Hiding Place (9781101606759) (24 page)

Would they know something by then? Would it all be resolved?

And if it was, what would life be like then in the absence of mystery?

Janet fumbled for her keys and approached her car. She wondered whether it was even worth it to see Michael, to tell him about the events of the day. She knew she would, of course. She wouldn’t be able to shut him out. But she also understood that he might not be ready to give her the kind of response she was hoping for. She wanted someone—Michael, in particular—to share her joy, her confusion, her fear, but he seemed too absorbed in his own feelings about his father to be there for anyone else.

Before Janet slipped into the car, headlights approached the house. The vehicle moved slowly, like someone searching for something. Janet felt her heart jump a little. As the car slowed even more at their house, she considered going back inside. But then in the disappearing light she saw the outline of the top of the car—a rack of lights and sirens.

Janet felt relief wash over her. The police.

They turned the interior light on in the car as Janet walked down the driveway. She leaned in, getting closer to eye level with the officer in the passenger seat. He was young, probably just out of college. His hair was cut short, making his head appear sleek and bullet-shaped.

“Evening, ma’am,” he said. “Are you Mrs. Manning?”

“Ms. Manning.”

“Is everything okay here?” the officer asked.

“Yes,” Janet said. “Why?”

She took a quick look at the cop in the driver’s seat. A female officer, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She nodded at Janet.

“No worries, ma’am,” the first officer said. “Detective Stynes asked us to keep an eye on this house, so we saw you out here and wanted to check in.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “We’re all fine. My father and daughter are still in the house.”

“Just call us if you need anything.”

“Have you seen anything?” Janet asked. “There’s a man…”

“Detective Stynes told us. But we haven’t seen anybody. We’ll be patrolling all night.”

Janet felt relief as they drove away. Someone would be watching the house and the neighborhood once she was gone. She could put her mother’s guilt and fears aside—to some extent.

Janet walked back up the driveway, heading for her car. The crickets in the grass started chirping in greater numbers, and a few stars, low and bright, emerged in the growing darkness. Janet looked up at the house one more time, saw the TV glow in her father’s room, the soft light through the curtains in Ashleigh’s. It looked so normal, so peaceful. But had it ever felt that way to her? Had it ever felt like a safe, normal home?

Her hand hovered above the door handle, but before she gripped it the voice came from the darkness next to the house.

“Janet?”

Her body spun halfway toward the sound, releasing the handle. For a moment, she thought she imagined the call, but then she saw the shape of a man emerging from the darkness, moving
toward the car. Janet looked to the front door. The angle of the man’s approach meant that if she ran, she might not make it past him.

Was it him? Was it the man from the porch?

“Who’s there?” she asked.

“It’s me,” the voice said.

Then she saw it—the familiar thin frame.

“Michael?”

He came closer and smiled a little. “It’s me,” he said again.

“Jesus. I was on my way to your house.”

“My mom’s house,” he said.

“Did you call here and find out where I was going?” she asked.

“No, I guess we’re just on the same wavelength tonight.” He smiled, the wattage turned up high. “There’s something I want to do. It’s easier this way.”

Janet’s heart calmed down, the rhythm easing from the bass drum pounding when she heard that voice in the dark.

“The police were just here,” she said. “They’re watching the house. If they’d seen you creeping around…”

“I saw them,” he said. “Why are they watching the house? Did something happen?”

“Oh, Jesus, Michael. So much. That’s what I wanted to come and tell you.”

He placed his hand on her arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s walk and talk at the same time.”

“Are you sure?” Janet stopped. Michael seemed distant, distracted. Despite the strength of the smile, something looked off. “Is something wrong?”

He let out a long breath. “I want to hear what happened to
you,” he said. “And I have to tell you something. I just want to talk to you.”

So Janet followed along.

