Darkness peering (20 page)

For the first time, she noticed his hair was shot through with gray.
He looked old. Drained. He'd once warned her that hypertension,
ulcers and alcoholism came with the job.

"What's the status on the phone records?" he asked.

"She made multiple calls from her office and cellular phone," Cavanaugh
said, pulling out the list they'd received from Bell's security
division. "We've interviewed everybody she was in contact with that
week."

Rachel stiffened, grateful that Tapper had been the one to interview
Billy about the phone calls he'd made to Claire and about their budding
relationship. They'd found Billys prints all over her apartment, along
with the landlord's, the plumber's, family members' and friends'.
Tapper had pretty much cleared Billy of

suspicion. Porter Powell's residential aide had seen him entering the
dorm at 9:10 P.M. Billy had signed in at the guard station and chatted
with the guard. Claire Castillo had disappeared sometime after 8:00
P.M." and Tapper surmised that Billy couldn't possibly have gotten to
the downtown area until sometime after 9:20, almost an hour and a half
after Claire was last seen. Tapper concluded that Billy had an
airtight alibi.

"She called over a dozen people from her office that day," Ca vana ugh
went on, "including her sister, Nicole."

"We interviewed them all," Keppel said. "Nothing unusual."

"The week before she disappeared, she made over sixty local calls from
her office, cell phone and home," Keppel said. "Mostly regarding
school activities. She contacted several people about a charity dance
for the blind ..."

"Sears, her landlord, the plumber, the dry cleaners, the florist, her
family, some friends, parents of students. She called her mother five
times, her sister ten times, her dad at the hospital twice, the plumber
three times, the landlord twice about the rent being late, the gas
company about a late payment--"

"She had financial problems?"

"Organizational problems," Rachel corrected. "Sometimes she'd forget
to mail a check. No financial distress whatsoever."

"Daddy's a doctor, he's loaded, she's his princess." Tapper had a
smirk like congealed grease.

"What about the plumber?" McKissack threw it out there.

'"Kenny G' Tarrington," Tapper said. "Fixed her leaky toilet Wednesday
morning while she was at work. The landlord let him in."

"He credible?

"Yeah, he's got a wife and kids, squeaky-clean record, offered to take
a poly.

"Who'd she call on Tuesday?"

"Tuesday, specifically? Cavanaugh shuffled through the BSD list. "Her
sister, Sears, her landlord--"

"Tell me about the landlord."

"Fred Lake," Keppel said. "Older guy. Kind of a recluse. Divorced
for five years. Wife moved out of state."

"He has keys to Claire's apartment," Rachel said.

"Is he cooperative?" McKissack asked.

"So-so." Cavanaugh shrugged.

"Got an alibi?"

"He went out for a six-pack and some spaghetti os around seven-thirty.
Liquor store and 7-Eleven clerks verified."

"Background check?"

"Check forgery, decades ago."

"Something smells fishy," McKissack said.

"I agree," Cavanaugh said.

"Talk to him again. See what you think. Maybe we'll put a tail on
him, too. What about Monday?"

"Who'd she call Monday?"

"That's what I like about you, Cavanaugh. You're mediocre and always
on, just like television."

Cavanaugh ignored the barb. "Okay, so Monday she calls her mother, the
plumber, the dry cleaners ..." Cavanaugh shuffled through a stack of
interview forms. "Picked up her dry cleaning on Monday afternoon. We
interviewed the store owner."

"Blind guy, Tapper said.

"Visually impaired," McKissack corrected him, pinning Tapper with a
look. "I know Vaughn. He does my dry cleaning."

"Pardon my political incorrectness."

Keppel made a snorting sound through his nose.

"She called her father at the hospital ..."

"What about the father?" Keppel asked. "Nobody's said anything about
the father."

"I've ruled him out as a suspect," McKissack said quietly, and Rachel
saw the strength hidden beneath the aloof exterior. He turned to her,
his eyes unreadable. "Anything else on the downtown area?"

"The crowd had thinned pretty much because of the rain," she said.
"Of the twenty or so people who came forward who were in the downtown
area that night, nobody outside the diner saw Claire leave. Nobody saw
her walking back to the parking lot. Nobody heard a scream that night
or saw anything unusual."

