Courage Tree (18 page)

J
oe could not sleep. If Paula hadn’t been in the room, he would have put on the television, one of the old shows on “Nick at Night” for some mindless entertainment. But Paula was sleeping soundly, and he didn’t want to wake her. They had talked for about an hour from their separate beds, and he was grateful for Paula’s calm, dispassionate thinking at a time when his own mind was in turmoil.

“There’s nothing we can do until we know who was in that car and what might have happened to the other girl,” Paula had said. “Until then, worrying won’t help.”

She had relaxed him, then, with guided imagery, placing him on a beach in Hawaii, and to his surprise, he felt his tight muscles soften with the sound of her voice. There was no one quite like Paula, Joe thought. He had never known anyone so able to remain cool and rational in the face of chaos. The only time he had ever seen her fall apart was the morning she learned of her mother’s death, and it had pleased him to be able to comfort her, to give back to her for a change. She had
given so much to him over the last few years, as he coped with Sophie’s illness and the divorce.

But even after the guided imagery, he still had not been able to fall asleep, and Paula’s calming effect was not lasting. He was about to get up and go outside for a walk when there was a knock on the motel door. Quickly, he pulled on his shorts and opened the door.

The man illuminated by the motel light was short and slight and dressed in a sheriff’s uniform.

“Are you Joseph Donohue?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“May I come in?”

Joe glanced behind him at Paula’s bed.

“I’m awake,” Paula said as she sat up in the bed.

“Yes,” Joe said to the sheriff. “Come in, please.” He moved to the side of the room to turn on the floor lamp.

“Have a seat,” the sheriff said, as he himself sat down at the small round table near the lamp.

Joe sat on the edge of his bed, his heart pounding. Whatever this man was about to tell him would change his life, of that he was certain.

“We’ve heard from the medical examiner,” the sheriff said. “Your daughter, Sophie, was not the child in the car.”

Joe let out his breath. He stared wordlessly at the sheriff, and before he knew what had hit him, he lowered his head into his hands and began to cry.

Paula was at his side instantly. She sat next to him on the bed, her arm around his shoulders.

“Shh, sweetie,” she said. And then she took over, as if she realized Joe would not be able to handle this conversation himself. “It was definitely Holly in the car?” she asked the sheriff.

“Yes,” the sheriff said. “The dental records allowed the medical examiner to make a firm identification.”

“So, what happens now?” she asked.

“First thing in the morning, we’ll organize a search party.”

“Was there any evidence in the car that would give you a clue what happened to Sophie?” Paula asked.

“Her knapsack and sleeping bag were in the car, in the trunk,” the sheriff said. “And we spoke to the other Scout leader, the one who saw the car drive away from the camp with Sophie in it. So, there’s every indication she was in the car. The back seat windows were busted out, and we can only conclude that she was able to get out of the car somehow.”

Joe looked up at that. “Before or after the fire?” he asked.

The sheriff shook his head. “That we don’t know,” he said.

“What about blood in the car?” Paula said, talking about blood as easily as she might talk about her garden. “Was there any blood that might indicate she was badly injured when she climbed out of the car?”

“I don’t know the answer to that yet,” the sheriff said. “We’ll be examining the car more carefully this morning.”

Joe looked at the sheriff. “Have you told my wife yet?” he asked. “My ex-wife?”

“No, not yet. How about you tell her. I’ve contacted Alison Dunn’s mother in Ohio, and now I have to give the Krafts the news about their daughter.” He pulled a piece of paper from his chest pocket. “They’re in room 202. One floor down, I guess.”

“Oh, God.” Joe shut his eyes at the thought of Rebecca and Steve receiving this news. Then he got to his feet. “I’ll go tell Janine,” he said to Paula.

The sheriff stood up as well. “We’re in the process of moving a search-and-rescue trailer up to the road where the accident was,” he said. “The plan is for everyone to meet there at 6:30 a.m. That will be the command post, where the searchers will ßget organized.”

“All right,” Joe said. He let the sheriff out the door, then looked across the room at Paula.

“I’ll be back in a while,” he said.

Paula nodded. “Good luck, hon.”

Janine’s room was next to his. He knocked softly on her door, but could hear no sound from inside. He knocked again, loudly this time. “Janine?”

Again, there was no response, and he knew she could not be sleeping that soundly. Not on this night. He looked down the walkway, and his chest tightened with the realization of where she must be. Swallowing his humiliation, he walked toward Lucas’s room.

“Is Janine in there?” he called, as he rapped lightly on the door.

From behind the door, there was the rustle of sheets. Quick, whispered words. In a moment, Janine opened the door, but before either of them could speak, the air was pierced by a scream coming from the floor below.

