A Tap on the Window (12 page)

EIGHTEEN

The
kid showed up in four minutes. Headlights splayed across the living room window. A second later, a truck door slammed, and two seconds after that, Sean Skilling came barreling into the house like a runaway train. But he put the brakes on the moment he saw me sitting with his parents in the living room. He looked like he was going to turn and run, but his father jumped to his feet and shouted, “Hold it right there, mister!”

Sean froze. But you could see it in his eyes, that he was still thinking of making a break for it.

“Get the hell in here,” Adam said, pointing to the living room. “Get the hell in here and sit the hell down.” He pointed to the chair he’d just vacated.

The kid moved cautiously, like he was expecting his father to attack him before he could sit, but he got to the chair without incident. Adam stayed on his feet, moving back and forth in front of his son in short steps, like a boxer warming up before the bell rings.

“What in the hell’s going on?” he asked.

Sean shot him a look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

That was probably true, to a point. He must have wondered whether I was here about Hanna, or Claire, or his friend punching me in the head. No doubt we’d get to all of it before the night was over, but clearly Adam Skilling wanted to address the third issue immediately.

His father said, “Who hit him? Who hit this man? I want a name!”

“I didn’t hit him. I didn’t lay a hand on him,” he said.

“But you saw him get hit, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know, maybe—”

“That’s a yes-or-no question. You saw him get hit, or you didn’t see him get hit. Which is it?”

“Adam—” his wife said tentatively.

“I’m talking here, Sheila. Yes or no?”

“Yeah, I saw him get hit. But it was dark.”

“Oh please,” Adam Skilling said. “Was it light enough for you to see him when the two of you ran off together? What if he’d been knocked unconscious? What if he’d had some kind of brain injury or something? You want to end up with a record? Is that what you want? So I’m gonna ask again, who hit—”

“Mr. Skilling,” I said firmly.

He whirled around, looked at me as though he’d forgotten I was there, even though his questions concerned me. “What?”

“We can get to who it was later,” I said.

“I’m trying to help, for Christ’s sake.”

“I know, and I appreciate it.” I turned to Sean, who looked slightly relieved. “In case you don’t remember, I’m Cal Weaver, and I’m a private investigator.”

“I know who you are.”

“I don’t think you understood what I was after when I saw you at Patchett’s. I’m looking for Claire, and I think Hanna can help me.”

“I don’t know where she is.” He looked at both his parents quickly. “Swear to God.”

“Why are you looking for Claire?” Sheila asked. “I don’t understand what’s happened with her. Is she missing?”

Sean looked down at the broadloom and shook his head. “Sort of.”

“What’s that mean? ‘Sort of’?” I asked.

“I mean, yeah, she’s gone away, but that doesn’t mean she’s
missing
. It just means she’s not around.”

“You know where she is?” I asked.

“I swear, I’ve got no fucking idea.”

Adam’s hand came out of nowhere and slapped the kid across the side of the head. “You watch your goddamn mouth.”

Sean winced but made an effort not to cry out. Maybe he was used to it.

“Does Hanna know where Claire is?” I asked.

Sean hesitated, bit his lower lip. “I don’t know. She might. She and Claire kind of cooked this thing up together.”

“Then we need to talk to Hanna.”

Sean said nothing.

“Where’s Hanna, Sean?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?” Sheila asked. “She’s practically attached to you. Did she go back to her parents’ house?”

“Maybe. But I don’t think so.”

Sadness washed over Sheila’s face. “Oh no, did you two break up?”

“That’d be the first bit of good news we’ve had around here in some time,” Adam said.

“No,” Sean said forcefully. “We didn’t break up.”

I was sensing something more urgent here than a teen romance in trouble. “Sean, did Hanna and Claire go off someplace together?”

“I don’t know. I’m starting to wonder. The thing is, I wasn’t at Patchett’s looking for Claire.”

“Don’t lie to us,” Adam said. “The man says he saw you there, and that when he tried to talk to you, somebody hit him in the head.”

“I
was
there, okay? I admit I was at Patchett’s. But I wasn’t looking for Claire.”

I nodded, suddenly getting it. “You were asking if anyone’s seen Hanna.”

