The Darkest Corners (24 page)

A nineties grunge song pulls me back to the present. Clearly, the definition of
classic rock
has shifted since I was a kid. Just this once, I wish something had stayed the same.

Nick lets us into the motel room. He reeks of weed, and his eyes are bloodshot.

“Come on, man,” Ryan says, exasperated. “You're
asking
to get caught.”

“I don't care anymore.” Nick is an angry drunk. I can tell, because I've known a lot of angry drunks.

Callie sits on one of the twin beds, her back against the headboard. Her eyes are closed.

“Let's go.” I shake her knee. “Before your parents wake up.”

Callie groans. I resist the urge to slap her. She's risking my getting sent home over a boy. A stupid boy who makes poor decisions and isn't even that good-looking.

I use both hands to shake Callie now. “UP.”

Eyes still closed, she swings one leg over the side of the bed. That's when I notice the empty bottle of Bacardi on the floor. So does Ryan.

“You let her finish it?” he practically yells at Nick.

“I don't tell her what to do,” Nick says. There is the slightest emphasis on
I,
which Ryan obviously catches. He looks pissed.

“Come on,” he mumbles. We both have to help hold Callie up, even though she slurs that she can walk on her own.

“Shut up,” I hiss into her ear. “You've done enough, okay?”

“Yo, ease up on her,” Nick says. “She's the only one who's still on my side.”

I'm about to tell
him
to shut up too, but Ryan interrupts. “So I'm not on your side, because I think you should go home? Nice.” His face is flooded with color.

“You want me to go to jail for something I didn't do?” Nick demands from where he's sitting on the bed. Ryan shakes his head, but he's not looking at Nick.

Nick stands up from the bed, and a chill crawls up my back.

“You think I
did
do it?” he says, getting in Ryan's face. “Is that what you think?”

Callie whimpers. I pull her away from Ryan as he returns Nick's scowl.

“I don't know what I think anymore, man,” Ryan mutters. “You're sure acting like a criminal.”

Nick looks like he's going to throw a punch, so I push Callie and Ryan out the door. Nick grabs the knob to stop me from closing it. My heart stops.

“You believe I didn't do it.” Nick looks me right in the eye. His lids are drooping, his words a little slurred, but his voice is insistent. “I can tell. You've got to go on Connect
.
Find the guy.”

“There was a man who didn't want sex,” I say, my thoughts a rapid-fire stream in my head. “Did she talk about him?”

Nick looks more alert. “Captain. That was his username. Captain something.”

“Are you sure?” I ask him.

“Yeah, she liked Captain. Said he was older and his wife just died,” Nick says. “I told the cops about him, but they acted like I just made it up.”

“Tessa, we've got to go,” Ryan says. I look over at them and see that Callie has vomited all over the concrete.

“We have to find out who Captain is,” Nick says to me. “Just get on Connect, okay?”

Before I can respond, Nick has shut the door in my face.

My stomach is unsettled as Ryan and I load Callie into the minivan. I don't realize until I'm behind the wheel that Nick said
we
have to find Captain.

I don't know when
we
happened, but I don't like it.

Callie is passed out for the entire ride home. I lean over occasionally, to make sure she's breathing. It's a good thing I paid attention to the route Ryan took to the motel, because Callie's in no shape to help me figure out how to get home.

I nudge her awake as I pull into the driveway. She stirs and whines.

“Get it together,” I hiss. “You screwed up big-time.”

“Why?” she slurs.

“If we get caught, your mom will send me away,” I say.

“Isn't that what you want?” she blubbers. “To go back to your nice life in Florida and forget I ever existed again?”

I'm dumbstruck. Is that really what she thinks, or is the Bacardi talking?
She's
the one who pretended
I
didn't exist anymore; she's the one who carried on with her life and her friends while I thought of Wyatt Stokes every single day for the past ten years. While Callie was numbing herself with booze and high school parties, I'm the one who went straight home every day and visited the forums, a ritual that became a prison. School, Gram's house, work, Gram's house. And not a single meaningful relationship in between.

