“Good for you. So many girls are desperate and dumb. They see all the signs, but they marry the man anyway, like I did. Spend the rest of their lives regretting it. No, you’re doing the right thing walking away.”
I leave it at that. “Thank you.”
We stop at a convenience store, and everyone piles in for snacks. There’s a Chick-fil-A next door, so I hurry over with half the crowd and get something to eat. I’m not sure where we are. I consider staying here, but I kind of like being with Miss Lucy, so I decide not to get off just yet.
Back on the bus, Miss Lucy shows me pictures of her grandchildren at various ages. She keeps the snapshots in an envelope in her huge purse, and I take them carefully with my fingertips and study them. I love family pictures. Some therapist would probably have a field day with my obsession with them. I’m one of those people who clicks on every photo my friends post on Facebook and Instagram, then I wind up clicking through every shot they have in every album, lingering on pictures of happy families.
Maybe it’s because I have sweet memories of my childhood, before everything broke loose.
When I get to the picture of a blonde girl in a homecoming dress, I comment on how pretty she is. Miss Lucy pulls a handkerchief out of her bag, takes her glasses off, and dabs at her eyes. I look up at her, wondering if it’s something I’ve said.
“That’s my precious granddaughter, Laura.”
“She’s beautiful,” I say. “How old is she?”
“She’s sixteen now. But she went missing a few days after this picture was made.”
“Missing? How long ago was that?”
Miss Lucy wipes her eyes. “Two years. The police ruled her a runaway, but we knew better. Something terrible happened to her. She would never have run away like that.”
I stare at her picture, trying to imprint it on my brain in case I see her someday.
“She was so excited about the homecoming dance. That picture was taken in the store when she was modeling the dress. Homecoming was going to be her first date a couple of weeks later, and she was over the moon excited. That cameo necklace she’s wearing, it used to be mine. I gave it to her to wear with her homecoming dress. It looked so pretty on her. She had all sorts of things coming up that she was looking forward to.” She laughs. “Laura doesn’t just look forward to things, she bounces like Tigger when she’s excited. She was going to sing a solo in an upcoming choir program, and she was thrilled about that. She had been chosen to star in her school play. She’d been rehearsing every day, and she loved every minute of it. No girl with so much going on in her life would just up and leave.”
“She looks happy here.”
“Not like a runaway.” She puts her glasses back on, takes the pictures from me, and gazes down at her again. “We haven’t given up. We’re still hoping to find her someday.”
“What’s her last name?” I ask, thinking I’ll look up the newspaper articles about her.
“Daly. It was all over the news in Georgia. We had search parties out hunting for her. They dredged the river looking for her. Thank God they never found her . . . that way.”
No, her family wouldn’t want her to be found dead, even if it brought that overrated word—closure. No one wants closure at the expense of their loved one’s life.
“The police insisted she’d run away, like that just ended it. My daughter said, ‘Well, if you think that’s what happened, then find her.’ She was fourteen at the time. Where was she? But they finally just gave up on the case, like it was common for a child to hit the road and vanish into thin air. It didn’t happen that way, but if it did, what happens to those girls? Where do they go?”
“Police love closing cases,” I mutter. “It’s an ego thing for some of them.”
She packs the pictures back into the envelope and stuffs it into her purse. I wonder how often she takes that picture out. Its corners are worn and bent.
“How are her parents?” I ask.
“Her father, my son-in-law, started drinking heavily and left. They’re divorced now. The family has never been the same since. That’s one reason I want to go live with them. My daughter needs help. Her other kids are getting short shrift.”
I know what that’s like. My mother was a wreck after my father’s death. She folded into herself and hasn’t entirely come out yet.
“How do you get through something like that?” I ask aloud, though I didn’t mean to.
“My faith in Jesus,” she says.
“Faith?” I ask. “Even when things went so wrong?”
“This is a fallen world, honey,” she says.
I look at her. “What does that mean? Fallen?”
She gives me a surprised look, then her face softens. “When Adam and Eve committed that first sin, all hell broke loose. Literally. The curse on humanity from then on was pretty much that we got what we chose. And some people choose evil.”
“So God doesn’t have control over it?” I ask, hoping I’m not coming across as combative. I just seriously want to know.
“Oh, he has control. But Satan is the prince of this world. Still, he can’t do anything without God’s permission. The first chapter of Job proves that.”
I’ve never read the book of Job, but I make a mental note to do it when I can. Anything that can help me understand evil could only help.
Though I can’t wrap my mind around what Miss Lucy believes, I decide to let it slide. I don’t want her to think badly of me.
But she’s not finished. It seems important to her to make me understand. “My faith is in Jesus, not in the way human beings behave. And I know this is not all there is. Someday he’ll wipe away all my tears.”
It sounds nice, but I find it hard to think that way. I’m glad she has something that comforts her, though.
“You don’t know Jesus?” she asks me gently.
I’ve been asked that question a few times in my life, and I confess that it always leaves me stumped. Who can know a man who lived two thousand years ago? I’ve dwelt on it before, wondering if these Christians sense his presence, if he somehow comes to them like a ghost, offering them smiles and high-fives, comforting them when they grieve, directing them where to find the best parking places.
