I kissed my daughter on the top of her head. “That’s what they’re trying to do.”
My voice was steady, so my children bought it. They believed. But I didn’t. I knew no one would fight as hard to find Sam or protect my kids as I would. As Perla had said earlier, sometimes you had to be an asshole. After the day I’d had, I would have no problem following that advice.
On our way back to Zoe’s house, the heater in the rental car decided to malfunction. It hissed a stream of tepid air, which I directed toward the windshield. The defrost cleared stripes not quite wide enough to see through. I connected the stripes by wiping away the condensation with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I was damned tired of things breaking.
Audrey asked a couple more questions and then fell into silence. Leo was quiet, too, staring out the window, connected only to the earbuds he had fished from the glove box. I sneaked a glance at the back of my son’s head, a wall that discouraged questions and kept me from his thoughts.
When I pulled the car up to the curb in front of Zoe’s townhome, Audrey ran ahead to knock. By the time Leo and I reached her door, it was already ajar, my daughter wrapped around Zoe’s waist. Boo bounced around their ankles.
“I tried calling you,” she said, and it triggered a memory. The phone call I had meant to return before running into Carver.
I swore under my breath, then excused myself, leaving the kids with Zoe, and got back in the car. I found a pay phone outside a convenience store a few blocks away. The handset was sticky and smelled like fermented berries.
The woman who answered was warm in her greeting. “I’m glad you finally called, Cassie.” As if I should recognize her voice, which I didn’t.
Fortunately, she picked up on my bewilderment. “It’s Helen, from Lake Park Drive?”
The neighborhood where Sam disappeared. “I remember.” Now. “You saw Sam and Audrey on Halloween.”
“She’s such a lovely girl, and your husband—so handsome.”
“Thank you.” I tried not to sound as if I was rushing her, even as my pulse quickened. Fortunately, she got quickly to the point.
“Remember the Gardners’ house?”
After Brooklyn’s story, I would never forget it. “Abandoned two-story, rotting jack-o’-lantern on the porch?”
“That’s the one,” she confirmed. “This evening, I was talking to a neighbor, and he mentioned he saw Sam go into the Gardners’ house on Halloween.”
She paused, and I reflected that pauses were rarely followed by good news. No one hesitated before telling you that you had won the lottery. Good news was breathless and eager. Bad news came slower.
Finally, she said, “He wasn’t alone.” Another pause. “There was a woman. This neighbor said she and Sam seemed—”
“Friendly?” I suggested.
“Intimate.”
I gripped the sticky handset until my knuckles lost color. I would probably lose skin when I tried to pry my hand free.
“Did your neighbor mention anything about this woman’s appearance?”
“Not much. He described her as attractive, a brunette, but otherwise unremarkable.”
Helen’s vague description bothered me. Brooklyn? Or the young woman in the photo? Both were brunettes. Something else was there, too, but it was like trying to catch smoke with a pool skimmer.
“My neighbor couldn’t be sure, but he thinks Sam might have been back at the house earlier tonight.”
My heart raced, the go-to speed these days. Stupid stress hormones. “Is Sam there now?”
“I’m sorry, honey, he isn’t. But if you want to take a look, I could meet you outside with a key. I used to water their plants, and I don’t think they’ve changed the locks yet.”
I asked her to call Detective Rico and tell him what she saw, then thanked her for the information.
Helen assured me there wasn’t need for my gratitude. “It’s what I would do if it were Bob,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll call this detective, after I see if my neighbor can give me a better description of that woman.”
27
I beat Detective Rico to the abandoned house. On the doorstep, I closed my gloved fingers around the key Helen had given me, its metal edges digging into my palm. I wondered if I would need it. Sam and Brooklyn had managed entry, and they hadn’t had a key.
I tried the door. The handle moved freely in my hand. I slipped the key into my pocket and moved into the house.
I pulled a small flashlight from my sweatshirt pocket, but for the moment, it was as unnecessary as the key had been. Outside, clouds shrouded the moon, but a streetlight in front of the home cut through curtainless windows, illuminating my path. I kept the flashlight in my hand but didn’t bother switching it on.
The house was large but uncluttered by furniture, making the search go more quickly than I had expected. I finished checking the downstairs and attached garage in a few minutes.
I started up the staircase, each step hesitant. Though I had no reason to doubt the integrity of the steps, I still expected them to shift beneath my feet.
Halfway up, at the landing, the staircase angled to the left, thwarting the streetlight’s glow. I paused on the steps and turned on my flashlight. I swept the beam up the stairs, toward the doors of the second-story bedrooms. One door was open, but the beam died at the room’s threshold. The other doors were closed.
I took a moment to survey my surroundings. Nails trailed the staircase walls like drunken ants, marching up in an uneven line but going nowhere. Dozens of family photos had hung there once, the memories lingering in the outlines where the frames had protected the paint from the sun. Would the walls in my own home soon look like this?
I kept the flashlight’s beam at waist height as I climbed the last few stairs. I walked through the open door first. A bathroom. The shower curtain had been removed. I checked the drawers. Empty.
Next, I checked the bedrooms that, judging by the pastel zoo animals in one and glow-in-the-dark stars in the other, had probably belonged to the children. In the room with the stars, a garbage bag sat propped in the corner. I dumped its contents on the floor. I unwadded each ball of paper, looked inside a child’s discarded sneaker, shook the broken action figures, even sniffed the discarded tube of acne cream. When I was done, I scooped the debris back into the bag. It didn’t feel right to leave a mess.
I saved the master bedroom for last, and my heart thudded as I approached its closed door. I held my breath as I pushed it open.
Unlike the other rooms, this bedroom was furnished, barely. A single pair of plaid curtains hung in the window that faced the street. A king-size bed remained, although it had been stripped of its linens. I stood there, frozen, staring at that bed. I tried not to think of a reason it alone would remain in the otherwise empty house.
I turned away from the bed toward the walk-in closet. Even the poles had been removed, their holders unscrewed from the walls.
I opened the door to the master bathroom. Sadness lived in the other parts of the home—the picture nails, the discarded toys, a single forgotten mug in the kitchen—but in the master bathroom, there were glimpses of rage. One hole in the wall was the size of a fist, another one the shape of a boot. Someone had also thrown a hammer at the shower’s glass door, shattering it. The hammer remained in the puddle of shards.