My life became a self-imposed prison, because a prison was what I deserved. Callie has just been avoiding her sentence until now.

I can't push words out around the lump in my throat. I just want to be done with her, done with this place. I'll go back to my prison in Florida if I have to, because anything is better than this.

And of course, because I've decided that I can't possibly feel worse right now, a light goes on in the living room. Maggie is staring out the window, right at us.

Maggie doesn't look at me or speak. We silently help Callie up the stairs and into her bed. Maggie mutters something unintelligible at her, but Callie doesn't respond, her head lolling to the side.

She's blacked out.

Finally, Maggie looks up at me. “What happened?”

A lie sticks on my tongue, that we went to the STI and things got a little out of hand. But even I wouldn't go to a bar in what I'm wearing. Maggie won't buy it.

If I say I had to pick Callie up from the bar, Maggie is the type of person who will report them for serving Callie alcohol.

“I had to pick her up,” I say slowly. “From a friend's.”

“Which
friend
?” Maggie's voice is sharp. The whole scene—her angry face, Callie's practically lifeless body, the twirling trophies surrounding us—feels like it's falling away around me.

I can't throw Ryan under the bus for this. And it'll be even worse if I tell the truth. “She asked me not to say.”

“Goddamn it, Tessa.” Maggie covers her face, probably wondering when my allegiance shifted from her to Callie. “That's the thing I'd expect to hear from my daughter.”

My heart squeezes. Her
daughter,
which I am clearly not. “I'm sorry.”

“We'll talk in the morning. I don't want to wake Rick up.” She leaves without a glance back at me.

We don't talk in the morning. When I wake up, Maggie and Rick are gone. There's a note on the kitchen counter.

Went to Nana's. Back in the afternoon. Cold cuts in the fridge for lunch.

No mention of the deep shit Callie and I are in. But in my gut, I know that without a doubt, when Maggie gets home, we're going to have a talk about how long I plan on staying in Fayette.

I'm running out of time. And all I have are random pieces that I'm not even sure fit the same puzzle.

I've seen
Unmasking the Monster
so many times, I practically have the transcript memorized, but there's always one line that sticks in my head. Something that a private investigator who took on the case pro bono after Stokes was in jail said.

I've always said that one person could blow this case apart—one person who saw something or knows something and isn't coming forward.

I pour myself a glass of orange juice and look at the clock over the sink. It's a little after ten. I head upstairs and knock on Callie's door. When she doesn't answer, I open it.

She's asleep facing the doorway, her mouth open slightly. Snoring. It's stifling in here; no one ever turned on the AC unit in her room last night. I turn it on and shut the door behind me.

I haven't had any calls since leaving my number for my mother. I sit my phone next to me on the bed and reach behind the headboard, where I left my father's stuff.

What would I have said to him, had I made it in time? What would he have said to me?

I'm sorry, baby.
That's the last thing he said to me before he went away. He cried in the courtroom, the papers said. He looked right at Manuel Gonzalo and told him how sorry he was that he would never walk again. My father played the part of the repentant convict and begged for leniency, but it didn't matter. He still got a life sentence.

After the jury announced that Stokes was sentenced to death, he smirked. They caught it on tape. The filmmakers asked him about it. He stubbed out his cigarette and looked at the camera, his pockmarked face ashy under the camera lights.

“They executed a guy on my block last week,” Stokes said. “Took three guards and a Taser to get him to stop wailing like a stuck cow. I'm not going out like that.”

“Then how will you go out?” the interviewer asked.

“Not quoting Matthew 6:14,” Stokes said. “That's for damn sure.”

I looked up the verse a while ago; it has something to do with forgiveness. I remember the Bible in my father's bag and rustle around for it. When I find it, I sit back up against the headboard and prop it open, resting it on my thighs.

As I flip to the New Testament, a square of paper falls out into my lap. A bookmark, maybe. I pick it up; a closer look, and I realize that it's part of an envelope.

There's some faded pink ink in the corner, over the stamp. I hold it an inch from my face and try to make out the name of the post office.

