The Good Girl (15 page)

Gabe
Before

I was waiting to talk to the Dennetts until I had some hard facts, but it doesn’t work out that way. I’m chomping down a greasy Italian beef sandwich at my desk when Eve Dennett comes into the station and asks the receptionist if she can speak to me. I’m still wiping the au jus from my face with a stack of napkins when she approaches my desk.

This is the first time she’s ever been down to the station, and boy does she look out of place here. Much different than the drunken losers we usually have walking around.

I smell her perfume before she ever arrives at my desk. She walks demurely as every sick bastard eyes her from across the room, jealous when her high heels come to a stop before me. Every cop knows I’m working the Dennett case and they have an ongoing bet as to if and when I screw the whole thing up. I even saw the sergeant putting money on it; he said he’d need the pot when he and I both found ourselves out of a job.

“Hello, Detective.”

“Mrs. Dennett.”

“I haven’t heard from you in a few days,” she says. “I was just wondering if there’s any...news.”

She carries an umbrella, which drips water on the linoleum floor. Her hair is matted down and windblown from the fury outside. It’s a horrible day, windy and cold. Not a day to be outside. “You could have called,” I say.

“I was out, running errands,” she says, but I know she’s lying. No one would be out today if they didn’t have to be. It’s just one of those days, a day to lie around in pajamas and watch TV.

I lead her to an interrogation room and ask her to have a seat. It’s a dingy room, poorly lit, with a big table in the middle and a couple of folding chairs. She lays the umbrella on the ground, but clutches her purse. I offer to take her coat; she says no thanks. It’s cold in here, one of those damp colds that chills you straight to the bone.

I sit down across from her and lay the Dennett file on the table. I see her eye the manila folder.

I look at her, at her delicate blue eyes. They’ve already begun to swell with tears. As the days pass by, all I can think is, what if I never find Mia? It’s apparent that Mrs. Dennett breaks a little more with each passing hour. Her eyes are heavy and bloated, as if she no longer sleeps. I can’t imagine what would become of her if Mia never came home. I think about Mrs. Dennett at all hours of the day and night; I imagine her lost and alone inside that mansion of a home, dreaming up all the horrific things that might have happened to her child. I feel this consummate need to protect her, to answer those burning questions that keep her awake at night: who and where and why?

“I was going to call you,” I say quietly. “I was just waiting for some good news.”

“Something has happened,” Mrs. Dennett says. It isn’t a question. It’s as if she knew all along that something had happened and that’s what brought her down to the station today. “Something bad.” She lays her purse on the table and digs inside for a tissue.

“There’s news. But that’s all right now. I haven’t quite figured out what it all means.” If Judge Dennett was here he would rip me a new one for not having all the answers. “We think we know who Mia was with before she disappeared,” I say. “Someone identified the photo that’s been on the news, and when we went to his apartment, we found some of Mia’s belongings—her purse and a coat.” I open the file and lay some photos across the table, ones taken of the apartment by the rookie who accompanied me the other day. Mrs. Dennett picks up the photo of the purse, one of those messenger-bag types that you sling across your body. The bag is laying on the floor, a pair of sunglasses and a green wallet falling out onto the parquet floor. Mrs. Dennett brings a tissue to her eyes.

“You recognize something?” I ask.

“I picked it out, that bag. I bought that for her. Who is he?” she asks, not pausing between thoughts. She glances at the other photos, one at a time, then sets them down in a row. She folds her hands on the table.

“Colin Thatcher,” I say. We ran the fingerprints we pulled from the apartment building in Uptown and came up with the man’s true identity, every other name in the apartment—on the mail, the cell phone, etc.—a pseudonym, a charade. We pulled mug shots from previous arrests and compared with the forensic sketch. Bingo.

I watch how Mrs. Dennett’s hands shake before me and how she tries, and fails, to control the trembling. It’s without thought that I feel my own hand reach out and find hers, ice-cold hands that melt in mine. I do it before she can hide them in her lap, hoping to disguise the terror she feels inside.

“There’s some footage from the security cameras. Colin and Mia entering the apartment, around eleven o’clock at night, then again later leaving the building.”

“I want to see it,” she says to my surprise. Her response is definite, not the kind of indecision I’m used to from her.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say. The last thing Eve needs to see right now is the way Colin Thatcher hurled her daughter out of the building and the distress in the girl’s eyes.

“It’s bad,” she concludes.

“It’s inconclusive,” I lie. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression.” But there’s nothing mistakable about the vigilant way the man hurries from the elevator, making certain no one sees, or the fear in the girl’s eyes. She’s crying. He mouths something that I’m certain contains the f-word
.
Something happened inside that apartment. The earlier footage couldn’t be any different. Two lovebirds heading up for a quickie.

“But she was alive?”

“Yes.”

“Who is he?” she asks. “This Colin...”

