“No,” Phillip said. “But Clayton went upstairs to shower and change clothes. Just not when the cook or the cleaning crew or whoever was in the house. Because he was supposed to be missing,” Phillip added, in case the agents hadn’t registered that crucial point.
“Do you know for a fact that his parents knew you were in the basement?”
“They had to know,” Phillip said. For the first time, he began to get excited. “For one thing, though they didn’t feed us much, we did get food maybe once a day. And he sure didn’t fix it or go to buy it. He was only out of the basement at night, when he went up to shower or whatever. And we were locked in, of course.”
“How did Josh get hurt?” Van Winkle asked.
“He got a little hurt when we were taken,” Phillip said. He looked ashamed. “If we’d all rushed Clayton then, none of this would’ve happened, and maybe Tammy would still be alive. We all jumped out of the car when Tammy got hit. Josh was slow getting back in the car to drive. Clayton clipped him on the side of the head with the gun.”
“And Josh was hurt a second time?”
“He lunged for Clayton on a bathroom break, and the gun went off. I can’t believe the Harrisons could miss that,” Phillip said.
Even in a house as large as the Harrison mansion, and in a soundproofed basement, I thought a gunshot would be audible.
“But you don’t know that they were in the house at that moment,” Crowley suggested.
“They might not have been. They didn’t come down. Clayton made us drag Josh back into the storeroom. Later he threw in some first-aid stuff.”
I put my hand over Phillip’s and squeezed. I tried to imagine being fifteen and handling the shooting of my friend without any expert help or any adult backup. My hat was off to Phillip. For the first time, I believed my brother would be fine … not because we would help him, but because he was innately strong.
“Just to be clear, you did not see Clayton’s parents with your own eyes at any time?”
Phillip looked taken aback. “No,” he said slowly. “I did not.”
“Does that mean they’re going to get away with this?” Robin said. He was not bothering to repress his anger.
“They may,” Crowley said. “They can pretend they didn’t know Clayton was keeping hostages, that they were only concealing their son because he was in trouble. As his parents, they were determined to keep him from harm.”
“From prosecution,” I said.
“Yes. From prosecution.”
“Knowing that he had committed murder and kidnapped four people?”
“Clayton says that Connie killed Tammy Ribble.” Van Winkle looked off into the distance as if he could not even dignify that statement with the slightest appearance of belief.
“She did,” Phillip said.
I gasped out loud, and warned myself to be still. Phillip didn’t need an audience to react to the drama. He needed us to hear what had happened in a factual way.
“So tell us what happened that afternoon,” Crowley said. “I’ll record it, if you don’t mind.”
“No,” Phillip said. “I’ll only be telling the truth.” He took a deep breath. “I was with Josh,” he began. “We were supposed to pick up Joss at the practice field after she’d given Liza her private lesson.”
“How well did you know Liza?” Van Winkle asked very quietly. He didn’t want Phillip’s stride to be broken.
“I had met her at my sister’s church,” Phillip said. “She was just a kid, four years younger than me. But Josh and Joss had told me what was happening to her at school, and I thought that was shitty. Those girls were just bitches in training, as far as I’m concerned. Liza is a nice kid. And she couldn’t stop them. No one could.”
Phillip looked sideways at me, and I saw the memory in his eyes. He’d hitched a ride with a trucker, who had made such forceful advances that Phillip had been forced to abandon his backpack and run to hide in the woods. Phillip knew about not having control over circumstances.
“So you were at the field…” Crowley murmured.
“And the three witches walked over from the school,” Phillip said. “They were trying to make Liza cry. I gave them a talking-to. They can’t do anything to me.”
Marlea had said she was going to try, however. I wouldn’t forget that.
“And then?”
“Liza didn’t want to be left at the field with them, and her mother was late coming. Sarah had finished up with the girl she was coaching, and she’d be leaving soon, too. Liza left a message on her mom’s phone, and Josh said we could give her a ride. We all got in the car. Josh and I were in the front seat, and Joss was in back with Liza. We thought she’d be more comfortable sitting with another girl.”