E-A-S-T-O.
The rest is ripped off. Easton, Pennsylvania, maybe? I think there's an Easton in Lehigh Valley, not far from Allentown.

Is it possible? Did Joslin write to my father in prison?

I turn the scrap over, and there's a phone number scribbled in the corner, in my father's handwriting. No names, just a number.

I dig my phone out of the pile on the bed and dial it.

A woman picks up on the second ring. “Hello?”

Her voice is unfamiliar. My heart sinks; I allowed myself the faintest sliver of hope that Joslin or my mother would pick up the phone.

“Who is this?” the woman demands. She sounds frazzled, angry. “Who are you?”

I hang up in a panic.
Stupid, stupid.
A completely acceptable response would have been a simple,
I'm sorry. Who is this?

I head downstairs while I work up the nerve to call back. I missed breakfast, and I figure I should eat something.

I'm rolling up a piece of turkey when my phone begins to vibrate, only the number on the screen isn't the one I just dialed a few minutes ago.

I don't recognize it—or the area code.

My heartbeat floods my ears. It could be her.

Even though I'm not ready—I'll never be ready—I answer.

“Hello?” It's a woman. Not the woman from earlier.

It's also not my mother.

“Who is this?” I ask.

There's a click on the line. “This is Agent Morgan Doherty with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the real question is, who are
you,
and why are you calling the family of a missing child?”

“What? I had no idea who I was calling,” I say, shocked. “I'm sorry.”

There's a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. “I figured,” Agent Morgan Doherty says, calmer. She sounds tired. “No one has called the tip line in years. Be more careful with your prank calls, okay?”

It wasn't a prank,
I want to say, but all I can say is “I'm so sorry. I didn't know.”

“It's fine,” she says, and sighs again. “Just disappointing for the Stevens family, that's all.”

Agent Doherty hangs up, and I nearly drop my phone.

Stevens.

I leave the cold cuts on the counter and bolt into the family room. The computer is on—Rick abandoned a poker game. I minimize it and start a new tab to search for
Stevens missing.

The result is instant.

Macy Stevens, last seen alive in 1991, in Tennessee. Just shy of her second birthday. The mother, Amanda Stevens, was supposed to drop Macy off at her parents' house so she could meet up with friends at a nightclub. She never showed up.

The next morning, Amanda's parents, Robin and Bernie Stevens, reported Amanda and Macy missing. An officer drove over to the apartment Amanda had been renting, and a hysterical Amanda said someone had taken the baby.

And that was when everything unraveled. The police found out that instead of driving half an hour to leave the baby with her parents, Amanda had left Macy sleeping alone in her crib while she had gone to a nightclub two miles away. Amanda said she'd gone back to the apartment twice to check on Macy, and both times had found the baby sleeping in her crib. It wasn't until Amanda got home in the early hours of the morning that she discovered Macy was gone.

Amanda failed a lie detector test, but there wasn't enough evidence to charge her with anything but child endangerment. The FBI launched a massive search effort for Macy, but the days stretched into weeks, then months.

There's a sketch of a man in the Wikipedia entry, someone a woman in Michigan reported seeing carrying a girl who matched Macy's description, a few days after she disappeared. I exhale—a deep, relieved breath—because it can't possibly have been my father. The man was African American. And the tip was determined to be “not credible.”

The vultures descended on Amanda Stevens right away. Brenda Dean, chief anchor for the Legal News Network, was the first to air the photos that Amanda's friends had anonymously mailed in. Amanda blowing smoke from a joint into the camera. Amanda sucking tequila out of a friend's belly button. In a now infamous phone interview, according to Wikipedia, Brenda Dean ripped Amanda Stevens to pieces, catching her saying “I loved my daughter,” as if Amanda's using the past tense had proved that Macy was dead.

The public was brutal to Amanda, but no one was quite as bad as Brenda Dean. Four years after Macy disappeared, Brenda's “Where's Baby Macy?” segments became so ruthless that the district attorney agreed to investigate Amanda Stevens. But they never got anywhere; if Amanda knew what happened to her daughter, she wasn't talking.