“What was that?” Janine’s hand flew to her throat. “What’s happening?”

“Let me in,” Joe said, as the screaming continued. He pushed past Janine into the room, closing the door behind him, as if he could block out Rebecca’s wailing, but the sound still filled the room.

From the corner of his eye, he could see that Lucas was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, dressed in the same khaki shorts and blue T-shirt he’d been wearing during the day. Joe ignored him as he grabbed Janine’s hand.

“Holly was the one in the car,” he said. “Sophie’s still missing.”

Janine glanced at Lucas, then lowered herself to the edge of the bed. “Sophie’s alive,” she said.

“We don’t know that,” Joe said, “but at least there’s still a chance.”

“No, she is,” Janine insisted firmly. She pressed her hand to her chest. She was wearing a white undershirt, and it was obvious that she had no bra on beneath it. “I can feel it. I
feel
it.” She looked at Lucas again, as if for confirmation, and to
the man’s credit he didn’t smile or nod or in any way encourage her. Standing up again, she started for the door. “We have to go back out there,” she said. “We need flashlights. Do the police have—”

“We can’t go out there, now, Janine.” Joe blocked her path. He knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. “We’re all supposed to meet at the accident scene at six-thirty. There’ll be a search party forming then, and—”

“I want to go
now
.” She turned toward him, a wild look in her eyes.

“Joe’s right, Jan,” Lucas said from the doorway by the bathroom. “You wouldn’t be able to do anything in the dark, and it’s muddy out there. You’ve got that cut on your—”

He was interrupted by another scream from the floor below.

“I should go to Rebecca,” Janine said. She pushed past Joe and was out the door before he could stop her.

Joe glanced at Lucas after she’d left the room. “Next thing you’ll know, she’ll be out there in the dark, traipsing around those woods.”

“Maybe that would be best,” Lucas said. “She needs to feel as though she’s doing something to find Sophie. She needs to feel as though she has some control.”

Joe bristled at Lucas’s proprietary tone. “I’ve known her for twenty-three years,” he said. “I think I know what she needs better than you do.”

“Then why haven’t you ever given it to her?” Lucas asked, then quickly held up his hands in apology. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Really, Joe. I’m out of line.”

Joe simply stared at him for a moment. Lucas’s apology had taken away any excuse he might have had to slam his face into the wall, and he couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit disappointed.

“No problem,” he said, opening the motel room door. “I’ll see you at six-thirty.”

Z
oe awakened before the sunrise Wednesday morning with her stomach churning. She lay on her air mattress, staring at the rotting wood in the ceiling of the shanty. If everything was going according to plan, today should be Marti’s day in the woods. Of course, it might have taken them longer to cross the country than Marti had expected, or they might have been detained somewhere for some reason. Only if absolutely everything had gone right would Marti make it to West Virginia today. What she wouldn’t give for a newspaper! What was the press saying about Marti’s escape? How close on her trail were the authorities?

She pictured Marti and the warden following the map she had so carefully drawn for them, turning off the highway onto the narrow road, making two more turns until they reached the dirt road that dipped and twisted as it bisected the forest. Marti would be leaning forward in the passenger seat, studying the road, biting her lower lip as she did when she was concentrating hard on something. The break would appear in the woods, and suddenly, the dilapidated, rust-colored barn would be in front of them.

“That’s it!” Marti would exclaim, and the warden would pull the car into the overgrown patch of grass around the back of the barn. They would get out of the car, and Marti, truly tasting her freedom now, would run toward the front of the barn and push open one of the broad doors. Inside, she would stop short as she waited for her eyes adjust to the darkness.

“Did you find it yet?” The warden would catch up to her, asking the question before realizing that it was too dark inside to find anything.

Slowly, Marti’s eyes would adjust, and the light from the two windows above the loft would gradually illuminate the one empty, long-unused stall at the far end of the building.

“There’s the stall,” she would say, moving forward.

Maybe the warden would get impatient at this point, and dart toward the stall himself. Would he know where to look? Would he have made Marti tell him over and over again, many times a day, where the money was hidden? Or would Marti have been wise enough to keep that information to herself until he delivered her safely to her destination? Yes, of course she would have been.

So, it would be Marti who would feel along the wall of the stall until she found the boards Zoe had pried loose. She’d reach in and pull out the fat leather bag and hand it to the warden, who would open it, pull out a fistful of bills, and whoop with joy. $500,000! The second and last installment.

Marti would breathe a sigh of relief that Zoe had come through for her. She’d say goodbye to the warden—maybe he’d give her a kiss on the cheek after traveling the breadth of the country with her—and she’d stand in the entrance of the barn, blinking from the sunlight, watching him get into his car and drive away.