“No, I can’t say that I do.”
She isn’t appalled. She just pats me on the knee and smiles. “Oh, he would change everything for you.”
I bite my tongue. Would he bring her granddaughter back? He hasn’t yet. Would he bring my dad back to life? Would he rewind time to the day before Brent was murdered?
My dad’s death, now Brent’s. These things make up my everything.
We’re quiet for a while as we ride, and Miss Lucy leans her head back and falls asleep. Her low snore lulls me to sleep, and I find myself dreaming of her granddaughter in that homecoming dress, standing on a stage singing a solo.
My stomach is sick when I jolt awake. If there’s a God, I wonder why he lets good girls go missing and good men die. I wonder how he can stand by as someone who would never have committed murder is blamed for it. Either he’s not paying attention, or he doesn’t really care.
When we pull over at another Trailways station to let out some passengers and pick up new ones, I get off to use the facilities and buy some food from the vending machine. When I get back on, Miss Lucy is smiling.
“I thought you might get off here. I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
I shrug. “Guess I’ll go to Atlanta.”
“You should come two hours farther south to Shady Grove. You’d like it there. Unemployment is zero. The mayor brags that everybody who wants a job there finds one.”
I do need to get a job as soon as possible.
“The population is about twenty thousand. Great school system, though you don’t have kids. But it’s a sweet little town. I think you’d do well there. And your boyfriend isn’t likely to find you there. He’d never think of looking for you in Shady Grove.”
I tell her I’ll think about it. It would be ama
zing to wind up in a town where I had at least one friend. Miss Lucy could be a source of comfort as the days get darker.
At least until she learns that I’m wanted for murder.
12
DYLAN
There’s another guy hitching a ride on the charter flight with me. I’m told he’s going to Dallas, but the pilot assures me that Durant will be the first stop since my assignment takes top priority. I assume that means that the Paces paid more for my trip.
The plane is a six-passenger Cessna Citation, a double-engine light jet. I take the backseat because I hope to work on the way, studying the crime scene pictures I snapped on my phone and reading up on Casey Cox. But the Dallas passenger is chatty.
“You fly this way often?” he asks, looking over the back of his seat at me.
I smile. “No, first time. You?”
“All the time. Beats going through security and all the waiting. So I heard them talking about you working on an investigation. You a cop?”
I click off my phone, settling in for the conversation. “I’m a privately contracted investigator. I’m just going to extradite a prisoner.” Though it isn’t entirely accurate, it seems like a good short answer.
“How long you been a PI?” he asks.
I don’t want to tell him I just started today. “I was a 31 Delta in the Army Criminal Investigations Division for the last few years. I was discharged recently. I like the work, so it seemed like a natural fit to be a PI.”
“Criminal Investigations? What kind of criminal investigations could there be in the army?”
This could take a while, but I don’t really mind. I like to talk about my former career. “Think of 31 Delta as the army’s version of the FBI or the Secret Service. We investigate any felony-level crime having to do with army personnel or property.”
He sets his arm on the back of the seat and twists more comfortably. “What’s the worst case you ever investigated?”
I don’t want to say the murder of my best childhood friend, so I come up with another answer. “We had some homicides, some suicides.”
“Overseas or stateside?”
“Both.”
“So soldiers kill each other?”
“Soldiers are humans in a pressure cooker. If they had criminal or violent tendencies before, they have a way of boiling to the surface when they’re in high-stress situations. Yeah, crimes are committed. Criminals are investigated.”
“So all those suicides. What do you think causes that?”
I look down, not wanting to meet his eyes. “Those happen mostly stateside after they get home. PTSD, injuries, families who’ve moved on while they’re gone, inability to get jobs . . .” That void in my stomach yawns bigger, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. “So what do you do?”
“I work for a medical equipment manufacturer. Mostly sales.”
I try to look interested as he waxes poetic about his work, but as he talks, my mind works through the puzzle of Casey Cox.
The trip to Durant is much shorter than I expected, and when we land, I’m let off the plane. The pilot tells me that the Paces arranged for a rental car and that the guy monitoring the radio at the fixed-base operator, or FBO, has the keys. I go in and find him sitting behind the counter with the radio mike in front of him. He’s gregarious, like a long-lost cowboy friend, and he tosses me the keys.
The car is a shiny black Altima. I sit in it a minute, figuring out where everything is, then I punch the Durant Police Department into my GPS, planning to let them know what I’m doing and enlist their help. I give them pictures of Casey and let them know that she may be connected to a murder in Shreveport. They make a call to Keegan to confirm that I’m legit, then agree to put out an alert on her and tell me they’ll help in any way I need.
I’m heading to the store where we know Casey got off the bus when a boom shakes the night. I duck, swerve hard off the road, and wind up in a shallow ditch.
When the car stops, I’m sweating and my heart is racing. I can’t breathe. I finally force my head up over the dashboard and see a group of kids across the street playing with fireworks.
