“Did your wife ever hurt Adam?” Officer Young asked Lance.
“Caitlin?” he said, incredulous. “No, of course not.” He was beyond frustrated. They weren’t getting anywhere asking him all these ridiculous questions. Meanwhile his son was out there with god-knew-who, and these two nitwits did not seem to be in any hurry to track him down. It was maddening. And Caitlin. He needed to see Caitlin. She must be going out of her mind with worry.
“Did you hurt your son?” Marley asked.
Lance was trying to keep his cool, but it was getting increasingly difficult.
“No, it’s not like that, you have it all wrong.”
“Do we?” Marley asked. “Because we spoke to your son’s teacher. She confirmed that Adam was not in school today, but she also told us something else. She said last week she noticed some bruises on his neck.”
Lance felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. He tried to remain passive, but he felt Young’s eyes boring into him.
“You know anything about that, Mr. Walker?” Young asked. “The bruises on Adam’s neck?”
“No, nothing,” Lance said, forcing his voice to remain neutral, even as a storm raged in his head. “Maybe his teacher is mistaken.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Young said. He didn’t sound convinced.
Lance couldn’t believe he was such an idiot. He had been raised better than this. You never talked to the cops without a lawyer. That was the rule, but he had been in such a desperate rush to find out what was going on with Adam, he had forgotten all about that rule. He hadn’t stopped to realize that the cops would consider him a suspect, but of course they did. Hell, they might not even be out there looking for Adam or his kidnapper because they thought they already had their man.
In his head he caught a glimpse of a memory. His mother saying, “The police won’t understand.” He thought of the day they showed up to ask about who might have murdered little Lily. He pictured the four of them in the living room, his mother telling them about the car she had seen as they jotted down notes. Had she said that about the police not understanding before they showed up, or was it after? But no, that was all wrong.
The vague memory resolved itself slightly. He saw his mother saying the words while wearing her terry cloth bathrobe. They were in the bathroom. He saw the hideous baby blue tile that she despised in the sad, outdated room. She was always cutting out pictures of bathrooms that she liked from magazines and taping them to the mirror, dreaming about the remodeling project she could never afford. Well, that was until she married Tucker Rixby and got her whole life remodeled.
Yes, he could see it plain as day. His mother was at the sink washing her hands, washing something, as she told him, “The police won’t understand.”
The memory was so vague and indistinct that it occurred to him it probably didn’t have anything at all to do with Lily. It was likely much earlier than that. Did it have something to do with his father’s heart attack? Yes, this felt right. Lance had only hazy memories of his father, who had suffered a fatal heart attack when Lance was just five years old. Whatever his mother had been talking about that night in the bathroom had something to do with his dad, but what? Lance couldn’t say. He might not even have her words right. He wondered if the police had questioned her after his dad died. Surely they couldn’t have blamed her for his heart attack, but maybe that was how it always was.
They always suspected next of kin—wives, husbands, parents. A child goes missing, and they immediately suspected the parents had something to do with it, and when that same boy showed up at school the previous week with bruises, well, it did kind of make one wonder, didn’t it? Of course, he couldn’t tell them what had really happened, because like his mother said all those years ago, they wouldn’t understand.
“I would never lay a hand on my son,” Lance said, “and I’m offended that you would even suggest such a thing.”
He realized the last bit was too much. It made him sound guilty. He had no business talking to the police on his own. This was why you always had a lawyer with you, but here was the dilemma: If he asked to call his lawyer now, he would succeed in looking even more guilty. The cops would stop any pretense of a search for Adam. So he couldn’t call his lawyer, but he had to get the hell out of there.
“Look, unless you plan on arresting me,” Lance said, “I need to go see my wife.”
“We’re not arresting you,” Marley said. He didn’t actually say the word yet, but Lance heard it in the tone of his voice. “But it will be much easier to find Adam if we know the truth.”
“I’ve told you everything there is to tell,” Lance said, and he stood up. Neither officer made a move to stop him, so he walked out the door, his heart racing.
He scanned the police station, but he didn’t see Caitlin anywhere.
“Mr. Walker!”
Lance looked over at the woman who jumped up from a desk and walked to where he stood.
“Your wife asked me to tell you she went back to the house.”
Still worried that Young and Marley would change their minds and call him back in for more questioning, Lance left the station, got in his car, and drove down the road. He pulled into the parking lot of the dry cleaners, and with the car still running, he pulled out his phone. His first impulse was to call Caitlin and make sure she was all right, but the police interview was still fresh in his mind. He needed to talk to his stepfather.
He didn’t have anything against the local attorney who had represented them when they bought their house and who had prepared their wills, but Lance figured a criminal case was probably above his skillset. This wasn’t the sort of thing where you wanted to mess around. His stepfather was the kind of man who knew a lot of people. Even if he didn’t personally know a good criminal lawyer in New Jersey, he would know someone who did.
Lance dialed the house number. His mother picked up on the third ring.
“Hi, Mom,” Lance said. “I need to talk to Tucker. Is he around?”
Then he realized he had to tell Raquel what was going on.
“I think he’s in his study. Let me grab him,” Raquel said.
“Wait, Mom, I actually need to talk to both of you,” Lance said.
“Is everything okay?” Raquel asked.
“If you can just get Tucker, I’ll explain everything to both of you,” Lance said.
He was surprised at how steady and calm his voice was as he explained the day’s events to his mother and stepfather. Maybe it was genetics, because after hearing the story, Raquel seemed to remain composed, while Tucker Rixby had a bit of a freak out.