Years later, someone leaked chapters from Brenda Dean's book proposal about the case. Dean promised a bombshell that would prove Amanda was guilty: court documents showed that Amanda Stevens had petitioned the state court to have Macy legally declared dead less than a year after she had disappeared—in order to cash in on a life insurance policy she'd taken out on Macy.

Amanda cut her wrists in her parents' bathtub after the segment aired.

In 2006, Amanda's parents brought a wrongful death lawsuit against LNN and Brenda Dean, claiming that the leaked information had driven the public to harass Amanda until she killed herself. The two parties settled for an undisclosed sum believed to be in the mid-seven-figure range.

Macy was officially declared dead in 2008. The Stevens family offered up a $100,000 reward for information leading to the identity and arrest of her killer. But by then, most people agreed that Macy's killer was really her dead mother.

Except, perhaps, my father.

He had the number for the tip line. Did he ever call? Knowing my father, he probably made a desperate attempt to get the reward, even though he'd never have been able to enjoy that kind of money from his cell block.

But I don't know my father, not really. I knew him for only eight years—my entire existence before he went to jail, but only a small percentage of his life. I didn't know about Bear Creek. I didn't know about him turning religious.

I know nothing about my father's life before he met my mother. I don't know where he lived back in 1994, when Macy Stevens was kidnapped and murdered. It could have been Tennessee, for all I know.

There's a nervous humming in my body. Ugly, ugly thoughts forming in my head.

One murder—now two. That was what I thought this was about. Now I feel like I've fallen into a rabbit hole, one where Lori and Ariel don't even factor in, and all I'm going to find at the bottom are terrible, awful truths about my own family.

Next door, the dogs go berserk. A car door slams in the driveway, and I know Maggie and Rick are home. I delete my search history and open Rick's tabs. He was buying more credit to play poker with.

I'm in the kitchen putting away the cold cuts when they walk in.

“Hi, honey,” Maggie says. Her voice has a nervous edge to it. She shoots a glance at Rick, and I know exactly what's going on.

She doesn't want him to find out about last night. And since Rick rarely leaves the house without Maggie, except to go to work, she can't bring up what happened until he leaves Monday morning.

It buys me some time. But probably not enough.

After I call the Fayette prison and leave a message for Wanda saying I need to speak with her about my father's phone records, I knock on Callie's door. She calls for me to come in, and I quietly crack the door. She's sitting on the edge of her bed, pulling a brush through her wet hair. I didn't even hear her wake up or start the shower.

“How much trouble am I in?” Her voice is gravelly.

I shrug. “Your mom hasn't said anything.”

“Shit.” Callie stops brushing her hair. “That's bad.”

Maggie's voice carries up the stairs.

“Callie! Someone's here.”

“Crap.” Callie wipes the inside corners of her eyes. She twists her wet hair into a bun. There are footsteps on the stairs. Whoever is here, Maggie sent him or her up.

Ryan stands on the other side of the threshold, uncertain whether he should stay there. “Uh. Wanted to make sure you're okay.”

“I'm fine.” Callie's voice is frosty.

Ryan scratches the back of his neck, stretching so his toned biceps is on full display. “Can we talk or something?”

“We can talk in front of Tessa.” Callie puts her brush down, to show that that's final.

Ryan glances at me. “Yeah, sure. Okay.”

I sit on the side of the bed opposite Callie, and Ryan sinks into the purple bowl-shaped chair in the corner. It's entirely too small for him.

“I know you're mad I followed you,” he says. Callie scowls, and I can tell this is as close to an apology as she's ever gotten from Ryan for anything.

“You're going to tell your uncle where Nick is, aren't you?” Callie says.

“That's really what you think of me?” Ryan lets out a low whistle. “I was friends with him before you were.”

“Okay, so then, as his
friends,
what do we do?” Callie asks.

“Captain,” I say. They both turn their heads toward me. “Nick said the guy Katie told us about, the one who didn't have sex with Ariel, his username had ‘Captain' or something in it. Nick told the police about him, but they didn't take him seriously.”

“We don't know that,” Ryan says, defensive. “They could be following up on that lead.”