Then, Zoe knew, Marti would be afraid. She did not like being alone, and she was no outdoorswoman. Following Zoe’s directions, she would walk south along the road, back the way she and the warden had just driven, approximately one mile.
Zoe had added this backtracking into the plan to fool the warden, just in case he was caught and pressured to reveal where he had dropped Marti off. Zoe could almost feel the tension mounting inside Marti’s body as she searched for the small piece of blue cloth caught in the branches of a tree at the side of the road. Marti would feel both relief and trepidation when she spotted it. Yes, she was on the right trail, but now she would have to enter the very lush, very disorienting forest, with its musty scent riding on the thick, sticky air and the sounds of birds and insects and animals that would be unnatural to her ears.

Zoe had instructed her to follow the trail of blue cloth. Find one piece, then stand and search the forest for the next and walk in that direction. She had made certain that each scrap of cloth was visible from the location of the piece before it. She’d told Marti to remove each piece of cloth as she passed it, so that no one could follow her trail. Marti would have about ten miles to cover in that painstaking fashion. It had taken Zoe most of a day to lay the trail; it would take Marti at least that long to follow it, although sheer terror might quicken her pace. Poor Marti. Zoe hated thinking of her, scared and alone, in the forest.

This would be a long day for Zoe, as well, as she waited for Marti’s arrival. If Marti didn’t come today, tomorrow would seem even longer. And what if she didn’t come tomorrow? Or the next day? What if she never arrived? Zoe would have no way of knowing what had happened to her. So many weak links in the treacherous chain of this plan, so many places where things could go wrong.

She couldn’t think that way, she told herself. She got out of bed and walked into the clearing to start the fire for her instant coffee.

She was stoking the fire beneath the pot of water when she heard the sound of crackling twigs directly behind her. Marti! She stood up and spun around, expecting to see her daughter
emerge from the woods. At first she could see nothing at all; the woods were too thick for the early morning sun to illuminate anyone inside them.

“Marti?” she called.

Suddenly, a child appeared at the edge of the woods. A small child, no more than six or seven, with red hair and one bare foot. Panicked, Zoe dropped the stick she was holding and ran the few feet to the house, grabbing her rifle where she’d left it leaning against the decrepit front porch. She raised the gun into shooting position, obliterating her face from this strange little intrusion.

“Git back with your folks!” Zoe ordered. “And keep offa my property!”

The little girl had been running toward her, but now she stopped. Her legs and arms were as thin as twigs, her red hair a tousled mess. And through the telescopic sights of the rifle, Zoe could see she was crying. The child’s body jerked slightly, as if she were uncertain whether to move forward or to turn back the way she came.

“Where’s your ma?” Zoe hollered.

The child raised her hands above her head, the same way the teenagers had done the day before, but it looked as though it took all her strength, and she could not seem to get them straight up in the air. One arm remained bent. She was trembling all over and weeping freely.

“I’m…” Her arms began to fall, as though she were too weak to hold them up any longer. Quickly, she raised them again, as if afraid Zoe would shoot her at any moment. She whimpered, in pain or fear or both, and something in that sound squeezed Zoe’s heart so hard that she felt the contraction in the center of her chest.

“I’m lost,” the little girl said, her lower lip quivering as she struggled to hold up her arms.

Zoe lowered the rifle to her side. What was she doing, pointing a gun at this baby?

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry.” She felt terrible for having frightened her. “Come here,” she said, laying the gun on the ground. Her voice was soft, her hillbilly persona abandoned.

The girl hesitated.

“It’s all right. I’m sorry I scared you,” Zoe said, waving the child toward her with her hands. “I’m not really a mean old lady. Come here, little one.”

The girl walked toward her, stumbling a bit, limping badly on her bare left foot. Her face was contorted with her silent weeping, and she fell into Zoe’s arms.

The little girl felt bony and frail in Zoe’s embrace.
This can’t be happening,
she thought. This child was not part of her perfectly laid plans.

“Come with me,” Zoe said, and she led the limping child to the porch, sitting her down on the one crooked step. The girl’s T-shirt was filthy, the right sleeve nearly torn away from the body of the shirt. Her shorts were ripped, and she smelled of feces and perhaps of vomit. Her bare foot was scratched and bleeding.

“My name is Ann,” Zoe lied. “What’s yours?”

“Sophie Donohue,” the girl said. She lowered her head and the tears started again. “I want my mom.”

“Of course you do,” Zoe said. She glanced anxiously toward the woods. “And where is she?”

“In Vienna.”

Zoe was confused. “Austria?” she asked.

Sophie shook her head. “Vienna, Virginia.”

“Oh. And what are you doing out here, honey?”