“We heard she had a big crush on you?” Crowley asked.
“Uh, yeah.” Phillip turned red. “But she wasn’t clingy and obnoxious. Just … she was pretty cool for an eleven-year-old.”
“All right. So you four were in Josh’s car and you went to the hair salon?”
“First we went by the Scotts’ house,” Phillip said. “But her mom and dad weren’t there, or at the church.”
The agents both made notes.
“So after that, Joss started freaking out because she had to be at the salon to get her hair cut, and she was late. She was texting Tammy on the way.”
“Why?” Van Winkle asked.
“Just to tell her we were almost there. Tammy’s sister had dropped her off. She was waiting.”
The agents nodded.
“So we were in that little road behind the beauty shop,” Phillip said. “Joss said she could go in that way.” His words came slower and his face showed stress. “And Tammy came out of the back door and ran over to the car to hug Joss. You know…?”
“That they were a couple, yes,” Crowley said.
“Okay. So Joss was about to get out of the car after talking to Liza a second more, to make sure Liza was okay about … well, about Joss not being in the car with her. Josh and I hadn’t even thought about that.” Phillip shook his head. “But Liza said she’d be okay, that she’d told her mom who she was with in her message.” He stopped and took a long, shuddering breath. It was obvious he was coming to something he didn’t want to relive. I was scared to put my arm around him or hold his hand. I wanted him to know that I was there for him, but I didn’t want to undermine his independence when he needed to be strong.
“Just then, Connie and Clayton pulled up in Clayton’s car. Connie was driving. I don’t know why. Clayton was about to explode. He has a bad temper,” Phillip said. “He jumped out of the car and started saying this awful stuff to Tammy and Joss. His little sister—Marlea—had told Clayton that Joss had made a pass at her! What a stupid thing to believe. I don’t know why Clayton was so crazy. It was like it was a personal slap in the face to him, somehow.” Philip took another deep breath. “Joss wouldn’t do anything like that. She’s not a child molester. She loved Tammy. But somehow Marlea had made Clayton believe that shit.”
“What happened after he started yelling?” Van Winkle said.
“So Clayton slapped Joss in the face—she was out of the car—and Tammy jumped him. She was beating on him.” Philip smiled faintly.
“With her fists?” Van Winkle kept writing.
“Oh, yeah, none of us were armed for riding around in Lawrenceton,” Phillip said with elaborate sarcasm. “But Clayton punched Tammy in the face, and we all started to get out of the car to help her and Joss—it just all happened so fast. When Clayton hit Tammy in the jaw, she kind of staggered back in front of Clayton’s car, and Connie pressed the accelerator and she hit her.”
There was a long moment of silence.
“And Joss screamed, or she tried to, but no sound would come out. Connie had stopped the car and she was just staring at nothing. And Tammy was dead.” Phillip didn’t seem to know that a tear was rolling down his cheek. “Clayton ran to his car and got a gun.”
“He had it in the car?
” Crowley murmured.
“I think in the glove compartment. He told Connie to leave, to drive back to his house without stopping or phoning anyone. Then he got in the backseat of Josh’s car and put the gun to his head, and said if Josh didn’t drive, he would shoot him. Clayton would shoot Josh,” Phillip said, so we’d all keep it straight.
“So we got to Clayton’s house. He got us all to go downstairs, and Connie helped him. He handed her a little gun, too. I don’t know what kind. When we were all herded into the little storeroom off the rec room—he got Connie to throw out a lot of the holiday stuff to make room—Clayton shut the door and locked it.”
“It had a lock already on it?”
“Yeah. The Harrisons kept their extra liquor in there, and they kept it locked because Clayton had thrown a party once and his friends had drunk up a lot of it, Josh told me. But Clayton knew where the key was, and he locked us in. Later, he put another lock on it, a padlock. So there we were, in the little room, and Joss was, you know, crying like hell because of Tammy and she was bloody, Liza was scared and missing her mom and dad. Josh and I didn’t know what to do. Josh didn’t feel good, because he’d taken a smack with the gun.”
