Tumbledown (22 page)

Sensing her foul mood, Bandit slunk out the cat flap. Alex returned to her seat just as the printer finished churning out a PDF document she had found online. She sorted the pages into order, scribbled “Harnish” on the top in red pen, and added them to the small pile bearing the same heading. Bridie would no doubt be doing similar research with far better resources at her disposal, but Alex, having no in-depth understanding of the bail appeal process, wanted some idea of what they might be up against.

She had spoken to Bridie the previous night, finding out which jail Sarah had been transferred to and the earliest date she would be allowed visitors. As a new prisoner, still within the admission and orientation period, she would have to wait five days before anyone other than her legal counsel could see her.

Alex glanced at her salvaged list and tapped the mouse pad on her laptop, waking it from power save. Tobin had returned the computer and a bagful of bedding earlier that morning. She had unlocked the door to find him attempting to peel off the sticky residue of an evidence label. After mumbling an apology and asking her to sign a receipt, he almost tripped over Flossie in his haste to leave. The bedding had gone straight into the garbage, but the laptop had been a godsend; buying a replacement was now crossed off the top of her list.

Her cell rang as she was typing “motels and hotels, Avery, Aroostook County” into a search engine.

“Hey, Mike.” She clicked enter as she spoke.

“Morning.” He sounded tired; Alex guessed he had been awake as late as she had.

“There are five R. Hollises living in Avery, Ruby, or Tawny Ridge,” he said, cutting right to the chase. “Three of those are female, one owns a bakery out in Tawny where he lives with his wife and kids, and the fifth is seven years old.”

“Great.” She tapped her pen on her teeth. “So who’s the Mr. R. Hollis getting his mail delivered to Emerson’s apartment?”

“That would be the million dollar question.”

She bit the pen top until it cracked. “Think we might be going in the wrong direction here? Every turn we take with Emerson, we slam into a brick wall.”

“It’s possible.” Castillo sighed. “Hate to follow bad news with shit news, but the tire images didn’t show a real lot of anything.”

“Wow, and here was I thinking they might have a name, number, and license plate carved into them.” She knew Castillo was absolutely not the villain, but she couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice.

There was a short silence.

“You get any sleep, Alex?” he asked finally.

“No.” She ran her hands over her face. “No, not really. You?”

“Here and there.”

“It’s driving me fucking crazy. Trying to get it straight in my head. It’s like the worst game of Clue, only with no one holding that little wallet with all the answers in it.” She heard him grunt in agreement. “I think Caleb Deakin killed Lyssa,” she continued, absently scribbling “CD – L” on a blank sheet of paper. “But those tire tracks must have been concealed by someone on the search teams, so I still think there’s a local involved. Maybe before heading out here Deakin found someone sympathetic to his cause, someone who could later volunteer for the search without seeming out of place.”

“Sounds plausible enough,” Castillo said. “Sleep deprivation must agree with you.”

“This is probably my manic phase. Next up is crash and burn, followed shortly afterward by rocking in a darkened room.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“I just want to keep going until I’ve tried everything. I’m starting to look into places nearby that Deakin could have stayed at. If he’s not at Emerson’s apartment, he might have rented somewhere else around here. Motel, hotel, trailer park.”

“Holiday home,” Castillo added.

She nodded, scribbling another note on her list. “Of course, he could just have slept in his damn car. You know more about the family than I do. Is he the type to turn tail and run straight back to North Carolina?”

“No, he’s not.”

“And he’s probably going to have contacts within the prison system.”

“I’m running background on as many of the staff and inmates at Prescott as I can, but—”

“I know,” Alex interrupted, not wanting him to have to state the obvious. “Budget cuts, jurisdiction, your stack of official ongoing cases that aren’t related to this entirely unofficial ongoing case.”

“Damn, Alex, you sound just like my boss, but that wasn’t what I was going to say.” The faint trace of humor that had been in his voice vanished. “Deakin isn’t a threat just to Sarah. You need to move. You’re far too vulnerable out there on your own.”

“Are you trying to scare me?” she asked, unwilling to admit that he was right.

