him believe, to dangle possibilities, if only as a means of keeping his spirits up and his will strong. Don’t forget, he told himself, you just got the biggest break of all. She’s here. She’s alive.

  “That has to be it,” Bill said. “Someone just grabbed them, threw them in the back of a van or something.”

  “I wanted to follow up on some of Summer’s other friends,” Hawkins said. “You told me that there were a few boys in her extended social circle. Maybe two or three of them.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Hawkins checked the notebook again, holding the pad at arm’s length so he could read the writing. “We’re talking about Clinton Fields, Todd Stone, and Brandon Cooke. Right?”

  “Yeah, that’s them. I guess. You have to understand that Julia knew more about Summer’s friends than I did. She talked to Summer more, you know? Mother-and-daughter stuff.”

  “So how was your relationship with Summer? You said on Saturday that things could be tense between the two of you, but you never really told me why. Have you thought about that more?”

  Bill lifted his hands, then let them fall back into his lap. He knew he seemed exasperated. He couldn’t hide it. “Look, she’s a teenage girl. I’m her middle-aged dad. I just didn’t always know if I was teaching her the things she needed to be taught. You know how teenagers are.”

  “My kids are grown now, so it’s been a while. Enlighten me.”

  “Okay, they’re a little contemptuous of their parents. Summer seemed that way with me.” Bill hoped that was the end, but the detective seemed to expect more. “We had tensions between us. Normal stuff, I guess. Shit, try being a man raising a woman. Her mother died a year and a half ago. It was just—” Something caught in his throat, and he paused, taking a deep breath. “It was Julia’s birthday a couple of weeks ago. Would have been her birthday. Still is, I guess. But . . .”

  “It’s been hard for Summer,” Hawkins said, prompting Bill. “Losing her mother.”

  “Yeah. It’s hard enough just being a teenager. Ever since Julia died, Summer’s been more rebellious, more mouthy. Standoffish to me. I thought we’d get closer because Julia died, and in some ways we have. We’ve cried together. Reminisced. But Summer is really hurting—I know that. She’s like me. When she hurts, she gets angry. Defensive. And she’s had a wall up since her mom died.”

  A nurse walked past, her pace quicker than anyone else’s, and Bill turned his head to follow her. But she passed Summer’s room, her white shoes squeaking against the tile floor.

  “I understand. A young girl needs and wants her mother.” Hawkins’s voice pulled Bill back. “You never really answered the question of whether Summer was sexually active.”

  Bill turned all the way around, his eyes fixing on the detective, his teeth grinding together again at the back of his mouth. “I did answer that.”

  Hawkins sounded more assertive, more determined. Some of the Kentucky charm dropped from his voice. “You actually said you didn’t want to talk about it. But now I think it’s imperative that we know everything there is to know about Summer.”

  “She’s fifteen. She’s not sexually active. Why are you asking me this?”

  Hawkins kept his blue-gray eyes trained on Bill, the scrutiny slicing in like sleet. “We have to understand every aspect of Summer’s life if we’re going to figure out who did this to her.” He pointed theatrically at the door of Summer’s room, conjuring the picture of the battered girl into Bill’s mind. “We’re looking into everything in this town. Her online communications. Her friends and teachers at school. Local sex offenders. You’re our best resource about Summer.”

  Bill felt unnerved by where Hawkins was going. The conversation was causing a small pain to grow in the pit of his stomach. “Is there something I need to know?”

  “Was she sexually active?” Hawkins asked. “Did she spend a lot of time with these boys from school? Or any boys that you know of?”

  “Sure, they were friends.” Bill chewed on a piece of loose skin near his thumbnail. “They’ve been to the house. Hell, Summer’s known some of them since they were in grade school, so I’ve seen those kids the whole time they were growing up.” Bill shifted in his seat, trying to articulate his thoughts about the boys Hawkins had mentioned. “They seemed like pretty normal kids. I know what boys want from girls. I know how pretty Summer and Haley both are. I thought I’d be dealing with this a little later. And I always thought I’d be dealing with it with Julia’s help. Not on my own.”

  “And that’s it about them?”

  “She went to a dance with the Stone kid, but she told me they were just friends. Hanging out, I think she said. He and Summer went to junior high together. The other one, Cooke? Isn’t he on the cross-country team at school?”

  “He’s a good runner, yes. He might go to state this year as a sophomore.”

  “And so the other one is Clinton Fields, right?” Bill asked. “Yeah, he’s in their extended social circle. Kind of a jerky kid.”

  “Why do you say that?” Hawkins asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s arrogant, snotty. Sure, he’s polite to my face when he comes around, and he’s a smart kid, a good student. But there’s a hint of aggression and disrespect beneath everything he says. I can imagine him walking out the door and badmouthing me. High schools are full of those kinds of guys.”

  “Was he dating Summer?” Hawkins asked.

  “They’d all been spending time together the past few months. They were always with a group of kids, but I guess that’s how they date now. Groups of kids.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Is there something else I need to know about any of them?” Bill asked. “Did I miss something?”

  “Remember, I’m investigating. Everything is on the table. And everyone.”