While they walked through the darkened streets, past homes that looked more comfortable with their porch lights burning and their kids tucked safely away in bed, Janet told Michael about the events of the day. She gave him a condensed version of Ashleigh’s adventure to the apartment complex—leaving out the details of the assault. When she told Michael that the man had a court summons with the name Justin Manning on it, Michael continued to walk by her side, but he kept his face turned away. He hadn’t said anything the whole time, hadn’t so much as grunted or acknowledged that Janet was even speaking. She didn’t know what to think or how to read his response, so when he continued to walk in silence for minutes after she stopped speaking, she said, “Well, what do you think of all this?”

He still took his time answering. They continued walking at a slow, easy pace until Michael abruptly stopped and turned to face her.

“I think it’s all bullshit, Janet.”

She stared at his face. They stood in the wash of a streetlight near the edge of the subdivision. Michael’s jaw was set hard, his eyes cold. He’d shown a similar response to the mention of the man on the porch when they spoke in the coffee shop, but he seemed even angrier and more agitated hearing about the man using Justin’s name. He still didn’t speak, and Janet got the sense he wasn’t ready to say anything else. But she wanted to hear from him. She’d sought him out for the sole purpose of sharing the news with him and seeing his reaction.

“Isn’t this good news, Michael?” she said. “Doesn’t this give us hope? I thought you’d be thrilled.”

“I’m not.”

“Can you tell me why?”

He took a step closer to her and reached out with both hands. He placed them on her upper arms, a gentle, affectionate gesture. “I don’t want to see you get hurt, Janet. In any way.”

“You mean because this guy might be dangerous?”

“That may very well be,” he said. “Some guy shows up spinning a tale about knowing the truth about the crime. But he won’t tell you the truth about it? Or he won’t go to the police?”

“Maybe he can’t. Maybe he’s not ready yet. Michael, I saw this man up close. I talked to him on campus. He seemed…disturbed in some way.”

“You see?”

“I don’t mean he’s dangerous.” Janet fumbled for the right words, but she knew that “disturbed” captured it best. And she also knew she wasn’t being completely honest with Michael. She didn’t know that the man was harmless. When she heard that voice calling her name outside the house in the dark, and she thought it was the man from the porch…she did feel afraid. But if he wanted to hurt her, why go to such elaborate lengths to talk to her? Why not just do what he wanted to do? Something else was at play. “I mean, Michael, that he’s been through something. He has something wrong with him in terms of how he interacts with people. Maybe he’s been homeless or abused.” She reached up to where his hands rested on her shoulders and took his hands in hers. “Oh, Michael, what if it is him? What if it’s really Justin? What if the whole last twenty-five years has been some kind of insane nightmare?”

“It hasn’t,” he said, his voice flat. “The last twenty-five years
did happen. Your mother died, and my parents split up. And we…we lived with it all that time.” He let go of her hands. “Whatever this man is up to won’t change that, don’t you see?”

Janet did see. She understood that the years and their toll wouldn’t be erased. But she wasn’t going to dwell on what had been lost. She couldn’t bear it. Like those photos that her father threw away—they were gone. She could let them go as long as she could also look forward to something more.

And here it was—the something more. Her brother might be alive. He might be alive and living right there in Dove Point. All they had to do was find him and talk to him. Whatever she needed to do to bring him back into the family, she would do. No questions asked.

“Michael,” she said. “I don’t know what your life has been like over the last decade or so, but surely this could help, couldn’t it? We could start to put some things back together.”

Michael turned away again. He looked into the distance and then Janet looked around as well. While they were walking and talking, she hadn’t been paying attention to where they were heading. She had followed Michael’s lead and concentrated on giving him a version of the day’s events. So when she looked around and followed the line of his gaze, what she saw surprised her.

They weren’t just on the edge of the subdivision.

They were across the street from the park. Michael reached out to her again, took her hand, and said, “Come on, this is what I wanted to show you.”

When Stynes reached the apartment complex, the first thing he saw was two uniformed cops leading a sweaty middle-aged man out of the manager’s office in handcuffs. The light was draining out of the day, but even in the glow from the parking lot lights, Stynes saw the man’s pasty skin, the clammy sheen of sweat across his forehead. They stuffed the guy into the back of a cruiser but left the door open when they saw Stynes approaching.