He looked at me, his eyes starting to fill with tears. “I don’t know where she is. She’s not answering her phone. She’s ignoring all my texts.”

“Try her now,” I said.

“I tried her just a few—”

“Just try her and hand me the phone.”

He complied. After tapping Hanna’s name in his contact list he handed the phone over and I put it to my ear.

It rang eight times before it went to voice mail. “This is Hanna!” she said cheerfully. “Leave! A! Message!” I ended the call. So her phone was on.

“Does Hanna have one of those tracking apps on her phone?”

Sean shook his head. “No.”

“Still, the fact that the phone is on means we might be able to get in touch with the provider and figure out where it is.”

“Where
she
is,” he said.

“She could have lost her phone, forgotten it, even had it stolen,” I said. “Maybe that’s why she’s not answering.”

I returned his phone to him and said, “Do you know why I’m here, Sean?”

He gave me a “duh” look. “You told me, at Patchett’s, that you’re trying to find Claire.”

“That’s right. But do you know why it’s
me
, and not someone else?”

Sean puzzled over that one for a second. “I’m . . . not sure.”

“You know what Claire and Hanna were up to last night.”

Slowly he said, “Kind of.”

“Were you supposed to be Claire’s ride? Were you the one who was supposed to pick her up out in front of Patchett’s?”

It made sense to me. Clearly, Claire and Hanna had needed a third person for their stunt. Claire had been waiting for a ride that hadn’t showed. And since Hanna was in on it, it stood to reason her boyfriend might be as well. And Bert Sanders’ neighbor had said she’d seen Claire get picked up the night before in a vehicle that could have been Sean’s.

When the boy didn’t answer, I said, “When, exactly, did you last see Hanna?”

“Last night,” he said. “Around nine thirty or ten or something like that.”

“Where was that?”

“I . . . I dropped her off at Iggy’s.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“I was driving around, just, you know, driving.”

“You had some time to kill.”

“Kind of. But then I got stopped by the cops.”

“What?” his father said, taking on a will-this-never-end expression. “What for?”

“I went through a stop sign. Okay, not really. I mean, I didn’t run it, you know? I did one of those rolling stops. I
almost
stopped. But there was this Griffon cop sitting there, and he hits the siren and pulls me over.” He shook his head in disgust. “You know what they’re like in this town. Any little thing, especially if you’re my age, or you’re from out of town, or if you’re like Dennis and your skin’s not exactly as white as everyone else’s.”

Adam had briefly closed his eyes. Maybe he thought if he closed them hard enough, when he opened them once again we’d all be gone.

“And they had me sitting there forever while they ran the plates and checked my license, but it’s totally clean, right? So when the cop finally came back he just gave me a warning to always come to a dead stop.”

“No ticket?” his mother said.

“That’s right,” her boy said, and smiled, grateful that there was at least one thing that had turned out right.

It also helped me fit one piece into the puzzle. That was why he wasn’t able to get to Patchett’s to pick up Claire and drive her to Iggy’s, where Hanna was waiting.

“Did you make a phone call while you were waiting for the police to run your license?” I asked.

He looked surprised. “Yeah.”

“To tell someone you were going to be late, or weren’t going to make it at all?”

I could see it in his eyes, that he was figuring it out now, too. That I was the fill-in. He’d called Claire to say he was held up, and she’d told him she’d try to hitch a ride.

“I don’t understand what’s going on at all,” Sheila said. “What are you two talking about?”

“What’d you do then, Sean?” I asked.

“I didn’t—I didn’t really know what to do. But wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“A phone call, I guess. To let me know things went . . . okay.”

Sheila interrupted again. “I still don’t—”

I held my hand up to silence her. We were finally getting somewhere.

“Did you get a call?” I asked.

Now a tear ran down his cheek. “Yeah,” he nodded.

“Who called you?”

“Hanna.”

“What did she say?”

“She was talking real fast. She said things kind of got fu—” He glanced at his father. “Things got kind of messed up, but it sort of went okay, that they did the switch, but she was all kind of freaked out.”

“Switch?” Adam said. I held up my hand again.

“What do you mean, freaked out?” I asked.

“She said she just jumped out of some guy’s car, and it was raining, and she was soaked, and she needed a ride, and she was really upset.”

