Laurence couldn’t really blame him.
Is my wife in trouble?
Yes, Laurence thought. No. Maybe. On one level, he didn’t really know. His gut instinct edged very strongly toward the first response, but he still couldn’t put the pieces of what was happening here together well enough to form a satisfactory picture.
On a different level, of course, the answer was obvious.
“Yes,” he said. “Your wife is wanted for questioning on suspicion of assault.”
Gardener blinked.
“Assault?”
“Yes.” Laurence nodded. “And breaking and entering too, although that would be of lesser importance right now.”
“But—”
“Yesterday evening,” Laurence said, holding up a hand, “we believe she assaulted a man named Michael Hyde. The attack took place inside his home. It was very serious.”
Gardener just stared back at him for a moment, and from the expression on his face, Laurence imagined he was putting together some pieces of his own. The suggestion his wife had assaulted someone might have been unbelievable at first, but the identity of the victim had clearly caused him to reconsider that idea.
“Katie has more or less admitted it,” Laurence said. “I spoke to her briefly on the phone last night. Unfortunately, she ended the conversation and we’ve been unable to reach her since. It appears she has turned off her cell phone. I must ask whether you have heard from her.”
Gardener shook his head and looked away.
But there was guilt there, Laurence thought. Self-recrimination. Gardener clearly blamed himself in some way for what was happening here.
“Mr. Gardener?”
“We had an argument,” the man said. “Yesterday morning. Katie stormed out. I thought she needed a bit of space—and honestly, I was angry too. Really angry. But I didn’t try to call her until later, and by then her phone was turned off. It has been all night. I was trying to think what the best thing to do was when you turned up.”
Laurence looked around the room again. It seemed a very nice house to him, this one. It was a home that had been gathered together over the years with love. But while that love remained, it also felt to him like something that had slipped down behind the cushions and got lost under the chairs. That maybe there wasn’t enough talking in this house anymore and too much was being left unsaid.
“What was the argument about?”
Gardener slumped slightly.
“It was me being an idiot,” he said. “Katie had called the police the night before, because she saw someone outside. Or thought she did. I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have done. I just thought the thing at the day care had freaked her out, along with all the stuff with her brother.”
The stuff with her brother.
One thing at a time though.
“What is it that happened at the day care?”
“Some of the kids thought there was a man in a car who was watching—”
“What color was this car?”
Gardener shook his head.
“I really don’t know.”
“Because when I spoke to your wife on the phone last night, she told me that Michael Hyde has been stalking your family. You, her, and—I’m sorry, I don’t know your daughter’s name.”
“Siena.”
“Right. And Michael Hyde drives a red car, doesn’t he?”
“Red car,” Siena said.
Laurence and Gardener both looked at her for a few seconds.
“Maybe I should have taken it more seriously,” Gardener said. “But it didn’t seem like a big deal. And I know how Katie gets sometimes. She takes the weight of the world on her shoulders. She’s always so scared that something bad is going to happen. Especially when it comes to her brother.”
“Ah, yes,” Laurence said. “What exactly has happened with Christopher?”
He listened as Gardener explained, although it very quickly became clear that the man did not know the answer to that question. Katie had received a phone call from her mother three nights earlier that had something to do with Chris. She had gone out, and then returned later that evening. It frustrated Laurence that Gardener was married to the woman and yet did not appear to know anything more than that.
It clearly frustrated Gardener now too.
“I didn’t ask,” he said. “Because I don’t want anything to do with her brother—and I think it’s best for Katie’s sake that she doesn’t either. All he ever does is hurt people and let them down. But she doesn’t think straight when it comes to him. She always blames herself for what happened.”
It’s my fault, Laurence remembered.
Oh, honey. It’s not your fault. Not at all.
“And yet she reported him two years ago,” he said.
“Because I made her.” Gardener looked pained. “I know it sounds bad when you put it like that. But Chris had screwed up so many times, and it just felt like the final straw to me. She was so hurt. So upset. But I could tell she was going to forgive him again, and so I persuaded her not to. I convinced her that going to the police was the best thing to do—that it was time to cut ties and walk away.”
I know it sounds bad.
Perhaps it did, and yet Laurence found it hard to blame Sam Gardener for pressing her on the issue. The situation was a complicated one—in large part because families were always complicated—but again, he remembered how guilty Katie Shaw had felt seventeen years ago. It occurred to him that she had been with Sam Gardener that afternoon, and that the man before him now might blame himself too. Regardless, it was obvious from the distress on Gardener’s face that he loved his wife deeply and was worried about her, and Laurence had no doubt his actions two years ago had been driven by those same emotions.
“Has she had any recent contact with her brother?” he said.
“I don’t know.” Gardener hesitated. “That was partly what the argument was about. She lied to me about being at work on Friday, and I was angry about that too. I don’t know what she was doing; she wouldn’t tell me. But I looked through her jacket the next morning and found something weird.”
An old newspaper clipping regarding a missing boy. Nathaniel Leland. The name meant nothing to Laurence, but he felt a chill go through him even so. Why was Katie Shaw interested in a missing child? It was another piece of the puzzle. He didn’t know where it fit yet, but the more pieces he had, the better the chance that some would begin to slot into place.
“There was an address and a phone number too,” Gardener said. “I think they might have been Chris’s.”
Jesus Christ.
“Did you make a note of them?”
Gardener nodded.
“Hang on.”
He stood up and walked through to the kitchen. Laurence waited in the front room, alone with the child. She was still immersed in her book, and for a moment, Laurence simply stood there. Then he crouched down and tried to catch her eye, smiling at her when she finally looked up.
“Siena, right? My name’s Laurence.”
“Hello.”
“I want you to think hard,” he said quietly, “and to remember as best you can, because it’s important. Did you really see a red car?”
The little girl nodded.