Jared had been frantic from the moment they entered the children’s clinic to search for Lena. His erratic behavior had cost them several valuable minutes. He’d kicked down doors that weren’t locked. He’d overturned desks and toppled filing cabinets. By the time Will had found the locked basement door, the young man was so spent that he’d barely had the strength to help Will break it down.
And then Jared’s second wind had kicked in. He’d rushed downstairs, heedless of anyone hiding in the shadows. They had found another locked door at the back of the basement. Deep ruts were cut in the concrete where metal shelving had once covered the entrance to what had to be a bomb shelter. An old but sturdy deadbolt held the door firmly in place. Jared had pounded away, popping off the steel like a pinball, nearly dislocating his shoulder, before Will came back with a crowbar from the workbench.
Will had to admit that he didn’t think of Sara until after the door was pried open. Lena was barely awake, shaking with fever. Her body was drenched in sweat. Jared cried as he untied the rope from her hands and feet, begging Will to get help. That was when Will had gone upstairs to find Sara. He was staring at her empty BMW when he heard her screams from the river. It was sheer luck that she’d managed to call for help before Darla pulled her back down into the water. It was even better luck that the rope that was used to tie up Lena was long enough to help Sara get back to safer ground.
Not that she had needed it. Will was pretty sure she was capable of taking care of herself. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see her walk on water after the hell she had survived.
On the phone, Will heard a baby gurgle and another woman talking.
Faith’s voice was muffled as she said something to the nurse. She told Will, “I need to go. They brought Emma for her feeding. Didn’t they, baby?”
Will waited through several seconds of baby talk before her voice returned to normal. “I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried about you down there on your own.” There was a strain to her voice, as if she was about to cry. Faith had been pretty emotional these last few months. Will had hoped the baby’s birth would send the crazy train back to the station, but maybe it would take a while for her hormones to get back to normal.
“I should probably go,” he told her. “I’m almost at Frank’s.”
She gave a loud sniff. “Let me know what happens.”
“I will.”
He heard the phone rattle around in the cradle and assumed that was Faith’s way of ending the call. Will tucked his cell phone back into his pocket. He checked a street sign against the directions and took a turn. There was an arrow pointing over to the other side of the paper. His lips tugged up into a smile. Sara had drawn a smiley face for him.
He slowed the Porsche again, looking for street numbers. Will checked each mailbox, comparing the addresses to the directions. Halfway down the street, he found what he was looking for. Frank’s house was a one-story cottage, but there was nothing quaint or cottagey about it. An air of sadness hung over the place like a dark cloud. The gutters sagged. The windows were dirty. The garden gnome was surprising, but the empty bottles of Dewar’s by the trashcan were not.
The screen door opened as Will got out of his car. Lionel Harris laughed at him, obviously enjoying the surprise.
“Good morning,” he said. “I heard y’all went for a swim last night.”
Will smiled, though he felt the cold sweat come back like a sudden rain. He couldn’t get the image out of his mind of Sara standing on top of that rock. “I’m a little surprised to see you here, Mr. Harris.”
“Just dropping off a casserole.”
Will’s confusion must have been obvious. The old man patted him on the back. “Never underestimate the power of a shared history.”
Will nodded, though he still didn’t understand.
“I’ll leave you to it.” Lionel gripped his cane as he walked down the porch steps. Will watched him walk into the street. A neighbor waved him over and he stopped for a chat.
“Frank’s waiting for you.”
Will turned around. There was a woman standing at the door. She was older, with stooped shoulders and unnaturally red hair. Her makeup was caked on in the same style that her daughter preferred. Will saw the finger of a bruise under the woman’s eye. The bridge of her nose was swollen. Someone had punched her recently, and very hard.
“I’m Maxine.” She pushed open the screen door for him. “He’s waiting for you.”
As depressing as Frank’s house was on the outside, the inside was far worse. The walls and ceiling had yellowed from years of cigarette smoke. The wall-to-wall carpet was clean but worn. The furniture looked like it had come from a 1950s model home.
“Back here.” Maxine gestured for him to follow her down the hall. Opposite the kitchen was a small bedroom that had been turned into a cluttered office. At the back of the house was a dingy bath with avocado green tile. Frank was lying in a hospital bed in the last room. The shades were all drawn but the sunlight glowed behind them. The room was dank and sweaty. Oxygen tubes were clipped to Frank’s nose but his breathing was still labored. His skin was yellow. His eyes were clouded.
There was a chair by the bed. Will sat down without having to be told.
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Maxine told them. “You’uns let me know if you need anything.”
Will turned in surprise, but she’d already left the room. He turned his attention back to Frank. “Julie Smith?”
The older man’s deep baritone had been reduced to a low tremble. “I had her call Sara.”
Will had assumed something like this had happened. “You already knew Tommy had killed himself before Sara got there.”
“I thought …” Frank closed his eyes. His chest slowly rose and fell. “I thought it would be better if Sara found him. That there would be fewer questions.”
It could have easily worked out that way. Sara knew Nick Shelton. She could have unwittingly smoothed things over. “Why did you have Maxine say that Allison had a boyfriend?”