“Yes. You should be scared.”

She looked out the window, watching the chickens wandering about on the grass and Tilly snoozing with her head on her paws. Beyond the grass, the forest loomed into her peripheral vision, and beyond that, she had no way of knowing what was out there.

“Maybe when I start my research I’ll find somewhere suitable to move to.” It was the only concession she was willing to give at that moment. “Somewhere pet and chicken friendly.”

“Jesus, Alex, get a friend to feed the fucking chickens.”

“You offering?” She waited for the penny to drop, waited for him to realize that they didn’t have any real friends left. It didn’t take him long.

“Shit.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ll sort something out, I promise.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.” A phone rang on his side of the line. He swore indistinctly and the ringing stopped; she suspected he had flicked it through to voice mail. “I spoke to Quinn again and e-mailed him Caleb Deakin’s record,” he continued. “He didn’t seem very interested, even when I pointed out the relevance of the dates, but I got him to promise that his officers would receive copies of the information.”

“Thank you. And I’m sorry for being a bitch.”

“I think you’re allowed a lapse here and there, given the circumstances.”

“Still, I am sorry.”

She heard another man’s voice in the background and Castillo’s low reply, before he came back to the phone. “I have a meeting in five,” he told her. “Let me know if you find anything.”

“I will.”

She hung up and wiggled her finger on the mouse pad again. A list of rental properties in Avery filled the screen. Deciding to start systematically before broadening the search, she dialed the number for Avery’s sole hotel. If it was anything like the last time, she didn’t expect them to be at all receptive to her inquiries and was pretty sure they would inform Quinn, but she wasn’t about to let that deter her.

*

The narrow window level with Sarah’s bunk looked out onto a concrete yard that was surrounded by a double chain link fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. Bird excrement covered the sill, but no birds came to perch there while she watched, and even when the sky grew lighter, she could hear nothing but the varying degrees of Camille’s snoring and a woman muttering endlessly in the adjoining cell.

Camille, adjusted to the jail’s routine, woke up three minutes before the process of unlocking the cells began. She shook her head as she studied Sarah’s face. “You’ll get used to it,” she said.

She looked younger than Sarah had expected, but she had badly healed scars on her arms that appeared to be the result of self-inflicted wounds and the veins standing out against her pale skin were blown and pitted. She tilted her head when she saw the bandages covering Sarah’s wrists, evidently supposing that she and Sarah had something in common.

Sarah, weary of trying to tell people what had actually happened, said nothing.

“Washroom first, so take your kit.” Camille indicated the plastic wallet containing Sarah’s allocation of toiletries. “Then breakfast. I usually shower after dinner, when it’s less crowded.”

Sarah nodded her agreement. The babble of voices in the corridor was increasing as the cells were opened sequentially and the inmates shouted greetings to each other, but it took another twenty minutes for her door to be released. Keeping close to Camille, she waited for her turn to use the toilet, doing her best to ignore the curious looks and murmurs of recognition or speculation from the other women. By the time a cubicle came free, she was so nervous that she kicked the door shut and knelt over the toilet bowl, retching, but she had eaten little the day before and her dry heaves amounted to nothing. At the sink, she splashed cold water on her face and brushed her teeth with thin, gritty toothpaste.

“Don’t swallow the water or you really will puke,” Camille said, and shrugged in apology as Sarah hurriedly spat out her mouthful.

The crowd in the washroom had thinned, leaving the last woman in the shower humming cheerfully to herself in relative privacy. Sarah followed Camille to a dining area that appeared to have been modeled on a school cafeteria, except that it lacked the motivational posters and metal cutlery, and every piece of furniture was bolted to the floor. Waiting in line with her compartmentalized tray, she looked around at the tables of women, some eating in silence, others chatting and laughing. Many appeared perfectly at home in their surroundings, while the guards seemed to favor a tactic of minimal intervention, remaining in the background as inmates served their fellow inmates and everyone cleaned up after themselves.

