Rocky Road (21 page)

Sadie watched him, thinking about what he was telling her. “You planned to kill yourself.”

He looked back at the picture of his children on the ground. “I figured if I made it look like an accident, maybe it wouldn’t hurt my kids so much. So I drove back to the Chuckwalla Trailhead Sunday evening. It was the third spot I checked—the other ones had cars in the parking lots. I left my phone on the seat, put on my pack, and headed up the trail. I walked for hours in the dark, trying to come to terms with the life I was leaving and what a fool I had been to let it come to this. I finally hiked up to a place where I was certain a fall would kill me, and ...” His voice trailed off, and everything was silent, except for the wind in the trees.

“You changed your mind,” Sadie finally said softly. He looked at her from across the fire pit, holding her gaze. “You found some hope, and you changed your mind.”

He nodded. “It took me four days to hike back here, using a compass and map I’d packed when I thought I was bringing Joey with me that weekend. It rained that first night, which I realized would wipe out any trail I left behind. I figured that the cabin was a place where I could plan my next step and weigh my options.”

“And did you come up with a plan?” It had been two months. What else could he have been doing?

“Not yet, but I’ve felt more peace than I have in a really long time. I’ve come to realize just how depressed I was—I slept for most of those first two weeks. It took time for me to be able to think clearly, and even now that I’m feeling better, this life up here is so ... free. I’m not accountable to anyone, and the longer I’m away, the less important any of the foundation garbage feels.”

“But your kids,” Sadie said, unable to wrap her head around that part. How could he abandon his children?

“If I’d stayed, I’d have had to either go along with Anita’s plan or expose her and take the fall. It’s my name on everything, not hers. I’d lose everything—and it’s hard to imagine that my kids wouldn’t be a part of that loss, and they didn’t deserve that any more than I did.”

Sadie wanted to argue with that, but could she honestly do so? She could imagine the future he had seen. He could lose his medical license. He could come under federal investigation that might lead to prison or huge fines. He could become an example of a do-gooder gone bad, and Anita would cry to reporters, saying how she was defrauded, and move to another state somewhere to, most likely, try again. And yet, Sadie pictured his children’s heartache at the memorial service, and that hurt her own heart. He had chosen not to take his life, and that meant he had to figure out how to move forward. His children would have to come to terms with this one way or another, and hiding up here was saving them from nothing and creating a different type of trauma.

“You said you contacted watch groups and nothing came of it—how? How could the investigation into your disappearance not show the truth—even if it’s your name on the chopping block, why don’t the police know about this stuff?”

Dr. Hendricks shrugged. “I keep thinking they’re going to figure it out, that something will come to the surface during their investigation of me—every week when I go to the motel, I look up any new information about my case, but I’ve seen nothing. I’ve both dreaded them figuring it out and hoped for it—I know I can’t live like this forever.”

“You’ve been watching the case,” Sadie summed up from his comment.

Dr. Hendricks nodded. “I go in once a week and search for new articles, follow threads about me on hiking forums, monitor the watch groups, and try to keep up with my kids.”

“With your kids? How?”

“I created a fake Facebook profile, and my daughter friended me. She thinks I’m a girl named Emily and that I go to another school. I never comment or dialogue, just read about what’s going on with her.”

“And she has no idea it’s you?”

He shook his head.

“What prompted you to call Lori yesterday?”

Dr. Hendricks paused for a few seconds, and then he looked up. “Kenzie posted that she was staying with Anita after the service. The idea of my kids staying with her terrified me, and I realized that with the memorial, the case was likely closed, or at least pushed to the side.”

“Did you talk to Lori about turning yourself in?” Sadie said, trying to get a sense of what his plan was.

“I didn’t say it like that, but I asked her to contact Edger’s office about finding proof that I’d been working with him, which I hoped would buy me some credibility. And I told her to keep the kids away from Anita, to get back to Vegas, and stay there until I contacted her again.”

Sadie thought back to how Lori kept checking her phone at the service and then her message that morning about her need to talk to Dr. Hendricks. Sadie imagined Lori going out of her head, knowing he was alive but having no additional information. “Lori left me a message on my phone this morning. She wants to talk to you.”

“She went back to Vegas like I told her to, though? Right?” Dr. Hendricks asked.