One shoulder went up. “It’s always the boyfriend.”
Will guessed that was true enough, but Frank had lied so many times over the last few days that Will didn’t know whether the man was capable of being honest. Lionel Harris had a point about change. Not many people could pull it off. There had to be something awfully bad or awfully good to compel a person to turn their lives around. It was obvious to Will that Frank was past any life-changing revelations. Even without the oxygen tank, he smelled sick, like his body was already rotting. Will knew that there came a point in every person’s life when it was too late to change anything. All you could do was wait for death to make you inconsequential.
Frank winced as he tried to get more comfortable in the bed.
“Can I get you anything?”
He shook his head, though he was obviously in pain. “How’s Lena?”
“The infection’s bad, but they think she’ll pull through.”
“Tell her I’m sorry,” Frank said. “Tell her I’m sorry about everything.”
“All right,” Will promised, though if he had his way he would never talk to the woman again. He didn’t think Lena Adams was all bad, but there was just enough of her that was tainted that left a bad taste in Will’s mouth. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Frank stared openly at Will. His eyes watered. “You got kids?”
Will shook his head.
“Darla was always rebellious, pushing me, pushing Maxine.” He stopped to catch his breath. “She disappeared on us when she was seventeen. I didn’t even know she was back in town until I saw her outside the clinic.” He coughed. Fine specks of blood dotted the bedsheet. “She was taking a cigarette break.”
“Why did she call the police on Tommy?” The act seemed risky considering her criminal enterprises.
“I don’t know if she was trying to scare Tommy or punish me.” Frank reached for the glass of water on his bedside table. Will helped him, holding the straw so he could drink. F
rank swallowed, the noise painfully loud in the tiny room. He sat back with a slow groan.
Will asked, “What did you do when you read the incident report about Tommy’s dog?”
“I went to the clinic and asked her what the hell she was doing.”
“Darla’s name wasn’t in the report.”
Frank didn’t answer.
Will was sick of pulling teeth. “You’ve done thousands of interviews, Chief Wallace. You know what questions I’m going to ask. You’ve probably already got a list in your head.” He paused, waiting for Frank to make this easy. After a full minute, Will realized nothing was ever going to be easy with this man. He asked, “What did Darla say when you confronted her?”
“She told me she was being blackmailed.”
“About the drug trial?”
“It wasn’t just the two kids she was lying about. It was a lot of them. She had a system going—getting them to double up on the rolls so it looked like more kids were in the study, then they’d split the checks when they came in.”
“Were they all blackmailing her?”
“Just Jason and Allison.”
“She told you their names?”
“No.”
Will studied him, trying again to figure out if he was lying. It was an exercise in futility. “What did Darla tell you about the blackmailers?”
“She thought she could pay them off, get them off her back. One of them was graduating soon. She thought if she gave them enough money they’d go away.”
“How much did she ask you for?”
“Ten thousand dollars. I didn’t have it. Even if I did, I wouldn’t’a given it to her. I spent so much money bailing her out so many times. I couldn’t throw away more.”
Will noticed the man had not considered a second option, which was arresting his daughter and sending her to prison for her crimes.
Frank continued, “She worked so hard to get her nursing degree. I never thought she’d …” His voice trailed off. “I didn’t know.”
“She’s been in trouble before.”
Frank would only nod.
“Bad checks,” Will supplied. Darla’s fingerprints were on file. They matched the print on the Windex bottle Will and Charlie had found in the dorm bathroom closet. Will made an educated guess. “She was in trouble before that.”
Frank gave a tight nod. “I’d get calls every now and then. Professional courtesy, one cop to another. Austin. Little Rock. West Memphis. She was taking care of old people, skimming their money. She was good. She never got caught, but they knew it was her.”
Will had found many times that there was a fine line between knowing someone was guilty and proving it. Being a cop’s daughter had probably given Darla an extra layer of protection.
“I was sure Tommy killed that girl. I just didn’t want anything to come back on Darla.”
“You did everything you could do to make sure Lena’s case was solid.”
He stared at Will with rheumy eyes, obviously trying to guess what he knew.
The truth was that Will didn’t know anything for certain. He guessed that Frank had hidden evidence. He guessed that Frank had delayed the call center in Eaton sending the audio of Maxine’s voice on the 911 call. He guessed that the man had impeded an investigation, acted with reckless endangerment, and blindly if not willfully contributed to the deaths of three people.
As Frank had said, there was knowing and then there was proving.
“I never wanted to get Lena involved in any of this,” Frank said. “She didn’t know nothing about any of it. It was all down to me.”
Will imagined Lena would say the same thing about Frank. As long as he lived, he would never understand the bond that held them together. “When did you figure out that Darla was involved?”
“When Lena—” He started coughing again. This time, there was so much blood that he had to spit into a tissue. “Jesus,” Frank groaned, wiping his mouth. “I’m sorry.”
Will fought to keep his stomach under control. “When did you figure it out?”