  “Where were they when Summer and Haley disappeared?”

  “We’re checking their alibis. We’re checking everyone’s alibis. They’re kids. They weren’t punching a clock at work or anything like that, but they say they were at the Fields house, playing video games. The parents weren’t there.”

  Bill felt a jagged pressure growing behind his right eye, a pulsing sensation that made him squirm in his seat. “Just arrest them,” he said. “Bring them in and get them to talk.”

  “It doesn’t work quite that way, Bill.”

  “Do you think I care about their fucking civil liberties? You shouldn’t either. Not when my daughter is in a coma and another girl is dead.”

  “Has Summer been in trouble lately?” Hawkins asked. “Anything? You said the two of you weren’t getting along, that it’s been tough since your wife died.”

  Bill thought back over the past year and a half, the series of ups and downs, arguments, and strained silences between Summer and him. “I told you already. It’s been hard on her. And she’s been pushing my buttons a little. Missing some curfews, not answering my texts when she’s out, that kind of thing.”

  “I wanted to ask you about—”

  “Wait,” Bill said. “That Fields kid. Wasn’t he into something a couple of years ago?”

  An alarm started ringing overhead. An insistent beeping that probed at the headache growing behind Bill’s right eye.

  Two nurses rushed by, and Bill watched them.

  They dashed into Summer’s room.

  “Jesus,” Bill said. “No.”

  He followed in their wake and was cut off by Dr. Davis, who went in ahead of him. When Bill entered the room, he heard one phrase
that stuck in his mind like a driven nail.

  Her oxygen level’s dropping.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Bill watched the medical team swarm around Summer.

  They called out terms and numbers Bill didn’t understand. It was like hearing another language.

  Her voice calm and steady, Dr. Davis said, “We’re going to have to put in a chest tube.”

  Bill stepped forward as Dr. Davis pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. They snapped into place against her wrists. She reached toward a silver tray and lifted a shining scalpel, something that looked sharp enough to cut through a tree trunk.

  “You have to go, Mr. Price,” Davis said.

  A nurse started removing Summer’s gown, exposing her breast. Another nurse used alcohol to sterilize the skin where the doctor intended to cut. Bill didn’t like the way they manhandled her, strangers treating her body as if it were a piece of meat.

  Someone stepped in front of him, a pudgy young man in scrubs, his thinning hair a stringy mess. “Why don’t you just step outside, sir?”

  “I want to stay.”

  “You can’t be in here, sir.”

  The man placed his hand on Bill’s chest and applied gentle but firm pressure, moving him backward and toward the door. Bill went along, but he said, “You can’t be in there either. I don’t want some strange man—”

  But he was out the door and into the hallway, and the man in the scrubs disappeared inside the room again. Bill took a step forward, intending to go back in, but he stopped himself.

  The doctor was right. He didn’t want to see that.

  When Summer was little and receiving a new vaccine every other month, it was Julia who went with her. Julia held her hand and told her to look the other way. Bill either didn’t make trips to the doctor, or stayed in the waiting room reading out-of-date magazines while Julia took their daughter back.

  He saw that shining, brutally sharp scalpel in his mind again. A device made to puncture and slice and penetrate. He’d watched enough TV shows to know they’d be slipping a rubber tube through the incision. The images nauseated him.

  He stepped back from the door and turned around.

  Detective Hawkins waited. He placed one of his ham-hock hands on Bill’s shoulder and made a gesture with his head, indicating that Bill should return to his seat on the couch where they had been talking. Bill happily obliged. It felt good to sit, and the nausea subsided once he was on the couch.

  Hawkins wandered off for a moment and came back with a paper cup full of water. “Drink this,” he said.

  Bill swallowed the cool water and smacked his lips. “Thank you.”

  “You’re sure there’s no one you want to call?” Hawkins asked. “What about your neighbor? Mr. Fleetwood?”

  “Adam.”

  “Right. You’re good friends with him. Do you want to call him to come sit with you?”

  “I’ll talk to him soon. He might be working.” Bill used a shaking hand to reach into his pants pocket. He pulled out his phone and checked the screen. A text. “My sister. Paige. She’s coming. Tomorrow, I think.”

  Bill struggled to type a response, his hands shaking like a ninety-year-old man’s. He marveled at the way Summer and Haley composed texts at lightning speed, almost like machines trained to do so.

  “How about work? Do you need to check in there?”

  “I’m an IT guy at a small college,” Bill said. “They can live without me for a while. They’ll probably miss me the most when I can’t go to Trivia Tuesday at the Tenth Inning.”

  Hawkins stared at him blankly.

  “The sports bar. A group of us from work plays trivia there.”

  “Right, I hear you,” Hawkins said. He looked at the closed door to Summer’s room and then back at Bill. The detective’s hands rested on his hips, the skin of his thick ring finger swallowing the gold band.

  “What about that stuff you were asking me?” Bill asked, his voice shaky. “Summer’s behavior. I’m confused by all of this right now. I don’t know what to think.”

  “I understand completely,” Hawkins said. “I’ll come back and check on you later.”

