“Oh yeah. He’s black.” He shrugged. “This is still kind of a white-bread town, you know. I’m not sayin’ that’s a bad thing—it’s just some people around here kind of freak out when they see a black guy.”
Sean wasn’t wrong about that.
“So even though you’re pissed with Claire, you agreed to help her with this thing last night.”
“Hanna asked me, so I did it. She said Claire was being stalked or something and she needed to get away.”
“Who’d she need to get away from? Roman?”
“I don’t know. I mean, okay, Roman has wanted to talk to Claire about why she dumped him. A guy deserves some kind of explanation, right? She wouldn’t answer the phone if it was him, and she stopped texting with him because he kind of crossed a line there.”
“How’d he cross a line by texting with her?”
“Oh man, I can’t talk about this. Forget I said that.”
“Sean.”
“Okay, you know you can send more than words in a text, right? You can send pictures?”
“I know.”
“So, after Claire broke up with Roman, he texted her a picture of what she was going to be missing.”
I was pretty sure I was getting his drift. “You telling me he texted a photo of his dick to her?”
Sean shrugged. “Pretty much.”
“And not at half-mast, I’m guessing,” I said.
“Look, it’s no big deal. Everybody does it. Sends hot pictures of themselves to each other. But Claire kinda didn’t like that after they’d broke up.”
“Did Dennis know Roman sent her those kinds of pics?”
“I don’t think so. He’d have probably tried to kill him if he had.” He waved his hands like he was trying to clear the air. “But, look, I don’t think it was Roman that Claire was trying to ditch. I mean, Hanna wouldn’t have asked me to help out if it was my own friend that was involved. That wouldn’t be right.”
“So you have no idea who might have been following her.”
He licked his lips. “I swear, I don’t know the details. Hanna said Claire wouldn’t even tell her what exactly was going on.”
“Could it have been the police?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. These are all things you should ask Hanna. I was just supposed to drive, okay?”
“What about Claire’s father?”
“What about him?”
“Could he be the one she was trying to give the slip to?”
Sean didn’t answer right away. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“To where I dropped Hanna off. You didn’t answer my question. Could Claire have been trying to get away from her father?”
“What, you think he’s been following her around?”
“I’m asking you. What’s the story on Claire and her dad? They get along?”
“I guess they’re okay. She’s living with him and not her mom, so I guess that says something about how they got along. And she didn’t want to have to go live in Canada and get split up from all her friends. Her mom’s new husband is even weirder than her real dad, so she probably figured she was better off with him.”
“What’s weird about Bert Sanders?”
“You hear stories.”
“What kind of stories?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Just, he’s, you know, even though he’s an old guy, he really gets a lot of action. I don’t know where he’d find time to follow Claire around.”
“Are you talking about women? He has a lot of lady friends?”
“Yeah. I mean, Claire says he’s all high and mighty about a lot of things, like what’s right and wrong and all that kind of stuff and raising shit with the cops—which, by the way, I happen to think is a pretty good idea—but when it comes to gettin’ some, he’s right in there. It kind of embarrasses Claire. Hanna told me she said, one time— Maybe I shouldn’t tell this.”
I waited.
“One time, Claire comes home from school in the middle of the day—she was sick, right? And her dad’s home, and there’s this woman, she’s got her head in his lap, right in the living room.” He gave me a look. “You know what I’m talking about?”
“I know what you’re talking about. Who was the woman?”
“Shit, I don’t know. I don’t even know if Claire knew. She caught a glimpse of what was going down—” He stopped himself. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. But when she saw what was happening, she, like, ran off.”
“Is Claire afraid of her father?”
He gave me another glance. “Everybody’s afraid of their fathers. Mothers, too, mostly.”
My mind drifted for a moment. Had Scott been afraid of me? Had he been afraid of Donna? I couldn’t believe that. We were good parents.
Except for when we weren’t.
“Yeah, but there’s afraid, and then there’s afraid,” I said. “You’re afraid your parents are going to find out about stuff you’ve done they wouldn’t approve of, and if they do, there’ll be consequences. You get grounded, lose driving privileges. End up with a Civic instead of that nice pickup you’re driving. It’s like that for all kids. But then there are parents who go too far. Who cross the line. You get what I’m saying.”
“Yeah.”
“Does Claire’s father cross some kind of line?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Sean said. “You mean, like, what, slapping her around or something?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t think so. I never seen her with bruises or anything like that.”
“What about other kinds of abuse?”
Sean made a face like he’d eaten something bad. He shook his head definitively. “No way. I mean, I don’t think so.” He paused. “If anything, Claire’s dad cares too much. That can be kind of hard to live with, too.”
“Do your parents care too much?” I said.
“Sometimes I wish they cared a little less. My dad’s on my ass all the time, and he’s pissed about Hanna being over and all, but her parents, they don’t care that much about what she does. She’s lucky that way.”
