“Maybe, at least, they can track down Betty Jo, so that your dad won’t be a suspect in her disappearance.”
That caught me up short. “I don’t like my father. But I don’t believe that he’s a murderer. And it seems really stretching it to believe that loan sharks from California took Phillip to make my father pay up.”
“Coming all the way to Georgia just doesn’t make sense,” he agreed.
That was the truth. “I think my dad would have tried to get the money from me to pay them off,” I said.
“I agree, and that’s the most solid argument for Phil being innocent I’ve heard.” Robin really didn’t think much of my father. I wondered what his own had been like.
If I’d thought things had been bad, the next day was worse. Way, way, worse.
The press arrived. In droves.
Chapter Thirteen
I don’t know how we’d escaped so far. I suspect that the sexting scandal in a much larger town had captured lots of interest, and it was much juicier. When teens are sending around nude pictures of themselves, older people take notice. Especially if some of the teens are football players and cheerleaders. Or National Merit Scholars.
Anyway, the story of the missing kids somehow, in its ninth day, blossomed into a sensation. The fact that the youngest of them was the only child of a minister and his wife was news, and that one teen had been left dead at the apparent scene of the abduction was even more sensational, and that a ransom demand had only been received by one set of parents, and that one of the kids had just moved to Georgia from California … well, there were just a lot of interesting angles to play off of, and lots of people to interview. Unfortunately, I was one of those people. And when they realized I was married to Robin Crusoe, the best-selling author of many fictional mysteries, that was fascinating, too.
Our landline began ringing early in the morning. After thirty minutes, we unplugged it from the base. When I looked out the front window, I saw three cars I didn’t recognize parked on the easement in front of our house. Two strangers came to knock on the door. We didn’t answer. Crap. I talked briefly to Beth Finstermeyer, who said that she had at least eight cars at her place … “I guess because I have two children missing, instead of one,” she said bitterly.
Within the hour I got a call from Cathy Trumble at the police station. She said there was going to be a press conference at the station at eleven that morning, that all the families involved had been asked to send a representative, and that in the sheriff’s opinion that was the best way to handle the situation. If all the families gave a statement, the local law enforcement, both city and county, could ask the media representatives to stay away from the homes of the victims.
“Okay,” I said, though I was far from sure I was going. “Where and when?”
“Please park in the lot in back of SPACOLEC,” she said. “The police parking lot, the enclosed one behind the complex. Come in through the rear door. Be here by ten thirty. Then all of you can go out for the press conference together.”
SPACOLEC was the Sparling County Law Enforcement Complex, which housed the police department, the sheriff’s department, and the jail. And traffic court. The building was less than ten years old, but it was already bursting at the seams as the urban sprawl of Atlanta engulfed Lawrenceton, raising both the population and the crime rate. I knew the current police chief, Cliff Paley, only by reputation. The newly elected sheriff, David Coffey, a massive man, had been graduating from high school when I’d entered it.
I talked it over with Robin, who was no stranger to dealing with the press.
“I think you ought to go, if you can stand it,” he said. “The police are right. They’ll come here, if you don’t go there.”
“Oh. Right.” I hated the idea of the news people waiting outside, observing our coming and going, in hopes of catching the moment when something pertinent actually happened. Reporting is a tough job, and has to involve a certain amount of persistence and boldness. But being on the receiving end could be very uncomfortable. “Are you going with me?” I asked, on my way to the bathroom to shower.
“I haven’t decided. Maybe I’d be a distraction, because my name is well known … if you’re one of the few American citizens who reads,” he added gloomily. One of Robin’s favorite independent booksellers had closed its doors the week before, and he was in a state of pessimism about the future of books. “Not like an actor,” he added hastily, lest I should think he was boasting.
“Robin, I know your name is in the public eye,” I said. “You don’t have to downplay it.” He’d always sold well. But after the even larger success of his nonfiction book about the murders in Lawrenceton years before, Robin had spent some time in Hollywood, working on the script of the book. He’d dated an actor whose star was rising, so he’d gotten a fair amount of press … even more when she died. And he’d gotten a screen credit on the finished product. The movie had done only moderately well, but any association with the movies threw a handful of glitter on a writer.
“It’s up to you,” I told Robin. “Of course, I’d be glad if you were there, but if you don’t think it would be a good idea, stay home.” I really meant it, but it was hard not to whine. I left him to think about it, while I headed for the bathroom.
After showering, I faced a clothing issue. The sweater I’d chosen for the day was just too tight. Maybe someone who didn’t know me well would not have seen much difference, but it seemed to me that my body was expanding every day. Since I hadn’t finished the laundry, I had one clean pair of pants that fit, a pair I’d meant to give to the next clothing drive. They were brown, heavy knit, and had an elastic waist, and I couldn’t imagine how I’d come to have them. But today, I was glad they were still in my closet. I found another sweater, beige and white, and I decided I didn’t look horrible. I slapped on some makeup and gathered my hair in a sober braid. A little jewelry, and I was good to go. I made a note to finish the laundry soon. No matter what the crisis was, we needed clean clothes to face it. Robin was not wise in the ways of the washing machine, though he was great at doing dishes. It balanced.