“You said the last time you’d seen her was earlier. But didn’t you go and pick her up then? The police were done with you by then, right?”

“Yeah, and I was going to pick her up. She was about to tell me where she was, and then she says—and don’t be angry, Dad, because this is exactly what she said to me—she says, ‘Shit, they’re here.’”

“Who’s ‘they’? The same ones Claire was trying to lose?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’d Hanna say then?”

“She didn’t say anything. The call just ended. And I never got to know where she’d been dropped off.”

I knew.

NINETEEN

“Sean
and I have to go out,” I told the Skillings.

“What for?” his mother said as we all got to our feet.

“We’re going to see if we can find Hanna, aren’t we, Sean?” I said to him.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know about this,” his father said.

“I very much appreciate your son’s cooperation, and yours,” I said. “In consideration of that, I’m inclined to let that other matter slide.”

The parents contemplated my words. Sheila spoke first. “You help this man any way you can, Sean.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “You do that.”

As their son and I moved toward the door, Sheila said, “Don’t be too late, now.” Like we were heading out to catch a movie.

Once outside, I said, “I’m parked around the corner.” We walked the short distance in silence. I hit the remote to unlock the doors and the two of us got into the Honda.

“Where are we going?” he asked as he reached over his shoulder for the seat belt.

“I was the one who gave Claire a ride last night,” I said. “When you didn’t show up at Patchett’s.”

“I figured that, but why would she have called
you
?”

“She didn’t. I was in the right place at the right time.” Or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you looked at it. “I was driving by, stopped at the light. Claire’d been standing there, waiting for you, and when you called and said you couldn’t make it, she tapped on my window to ask for a ride. I was going to say no, but she recognized me, said she knew Scott. So I said okay.”

“If I hadn’t got pulled over,” Sean said, “I’d have been there. Stupid cop was jerking me around for no reason.”

I keyed the ignition, turned around, gave it some gas. “Yeah. So let me guess how it went. You gave Claire a lift to Patchett’s. Then you picked Hanna up and took her to Iggy’s so she could wait for Claire.”

“Yeah. We figured no one would follow me after I dropped Claire off. They’d hang back at Patchett’s.”

“Okay. Then, after you dropped Hanna off, you were to go back and get Claire, drive her to Iggy’s. They do the switch, and Hanna, wearing that wig, gets in your car looking like Claire. How’m I doing?”

“Good,” he said, looking straight ahead.

“Hanna had me fooled for about one minute, but I guess that was okay, because I wasn’t the one she had to trick. So here’s what I’m wondering, Sean.”

He glanced over.

“Who’s following Claire that she’d go to that much trouble to get away from him? And who picked her up after Hanna took her place?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“Really, man, I don’t know what the fuck it’s all about.” His dad wasn’t here now to slap him upside the head, and I wasn’t going to do it. I was tempted, but not over his foul language.

“You just agreed to help out without knowing a thing?”

“Claire didn’t talk to me about it. She and I, we haven’t been getting along as well as we used to since she dumped my friend—”

He cut himself off.

“Your friend?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got a friend she used to go out with, but then she started seeing this other guy.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“This friend the same one who clunked me in the head?”

Sean shot me a cautious look. “He didn’t mean to hurt you or anything. He thought you were coming after me. He was just trying to protect me.”

“Okay,” I said. “You want me to go back, ask your parents who, out of your friends, recently got dumped by Claire Sanders? How long do you think it’ll take me to get a name?”

Sean looked ready to surrender. “You gonna have him charged?”

“No,” I said.

“You gonna throw him in a trunk or anything?”

I glanced over at Sean, then back to the road. “No. I won’t do that.”

“His name’s Roman.”

“Roman?” I said. “Roman Ravelson? Whose parents own the furniture place?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t he a bit old for Claire?” I knew he was twenty-one.

“Whatever,” he said. “She broke it off, anyway. But now she knows how it feels, so maybe she’ll get back with him, although I kind of doubt it.”

“What, did someone dump her?” I asked.

“She started going out with this other guy, Dennis—I don’t know where he’s from exactly, but not from here; he was just here for a summer job—and she was all super in love with him, but then I guess he just wanted out, and went back to wherever he came from. Claire was, like, all devastated, and you ask me, it kind of looked good on her.”