Was that what defined luck for these kids? Parents who didn’t give a shit? I seemed to recall Hanna’s parents being worried about something. A business Hanna was involved in with her boyfriend that could end up biting her in the ass.
“You and Hanna got something going on the side,” I said, not asking a question. “To make some money.”
His head jerked. I’d hit a nerve. “What?”
“What is it?” I thought immediately of Scott. “You guys selling something? You selling drugs?”
“Jesus, no.”
“You’re doing something. Her parents mentioned you had something going.”
“It’s nothing. It’s not a big deal. It’s just—look, everybody does it.”
“Everybody does what?”
“Drinks,” Sean said. “It’s no big deal around here. I mean, everybody knows you can get a drink at Patchett’s as long as you don’t look like you’re twelve. But not everybody wants to drink there. Sometimes, you know, you want to do stuff at home or someplace else.”
“Like when parents are away.”
He gave me a look. “Sometimes.”
“So where do you and Hanna fit in?”
Sean sighed. “Man, you just don’t quit, do you?”
“Something’s going on, Sean. Something with Claire. I don’t know what it is yet, but you answering my questions, it helps. I’m not looking to make trouble for you. I just want to find Claire.”
“What me and Hanna are doing, it’s got nothing to do with Claire.”
“Why don’t you let me decide that?”
Another sigh, then, “Okay, so, we get stuff people want, you know, to drink, and we deliver it.”
“You and Han
na. Using your Ranger?”
“Yeah.”
“Just to friends?”
“Like, anybody. Word gets around, people have a couple numbers they can call, they say they need some rye or vodka or beer or whatever, and we deliver.”
“With a markup.”
“Well, yeah. We’re not doing it for nothing.”
“How do you get it? You and Hanna aren’t old enough to be buying booze in bulk.”
Sean’s lips stayed pressed together.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You need someone who’s twenty-one, who can pick up everything you need. Roman.”
He looked at me. He didn’t have to admit it. I could tell from his expression.
“Roman gets a cut of what you and Hanna make?”
Sean nodded.
“You just work Griffon?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We kinda go all over. Lewiston, Niagara Falls, Lockport. If the order’s big enough. Thing is, it used to be easy to go over the border for a drink. But now, you gotta have a passport to get into Canada and back, so more kids, we gotta do it on this side. There’s a market, you know?”
“How much you make?”
“We usually only do it on Saturdays, maybe on a Friday night, too. We can make a couple hundred.”
I smiled. It was entrepreneurial, to be sure. But risky, too. Driving into neighborhoods they didn’t know, a truck full of liquor, large sums of cash. Pretty dumb, all things considered.
We rode for a minute in silence. Then I said, “I’ve got one last question for you. Not about Hanna, or Claire, or any of this.”
Sean waited.
“At Patchett’s, when I told you my name, and you asked if I was Scott’s father, the first thing you said was that you didn’t know anything about what happened to him.”
“I don’t.”
“I hadn’t even asked you anything. You came out with that pretty fast.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, “I got another friend, Len Eggleton. Maybe you know who I’m talking about.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Len says one night, this guy came to see him, said he wanted to know who sold his kid some X. Len said this guy, he’d heard a rumor that Len dealt the stuff, even though, far as I know, Len’s never been into that kind of thing. Just weed, you know.”
I still said nothing.
“So anyway, Len says no way, he never sold or gave this guy’s kid any X, and the guy, then he’s all, okay, if Len didn’t give it to the kid, maybe he knows who did. And Len says no fucking way, he doesn’t know, and the guy, he says maybe Len needs time to think about his answer, and he grabs Len and he stuffs him into the trunk of Len’s car. Len’s, like, he’s totally claustrophobic, and just about freaks out, so the guy lets him out, and I think he actually kind of believes Len now, that he really doesn’t know who gave the kid the X, but the guy, he tells Len if he tells anybody about what just happened, he’ll put the word out that he did give up a name. Len was scared shitless, so he never told his parents or the cops or anyone else but me and a couple of other friends.”
It was very quiet in the car.
“So,” Sean concluded, “that’s why, when I saw you, I told you right out that I didn’t know anything. Because I didn’t want to end up in a trunk like Len. That’s why Roman decked you. He was trying to save my ass.”
I shot him a startled look, but said nothing. I pulled the car over to the shoulder, eased to a stop, and put it in park.
“We’re here,” I said. “This is where I dropped Hanna off.”
TWENTY
We both got out and stood a moment in the cool night air. Unlike twenty-four hours before, there was no rain. There was the sound of distant traffic, and the occasional vehicle that went right by us, but other than that it was very quiet.
A few car lengths up, the traffic light changed. The businesses were closed, and there were few lights on in the homes that were sandwiched between them.
“You let her out here?” Sean said. “This is, like, the middle of nowhere.”
“She tried to jump out of the car when it was moving. I had to pull over. I couldn’t force her to stay.” I was trying to convince myself as much as Sean.