“Colin Thatcher.” I release Mrs. Dennett’s hand and reach inside the manila folder. I pull out the man’s rap sheet. “He’s been arrested for a number of misdemeanors—petty theft, trespassing, possession of marijuana. He served time for selling and is wanted for questioning in an ongoing racketeering case. According to his last probation officer, he went MIA a few years back and is essentially a wanted man.”

I couldn’t begin to explain the horror in the woman’s blue eyes. As a detective I’m used to words like
trespassing
and
racketeering
and
probation officer
. But Mrs. Dennett has only heard these words on reruns of
Law & Order
. She couldn’t begin to understand what it all means; the words themselves are elusive and hard to grasp. She’s terrified that a man like this has her daughter.

“What would he want with Mia?” Mrs. Dennett asks. I’ve asked myself this very question a thousand times. Random crime is relatively rare. Most victims know their assailant.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I have no idea, but I promise you I’m going to find out.”

Colin
Before

The girl sets her plate on the wooden deck beside her. And then she rises beside me and we both stare, over the wooden railing, into the dense forest as a woman emerges. A fiftysomething woman with short brunette, hair in jeans and a flannel shirt, pudgy hiking boots, and she’s waving to us, like she knows us, and a new thought crosses my mind: it’s a trap.

“Oh, thank heaven,” the woman says as she welcomes herself onto our property.

She’s trespassing. This is our space. No one was supposed to be here. I feel suffocated, smothered. She’s got a water jug in a hand. She looks like she’s walked a hundred miles.

“Can we help you?” The words eject from my mouth before I can figure out what’s happening, what I’m going to do. My first thought: get the gun and shoot her. Drop her body in the lake and run. I don’t have the gun anymore, don’t know where the girl is keeping it. But I could tie her up while I ransack the cabin for its hiding place. Under the mattress, in the bedroom, or along some crevice in the log walls.

“I’ve got a flat. About a half mile down the road,” she says. “You’re the first cabin that wasn’t deserted. I’ve been walking....” she says, and then stops, to catch her breath. “Mind if I sit?” she asks, and when the girl manages a nod, she drops to the bottom step and guzzles from the water jug like someone who’s been stranded in the desert for days. I feel my hand reach out and clutch the girl’s, feel myself crush the bones of her hand until she lets out a whine.

We forget all about our dinner. But the woman reminds us. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says, motioning to the plates on the floor. “I was just wondering if you might be able to help me fix the tire. Or call someone, maybe. My phone has no reception around here,” she says, holding it up for the girl and me to see. She says again that she’s so sorry to interrupt. Little does she know what she’s intruding on. It’s not just our dinner she’s disturbing.

My eyes drift to the girl. Now’s her chance, I think. She could tell the woman. Tell her how this crazy person kidnapped her, how he’s holding her captive in this cabin. I hold my breath, waiting for any number of things to go wrong. For the girl to tell, for the lady to be part of a ploy to catch me. She’s working undercover, maybe. Or for Dalmar. Or maybe she’s just some lady who watches the news and sooner or later she’s gonna realize that
that
girl is the one she’s been seeing on TV.

“We don’t have a phone,” I say, remembering how I dropped the girl’s cell in the garbage can in Janesville, how I cut the phone lines when we arrived at the cabin. Not that I can have her stepping foot inside our cabin, seeing the way we’ve been living for weeks: like two convicts on the run. “But I can help you,” I say begrudgingly.

“I don’t mean to be a bother,” the woman says, and the girl, simultaneously, says, “I’ll just stay here and do the dishes,” as she squats to the ground to retrieve our plates.

No chance in hell that’s gonna happen.

“You better come with,” I say to her. “We might need your help.”

But the old lady says, “Oh, please. I don’t want to drag you both out tonight,” and she pulls her flannel shirt around herself and says that it’s cold.

But of course I can’t leave her alone, though the woman promises to be an excellent assistant. She begs me not to drag my
girlfriend
out on a night like tonight. It’s cold out, she says. Nightfall is coming soon.

But I can’t leave her. If I leave her here, she might just run. I picture her, tearing through the woods as fast as she can, a mile or so away by the time I manage to fix the flat and get back. It would be dark by then, and there’d be no chance in hell I’d be able to search the woods in the dark and find her.

The woman apologizes for doing this, for being such an inconvenience. I picture my hands, closing in around her neck, compressing the jugular vein to stop the flow of oxygen to the brain. Maybe that’s what I should do.

“I’m just going to do the dishes,” the girl objects, quietly, “so we don’t have to worry about it later,” and she gives me a playful look, as if implying intimate plans later tonight.

“I think you should come,” I say gently, laying a hand on her arm as if I can’t possibly stand the idea of being apart.

“Romantic getaway?” the woman asks.