Soon, I hoped, I would feel cheerful enough to shop for maternity clothes. But right now I would scrape by.
There was some time to kill when I was ready, so I turned on the television. I was just in time to get a breaking news update from an Atlanta station. “This just in, there will be a press conference at eleven today about those missing teens in Sparling County,” the anchor said, and I snapped to attention. “Stay tuned for more on this story.”
I was staring blankly at a game show when Robin emerged to tell me he’d decided to come with me to SPACOLEC. He was wearing his better khakis and a button shirt instead of a polo shirt, so he’d made an effort. I patted my own head to remind him, and Robin pulled out a comb and dragged it through his red hair. We were the messy-haired couple, for sure. I’d never been able to smooth out my wavy brown hair, which fluffed out like a Diana Ross cloud on occasion.
Our baby was doomed to have a flyaway mane. I hoped she (or he) would get Robin’s hair color.
“What are you thinking about?” Robin said. He could see me in the hall mirror. “You have the funniest expression on your face.”
“I’m hoping the kid has your hair,” I said honestly, and he shook his head.
“Bane of my childhood,” he said. But he looked pleased.
We bundled up. The weather forecast was not good. It was cold enough for any rain to cause potential problems as sleet, and we might not see the sun for a few days. In the past couple of years, I’d noticed that if we had too many days like that in a row I became moody and a bit depressed.
“We don’t have any Christmas decorations out,” Robin said, out of the blue.
“Nope, I was waiting for Phillip to be out of school, so he could help put them up,” I said. “I thought it would make him feel homier, like he belonged with us.” And to my horror, I felt tears well in my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. It would be too
easy to keep on crying.
My plan to make Phillip feel included in our family seemed long ago and far away. I had a closet full of presents that needed wrapping. I had made meal menus and planned grocery trips to keep the refrigerator from getting too crowded. It seemed like all my planning had belonged to the life of another person, someone who had anticipated a future that now felt incredibly optimistic.
“You’re right,” I said. “Maybe we can try to get the tree up tomorrow.” I didn’t sound enthusiastic. I sounded apathetic. “I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing for being such a killjoy.
“Putting it up might make us feel better,” Robin said. “If anything will.”
“I’m ready for something to make me feel better.” Suddenly, I realized that the Harrisons would probably be at the press conference; the Harrisons, whose trust I’d just violated by revealing to Cathy Trumble that there’d been a ransom demand for their son. “Oh, shit,” I said, and told Robin what I was thinking.
“It may not be pleasant,” he conceded in a masterly understatement. “But you did the right thing, you know that. If it was just a question of Clayton’s well-being, that would be one thing. But there are a lot more people involved than that boy.”
“I’m pretty sure the Harrisons won’t feel that way,” I said. And I wondered how to ask Dan Harrison what he’d been doing the night we’d followed him.
We got into the car so quickly that we only got a few shouted questions from the reporters outside. We ignored them, though something in my Southern soul chided me for being rude. The employee parking lot was enclosed in a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and a uniformed deputy was there to open the gate. Robin found a spot some distance from the back door. The other vehicles were huddled close to the building in case it began raining; given the ominous sky, that was a probability. I pulled my gloves on as I got out of the car, and I was glad I’d tucked a scarf around my neck.
Robin put his arm around me and we made our way between the cars to the door. When another deputy (my friend Levon) opened the door to my knock, we entered to find ourselves standing in a holding room of sorts. There were a couple of tables and some chairs, but they were against the walls to leave a clear path in between. Since it was cleaned by trustees, the floor was polished and gleaming.
“The other families are in the room to the right,” Levon said. “If you’d join them, we’ll get started with the briefing in a couple of minutes.”
“Hi,” I said, feeling glad to see a familiar face.
“I’m sorry we haven’t found them yet,” he said, his voice dropping from official to personal.
“Thanks,” I said. “I know you all will do everything you can.”
He nodded. “We’re looking as hard as possible. By the way, your dad’s here.”
Somehow I hadn’t expected that. I was glad of the warning.
Following Levon’s pointing finger, we entered a hallway, with the concrete block walls and linoleum floor of a place designed to receive hard use. I could hear a low hum of voices from the open doorway to a room on the right hand side of the corridor. When we entered we were surrounded by familiar faces: Beth and George, Emily and Aubrey, and Daniel and Karina Harrison, who now publicly belonged to our club. My father was in a corner, very much by himself. When we sat down in some of the folding chairs scattered around the room, we received weary nods from all of them.
I didn’t know whether to apologize to the Harrisons or not. I wondered if they’d jump on me and pummel me, or curse me out. Karina seemed to read my face. “Don’t worry,” she said dully. “We paid the ransom and we didn’t get him back. And now poor Connie is dead. What is happening in this town?”
I am ashamed to say I felt a rush of relief that I wasn’t going to be the target of her hostility, and then I was even more ashamed. Robin and I had had several conversations about what had happened to the ransom money, there one minute and gone the next. Had Dan retrieved it, and returned the next night to replace the money behind the heating and cooling unit? Had we witnessed a dry run?