I’d heard the name earlier tonight. “Is Dennis the black guy you mentioned?”

“Huh?”

“When you told your parents about being pulled over, you said the cops pull over people your age, out-of-towners, or people like Dennis who’s not as white as everyone else around here.”

“Oh yeah. He’s black.” He shrugged. “This is still kind of a white-bread town, you know. I’m not sayin’ that’s a bad thing—it’s just some people around here kind of freak out when they see a black guy.”

Sean wasn’t wrong about that.

“So even though you’re pissed with Claire, you agreed to help her with this thing last night.”

“Hanna asked me, so I did it. She said Claire was being stalked or something and she needed to get away.”

“Who’d she need to get away from? Roman?”

“I don’t know. I mean, okay, Roman has wanted to talk to Claire about why she dumped him. A guy deserves some kind of explanation, right? She wouldn’t answer the phone if it was him, and she stopped texting with him because he kind of crossed a line there.”

“How’d he cross a line by texting with her?”

“Oh man, I can’t talk about this. Forget I said that.”

“Sean.”

“Okay, you know you can send more than words in a text, right? You can send pictures?”

“I know.”

“So, after Claire broke up with Roman, he texted her a picture of what she was going to be missing.”

I was pretty sure I was getting his drift. “You telling me he texted a photo of his dick to her?”

Sean shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“And not at half-mast, I’m guessing,” I said.

“Look, it’s no big deal. Everybody does it. Sends hot pictures of themselves to each other. But Claire kinda didn’t like that after they’d broke up.”

“Did Dennis know Roman sent her those kinds of pics?”

“I don’t think so. He’d have probably tried to kill him if he had.” He waved his hands like he was trying to clear the air. “But, look, I don’t think it was Roman that Claire was trying to ditch. I mean, Hanna wouldn’t have asked me to help out if it was my own friend that was involved. That wouldn’t be right.”

“So you have no idea who might have been following her.”

He licked his lips. “I swear, I don’t know the details. Hanna said Claire wouldn’t even tell her what exactly was going on.”

“Could it have been the police?”

“Like I said, I don’t know. These are all things you should ask Hanna. I was just supposed to drive, okay?”

“What about Claire’s father?”

“What about him?”

“Could he be the one she was trying to give the slip to?”

Sean didn’t answer right away. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“To where I dropped Hanna off. You didn’t answer my question. Could Claire have been trying to get away from her father?”

“What, you think
he’s
been following her around?”

“I’m asking you. What’s the story on Claire and her dad? They get along?”

“I guess they’re okay. She’s living with him and not her mom, so I guess that says something about how they got along. And she didn’t want to have to go live in Canada and get split up from all her friends. Her mom’s new husband is even weirder than her real dad, so she probably figured she was better off with him.”

“What’s weird about Bert Sanders?”

“You hear stories.”

“What kind of stories?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Just, he’s, you know, even though he’s an old guy, he really gets a lot of action. I don’t know where he’d find time to follow Claire around.”

“Are you talking about women? He has a lot of lady friends?”

“Yeah. I mean, Claire says he’s all high and mighty about a lot of things, like what’s right and wrong and all that kind of stuff and raising shit with the cops—which, by the way, I happen to think is a pretty good idea—but when it comes to gettin’ some, he’s right in there. It kind of embarrasses Claire. Hanna told me she said, one time— Maybe I shouldn’t tell this.”

I waited.

“One time, Claire comes home from school in the middle of the day—she was sick, right? And her dad’s home, and there’s this woman, she’s got her head in his lap, right in the living room.” He gave me a look. “You know what I’m talking about?”

“I know what you’re talking about. Who was the woman?”

“Shit, I don’t know. I don’t even know if Claire knew. She caught a glimpse of what was going down—” He stopped himself. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. But when she saw what was happening, she, like, ran off.”

“Is Claire afraid of her father?”

He gave me another glance. “Everybody’s afraid of their fathers. Mothers, too, mostly.”

My mind drifted for a moment. Had Scott been afraid of me? Had he been afraid of Donna? I couldn’t believe that. We were good parents.

Except for when we weren’t.

