Her shoulders and neck are knotted and tight. She keeps thinking about the way Scout had smelled that morning, as if he’d been held close by someone else. A stranger.
She tries to moderate her tone as Sergeant Jenkin stares at her, face impassive. “Look. We know she got into a truck with a strange man because we have a witness who saw her do so. Can’t you chase that up? You must be able to dosomething!”
“A witness? Well, that’s a start.”
“Good!” Cathy grins. “Great! She’s an old woman who came into the pharmacy. Suzie will be able to put you in touch with her, I’ll bet.”
Sergeant Jenkin pauses in the act of typing, fingers hovering over the keys. “How old was this woman?”
“How would I know? Eighty? Ninety? What does it matter?”
“Did she have a walker? Insist on doing everything herself?”
Cathy shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. She’s a regular in there.”
“Yeah, I know she is. That’s Beatrice Scott. Betty to her friends, of which I happen to be one. I regularly go and see her and some of the other folks at Shady Pines to give them advice on online scams, credit card fraud, that kind of thing. Make sure they’re not signing their life savings over to some hustler from overseas. Now, Betty isn’t quite the oldest person in town, but she’s getting there. Still sharp as a whip, though. Her eyes are about the only thing letting her down.”
Cathy feels herself deflate, first physically—shoulders sagging, stomach pooching out over the top of her waistband—and then mentally, realizing that this had all been a big, pointless waste of time.
Sergeant Jenkin is still talking, typing something into his computer. “Glaucoma. Both eyes. Oh, she can see up close, all right—I’ve watched her play bingo up at Shady Pines myself—but the idea that she could pick out a man sitting in his truck all the way across the street? No, sorry. Not even on her best day.”
“Can’t you at least talk to her? Go in and watch the CCTV? You must have cameras all over town. You’re quick enough to single my son out for skateboarding every weekend.”
Sergeant Jenkin laughs uncomfortably. “We don’t caution Danny for skateboarding, Cathy. It’s for the destruction of property and criminal damage. You can laugh if you like, but a lot of these property owners don’t want all these boys hanging around in their car parks and outside their businesses. He ought to find a more productive hobby.”
I remember you with vomit on your shirt and your dick in your hand, asking me to suck it, Cathy thinks, almost recoiling from the memory,so don’t lecture me about what my son should be doing. The urge to say this to Sergeant Jenkin, who is sitting back in his chair with his hands laced across his stomach in a way which signals he is done with this conversation, is so strong that Cathy thinks the words will just fly out like sharp red arrows.
Instead, she draws a breath and grits her teeth in a barbed smile. “Well. Thank you for your time anyway, Neil.”
“Let me tell you what I think, Cathy. Your sister is in the process of a separation. She’s stressed out, struggling. You said the divorce papers arrived the day she went missing? That’s certainly enough to trigger a breakdown. Or maybe she’s got something going on with this man in the truck, I wouldn’t know, and neither would you, because she’s a single woman. An adult, capable of making her own decisions. As for this note you found, well, how do we even know it’s from her?”
Cathy sighs. She’s going to be late for work again, she realizes.
But Sergeant Jenkin isn’t done. “Here’s another thing, and maybe you won’t want to examine it, but it probably needs to be said. You said you and Hazel hadn’t spoken for five years? It’s clear you’re feeling a lot of guilt about what happened, Cathy. Maybe that’s why all this stuff is eating you up. Go home and get some rest. Paint your toenails, that’s what my wife does when she’s fed up with the world. I bet Hazel’ll be back in a couple of days and she’ll be mighty embarrassed about all the fuss she’s caused.”
Cathy’s head snaps up. Sometimes her temper is quick to spark and as unstable as a wildfire.This town, she thinks, feeling color flush her cheeks,this tiny, stupid fucking town.
“What’s that meant to mean, ‘about what happened’?Nothinghappened. I didn’t take that money!”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Cathy. I just think—”
Cathy can’t bear it any longer. She grabs her bag and snatches the receipt from the desk, breathless with fury and the hot, molten tears filling her eyes. She can feel the emotion building, all of it, strangling her until her breath whistles. But she doesn’t want to cry here in front of Neil fucking Jenkin, so she forces a strangled “Thanks for your time,” and slams the door against the wall as she leaves.
She walks until she reaches the car park, where Cathy finally stops and drags her palms down her face, heaving big gulps of cold air into her lungs. She can taste the pines, and the wind blowing in off the lake, like rusted metal on her tongue.
34
Andrew locks the door to the cellar, but by now it’s a token gesture. He knows I’m too weak to escape. Moments after I watch him walk into the woods, I use the coat hanger to open the door and Maria draws the bolt on the other side. The padlock is where she’d left it, lying on the floor and still attached to the hasp. We lean into each other like two famished ghosts, Maria’s leg trembling against my own. Overhead, the weather vane creaks.
“Did you do it?” I whisper.
“Yes. I put it right inside. Do you think it will work?”
I shrug. There hadn’t been much power left on my phone, maybe less than 5 percent, and I’m amazed it has lasted this long. Once it is in range of a signal, the battery will go down quickly. We just have to hope it lasts long enough to send that ping to my sister, the one I hope will reveal my location. That is, unless Andrew discovers the phone first. All he has to do is look inside the bag Maria had given him.
“I don’t know.” I don’t want to get her hopes up. “It might. We’re due a little bit of luck, aren’t we?”
She looks sadly at me with her filmy eyes. “Your head.” She puts her cold hand on top of it and strokes the bristles. “He shaved it.”