“When?”
“This afternoon.”
Rico studied me through narrowed eyes. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
I sighed, so deeply it rattled my chest. “I’m sure there is, but I can’t think of anything right now.”
He rubbed his eyes, and I sensed his own confession coming. “I talked to the principal at the high school.” He made a show of consulting his notebook. “Chuck Diggs. Principal Diggs said Sam might have been sleeping with his students.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Sam’s friend, Ozzy Delgado, said the same thing, that Sam would never touch a student.”
“Because he wouldn’t have.”
“But Ozzy did say he was sleeping with someone. So a cheating husband disappears. Okay. The story tracks. Either Sam left because he wanted to pursue this adulterous, possibly illegal, relationship, or you found out about the affair and there was a fight. In this scenario, we don’t know where your husband is—a hotel? a ditch?—but we have an idea what led to his disappearance. Which means we know where to look.”
Rico let his words settle. I couldn’t move. I wanted to leave, but I also needed to hear where he was going with this.
“See, at first, that’s what I thought happened,” he said. “Then your son gets injured in a football game, and the guy who hit him ends up in the hospital too. The storyline shifts. Leo has a temper. He fights with his dad—about the affair?—and then Sam disappears. Leo bullies this boy online, and then that boy nearly dies in an accident.”
I couldn’t help myself this time, “Do you really believe my son capable of that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t much like anonymous tips. I prefer when the person making the accusations is willing to stand behind them. That said, I don’t really know your son.”
“Then let me tell you: he’s not.”
Rico tucked his notebook inside the pocket of his jacket. “I’m married. Twenty-six years, three kids, two still at home. I understand the impulse to protect your husband and kids,” he said. “But I am going to need that photo as soon as possible. If I’m going to find Sam, I’m also going to need you to be straight with me. You can’t hold stuff like this back, even if it shines an unfavorable light on your family.”
The detective’s tone sounded less sympathetic than it had earlier, and when he walked away, I got the unshakable feeling I had disappointed him.
29
After checking in with Zoe, I sat in the car and contemplated my next move. At first, the brisk air seared my lungs, but the interior quickly became swampy with my breath. I cracked the window, then wiped the condensation from the windshield with my sleeve.
Though Helen’s house had been dark when I had gotten into the car, lights blazed there now.
Helen’s description of Sam’s lover continued to trouble me.
Attractive, brunette, and unremarkable.
It certainly sounded like Brooklyn, but I suddenly seized on the last of the descriptors—unremarkable.
Midbreath, the memory landed, just beyond reach. I forced myself into stillness, holding my exhalation, afraid the memory would be as easily chased away as a butterfly pausing for nectar.
Then it hit me, and I released my breath.
When I had asked Audrey to describe the woman she had seen with her dad on Halloween, Audrey had told me the woman had been wearing a costume. Gray wig. Painted face. Like a broken doll.
Hardly unremarkable.
Helen had lied. More than that, she had described Brooklyn as she normally was, not how she had appeared on Halloween. So Helen had seen more than she had admitted.
I got out of the car, taking the blazing lights as an invitation. Not that I required one.
With the side of my fist, I knocked on the door. Immediately, it opened—but instead of periwinkle hair and a creased brow, I was greeted by a middle-aged man wearing a knit cap, a thin robe, and a scowl.
“What do you want?” The man pulled his robe around him. At this hour, it likely offered inadequate protection against the chill.
“I’m looking for Helen.”
The man’s expression shifted from annoyance to confusion. “Who?” He tugged on the edge of his knit cap, his nose red from the cold.
I repeated myself, this time describing Helen. Seeing no reaction, I added details as if the man wouldn’t know an elderly woman lived in his home unless I chose just the right word to describe her.
Ah, yes, I wasn’t sure, but since you mentioned her snub nose . . .
The man in the knit cap and thin robe shook his head. “My wife and I have lived here for four years.” His tone was apologetic, but he closed the door a fraction. For all he knew, I could be connected to the trouble across the street. Which, I guessed, I was.
It hit me then that I had first met Helen on the street, and, earlier that night, on the doorstep of the abandoned house. I had never actually seen Helen leaving or entering the house she claimed as hers.
“Maybe she’s a neighbor?” I asked.
“Never seen anyone like that.” His eyes drifted across the street. “So—do you know what’s going on over there?”
I reached for my phone, for photos of Sam, before realizing I had nothing to show this man. Per Perla’s instructions, I couldn’t even give him my new number. “They’re looking for a man who disappeared last night.”
Before I could describe Sam, the man in the robe said, “Oh, it’s about that teacher? Yeah, the police were asking around about him earlier.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Honestly? My guess is that guy ditched his family.”
The man’s face grew weary, his tone wistful, as if such a thought had occurred to him too.
I felt suddenly dizzy. “Why would you say that?”
“Isn’t that always how it happens? Either the guy left, or the wife killed him?”
He moved to shut the door, but I stretched my arm across the threshold. With my other arm, I gestured toward the house where Rico and his team still milled.
“Do you know who lived there?”
The man furrowed his brow, considering how helpful he should continue to be to the persistent stranger on his doorstep. He must have recognized my level of persistence and that giving me a name was the only way to be rid of me, because, finally, he answered.
The name he gave me was not Gardner.
While talking to the man who wasn’t Helen, I had missed a call from Zoe. When I called her back, she rushed through her first piece of news: Perla had texted Zoe asking that I stop by on the way home. Nothing urgent, she’d texted.
Zoe quickly moved on to her second announcement, delivered without pause for breath or breaks between the words. Still, I understood it clearly enough: she had found Hannah, or so she hoped. Zoe forwarded to my phone a photo from the yearbook and an address.
I checked the time. Though it was late, it was a Friday night. Hannah would likely be awake. That’s if she was home.
First Hannah’s house, then Perla’s, I decided.
I started the car, rolling down both windows. The cold air served the dual purpose of defogging the windows and keeping me alert. On the way, I stopped at an ATM, then I headed across town to confront a teenage girl who had started rumors about sleeping with my husband.