A couple of hours later, Frank Travis arrived at the house. Rebekah had prepared some sandwiches and, while the girls ran around the backyard, she and Travis sat on a couple of old wicker chairs, under the shade of the porch, Roxie lying at Rebekah’s feet, chewing an old slipper.
‘This brings back memories,’ Travis said.
‘Were your kids crazy like this?’
He smiled. Kyra was running around in circles, singing a song she’d heard on the Disney Channel, while Chloe was laughing so hard she eventually lost her balance and plopped onto her backside.
‘How are they doing?’ Travis asked.
Rebekah watched Kyra as she poured her and her sister an imaginary cup of tea. ‘They’re doing okay,’ she said. ‘But sometimes they look at me and it’s like …’ Her eyes went back to the girls. ‘It’s like they don’t remember me.’
‘Give it time, kiddo.’
She glanced at him. ‘And then there’s this thing with Gareth. I don’t know what I expected to happen between us when I got home. I didn’t expect us to get back together, but I guess I didn’t expect him to move on so quickly.’
Travis was quiet for a moment, his hands steepled in front of him. ‘This stuff can be hard, Rebekah.’
‘I think it’s time you started calling me Bek now, Frank.’
‘Bek.’ He smiled again, fiddling with the bandage on his head. ‘When my wife left me, Jeez, I was spinning like a top for months. It was nuts, because I wasn’t even happy with her. I didn’t like her. But anything that tilts you, even if it’s something small – and I’m not saying this thing with the girls is small, not at all – it can really play with your head.’ Travis took a bite of his sandwich. ‘It’s like Louise. I got her home – not in the way I wanted to, but I got her home – and I’m still lying awake at night. It still feels like I failed her.’
‘You didn’t fail her, Frank.’
Travis didn’t say anything, just took another bite of his sandwich, and they fell into a comfortable silence, watching the girls. After a while, Travis turned to Rebekah and said, ‘They’re maybe a little confused right now but they’ll come around. Kids are remarkable. They’re so much more resilient than we give them credit for. When they’re this age, they adapt and move on. There’s no rancour or regret. Soon, it’ll be like you were never away.’
Rebekah looked at Travis, and felt an immediate pull towards him: this was the sort of speech her father used to give to Johnny, Mike and her when they were growing up – gentle, incisive words that would draw them back from whatever edge they’d wandered out to. She found herself reaching over to grasp Travis’s hand, and – although he seemed taken aback – he soon took hers in return, understanding.
‘Thanks, Frank,’ she said.
He held her hand for a moment longer and then she saw his expression change, and she knew they were about to get to the real reason for his visit. In truth, a part of her had been scared to ask. If this visit was about Johnny, she knew it would hurt. She knew it from the way Travis was looking at her.
He placed the half-eaten sandwich on his plate, finished his Coke and then moved his hand to the inside pocket of his sports coat. When it emerged, a flash drive was pinched between his thumb and finger. Travis put it down, pushing it towards her. On the side, it said, FAO: Frank Travis.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘They figured out what happened to Johnny that day.’
Rebekah blinked.
‘Bowners and her team, in their interviews with “Hain”, they’ve managed to put together a rough idea of what happened when you and your brother got separated.’ He grimaced, as if he was having a hard time forming his words. ‘They know why Johnny’s wallet was at the lighthouse.’
‘Why?’ Rebekah asked, almost fearful of the answer.
‘It sounds like, when you were trying to escape from Lima, Johnny didn’t realize you weren’t behind him to start with, and then when he went back for you – when he was calling your name – he couldn’t find either you or Lima because you’d already drawn Lima away from the track, in the direction of that gully.’ In the beat between sentences, an image of that day flickered behind Rebekah’s eyes. Her tumbling into the gully, hitting her head and blacking out. ‘After that,’ Travis went on, ‘there’s a knowledge gap, but the cops seem to think that when Johnny couldn’t find you he tried to run back up to the main road, presumably to flag someone down. Shortly after, Lima finished with you, because he thought you were dead, and returned to the parking area with the keys for Stelzik’s Chevy. He used it to catch Johnny.’
‘So how did Johnny get all the way out to the lighthouse?’
Travis didn’t respond initially. Instead, it looked like he was gathering his strength, steeling himself for the final assault. ‘He didn’t. Hain says Lima caught up with your brother before Johnny ever managed to reach the top of that trail out of Simmons Gully. I mean, the track was almost a mile long …’
Something hitched in Travis’s voice.
‘According to Bowners,’ he continued quietly, coming forward in his chair, ‘a stretch of the Loop was cut off temporarily when a truck spilled some logs across it.’ Rebekah remembered the night she’d got to the top there, in the middle of the storm, before she’d headed into Helena, and had found wood and plastic fasteners across the road. ‘That meant when Lima was done …’
Done.
Done burying her brother.
‘Once he was done, he couldn’t take the direct route back to Helena, along the southern flank, because it was blocked. He had to go the other way around and come past the lighthouse. That was how Johnny’s wallet ended up there. Apparently, according to Hain, when Lima was driving away from the dig site – after he’d buried Johnny – he spotted the wallet near the top of the trail. Your brother dropped it when he died. Lima didn’t want to leave it out in the open there because he thought it was too close to the body, so he stopped at the lighthouse and dumped it there.’ Travis reached over and took her hand again. ‘I’m sorry, Bek. This is just …’ But there were no words.
His other hand went to the flash drive.
‘With two cops dying at your house,’ he said, ‘with the recovery of, first, Louise’s body, and then the other two women’s, then Johnny’s, and then me, and all the other terrible shit that’s been going on since the island, somehow no one got this over to you. It got missed. I know that Bowners is going to call you to apologize later on. She says they meant to show you days ago.’
‘What is it?’
‘Lima missed something in Johnny’s pockets.’ Travis stopped, looking at Rebekah, and as she wiped her eyes, she nodded, letting him know she was ready to hear. ‘Johnny hid it in the coat’s actual lining.’
‘Hid what?’
‘You remember that day at the forest you got back to find the window on the Cherokee had been smashed? You covered it with plastic wrap for five months.’ Rebekah nodded. ‘You remember how the dashcam got taken from the Cherokee, and it never made sense why someone would steal it?’
Rebekah frowned.
Travis pushed the flash drive all the way over.
‘This’ll explain everything.’