“Yeah, but there’s afraid, and then there’s
afraid
,” I said. “You’re afraid your parents are going to find out about stuff you’ve done they wouldn’t approve of, and if they do, there’ll be consequences. You get grounded, lose driving privileges. End up with a Civic instead of that nice pickup you’re driving. It’s like that for all kids. But then there are parents who go too far. Who cross the line. You get what I’m saying.”

“Yeah.”

“Does Claire’s father cross some kind of line?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sean said. “You mean, like, what, slapping her around or something?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t think so. I never seen her with bruises or anything like that.”

“What about other kinds of abuse?”

Sean made a face like he’d eaten something bad. He shook his head definitively. “No way. I mean, I don’t think so.” He paused. “If anything, Claire’s dad cares too much. That can be kind of hard to live with, too.”

“Do your parents care too much?” I said.

“Sometimes I wish they cared a little less. My dad’s on my ass all the time, and he’s pissed about Hanna being over and all, but her parents, they don’t care that much about what she does. She’s lucky that way.”

Was that what defined luck for these kids? Parents who didn’t give a shit? I seemed to recall Hanna’s parents being worried about something. A business Hanna was involved in with her boyfriend that could end up biting her in the ass.

“You and Hanna got something going on the side,” I said, not asking a question. “To make some money.”

His head jerked. I’d hit a nerve. “What?”

“What is it?” I thought immediately of Scott. “You guys selling something? You selling drugs?”

“Jesus, no.”

“You’re doing something. Her parents mentioned you had something going.”

“It’s nothing. It’s not a big deal. It’s just—look, everybody does it.”

“Everybody does what?”

“Drinks,” Sean said. “It’s no big deal around here. I mean, everybody knows you can get a drink at Patchett’s as long as you don’t look like you’re twelve. But not everybody wants to drink there. Sometimes, you know, you want to do stuff at home or someplace else.”

“Like when parents are away.”

He gave me a look. “Sometimes.”

“So where do you and Hanna fit in?”

Sean sighed. “Man, you just don’t quit, do you?”

“Something’s going on, Sean. Something with Claire. I don’t know what it is yet, but you answering my questions, it helps. I’m not looking to make trouble for you. I just want to find Claire.”

“What me and Hanna are doing, it’s got nothing to do with Claire.”

“Why don’t you let me decide that?”

Another sigh, then, “Okay, so, we get stuff people want, you know, to drink, and we deliver it.”

“You and Hanna. Using your Ranger?”

“Yeah.”

“Just to friends?”

“Like, anybody. Word gets around, people have a couple numbers they can call, they say they need some rye or vodka or beer or whatever, and we deliver.”

“With a markup.”

“Well, yeah. We’re not doing it for nothing.”

“How do you get it? You and Hanna aren’t old enough to be buying booze in bulk.”

Sean’s lips stayed pressed together.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You need someone who’s twenty-one, who can pick up everything you need. Roman.”

He looked at me. He didn’t have to admit it. I could tell from his expression.

“Roman gets a cut of what you and Hanna make?”

Sean nodded.

“You just work Griffon?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We kinda go all over. Lewiston, Niagara Falls, Lockport. If the order’s big enough. Thing is, it used to be easy to go over the border for a drink. But now, you gotta have a passport to get into Canada and back, so more kids, we gotta do it on this side. There’s a market, you know?”

“How much you make?”

“We usually only do it on Saturdays, maybe on a Friday night, too. We can make a couple hundred.”

I smiled. It was entrepreneurial, to be sure. But risky, too. Driving into neighborhoods they didn’t know, a truck full of liquor, large sums of cash. Pretty dumb, all things considered.

We rode for a minute in silence. Then I said, “I’ve got one last question for you. Not about Hanna, or Claire, or any of this.”

Sean waited.

“At Patchett’s, when I told you my name, and you asked if I was Scott’s father, the first thing you said was that you didn’t know anything about what happened to him.”

“I don’t.”

“I hadn’t even asked you anything. You came out with that pretty fast.”

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, “I got another friend, Len Eggleton. Maybe you know who I’m talking about.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Len says one night, this guy came to see him, said he wanted to know who sold his kid some X. Len said this guy, he’d heard a rumor that Len dealt the stuff, even though, far as I know, Len’s never been into that kind of thing. Just weed, you know.”