Several women on different tables tried to wave Camille and Sarah over to empty seats. Camille grinned. “Fish are always the most popular girls in the room,” she said, before noticing Sarah’s bewilderment and explaining, “Newbies never feel like eating nothing. They’ll all be hoping you’ll share.”

“Oh, right.” The strong smell of institutional cooking certainly did little for Sarah’s appetite, nor did a breakfast offering of white bread, peanut butter and jelly, grits, and a plastic cup of milk.

“Make sure you get something in trade.” Camille led them over to a table with two spare seats. “Or they’ll take your food even when you are hungry.”

Within five minutes of sitting down, Sarah had swapped her bread and the peanut butter and jelly for the promise of paper and a pen. She had also inadvertently revealed that most people in England wouldn’t be able to identify a bowl of grits in a breakfast cereal lineup.

“You don’t have grits in England?” One of the women appeared genuinely horrified by the thought.

“No, we don’t,” Sarah said. “People tend to stick with porridge. Would you like mine?” she added, feeling the urge to make amends for the transgression.

The woman eagerly scooped the grits onto her tray, took a forkful, and spoke with her mouth full. “Patsy in the kitchen today?” She craned her head toward the serving hatch. “She never puts enough fuckin’ salt in.”

“Quit bitchin’,” Camille said. “If they were that bad, you wouldn’t be eating Sarah’s.” Her intervention was enough to mollify the woman, who resumed eating in silence.

Sarah sipped her milk, hoping it might ease the cramping in her stomach. The shutter on the hatch clattered into place, which the women seemed to take as a signal to finish their meals.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“Lock up and cleaning,” Camille told her, pointing out where to stack the empty trays.

“And then?” It was only eight a.m.; she couldn’t imagine the cell would take very long to clean.

The look she received in response, however, implied she had asked a particularly stupid question.

“Then we have lunch,” Camille said.

*

Choking and sobbing, Leah dragged herself up from the floor using the frame of a kitchen chair. She made it onto her knees before a sharp pain in her abdomen forced her to crouch back on all fours.

“Oh God, help me,” she whispered, blood dripping from her mouth to paint patterns on the tiles.

In the next room, Caleb lowered the volume on the television, now that he no longer needed it to conceal the sound of his blows. His cell phone rang and he must have knocked something over as he grabbed for it; Leah heard a thud as the object landed on the carpet.

“She’s in Prescott County,” he said. Then, almost yelling, “No, not Penobscot, Prescott, you dumb fuck.”

Leah wiped her chin with her palm. Then, still gripping the chair, she pulled herself to her feet. Caleb’s laptop lay in front of her on the kitchen table. Although its screen was dark, whatever he had seen on there had gotten him so enraged that he hadn’t taken the time to close it down, and it sat as if waiting for further instructions, its cooling fan whirring patiently.

She rinsed her mouth at the sink and found a clean cloth to press against the tattered cut on the inside of her cheek. She could hear Caleb next door, still preoccupied on the phone. She touched the mouse pad with one finger, telling herself that was all she would do; if it didn’t work, she would leave it alone.

A color mug shot of Caleb instantly filled the screen. Beneath the image, several lines of text listed his date of birth, his employment record, and his home address—including the date he had last been seen there. There was no mention of his being married. Perhaps whoever had been watching him hadn’t been watching him very closely, or perhaps they just didn’t think Leah was significant. The short message in the e-mail made the blood in her mouth and the ache in her belly easier to bear, though: “Received from FBI. Sent out to all the police officers in the district.”

She stared at the photograph until the screen dimmed and then darkened. There was a sudden, rapid approach of footsteps in the stairwell, and Caleb paused his telephone conversation mid-sentence. She turned hopefully toward the front door, but there was no knock, no battering ram to splinter the wood and force a way in. A woman shouted for her children to stop running about, and shortly afterward everything fell quiet.

As Leah hobbled into the bathroom, Caleb started talking into the phone again, his voice now wary and hushed. Let him see how it feels to be hunted, she thought, dipping a handful of tissue between her legs to check if she was bleeding. The tissue was clean when she pulled it away. She sat heavily on the edge of the bathtub, offering up silent thanks and adding her own whispered prayer onto the end.