Phillip looked ten years older by this time. “And there we stayed,” he said eventually. “Clayton would throw in some McDonald’s bags every now and then that his parents brought him, I guess. He could hardly go out to get them, right? Or there would be homemade sandwiches.”
“Can you remember when you ate the McDonald’s food?”
It was evident to me that the FBI agents were trying to pin down the Harrisons’ involvement in the crime. They were anxious to be able to prove that the couple had known exactly what their son was up to. Surely, buying a large bag of hamburgers and fries meant that they’d known there were other people to feed.
“The day after we got there, and a couple of days after that,” he said, after some thought. “There was bottled water in the room, too, so we drank that. But food, we didn’t get enough, and he’d only let us out twice a day, one by one, to go to the bathroom. Pretty horrible.”
“When did Josh get injured?”
“Oh, the day I called you,” he said to me. “We had it all planned out. We were going to rush him, and then I’d make it up the stairs to a telephone while Josh and Joss pinned him down. When he unlocked the door, we went for him.”
“He had the gun?” I said quietly.
“Oh, sure, he had it all the time. But we had to get out. So I plowed past him, and Josh and Joss jumped him. I made it up the stairs and saw a cell phone on the kitchen counter. I dialed you, and I heard your voice.” Phillip closed his eyes. “I don’t even remember what I said to you, Roe. I saw the gun in Clayton’s hand, and I had to hang up. Clayton was yelling, telling me that he’d shoot Joss if I didn’t come back.”
“Did you think about running out right then?”
“I never wanted to do anything more in my life. But I believed Clayton. So I went back downstairs. That was the worst moment.” He nodded, definite. “The worst.”
Robin patted Phillip’s shoulder. Phillip sat forward and put his head in his hands. “How is Josh?” he said, his voice muffled. “Clayton took his shirt for something.”
“His parents, I assume, planted it out in the country to draw attention away from town. Josh has an infection from the gunshot,” Crowley said. “But since it grazed him instead of lodging inside his body, the doctors are pretty certain he’ll recover after some stitching and a lot of antibiotics. He has a mild concussion, too.”
“And Joss?”
“She’s bruised, but otherwise doing okay.”
“Liza?”
“With her mom and dad. Physically fine.”
“Clayton?”
“Being questioned, with a lawyer present, and his parents in other interview rooms with their own lawyers.”
“What about Connie? Why hasn’t she been arrested? She knew what he’d done. She helped him.”
There was a long silence. I said, “Honey, I have to tell you something. Connie killed herself.”
Phillip dropped his hands and I could see his face. “Good,” he said. “She murdered Tammy. She should have felt bad about it. I’m glad she did.”
I tried not to look shocked, though I was, a little. But how could I blame him? He’d seen something awful.
“What about Clayton’s car?” Crowley asked. “Do you know where it is? We haven’t been able to find it yet.”
“No idea,” Phillip said. “He was upset at having to get rid of it, though.”
Van Winkle said, “I think it must be close, Bernadette, because it’s so conspicuous they wouldn’t risk driving it far.” (In fact, a very surprised fisherman found it in a pond about three miles from the Harrison house the next week.)
Phillip talked a while longer, giving the agents some more details and elaborating on Clayton’s threats. And his plans to leave the country, because his dad had a cousin in Europe. Clayton didn’t ever tell Phillip what country, he was canny enough for that. “He tried to keep us quiet, telling us that he’d be gone, and his parents would pretend to be shocked we were in their own basement.” Phillip shook his head. “I didn’t know if he was telling us the truth or not, but I tried to believe he was. I don’t know if the Harrisons would have let us go.” He looked too bleak for a teenager, and I ached for him.
“Did you know his parents claimed they paid ransom for him?” Van Winkle said.