“She didn’t even stay after the service long enough to say goodbye to anyone. Judging by her message, I think she’s been waiting for you to call her back since she talked to you that first time.”

“I don’t know what to tell her when I haven’t decided what to do yet,” he said, and then he looked up at Sadie. “How was ... the service?” He looked embarrassed to have asked and stared at the ground. “I hope my family can forgive me.”

“It was a nice service, but very sad.” What a strange conversation this was. “Your brother read your obituary and your mother gave a beautiful tribute.” She wasn’t sitting close enough to him to know if this caused him pain, but she imagined he was thinking of the people who loved him. She wondered how he would ever truly explain all of this to them. “Anita spoke, too,” Sadie said. He gave her a wary glance. “It was my first clue that something wasn’t right. It sounded like a campaign speech.”

“Leave it to Anita to use my funeral as a stepping-stone.” He took a deep breath and let it out, returning his salad to the ground. He looked up at Sadie and rested his forearms on his knees. “So—you said you could help me before I told you all of this. Do you still think you can?”

It was Sadie’s turn to look down at her salad. She’d nearly forgotten about it while she considered what Dr. Hendricks had told her. Was it trustworthy information? Could she believe what he’d said? If it hadn’t been for the little things she’d uncovered already, she’d have been less certain, but his information fit what she already knew. It made sense of things that hadn’t made sense before. After a few contemplative seconds, she looked up at him. “I think so.”

“How?” he asked eagerly—perhaps desperately.

She would need Officer Nielson’s help with this, but she felt comfortable sharing some possibilities she thought the police would support. “Well, I can follow up with Kyle Edger’s office or family.” She said she would do it, but she’d already decided to turn that over to Officer Nielson. The police would be much more effective with legal documentation than she would. “Second ... well, I’m not sure what else we can do unless you’re willing to come out of hiding and tell your side of things.” She needed to tell him about Anita, but was this the right moment? She still worried about what she might miss if he stopped talking now.

He looked at the ground again. “There’s something that could help with that part.”

“Oh?” Sadie said, her ears pricked to hear more.

“I’m the only one who knows Anita didn’t really have cancer, so I made copies of her medical record before she falsified it and found some other documentation that proves it was all made up. I included notes about when I made certain discoveries, when I contacted Kyle, and things like that. I saved everything on a USB drive I hid at the office after finding Anita going through my things one day. I didn’t think I’d need it when I left for that weekend, so it’s probably still there.” He looked up at Sadie. “After talking to Lori yesterday and considering that I might have to come out of hiding soon, I thought about asking her to get it since it would prove that Anita wasn’t what she seemed, but ...”

Lori wasn’t here. Sadie was. “You want me to get it?”

“It’s in a back room of the clinic, somewhere no one will find it unless they know where to look. I don’t know how you’d get it.”

“I can get it,” Sadie said with complete confidence. “Are you willing to turn yourself in if you have the USB with you when you do?”

He paused, but then he nodded. “Like you said—if you can find me, someone else will, too.” The tone of his voice and the heaviness of his expression showed his terror at that thought.

“Turning yourself in, with verification of Anita’s fraud, will help you.”

She watched his glance move to the faces of his children in the photo again, and she hurried to give him more incentive to turn himself in. “I know things will be hard, and I know that the future is scary, but I promise you that there are many people who will rejoice in your return, who will support you and love you and help you through this.”

He continued looking at the picture. “What if I end up taking the fall for everything? What if my greatest fears are realized?”

Sadie had no reassurance for that. “In a sense, you lost everything when you came here, but you’re okay and stronger than you were when you arrived. That should give you confidence to take another uncertain path. And I just don’t see how you can wait any longer. If you don’t take an active role, your passiveness could work against you.”

He paused. “Yeah, I feel that, too.”

“Where’s this USB drive?”

He explained that it was hidden on an old ultrasound machine. She repeated everything he told her regarding its location, wishing she had a pen to write it down. When they were finished, Sadie knew she couldn’t wait any longer to tell him about Anita. From what he’d said about her, however, Sadie thought that perhaps this information would help him with the choice he had to make. “There’s one more thing you need to know before you go back. I hope you’ll understand why I didn’t tell you sooner.”

He didn’t ask what it was. He just looked at her expectantly, almost bracingly, as though he feared he’d be unable to handle one more thing.

“Anita’s dead.”