“Not sneaking out tonight, are you?”
“Only if you don’t.”
“Rory.”
“Yes, Father?” His voice drips with smart-ass. “What lesson do you want to teach me tonight?”
“Good night.”
I shut the door before he can answer. I do not want to hear it. Not tonight.
Jenna is just getting into bed, and I sit down to talk to her. Both the kids already know about the church and the basement under it, the same way they know about everything faster than light. I wish there were a way to stop it, because she is just so young. Not young enough to still sleep with stuffed animals, but young enough to keep them around. But she still knows too much about this kind of thing. Girls are abducted and locked up in books, movies, TV shows, and in real life. It would be impossible for her to have missed that, and she hasn’t.
“They were chained up down there, weren’t they?” she says.
I shake my head. “We don’t know yet.”
“Don’t lie.”
“Probably they were.”
She nods and turns over on her side, toward the nightstand. The light on top has a flower-shaped lampshade. Orange, of course.
“How’s your stomach been?” I ask.
“It’s fine.”
“Good.”
“Why would someone hurt people like that?”
I shrug. “Some people are just wired wrong. They think bad is good.”
“I bet Claire catches him.”
“I bet you’re right.”
She smiles a little.
I hope she is wrong.
Fifty-eight
The first pictures of the basement are surprising. It does not look like the medieval dungeon I have built up in my head.
Instead, it looks like the unfinished basement of an old building. Dirt floor, old wooden shelves on the wall, an old staircase. Only the wall farthest from the stairs is different, because it is the only one that indicates what may have happened in that basement. The wall has been bricked over and covered in stucco. A jumble of chains and cuffs lie on the ground beside it.
Claire introduces the pictures at an evening press conference, and I watch it from inside a bar. It is the same bar I was in when Lindsay’s body was found.
I nurse a beer and sit where I have a view of a front window. Across the street is the First Street Bar & Grill, where they make giant hamburgers to eat with their giant microbrews, and everything is cheaper than it sounds. Millicent is not a fan of burgers or beer, so we go there only to meet clients or attend a party.
Claire goes through each picture and describes the details. There are close-ups of stains on the walls and the dirt floor. They look like rust, but she says they are blood.
The bartender shakes his head. No one makes a sound. They are too busy drinking and watching.
I cannot imagine Millicent leaving so much blood behind, if that’s what it is. Claire might be lying. Her eyes stare right into the camera, so it appears she is looking right at me. Or at the guy next to me. Or at the bartender. It is unnerving.
I hate Claire’s pantsuits. Tonight, it is navy blue paired with a dark grey blouse. She always looks like she going to a funeral.
Claire stands at a podium near the church, although it isn’t close enough to see anything but trees. Not even the steeple is visible. The police chief and the mayor are on one side of her, and an easel is set up on the other. Large copies of the pictures are stacked on it, and a couple of uniformed cops flip through each one as Claire speaks.
“We are already running tests on the blood, comparing it to both Naomi and Lindsay. We also discovered traces of saliva, and those are being tested as well.”
She does not take questions. The whole press conference lasts about twenty minutes, which gives the newscasters and pundits time to dissect it. Claire didn’t say anything about a message left on the wall, nor was there a photo of one.
The bartender turns the channel to sports news. I order another beer and hardly touch it.
Forty minutes later, I see him. Across the street, Josh walks into the First Street Bar & Grill. It is his favorite restaurant.
I came across this information by accident while driving down First Street a couple of nights ago. While stuck at a red light, I watched Josh get out of his car and head into the restaurant. The next night, I drove by again and saw his car parked out front. The third night, the same thing. On that evening, I walked by and saw him sitting at the bar, alone, drinking a beer while watching TV.
I go across the street and sit a few barstools away from Josh. Since I have already eaten dinner, I order a shot and a beer. Same as he does.
I look at him and look away. Then I look back, as if I recognize him.
Without even glancing in my direction, he says, “Yes. I’m that guy from the news.”
“I thought that was you. I see you on TV almost every night,” I say. Josh looks a lot different in real life. His face does not look as smooth. The texture of his skin is uneven. His nose is red, and so are his eyes. Too bad I didn’t bring the eye drops.
He sighs and finally turns to me. “Thanks for watching.”
“No, thank you for your reporting. You’ve really been the go-to guy on that big case, right? The women who were killed?”
“I was.”
“You still are. You seem to know everything first.”
Josh drinks a third of his beer in one gulp. “Are you one of those true-crime freaks?”
“Not at all. Just someone who wants this asshole caught.”
“Cool.”
I motion to the bartender for another shot. “Hey, man,” I say to Josh. “Let me buy one.”
“No offense, but I’m not gay.”
“None taken. Neither am I.”
Josh accepts the shot. The bartender brings a couple more beers with it.
Together, we watch the sports channel, talking back and forth about this team or that one. I buy a couple more shots but pour mine into a peanut bowl when he is not looking. Josh drinks his and orders two more.
When a soccer game starts, he nods to it. “I bet on the Blazers. You?”
“Same.” Lie.
“You play? You look like you play.”
I shrug. “Not really.”
He gulps down the rest of his beer and motions for two more. “I used to play for this soccer team called the Marauders. We sucked, but people were still afraid of us. That was kind of awesome.”
“Sounds like it.”
During a commercial break, an ad for the local news shows today’s press conference. Claire Wellington is once again on the screen.
Josh shakes his head and looks over at me. His eyes are not as clear as they were when I walked in. “You want some inside information?” he says.
“Sure.”
He points to the TV. “She’s a bitch.”
“Really?”
“It’s not because she’s a woman. Really, that’s got nothing to do with it. But the problem with having a woman in charge is that they have to change everything. Prove themselves, you know? And it’s not their fault they have to do that—I get it. I just wish they didn’t screw everything up.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s a million percent right.”
The young, earnest reporter I have been watching is not the person he is on TV. I don’t know why I expected him to be.