  “That Fields kid, Clinton,” Bill said. “There was something about him, something that happened a year or two ago. What was it?”

  Hawkins took a moment before he answered. “He got in a fight at school with another kid.”

  Bill waited. “That’s it? I thought there was more—” Then it came back to Bill. The story made the local news for a couple of days. Everybody with kids at the high school heard about it and talked about it. “Oh, I remember. Not just a fight, Detective.” Bill felt sweat forming at his hairline, a sticky, cloying liquid. “He hurt that kid. Put him in the hospital, right?”

  “He did, Bill. Clinton Fields got in a fight at the bus stop almost two years ago, when he was fourteen. Broke the other boy’s jaw.”

  “Oh, no.” Bill’s hand went to his face involuntarily to rub his own jaw. “He’s a thug—that’s what you’re telling me. A true menace. And you don’t want to arrest him yet?”

  “Did Summer ever mention him being violent? Or threatening violence?”

  “No. But what does that matter? You’ve got to talk to him. Arrest him.”

  “I will, Bill. We’re well aware of all of this. In fact, I’m on my way to check into it more right now.”

  “Will you tell me what you find?”

  “Of course. Will you call me if you need anything? And let me know how Summer is.” He started to walk away and stopped, his big body showing surprising grace. “I had a collapsed lung once. When I was in college. I collided with another guy during a basketball game. That was enough to do it. I had to have the whole chest-tube thing in to relieve the pressure. The worst part was in the beginning. They said I’d feel a little discomfort, and then they put that tube in.” Hawkins winced, and the exaggerated face looked comical on the big man. “But then I could breathe again.”

  Bill didn’t know what to say, so he said, “Thanks.”

  “My point is, a collapsed lung isn’t as scary as it looks.”

  “That’s one thing that isn’t, I guess,” Bill said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bill jumped off the couch when Dr. Davis came out of Summer’s room.

  She looked slightly winded, like a jogger after a good, solid run. She told Bill that everything had gone according to plan. “We reinflated the lung, and her oxygen levels are returning to normal. We’ll continue to keep an eye on everything else. Our goal here is to make sure she’s stable. When she is, we’ll transfer her to our rehab wing.”

  “I’m going to go back in and sit with her.”

  “Give them a few minutes to get everything cleaned up.”

  Bill imagined a room swimming in his daughter’s blood, the stained scalpel tossed on the floor amid soiled bandages. They needed to put her gown back on the proper way, to cover Summer up so everyone in the world couldn’t just walk in and see her breast exposed. His daughter had been handed over to strangers for the past two days. First when she was kidnapped and beaten and who knew what else. And again in the hospital where her body had been probed and prodded and sliced.

  “I can contact the hospital social worker if you’d like,” Davis said. “Or the chaplain. I imagine people will want to come by and see Summer. Friends from school. Family. It might get complicated.”

  “No, thanks,” Bill said. “I’m good.”

  Davis considered him for a moment, then said, “The nurses will let you know when you can go back in.”

  Bill returned to the couch and waited. The headache that had started forming when he was speaking with Hawkins seemed to have eased. He heard back from Paige. She told him, via text, that she intended to come directly to the hospital when she reached Jakesville the next day.

  He hadn’t seen his younger siste
r in six months. They spoke on the phone from time to time, but mostly they communicated through texts and Facebook messages. They shared an irreverent sense of humor, and each tried to top the other by sending the most bizarre news stories or links to weird Web sites. On more than one occasion, Bill ended up chuckling to himself at work or at home over one of Paige’s messages.

  Bill found himself looking forward to her arrival. He and Paige grew close the summer before he left for college when they spent a week driving around the country seeing R.E.M. in concert five times. Bill had never said it out loud, but he wished they’d grown closer sooner instead of right before he moved away. He always seemed to figure things out when it was too late. It was like a curse.

  Someone said his name just then, and he looked up.

  “There he is.”

  Bill saw two figures approaching him from down the hallway. It took a moment, but then he saw who one of them was. Candy Rodgers, Haley’s mom. An older man with steel gray hair walked by her side. He wore a polo shirt and khaki pants with a cell phone clipped to the belt.

  Bill stood up. Candy came directly toward Bill, her arms open for a hug. She wore black pants and a pink shirt, and a gold bracelet jangled from her wrist as she and Bill embraced. He caught a whiff of something floral, a shampoo or perfume.

  “I’m so sorry, Candy.”

  “I’m sorry too.”

  They held each other longer than Bill was expecting. He’d never hugged Candy Rodgers before, didn’t even know her very well. He did know Haley’s parents were divorced—apparently a nasty split—and her father lived out west and had little contact with the family. Bill wondered if the man with Candy was a relative or a new love interest.

  “This is our pastor,” Candy said, nodding at the man in the khaki pants. “Caleb Blankenship.”

  The minister, who looked to be about sixty, gave Bill a firm handshake and a sympathetic look. Candy dabbed at her eyes with a balled-up tissue. She looked older than Bill remembered, but that may have been because she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her unnaturally blond hair hung limp and loose around her shoulders.