Without a word, he came and stretched out across the bed before me, on his side, head in hand.
“I don’t know all the specifics of the case, but something you said the other night struck me,” I told him.
His chin moved slightly in what I was taking as a, Go on, and I was also taking this not as his usual “I’m feeling like silent badass communication,” but that he was too exhausted to speak.
So I hurried.
“It made me remember something I thought was weird. About Alice.”
His eyes flared with interest, but he said nothing.
“She was taken the day I moved in. A weekday. A Monday.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have an eight-year-old’s slumber party on a weekday.”
He pushed up to his forearm.
Yes.
Interested.
“If this guy knew her, if he lured her, if he planned this with her, he had to be able to get to her. And people like this, this guy maybe especially, they insinuate themselves into investigations and…” I didn’t want to do this, I was relatively certain I was wrong, because he was not the person I chased, or Robertson saw, but I had to do it, “…and Ray runs kids’ programs at the rec center.”
He expelled a breath and his hips listed back.
“When that guy came on the scene, and we knew he did what he did, that thought occurred to me. He’d already been interviewed by Harry after Alice was taken. So we took another look at him.”
I nodded.
“I don’t know why Audrey and Dale had the party on a weekday, outside it was Alice’s actual birthday. The girls were not supposed to be outside. Audrey took off work early, and with another mom, picked them all up from school. They had a thing at the Double D with sundaes, came home and watched a Disney movie, had pizza and cake and presents, watched another Disney movie and then they all went to bed. That other mom was helping her take them to school the next morning. Both Audrey and Dale gave the sense that Alice was a little spoiled. She got what she wanted, and she wanted to celebrate her birthday on her birthday.”
“Okay,” I replied.
“And then Ray came on the scene, and he works with a lot of kids, so like I said, I had the same idea as you, and we double checked.”
“Okay,” I repeated when he paused.
“All those girls were friends because they were in the same dance class, which is what they did a couple afternoons after school. A few of them, including Alice, also are watched by Betty, the mom who helped Audrey out. Betty is also one of the only friends Audrey has in town. Betty lives close to school, and she’s a stay-at-home mom. She picks them up, walks them to her house, or gets them to dance class. When class isn’t on, she watches them after school for a couple of hours before the other parents come pick them up. They pay her to do that. In the report, notes from her interview, she referred to it as ‘pin money.’ Alice was one of the kids she watched. None of them were in the rec center programs, which are mostly geared toward sports and physical fitness, for boys and for girls. Just not those girls.”
“The girls that don’t stay with Betty?”
“Two have moms at home. One has an older sister who watches after her. No rec center.”
I let out a breath, both mentally and physically.
“I’m kind of glad, because if I was wrong, I mean, Ray’s been put through the wringer with that video thing.”
“Yeah. He gave that to Jess. He also said he’s probably going to be leaving town soon. Though he has no clue where he and Shelly would go, considering he’s internet famous in a way he didn’t ask for and pretty much no one is gonna hire him to work with kids anymore.”
“Now that I know he’s not a prideful psychopath, I feel bad for him again.”
“‘To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it.’”
“Confucius knew his shit.”
A meager smile came from the depths of Bohannan’s beard.
And then he asked, “You tired?”
I wasn’t.
“Do you want me to be?” I asked back.
He nodded.
I bent to him, touched my mouth to his, got out of bed and went to the bathroom so I could get ready to get back in bed with Bohannan.
This, I did.
Bohannan held me in his arms in the dark and he was dead weight in seconds.
I held him back, and I had a pretty freewheeling relationship with God.
I wasn’t a fan of how a lot of His supporters regarded my daughter.
I wasn’t a fan of how a lot of His supporters hid behind Him to do a lot of things.
But since I figured He felt the same way, I sensed we were on the same page.
I also figured He listened to everyone’s prayers, even if some of them made Him shake His head.
Though, the one I sent His way that night, I knew in my heart, He agreed with me.
Fifty-Three
It’s Over
Bohannan’s phone ringing woke us both.
He turned, grabbed it, and just like Agent Palmer, when he spoke into it, he sounded like he’d been up for a couple hours, had a run, a shower and was enjoying a smoothie when the call came.
He offered all this up with just, “Bohannan.”
Then he was out of bed.
I sat up.
The light from the closet shone into the room.
I heard him say, “Pinned?”
Then I heard him say, “Yeah.”
Finally, I heard him say, “Twenty.”
I switched my light on.
Maybe five seconds later, he came to me dressed, bent, touched his mouth to mine and then gave me the briefest of briefs.
“They have him pinned in a cabin in Ash Peak. Shots have been exchanged, he caught Dickerson in his vest.”
“Oh God.”
“I gotta go.”
“Do you have a vest?”
And helmet? And full body armor?
“Office. Nothing they can do, and they’re gonna be pissed, but I’m leaving Jace and Jess with you.”
If there was nothing to do, why was he going?
“Okay,” I said.
Another touch on the lips.
And he was gone.
Jace and Jess didn’t stay left.
A couple hours later, as I sipped coffee in the kitchen and they climbed the walls of the great room (fortunately, Celeste remained sleeping through this), their phones chimed with texts at the same moment, and without a word to me (something which, later, I’d be having words with them about), they loaded up and then they blasted out in a Ram.
I did not go back to bed.
I stayed up with coffee and my laptop.
I tried writing.
That didn’t work.
I tried reading.
That didn’t work either.
In the end, I turned on the lights of the Christmas tree and fell into a trance that was not like what I would do when my mom wanted me to be invisible.
It was a trance that was being caught in the grip of worrying.
I pulled out of it when I heard Celeste was up and moving around, getting ready for school.
I then made a parental decision that was not mine to make, but if she was my daughter, or if I was her, it would be what I wanted, so I went up and knocked on her door.
She was just out of the shower and sitting at her vanity-cum-desk in a room that proved the tentacles of Bohannan’s genius instincts went in many directions, because it was not too young or too girlie, and it was not I’m a dad and don’t know my girl needs her space like she needs her space.