I say, “Yeah, something like that,” and then turn to the girl and whisper roughly, “You’re coming—” I lean closer and add, “Or that lady doesn’t leave here alive.” She’s deathly still for a split second. Then she sets the plates on the ground and we head for the truck and climb in, the woman and me in the front seat, the girl smashed in back. I swipe remnants of rope and duct tape from the passenger’s seat, hoping the woman didn’t see. I thrust them in the glove compartment and slam the door, and then turn to her and smile. “Where to?”

In the truck the woman tells us how she’s from southern Illinois. How she and some girlfriends stayed at some lodge and went canoeing in the Boundary Waters. She pulls out a camera from her purse and shows us digital images of the four old ladies: in the canoe, with sun hats on, drinking wine around a fire. This makes me feel better: not a trap, I think. Here’s the proof, the pictures. She was canoeing with girlfriends in the Boundary Waters.

But she, she tells us—like I give a shit—decided to stay an extra couple days. She’s a recent divorcée, in no rush to return to an abandoned home. A recent divorcée, I think. No one at home waiting for her return. There would be time before she was reported missing—days, if not more. Enough time for me to run, to be far enough away when someone stumbled upon her body.

“And then, there I was,” she says, “making my way back to civilization when I got a flat. Must’ve hit a rock,” she says, “or a nail.”

The girl responds impassively. “Must have,” she says. But I can hardly listen. We pull up behind a compact car. But before we get out, my eyes survey the thick woods that surround us. I peer through the tangle of trees for cops, binoculars, rifles. I check to make sure the tire is flat. It is. If this was an ambush, no one would go to such elaborate measures to trap me. By now, as I step from the truck and approach the abandoned car, I’d be facedown on the ground, someone on top of me with a pair of cuffs.

I see the woman, watching me, as I grab some tools out of the bed of the truck, and remove the hubcap and loosen the nuts, as I jack up the car and switch the tires. The ladies are talking, about canoeing and the northern Minnesota woods. About red wine and a moose, which the lady saw on her trip, a male with enormous antlers strolling through the trees. I make believe she’s trying hard to connect the dots, trying to remember whether or not she saw us on TV. But I remind myself that she’s been in the middle of nowhere with girlfriends. She was canoeing, sitting around a campfire, drinking wine. She wasn’t watching TV.

I thrust a flashlight in the girl’s hands and tell her to hold it. It’s getting dark out by now, and there isn’t a streetlight around. My eyes threaten her when they meet, reminding her to avoid words like
gun
and
kidnap
and
help
. I’ll kill them both. I know it. I wonder if she does.

When the woman asks about our trip, I see the girl turn to stone.

“How long are you staying?” the woman asks.

When the girl can’t answer, I say, “Just about another week.”

“Where are you all from?” she asks.

“Green Bay,” I say.

“Is that right?” she asks. “I saw the Illinois plates and thought—”

“Just haven’t gotten around to changing them, is all,” I say, cursing myself for the mistake.

“You’re from Illinois,” she asks, “originally?”

“Yep,” I say. But I don’t tell her where we’re from.

“I’ve got a cousin in Green Bay. Just outside, actually. In Suamico.” I’ve never heard of the damn place. But still, she’s talking. How her cousin is a principal at one of the middle schools. She’s got this dull brown hair, short like an old lady’s hair. She laughs when the conversation goes quiet. Nervous laughter. Then looks for something else to say. Anything else. “Are you all Packers fans?” she asks and I lie and say that I am.

I thrust on the spare as fast as I possibly can, then lower the car and tighten the lug nuts and stand, looking at the woman, wondering if I can just let her go—back to civilization where she might just figure out who we are and call the cops—or if I need to smash her head in with the wrench and leave her in the woods for good.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” she says, and I think of my own mother, lying in the abandoned woods to be eaten by bears and I nod and say it was okay. It’s dark enough out that I can barely see her and she can barely see me. I grip the wrench in my hand, wondering how hard I’d have to hit her to kill her. How many times? Wondering if she’d have it in her to fight or if she’d just drop to the ground and die.

“I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t found you.” And she steps forward to shake my hand and says, “I don’t think I caught your names.”

I clutch that wrench in my hand. I can feel it shake. It’s far better than killing her with my bare hands. Much less personal. I don’t have to stare into her eyes while she struggles. One good hit and it will all be done.

“Owen,” I say, clutching her cold veiny hand in mine, “and this is Chloe,” and she says that she’s Beth. I don’t know how long we all stand there, on the dark street in silence. My heart is beating fast as I eye a hammer in the toolbox. Maybe a hammer would be better.

But then I feel the girl’s hand on my arm, and she says to me, “We should go.” I turn to her and know she sees what I’m thinking, sees the way I’ve got that wrench gripped in my hand, ready to strike. “Let’s go,” she says again, her nails digging into my skin.

I drop the wrench into a toolbox and set it in the bed of the truck. I watch as the woman climbs into her car and drives away, slowly, headlights swerving through the thick trees.

I’m gasping for air, my hands a sweaty mess as I open the truck door and step inside and try to catch my breath.