A picture of the missing woman was tacked to the wall. She had an
unspoiled beauty, keen eyes sparkling with her zest for life. They had
a description of the outfit she was last seen in: black lined raincoat,
short black skirt, cinnamon-colored hose, short black leather boots,
pink silk blouse, thin black belt, diamond stud earrings, small gold
cross on a thin gold chain. She wasn't particularly religious but she
never went anywhere without that necklace.

The police had in their possession X rays of Claire's chest and her
left wrist where she'd broken it skiing ten years ago. Rachel feared
that those and Claire's dental X rays might be the only way they'd be
able to identify the body

"What about the hotline?" McKissack turned to Phillip Rein gold. "Any
new leads?"

"The usual, Chief. Calls keep pouring in. It's witchcraft, it's devil
worship. Couple of psychics weighed in today with their weird theories
about UFOs and what have you. Yadda, yadda, yadda."

McKissack nodded. They'd already spent too much valuable time tracking
down hundreds of "leads" that turned out to be false--calls from
concerned residents, calls from kooks, calls from other police
departments with suggestions relating to Claire Castillo's whereabouts.
Strange men had been spotted all over town. They'd interviewed all
known sex offenders, but the exercise had proved fruitless. In the
papers, you always saw a caption under the picture of the killer,
Rachel thought, and it always said "Nice guy. Real quiet."

"Everybody liked her," Rachel said. "Friends, relatives.

coworkers. She was a dedicated, hardworking teacher. Her students
adored her ..."

"We're working on the codes in the Day-Timer," Keppel said. "These
notations are odd, but who's to say? This kind of thing's
idiosyncratic and I guess it worked for her. So far, we've figured out
that the capital letters mostly represent friends and family, people's
initials. "IV1&D' means Mom and Dad, "N' stands for Nicole, and so on.
Then there's lower case: 'cd' means charity dance; 's' is for shopping;
'h/c' for haircut, etcetera. But sometimes you'll get an upper-case
"HE," meaning Hurryback Cafe, or a lower-case 'pm," meaning Peggy
Morrissey ... so she doesn't always stick to the rules."

"What about the day she disappeared?"

"Okay, she's got a lower-case 'pm @ I 2' written down here. Peggy
Morrissey confirmed they had lunch together. Then an upper-case "HE'
in the lower right-hand corner, meaning her usual Wednesday night
dinner at the Hurryback. Then a 'pu C slash P' with a question
mark--meaning pick up costumes, we think..."

"Costumes?"

"For the school play. "P' for play, "C' for costumes. We found them
in the trunk of her car. Then she's got this big, lowercase,
underlined 'b." It's prominent on the page."

"Buck Folette, obviously," Tapper said.

"But it's lower case."

Tapper shrugged. "She doesn't always follow her own rules. You said
so yourself."

"It's problematic, because the next day, Thursday, she writes
upper-case "B @ 7," meaning she had a date with Billy Storrow that
night."

"What about Billy?" McKissack asked, and Rachel's heart pounded as he
eyed her with aggressive suspicion. "He and Claire were close?"

"They were good friends."

"How good?"

"Billy was with his head-injured kid until nine-ten P.M.," Tapper
reminded him.

"I'm not suggesting he's a suspect," McKissack said as his eyes
explored Rachel's face. "I'm just wondering what their relationship
was."

"At the beginning stages," she said as evenly as she could. "They'd
been friends for over a year, and it was just beginning to turn into
something more ... substantial."

"It would've taken him ten minutes to get from the school to the
downtown area," Tapper said. "That would've made it nine twenty P.M.
She'd've been walking around for almost an hour and a half by then, and
yet nobody saw her after eight P.M. Not a soul. Doesn't add up."

"I know," McKissack said, eyes hard on Rachel. She could feel her body
moving as she breathed. "I'm not saying he's a suspect."

"He's got a solid alibi," she said, sounding more defensive than she'd
intended.

"You said something about Nicole the other clay?" McKissack switched
gears, sitting back and breaking off eye contact.