I wipe my face with shaking hands and tell myself to get a grip. This is ridiculous. There aren’t IEDs in Durant, Oklahoma. This is why I was discharged from the army. They said I wasn’t functioning well, that my PTSD was severe and disabling.
Maybe they were right. I get out and assess the mess I’ve gotten myself into. If the ditch had been deeper it would be worse. There doesn’t seem to be any damage to the car, but what if I’d been on a four-lane road with traffic on either side?
I get back in and carefully make my way out of the ditch. Thankfully, my wheels don’t get stuck, and in just a few minutes I’m back on the road without having to call a tow truck. No one has to know.
I’ve stopped shaking by the time I get to the convenience store. I go in and show Casey’s picture to the night clerk, but he’s never seen her. He says he would remember those big eyes, and he’s got a particular love of blondes.
I tell him that her hair color and style may have changed, but he’s still no help. I stand in front of the store, looking up the street. Casey would have seen a Walgreens about two blocks up. I step to the side of the building and look the other way. Nothing but HUD apartments. I doubt she would have chosen that direction.
I drive up to the twenty-four-hour Walgreens and go in. I head to the nearest clerk and wait in line. The clerk is an elderly lady who should have had the privilege of retiring years ago. She is slow and methodical. I wonder if her back aches, but she smiles and speaks to everyone like a trouper. They should give her a stool or at least offer her the day shift.
When I get up to her, I show her Casey’s picture on my phone and ask her if she saw her yesterday.
“I wasn’t working yesterday,” the woman says. “She doesn’t look familiar.”
“Is there anyone here who was working yesterday?”
“I think Haley was. She’s at the makeup counter.” She points, and I see a young woman cleaning the glass counter.
I show Haley the picture. “Can you tell me if you’ve seen this woman in the last day or so?”
She glances at the picture and starts to say no, but then she frowns and takes the phone out of my hand and moves two fingers out from each other on the screen, enlarging Casey’s face. “Why? Are you her boyfriend?”
“No.”
“A cop?”
I straighten, certain that she’s seen her. “I’m not a cop, but I’m working with the Shreveport Police Department to find her. Someone close to her has died and I need to find her. Did she come in here?”
She pauses for a long moment, studying my face now. I meet her eyes, hoping she’ll trust me. “She didn’t have hair that length. It was chin length. And she had glasses, but I think it was her. She said her car broke down and she was stranded here for the night.”
“Did she buy anything?”
“Yeah, but I don’t remember what. She seemed nice. I knocked over an endcap and she thought I was hurt when she saw me on the floor. Oh, wait. I remember. She bought some hair dye. It was dark brown. I noticed because it wasn’t the color of her hair.”
So by now she’s a brunette. Dark brown, chin-length hair, glasses instead of contacts.
“Did you talk?”
“Kind of. Who died? A family member?”
“No, a close friend.”
Haley’s eyes fill with concern. “She said her phone battery was dead and her car had broken down, so she used our phone to call a cab.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?”
“She asked me about the motel up the street, but I told her not to go there. I told her to go to the Hampton Inn, because it’s safer.”
Perfect.
“Was that yesterday?”
“No, the day before, I think. I was off yesterday.”
“What time was it? Do you remember?”
“Probably around four.”
&nbs
p; I ask her for the number of the cab company Casey took so I can talk to the person who gave her a ride. “Listen, if she happens to come back in, would you call me?” I tear a piece of paper off the notepad I keep in my pocket and write my cell number on it.
“You want me to give her the number?” she asks.
“No,” I say quickly. “She won’t call.”
She stares at me for a moment. “She’s in trouble, isn’t she?”
I sigh. “Please, will you let me know? It’s very important.”
She says she will, but I doubt it as I walk out. I can’t count on her. But it may not matter. Casey isn’t likely to return here, especially if she’s in another part of town.
I drive to the Hampton Inn where she was sent and ask to speak to the night manager. I show him my credentials and tell him I need to know if she checked in here.
He lets me see the list of people who checked in between the hours of four and five that evening. There are several women’s names, so I jot them all down. “Can you tell me which ones paid with cash?”
He goes deeper into the system, then hands me a name. “Lexi Jones.”
Lexi Jones. She must have pulled that out of the air. There’s nothing I’m aware of that connects her to that name. “Is she still here?”
He types something into his computer and looks at the checkouts. “No, checked out this morning.”
My heart sinks. “Can I see the security video of the time when Lexi Jones checked in?”
The manager calls the Durant police to make sure I have the authority, then he walks me back to the security office and finds that hour. I watch as people come and go, and at about the 4:20 mark, she comes in.
It’s Casey for sure—shorter hair and glasses. I put a copy of the video on my thumb drive, print out her picture. “Let me see the video of the time she checked out.”
“She did rapid checkout in her room. She wouldn’t have come to the desk.”
“Still, you may have caught video of her coming through the lobby. I want to see if she changed her appearance again.”
He seems caught up in it now, as if loving this new task. We watch for several minutes after she checked out. He clicks it into slow motion each time someone walks through the lobby, then finally we see a brunette hurrying through.