Tucker’s voice cracked as he asked, “Just tell me what I can do.”
“Well,” Lance said, “do you know of any attorneys who have experience with this sort of thing?”
“Of course, there’s—” Tucker began, but Raquel cut him off.
“No, we’re wasting time. We’ll talk about that in person. We’re on our way now.”
“Mom, wait—” Lance said, but he, too, was overruled by his mother’s decree.
“We’ll throw some stuff into a suitcase and head right out,” she said.
Lance hadn’t counted on this, but he didn’t see how he could stop the two of them. He reasoned it might be for the best. They would be able to help, and though Caitlin and Raquel weren’t exactly the best of friends, he thought it would be good for Caitlin to have a sort of mother figure around. Then he remembered he needed to get back home to comfort his distraught wife.
“I’ve got to go,” Lance said.
“So do we,” Raquel said.
As he drove up to the house, Lance spotted the dark car parked on the road out front. In this upscale suburban neighborhood of garages and long driveways, no one parked on the road. Lance had a moment of panic. It was the kidnappers. They had shown up at the house. What if they were holding Caitlin hostage? But the panic melted in an instant as he recognized the dark car for what it was, an unmarked police car. Had they posted the police detail outside to keep an eye out for kidnappers or because they wanted to keep Lance and Caitlin under surveillance? Lance guessed it was probably the latter, though no doubt, if asked, the police would say they were hoping to catch the kidnappers.
Caitlin was in the living room when Lance stepped inside. She was holding the blanket they kept in the car for Adam. She twisted it in her hands as if she were trying to wring out damp laundry. Her hair was a tangled mess, and her eyes, surrounded by puffiness, looked wild and glassy.
He went to her and embraced her. Holding her, he could feel his blood pressure drop, but she went stiff in his arms and pushed him away. She shook her head and resumed her wringing of the blanket.
“I should have seen this coming,” Caitlin said.
“What are you talking about?” Lance said. “How could anyone have seen this coming?”
“I should have seen it coming,” she repeated.
But he knew the truth. If anyone should have seen this coming, it was him. He knew Caitlin was in trouble. He had seen the evidence of it, but he had ignored the warning signs. What had he done? He went and bought her sleeping pills. His wife needed medical attention, and his method of dealing with it had been to buy her sleep aids. He couldn’t believe he was such a colossal idiot.
He saw that video of Caitlin in the convenience store, trying to carry all the energy drink cans in her arms. Just the memory of it made him shudder. She had seemed so crazy and deranged, he had barely recognized her. And now, pacing around while obsessively twisting a blanket in her hands, she did look a lot like a seriously disturbed mental patient.
What if, in her altered mental state, she had done something to Adam? Maybe she had made up the whole story of him disappearing in the Quick Chek parking lot to cover for whatever she had done earlier. The police certainly suspected she was lying about him disappearing from the parking lot.
Had she told them about the sleeping pills? he wondered. The thought had crossed his mind while he was in the police station, but he was smart enough to not say anything to implicate his wife. The more and more he and Caitlin looked like culprits, the less attention the police would devote to tracking down the real evildoer.
“I should have seen this coming,” Caitlin said again. “Stupid, stupid. Those goddamn pills.”
“What happened?” Lance asked. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”
She stopped twisting the blanket and turned to stare at him.
“Don’t you know?” she asked, confused. “I stopped at the convenience store, and Adam was taken out of the backseat while I was inside the store.”
It was the same story she had told the police, but he had seen the security camera footage from the parking lot. No one but Caitlin had entered the car.
“I need you to retrace your steps,” Lance said. “Think carefully about everywhere you went.”
“He was in the car when I pulled into the parking lot,” she said.
“I looked into those pills you were taking,” Lance said. “They had some pretty serious side effects. They can cause disorientation and confusion. There was a class action lawsuit.”
“If I hadn’t been taking those pills, this never would have happened,” Caitlin said. Her voice had gone quiet as she stared down at the floor.
Lance felt the tears well up in his eyes.
He had failed her. For years she had taken those things. Why hadn’t he ever looked into them before? The least he could have done was look up their side effects, but he hadn’t done that, and why? Well, he knew why—because Caitlin’s sleeping pills made everything perfect for him. Caitlin was perfect in so many ways, and her dead-to-the-world sleep was like the cherry on top. He hadn’t wanted to screw things up for himself, but all the while Caitlin was in trouble, and he had been too self-absorbed to realize it.
“I’m sorry,” he said as the tears rolled down his face.
She took a step away from him, confused. Was it his imagination, or did she look afraid?
“Caitlin?” he asked. “What happened? You need to tell me what happened. Whatever you can remember. I know the pills have made you confused, but I need you to think. Try to remember, please.”
“If I hadn’t been taking the pills, I would have seen all this coming,” Caitlin said. “It’s all my fault.”
Lance didn’t know what she was talking about. She wasn’t making sense, but that was probably because of those pills.
He reached out and placed his hands lightly on each of her shoulders. “I need you to think carefully. Are you positive Adam was in your car when you pulled into the Quick Chek parking lot?”
“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t go anywhere else.”
“You went straight to the convenience store from the house?” he asked.
“He was asleep in the car seat,” Caitlin said, but that didn’t make any sense. It was a two-minute drive to the convenience store, maybe three. Adam wouldn’t have fallen asleep that quickly.
“Are you sure?” Lance asked.
Caitlin started to nod her head, but then she froze.
“Caitlin?” Lance asked. “What is it?”
She didn’t answer.