“What do we really have to lose by going to some truck stops and asking around?” Callie asks. “We could start with Buckstown. It's outside Mason, and I think one of the first victims was last seen there.”

Ryan looks speechless. “This isn't about Nick at all, is it? You really think it's the Monster.”

Callie's chin quivers. “I don't know. But if it is, the cops aren't going to admit it.”

Ryan covers his face with his hands. “Callie. You cannot go looking for this guy on your own.”

“Fine,” she says stubbornly, with a sidelong glance at me. “Then you can come with us.”

Ryan sighs. I don't want to spend my day driving up and down the interstate with him either. I want to tell Callie about the bizarre phone call with the FBI agent, and the possible connection between my father and missing Baby Macy Stevens.

But Callie has made up her mind that she trusts Ryan and that he can help us. So now I have to keep my mouth shut until I decide if I feel the same way.

The Buckstown Travel Center is forty-five minutes south on the freeway. Another half hour and we'd be at the Ohio border. We decided to start here because it's the last place anyone saw Rae Felice before she disappeared. Ari could have met the Monster here as well.

Ryan parks in the rest area. “If there's any girls working here, they're probably afraid after what happened to Ari. We have to be careful what we say.”

“Pretend we're looking for someone,” I say. “Callie's sister. She ran off, and no one's heard from her in weeks, and we think she's hanging around one of these stops.”

Callie's quiet; her eyes meet mine in the side mirror, and I know she's thinking about Joslin. That she could have gone to one of the stops after she ran away, looking for a ride out of the state. She could have fallen into drugs, or prostitution. Or worse. It's just what everyone assumed happened to her, because there are no happy endings for runaways.

“That's good,” Ryan says. “But they still might not talk.”

“Well, we're going to see, I guess.” Callie opens the door and hops out of the truck.

The rest area consists of a cafeteria with a Burger King, a Dunkin' Donuts, and a Subway. Off to the side are the bathrooms and a newsstand selling snacks and maps of Pennsylvania. Everything looks too new, too family friendly. No truckers pissing in the parking lot and girls in leather skirts haunting the cigarette kiosks. It's nothing like some of the places off the interstate that I remember from when I was a kid.

Ryan can tell too that this is a lost cause. “We should at least ask around.”

Callie stops walking and pulls out her phone. Over her shoulder, I see that she's on someone's Facebook page. Emily Raymes's.

Dunkin' Donuts has the shortest line, so we fall into it, and we wait until an older woman, around Gram's age, asks if she can help us.

“We're looking for a girl,” Ryan says. “It's her sister.”

He nudges Callie, who shows the woman Emily's picture. The woman blinks.

“She ran away,” Ryan explains. “We're worried she's in trouble. Maybe hanging around here…with the wrong crowd.”

“You've come to the wrong place, baby,” the woman says. “They cleaned up this stop years ago. We don't get folks like that anymore. You know, like hitchhikers,” she continues, taking our lack of response as confusion. She lowers her voice.
“Pimps.”

Her accent is strong, maybe Georgia. She says it
peemps.

“Thanks,” Callie says, looking so dejected, I almost believe that she actually has a sister.

“If I was you, I'd check out Midway Truck Center,” the woman says. “But don't go after dark, and definitely don't go without him.” She points a pudgy finger at Ryan. We thank her and move so she can help the customers behind us.

“Hold on,” I say as Callie and Ryan make their way toward the exit. “I'll meet you outside.

Five minutes later, I emerge with a bag of fries and a Diet Coke from the Burger King. Callie makes a face as I climb into the truck.

“What?” I stuff a fry into my mouth and offer the carton to Ryan and Callie. “May as well not waste the trip.” And besides, all I've eaten today is half a bite of turkey.

Ryan grabs a handful of fries, and Callie gags and rolls down her window. I take a sip of my soda. I feel bad, but it's not my fault she's hungover.

It doesn't get better for her; according to the GPS, Midway Truck Center is an hour east. Even
I
start to get carsick in the back of Ryan's truck. We spend the ride in silence, watching the sky turn shell pink.