“This is our guy?” he asked the officers.

“Indeed,” one of them said. “Nicholas Reeves. Age thirty-eight. He says he’s managed this complex for the last three years.”

Stynes leaned into the car, positioning his face about a foot from Reeves. “So you like touching little girls, Nick?”

The man started crying right away. He squished his eyes shut and ducked his head and his body shook while he cried. Stynes noticed that Reeves’s lip looked a little puffy and red, the result of being kicked in the face by Ashleigh Manning. Stynes thought the girl was nuts for doing what she did, but he had to admire her cojones. And he kind of liked seeing a guy like Reeves take a good shot to the face.

“Do you think this is going to make me feel sorry for you, Nick?” Stynes asked. “This crying bullshit.”

The man still couldn’t bring himself to speak, but he managed to shake his head. In truth, Stynes did feel a little sorry for
the guy. He might be a creep and a pervert, but he still possessed a vulnerable humanity that Stynes couldn’t ignore. And if he thought his life sucked while sitting handcuffed in the back of a small-town police cruiser, wait until he got a load of prison as a pasty, doughy child molester.

“She was only fifteen, you know that?” Stynes said. “Fifteen. My socks are older than that.”

“I’m sorry,” Reeves said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Yes, you are. But sorry doesn’t feed the bulldog, does it?”

The man continued to weep, but his sobs were more quiet.

“Let me guess. I bet your apartment is full of porn and underwear you swiped from your tenants’ apartments when they weren’t home.”

“Don’t tell my mother,” Reeves said. “Can we just not tell my mother?”

“Does she read the newspaper? Because it will be in there under the heading ‘Felony Sexual Assault.’ ”

The man’s head jerked up. “Felony?”

“What do you think? You touch a little girl and we give you a break?”

“I just wanted to hug her,” he said. “Just…feel her.”

“You’re not supposed to do that with kids.”

“I don’t mean that way.” Reeves took a deep breath. He tried to suck some of the snot on his face back into his nose. “I mean I just wanted some companionship.”

“You should have got a cat.”

Stynes reached into his back pocket and brought out an old
handkerchief he sometimes remembered to carry. He balled it up, taking great care to cover the skin of his own hand, and wiped Reeves’s nose back and forth, clearing most of the snot and tears. He tossed the handkerchief onto the ground.

“Thank you.”

“So, Nick, tell me about the guy who rented this apartment from you. You know, the apartment in which you sexually assaulted this girl today.”

Reeves took a long moment to answer. Stynes lifted his foot and gave Reeves a gentle kick in the leg.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

“Are you willing to work out a deal?” Reeves asked. “I tell you what you want to know, so you go easy on me?”

“You watch too much
Law and Order
, Nick. How about you tell me what I want to know, and then I won’t put you in a holding cell with a four-hundred-pound gay black man who likes pasty white guys? How’s that for a deal?”

Reeves nodded. He understood.

“He rented the place three months ago. A three-month lease.”

“Is that standard?”

“We offer it when we have a lot of vacancies. The rent is more per month, but you get the shorter lease.”

“Go on.”

“He showed up and paid the deposit—that was just ninety-nine dollars—and the first month’s rent. Then he didn’t pay again, so he was going to get evicted, except the lease was up anyway. And when I told him he was being evicted, he just took some of his stuff and left.”

“He pay with a check?”

“Cash.”

“His name?”

“Steven Kollman.”

“You ever talk to him or find anything else out about him?”

“Is he in trouble?” Reeves asked.

“Not as much as you. Yet.”

Reeves stared straight ahead. He seemed to be thinking something over. “I got kind of a weird vibe off the guy.”

Stynes looked at the two uniformed cops who were listening in. “
He
got a weird vibe off the guy.”

“Seriously,” Reeves said. “He said he used to live here, and he was back in town to reconnect with his roots. That’s what he said. We never talked after that until I evicted him.”

“How did he take the news of the eviction?” Stynes asked.

“Like it was nothing. Like I’d told him it might rain tomorrow. I don’t think he cared. He just left.”