“When Lena told me there was another kid got killed the same way …” His voice trailed off again. “I couldn’t see Darla doing this. You’ll understand when you have kids. She was my baby. I used to walk the floor with her at night. I watched her grow from a little girl into …” Frank didn’t finish his words, though it was obvious what Darla had grown into.
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Last night,” he admitted. Then, instead of making Will ask the right questions, he volunteered, “We got into a fight. She said she had to leave town. She wanted more money.”
“Did you give it to her?”
He shook his head. “Maxine had a couple hundred bucks in her purse. They got into a fight. Pretty bad.” He indicated the oxygen tank, the rails on his bed. “By the time I got up, she had Maxie on the ground, beating her.” Frank pressed his thin lips together. “I never thought I’d live to see anything like that—a child wailing off on her own mother. My child. That wasn’t who I raised her to be. That wasn’t my kid.”
“What happened?”
“She stole the money. Took some out of my wallet, too. Maybe fifty bucks.”
“We found almost three hundred dollars on the body.”
He nodded, as if that’s what he expected. “I got a call from Brock this morning. Said she was pulled out downriver from the granite field.” He looked at Will as if he didn’t quite believe the information.
“That’s right. She was near the college.”
“He said I didn’t need to see her right now. Give him time to clean her up.” Frank’s breath caught. “How many times have you said that to a parent who wants to see their kid, only you know the kid’s been beaten, cut, fucked up six ways to Sunday?”
“A lot of times,” Will admitted. “But Brock’s right. You don’t want to remember her like this.”
Frank stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know if I want to remember her at all.”
Will let his words hang between them for a few seconds. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
Frank shook his head, and again, Will wasn’t sure whether or not to trust him. The man had been a detective for over thirty years. There was no way he hadn’t at least suspected his daughter was involved in these crimes. Even if Frank didn’t want to say it out loud, surely he knew deep down that his inaction had at the very least cost Tommy Braham and Jason Howell their lives.
Or maybe he didn’t know. Maybe Frank was so good at deceiving himself that he was certain he had done everything right.
“I should let you get some rest,” Will offered.
Frank’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep. “I used to take her hunting.” His voice was a raspy whisper. “It was the only time we got along.” He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The only sound in the room was the quiet hiss of the oxygen tank beside his bed. “I taught her to never aim for the heart. There’s ribs and bone all around it. Bullet ricochets. You end up chasing the deer for miles waiting for him to die.” He put his hand to the side of his neck. “You go for the neck. Cut off the stuff that supplies the heart.” He rubbed the sagging skin. “That’s the clean kill. The most humane.”
Will had seen the crime scenes. There was nothing humane about the murders of Allison Spooner and Jason Howell. They had been terrified. They had been butchered.
“I’m dying,” Frank said. His words were no surprise. “I was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago.” He licked his chapped lips. “Maxine said she’d take care of me as long as I gave her my pension.” His breath caught in his chest. He gave a strained laugh. “I always thought I’d die alone.”
Will felt an overwhelming sadness at the man’s words. Frank Wallace was going to die alone. There might be people in the same room with him—his bitter ex-wife, a few blindly loyal colleagues—but men like Frank were destined to die the same way they had lived, with everyone at arm’s length.
Will knew thi
s because he often viewed his own life and death through a similar lens. He didn’t have any childhood friends he’d kept in touch with. There were no relatives he could reach out to. Faith had the baby now. Eventually, she would find a man whose company she could tolerate. There might be another baby. She would probably find a desk job to take some of the stress out of her life. Will would recede from her life like a tide rolling back from the shore.
That left Angie, and Will had no great hope that she would be a comfort to him in his old age. She lived fast and hard, showing the same reckless disregard that had landed her mother in the coma ward at the state hospital for the last twenty-seven years. Marriage, if anything, had pushed them further apart. Will had always assumed that he would outlive Angie, that he would find himself alone at her graveside one day. This image always brought him great sadness tinged with a modicum of relief. Part of Will loved Angie more than life itself. Another part of him thought of her as a Pandora’s box that held his darkest secrets. If she were to die, she would take some of that darkness with her.
But she would also take part of his life.
Will asked Frank, “Do you need me to get you anything?”
He coughed again, a dry, hacking sound. “No,” he answered. “I’m fine on my own.”
“Take care of yourself.” Will made himself reach out and touch Frank’s shoulder before he left the room.
SARA WAS IN the front yard with her greyhounds when Will pulled into the Linton driveway. The side of her face was bruised. The cut on her arm had needed stitches. Her hair was down, brushing across her shoulders.
She looked beautiful.
The dogs ran to greet him as he got out of the car. Sara had dressed them both in black fleece jackets to fight the cold. Will petted the excited animals as much as he could without falling over backward.
Sara clicked her tongue and they stopped accosting him. She asked, “I take it Frank wasn’t much help?”
Will shook his head, feeling a lump come into his throat. He used to be good at hiding his thoughts, but somehow Sara had cracked the code. “I don’t think he has long.”
“I heard.” She was obviously conflicted about the impending death of her longtime family friend. “I’m sorry that he’s sick, but I don’t know how I feel about him as a person after all of this.”