Rachel took a moment to compose herself, subtly wiping her palms on her
knees. "Nicole's parents won't let her see her boyfriend anymore.
Nicole and Dinger ledesco have been going steady for nine months now.
I talked to Jackie Castillo, and she and her husband don't like Dinger.
They think the two of them are sleeping together, and in light of
Claire's disappearance, they don't want Nicole involved with this young
man. I hey realize they're being extremely protective, but they
believe it's for her own good."

"What about it?" McKissack asked. "D'you think this kid could've
kidnapped Claire?"

Rachel glanced around the table and could tell by all the blank looks
nobody else had thought of it, either. "I talked to Dinger briefly,"
she said. "Asked him about his relationship with the family."

"And?"

"Left it at that."

"Well, what d'you think?" McKissack asked no one in particular.

"He's just a kid," Cavanaugh said. "What is he, seventeen?"

"So nobody's thought of it? Nobody's even considered the
possibility?"

The question hung in the air.

"He's sleeping with the younger daughter, hanging around the house a
lot. Claire comes over once or twice a week ... always on weekends. He
meets her. Develops a crush ... follows her ..."

"Dinger Tedesco?" Keppel fumbled with the Day-Timer, rifling through
its pages. "I don't see any "DTs' in here."

"So what's the kid's real name?" McKissack asked.

"Huh?"

"I'm assuming Dinger's a nickname."

Rachel scanned her notebook. "Brigham," she said.

"Brigham." McKissack held Rachel's eye.

"It's possible," Rachel hedged.

"I want you to look into it further, Storrow."

Her cheeks burned; she felt unfairly targeted.

"Now everybody go home," he barked. "Let's get some shut-eve."

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, NICOLE CAST ILLO MET DINGER

out behind the bleachers on the wet athletic field where they huddled
together against a rotting wooden beam. She hadn't told him yet that
she'd changed her mind. The air was misty with rain, the kind of rain
you couldn't see but could feel coagulating on your skin and your
clothes.

"You've gotta talk to them," Dinger insisted. "You've gotta convince
them it's okay for us to see each other again."

"I can't convince my father of anything. Once he makes up his mind,
that's it."

"Oh great." He threw up his hands and looked like he wanted to hit
something. "Shit fuck dammit all to hell!"

"Dinger," she said tensely, "you know, I've decided to go ahead and
have this baby."

"What?" His eyes grew startled, hair clinging to his scalp in a
defeated sort of way. He glanced at her belly as if he could see
through her raincoat. "Are you sure?" He sounded panicky, as if he'd
changed his mind, as if maybe he didn't really want this baby after
all.

"Fucking asshole."

"What'd I say?"

She stormed past him, her high heels punching dots in the soggy field,
and he followed her into the parking lot.

"Nicole, Uzzat?"

"I thought you wanted me to have this baby? I thought you were against
abortion?"

"I did. I mean ... I am!"

She eyed him with suspicion. "You sure?"

"Yeah."

"You don't sound so sure."

"Of course I'm sure! You just surprised me, that's all..."

"Shut up and drive."

Dinger's car, a '76 Monte Carlo, smelled of candle wax and hamburgers.
They blasted music while they drove into town, past cows grazing
stupidly in the yellowing fields. They drove past tilting barns and
grain silos and ugly, old Victorian houses. She didn't want to live
here. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in Flowering
Dogwood.

They pulled into Burger King and parked. While he was getting their
food, she primped in the rearview mirror, catching

sight of a small hard pink pimple on her chin. "Oh great," she said.
"Miss Zit-me rica

She lit a cigarette, and when Dinger came back with their food, he
said, "The tip's bright orange."

"I can't help it."

"You'll fry7 your lungs extra-crispy."

"I don't care."

"You'll care later."

"No, I won't."

They didn't speak for a while. After he finished his burger, Dinger
picked up an Etch-A-Sketch from the car floor and fiddled with the
knobs. His fingernails were dirty. He drew a squiggly, angular baby,
and suddenly she loved everything--rain beading down the windshield,
the wipers with their rubber squeak-squeak, hot coffee smells mixing
with Dinger's pretzel smelling scalp, his fuzzy profile with its
ski-slope nose. His soft features spoke of great potential, of what he
might someday become, and she wanted to know that man.

"I love you," she whispered, throwing herself at him.