“Seems like a shitty thing to do,” he said.
I went around to the back of the car, used my remote to pop the trunk. Sean spun around, a nervous look on his face.
“Don’t worry, I’m just getting a flashlight,” I told him, and grabbed a heavy Maglite I kept in there, along with other tools of the trade, like a bright orange safety helmet that would allow you to go almost any place you wanted when you put it on your head, as well as a laptop, a mini-printer, even a Kevlar vest I’d kept from my days as a cop but had never worn since. I closed the trunk, joined Sean, and clicked the light on.
“When she jumped out,” I said, “she ran that way.”
“Why are we doing this?” he asked. “This doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“This is where Hanna called you from. Last thing she did was show me she had a phone, which I took to mean she was going to call someone else for a ride.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“She called you. And got interrupted. Right now, it looks like you’re the last person we know who’s spoken to her. It happened around here. So I want to look around. Over here, by these bushes, that’s where she tossed her wig.”
I cast the flashlight beam around the shrubs. Panned it low first, then went higher, in case the wig had caught on a branch before it hit the ground.
“There,” I said.
We closed the distance. I went down to one knee and took hold of the wig, tentatively at first, like it was a piece of roadkill. “This look like the wig?” I asked him.
“I think,” Sean said.
“Me, too. How many wigs can you expect to find along the side of the road?”
“I guess.”
I got up, heard my knee crack. I walked back to the car, unlocked it, and set the wig on the backseat.
“Let’s head up this way,” I said, pointing to the corner. “When she got to the corner, she turned right.”
I kept scanning my flashlight across the sidewalk, using it like a white cane. I didn’t know what I was looking for, if anything, but it seemed like a detective-ish thing to do. When we hit the corner, I saw that the cross street went only about a hundred yards before there was a short bridge. Just this side of it, on the right, was a house that looked as though it had been knocked down in one windstorm and reassembled by the next. Boards askew, eaves hanging loose. But there was activity here. Three people sitting on the sagging porch, drinking beer, sitting in what were once, perhaps in another millennium, living room chairs that now had the stuffing exploding from them.
“Hey,” I said as we came up in front of the house.
There were two women, heavyset, and a thin, bearded man between them. All in their sixties, I guessed, enjoying a night of getting buzzed in the evening air.
“Hi,” said the man. “How you boys doing tonight?”
“We’re good,” I said. “My name’s Cal, and this is my friend Sean. We wonder if you might be able to help us.”
“You lost?” the man asked. “’Cause I can’t imagine anyone would intend to be walking along here at night unless they was.”
The women cackled softly.
“We’re trying to find a girl,” I said.
“You can have both of these ones,” he said, and the women cackled some more. I laughed along with them, showing I could appreciate clever repartee.
Sean was drifting away, heading toward the bridge. From what I could see, it spanned little more than a creek, and was only about forty feet long.
“A girl came running along here last night, about this time,” I said. “It was raining, and she migh
t have been on her cell phone.”
“What she look like?” one of the women asked.
“About seventeen, five and a half feet tall, slight, with short blond hair,” I told them. “We think that while she was making the call, someone may have stopped, given her a ride maybe.”
“What time did we go in last night?” the woman asked the man.
“We didn’t even sit out here,” he said. “’Cause it was raining. We enjoyed our evening festivities indoors.”
“That’s right. We didn’t come out here at all,” the second woman said.
I was trying to keep track of what they were saying while keeping an eye on Sean. He was at the bridge, which had two streetlamps at each end, and was peering over the right railing.
“You didn’t hear anything at all?” I asked. “Nothing out of the ordinary?”
“Nope. Except for Mildred here, who had some terrible gas.” He pointed to the woman to his left. There was more cackling.
“And those damn dogs,” Mildred said.
“What dogs?” I asked.
The man said, “They’ve been going at it, off and on, all day, like they’ve been fightin’ over somethin’. Settled down lately.”
“Where?”
The man pointed in Sean’s direction. I turned my head. He was on the other side of the bridge now, leaning over the railing, looking down into the dark. Sean shouted: “Come here! Come here!”
I ran.
“Down there,” he said as I came up alongside him. “It looks like there’s something down there.”
I shone the light down. Water trickled along a gravel bed, probably no more than six inches of it at its deepest point. Along the bank, close to the abutment, there was something lighter in color up against the dirt and brush.
I played the light over it. It looked to me like a foot, and a leg, up to the knee. Badly mangled. I wouldn’t be able to see any more until I got under there.
Sean was starting to move, but I grabbed his arm and said, “Stay here.”
“I gotta see if—”
“Stay here,” I repeated, more firmly.
I ran to the end of the bridge, then cut my way through brush and tall grasses that matted the hill down to the creek. I nearly fell twice, my foot slipping on a beer bottle or can. I worked my way toward the slope of the abutment, shining the light ahead of me.