“Oh, sure. I heard him talking to his parents about it. Sometimes if he got bored, he’d call them, though he was in the basement and they were upstairs. They all used burner phones to talk to each other, so it wouldn’t be traceable. They told Clayton if they claimed they’d paid ransom, Clayton would have the cash to take with him. Untraceable.”
We hadn’t seen Dan Harrison go through a rehearsal for delivering the ransom money. He’d been doing the motions in case he was being watched—which he was, but not by law enforcement, but by a librarian and a mystery writer.
“Did Clayton ever say explicitly that his parents knew you were downstairs?”
Phillip thought. “No, but when he said ‘discover’ he practically said it with quote marks, you know?”
“If you find all the burner phones, surely you can prove they were talking to each other,” I said. “One of those phones must have been on the counter, and that’s what Phillip used to call me. And if the Harrisons withdrew the false ransom money, they had to know all about what Clayton had done.” I would be very, very angry if the Harrisons were not punished for their complicity.
Van Winkle and Crowley left soon after, without committing to any certainty that Clayton’s parents would stand trial. They told Phillip he’d been really brave, and that they were relieved he was okay. No sooner had we turned away to clear the dishes from the breakfast bar, than the doorbell rang.
This time it was my father. And his wife.
Betty Jo was defiantly dressed in a long black skirt and a fuchsia and black blouse. Phil wore his usual—khakis and a plaid shirt. They were both angry with me, of course.
“I had to find out from a reporter that my son had been found,” Dad said to me, venting some of his anger before he even looked at Phillip, who was standing back and looking unhappy.
He was justified, this time. He should have been the first person I called. In my defense, I can only say that it had been years since I’d thought of calling my father with any news at all.
“She saved me,” Phillip said. “So don’t get onto her. Mom, where have you been?”
Betty Jo looked self-conscious. “Well, I haven’t been with a man, if your dad told you that. Honey, I couldn’t live with the humiliation your dad had dealt out. There was a lot of other stuff wrong, that I can tell you later.”
“You mean Dad’s gambling habit? I picked up on that a long time ago.”
My father looked away, angry.
“I tried to call you once along the drive north,” Betty Jo said. ?
??You didn’t pick up. I just had to take the time to put my life back together. At the commune, we couldn’t use electronics.”
Phillip was pretty angry, himself. “Ever think about writing me a letter?”
This family drama was eclipsing Phillip’s homecoming, and I wouldn’t have it.
“Shut up,” I said to Betty Jo and Dad. “This is not your day to hash out your mistakes and your differences. This is Phillip’s day, because he was lost but now he is found. Tell him how glad you are about that.” I spun on my heel and walked away, washing my hands of them. I had to put physical distance between us.
Robin kept a tight watch on the reunion, while I put dishes in the dishwasher and listened to some phone messages I’d gotten. One was from my mother, who sounded genuinely delighted that Phillip was safe. “We’re ready to throw a party over here!” she said. I called her back right away.
“As soon as we can get your first husband to leave,” I said, not bothering to lower my voice. “And Betty Jo, too.”
My mom commiserated with me some, and then hung up. Beth Finstermeyer had called next, to rejoice with me. She told me that Josh would have to stay in the hospital on IV antibiotics, but he was already eating and talking about Christmas Day. Joss, she added, was glad to be out of the basement, but she was grieving over Tammy. “I’ve never had to console a child about the death of someone they loved,” she said heavily. “It feels a little strange, talking to Joss about her girlfriend. But as long as she’s home…”
“Yes, as long as she made it home,” I said. “I’ll see you soon, and we’ll both be happier.”
“George says thanks,” Beth said, and hung up before I could ask what for.
A couple of hours later, I got a similar call from Aubrey Scott. He was gracious enough to tell me how much Liza had depended on Phillip’s kindness to get through her imprisonment. “I know Phillip is a lot older than Liza, especially as kids reckon it,” he said, “but I know they’re fast friends now, as strange as other kids may think it.”
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” I said. “I only care that they all came through it well. The law will take care of the rest. But I’m afraid the Harrisons won’t get convicted … if they even get charged.”