“I told, too,” Beth said, and I felt a flood of relief.
“You had to.” Karina shrugged. “You’re missing your own kids.”
“Not Aurora,” Dan Harrison said, his voice heavy. “It’s her half brother.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I started to take him up on the challenge of who was missing a child more, but I didn’t have the energy or the righteousness to do it. I dismissed his words and sank back into the bog of unhappiness I’d been slogging through for what seemed like forever. I was thinking, and my thinking was that this forgiving behavior, while a relief to me, was atypical of what I knew about Karina Harrison. I added that to the long list of things I didn’t understand about this case.
I didn’t look at my father.
The sheriff and the police chief came in together, which was a rare thing. David Coffey and Cliff Paley were not buddies, I’d heard. Coffey had moved into the sheriff’s office when his predecessor, Padgett Lanier, had had a heart attack. I heard good things about the job he was doing.
Cliff Paley, the appointed chief of police, had come up through the ranks and was a lifelong resident of our town. When the previous police chief had retired, Cliff had been the overwhelmingly favored candidate for his replacement.
I didn’t know exactly why they’d never been in harmony, and frankly, I didn’t care, except insofar as it might complicate or impede the investigation somehow. I was anxious to hear if there was any news, and I was anxious about the press conference. I was not much of a public speaker. I gripped Robin’s hand and waited in the tense silence that fell over the small group as the two newcomers took their places in front of us all.
“We don’t have any big news,” the sheriff said directly.
The air went out of my lungs.
“I’ll be telling the media all this soon, but I wanted you all to know it first. Josh’s car didn’t have any prints we could identify as belonging to someone who might be the abductor. Comparing the prints to those we found in their homes, we identified prints from all the kids. The spots of blood were from Jocelyn Finstermeyer. As I’ve already informed the Finstermeyers, the blood was not sufficient to indicate anything life-threatening.”
Emily began to cry almost silently. Aubrey put his arm around her. He looked helpless and hopeless. George and Beth sat straight, eyes ahead, stoic. My father simply looked relieved.
“In conjunction with the police department, we’ve searched every location connected with the missing kids or their families. We’ve questioned known felons in the area. We’ve come up with nothing but some stolen goods we didn’t expect to find.” Both Paley and Coffey looked grim and unhappy at having to deliver such negative news. “The cell phones of all the kids … we’ve been unable to track them, so they’ve been destroyed or disabled. On the other hand,” Coffey continued, “we haven’t found bodies, personal effects, or anything that might make us think that the kids have been harmed.”
I hadn’t looked at it that way. But it didn’t exactly make me sit up and cheer. The absence of negative news didn’t make me feel positive.
My cell phone rang, and I winced. I had forgotten to silence it. Everyone turned to look at me as I pulled it out, saw the number calling was unknown. But since every call might be news, I put it to my ear without apology. “Yes?” I said warily.
“Roe,” a voice said, low and urgent. The minute I heard it, I put the phone on speaker
“Philip?” I said, my voice rising. “Where are you? Have you escaped?” From the corner of my eye, I saw someone lean forward, absolutely focused on me. Karina. She must hope for news of Clayton.
“Josh is hurt. I can’t leave him.” Phillip was still talking in that low, hurried voice.
“How is Josh hurt?” I had so many questions I couldn’t force them all out of my mouth. “Where are you?”
The sheriff plucked my phone from my hand and put it to his ear automatically, as i
f that might make him hear more clearly despite the phone’s setting. “Phillip,” he said, in what was meant to be a reassuring voice. “This is the sheriff. Son, give me a clue where you are.”
There was a slight pause, voices coming faintly over the phone.
“I can’t talk any more,” Phillip said. His voice was dull. “He’s got a gun to her head.”
And the line went dead.
We were all frozen in the moment, eyes wide, terrified, waiting.
But there was nothing more to hear.
It was a terrible moment. And yet, I knew that just a moment before, Phillip had been alive and talking. And he’d somehow made it to a telephone. I could not bear to look at the Finstermeyers or the Scotts. Josh was hurt, and either Liza or Joss had been threatened with a gun.
“Oh, George,” Beth said to her husband. Her composure dissolved, and she wept.
“But Josh was alive,” George said. “And so was our girl.” And he wept with his wife.
The Scotts were staring at each other, too upset to speak, and my father got up and began pacing around the room. His jaw was set tight and he did not look at anyone at all.
The sheriff was still holding my telephone. I asked him,“Did Phillip say anything we couldn’t make out? Did you hear any background noise that we didn’t hear?”
“I heard only what you heard,” David Coffey said.
There was an outburst of protest at this. No one believed him. If I could have, I would have opened his ears and dug out what he’d heard my brother say. But nothing we told him swayed his decision.
When the noise had died down, the sheriff said, “Obviously, this gives us more to go on. And if you’ll give me your phone Mrs. Crusoe, I’ll take it to our tech guy to see if he can learn anything from it.”
Being called “Mrs. Crusoe” was the least of my worries now. He could call me Annie Oakley for all I cared. I surrendered the phone numbly, feeling I was giving up my last contact with Phillip. Levon hurried out with it.