“I was at Girl Scout camp and…”

“At Girl Scout camp?” Zoe was surprised. “Aren’t you way too young to be a Girl Scout?”

“No,” Sophie said. “I’m a Brownie. I’m eight. I just look a lot younger.”

“Yes, you’re a little thing.” Sophie could easily pass for a six-year-old, Zoe thought, but then she hadn’t had that much experience with little girls. She’d barely seen Marti at the age
of eight. That was the year Zoe had taken her singing and dancing routine on the road.

“So,” she said, “you were telling me how you got lost.”

“I don’t know exactly what happened,” Sophie said. “We had an accident, I think. Somehow. I don’t know. All of a sudden, I woke up and I was lying against a tree…a down tree….” It seemed hard for her to find the words she needed. “A tree on the ground…”

Zoe nodded her understanding.

“And in front of me was a car on fire. I think I was in the car, and somehow I got out, but I don’t remember.”

“Who was in the car with you?”

“Alison and Holly. Alison’s the leader and we were taking a shortcut. And Holly is my friend.”

“And did either of them get out of the car with you?” Zoe glanced again toward the woods.

“I didn’t see them. I think they might have been in there. Inside the car.” Sophie’s face was a wide-eyed mixture of fear and sorrow. “I think they were in the fire. I was afraid to look, and it was so hot. It was hurting my eyes.”

Zoe struggled to make sense of Sophie’s words. The nearest road was five miles away, of that she was certain. Surely this child hadn’t walked five miles alone through the woods. “Where was this, honey?”

“I don’t know.” She pointed behind her. “Somewhere…I know you’re supposed to hug a tree if you get lost in the woods, but I wanted to get away from the fire. And then I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the road. I kept turning and turning and—” she lowered her head “—I got so lost.”

“How scary,” Zoe said. “When did this all happen?”

Sophie shook her head slowly, her red-rimmed eyes unfocused. “I don’t know. But I think I’ve been alone for three nights.” She looked toward the woods from which she’d emerged. “I’ll never go in the woods again,” she said. “I hate them. Every time I fell asleep, I had nightmares.”

Zoe caught another whiff of the foul smell emanating from Sophie’s clothes. “Did you get sick?”

Sophie nodded. “I think it was some berries I ate. I shouldn’t have, but I was so hungry. And then I got diarrhea and…I feel gross.”

“And you hurt your arm, I think.” Zoe took the small, scratched and dirty arm in both her hands to examine it. “Did you break it, maybe, or…oh, you burned it.” There was a long, narrow red burn running the length of Sophie’s forearm. She had been closer to that fire than she’d thought.

“Hurts.” Sophie carefully removed her arm from Zoe’s hands and held it tight against her body.

“Okay, my little friend,” Zoe said. “We need to get these dirty clothes off you and clean you up. Let me put a bigger pot of water on the fire. You wait here.”

She went inside the shanty, trying to move automatically without stopping to think. If she started to think, she would panic. She was inside some sort of crazy nightmare. Someone would be looking for this little girl. How close were they? What in God’s name was she going to do if they showed up? She could slip back into her mountain woman role, holding the gun to her face again, while that someone took the child away. And with any luck, that would be the end of that.

She put the pot of water on the fire, then helped Sophie out of her clothes. In spite of her lack of experience with eight-year-old girls, Zoe was quite certain that Sophie was not typical of children her age. She allowed herself to be undressed with no modesty whatsoever, as though having a stranger lift off her shirt, tug off her filthy underpants was nothing new to her. That’s when Zoe noticed the large bandage on the little girl’s stomach.

“Why do you have this bandage here?” she asked.

“It’s my catheter,” Sophie said. “It’s taped there so it doesn’t flop around.”

A catheter
. Lord, what had she gotten herself into with this child?

“Ugh, those are gross.” Sophie grimaced at the sight of her underpants. “Can we throw them away?”

“Yes,” Zoe said. “As a matter of fact, I think we’ll bury them.” She tossed the soiled underwear a few yards away from them, then wrapped a green bath towel around the little girl, tucking it in at her chest. “Why do you need a catheter, Sophie?” she asked.

“We hook it up to the dialysis machine,” she said.

“So, you have a problem with your kidneys?” Zoe asked.

“Yes, but I’m a lot better than I used to be.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Zoe said, her sense of panic mounting. “How often do you need to have dialysis?”

“It used to be every night. Now it’s just Sunday and Wednesday nights.”

“Today is Wednesday,” Zoe said.

“It is? Wow. I missed Sunday night, too. I feel okay, though, I think. I better not drink too much, though.”

Oh, this was never going to work. Zoe looked toward the woods again, hoping now that someone
would
appear looking for this child. She would do the mountain mama routine and get the girl out of here.