In some ways, Ethan Trent had waited years for the knock at his door.
He used the remote to flick the television off, hoping he'd heard wrong. Kids who stayed out past their curfew didn't knock, they tried to sneak back in.
The knocking came a second time.
Damn it Alison, if you've gotten yourself arrested I'm going to ground you until the Lions win the Super Bowl.
Ethan took a couple of deep breaths and forced himself to answer the door.
The man peering in looked more like a CEO than a cop. Instead of the blue uniform Ethan expected, he wore a suit and tie, the tie knotted tightly even at this late hour. The gel in his hair made it look freshly wet.
Ethan cracked open the storm door and caught a whiff of Old Spice. “Can I help you?”
“Mr. Trent?”
“Yes.”
The corners of the man's eyes creased, almost a wince.
Whatever had brought this guy to Ethan's doorstep at nearly midnight, the news couldn't be good. Ethan tried to remember how much he had in the checking account. A teacher's salary didn't allow for a lot of emergency spending. That included bail money. “Is it Alison?”
The man drew a leather wallet from his jacket pocket and opened it to show Ethan a badge. “May I come in?”
What have you gotten yourself into? “That's a yes, then?”
“Please,” the cop said. “I'd prefer we took this inside.”
Ethan led him into the kitchen. On the stove, a digital clock blared the numbers 11:55 in red. The smell of grilled onions still hung in the air from dinner—a dinner Alison had missed as usual.
The cop glanced around as if looking for something. “Your wife at home?”
“I'm divorced.”
“I see.” He gestured at the kitchen table. “Have a seat?”
“Look, I know Alison's got a troublesome streak, but whatever she's done can't be that bad.”
“Please.”
Ethan pulled a chair out and sat at the table. “You're really starting to worry me.”
“I'm Detective Anderson,” the cop said as he eased into the chair across from Ethan. “If you feel comfortable with it, call me Randy. Detective this and Detective that gets old fast, I think.”
“Fine, Randy. Tell me what's happened with my daughter.”
Detective Randy Anderson drew the edge of his hand across the table, raking together a pile of crumbs Ethan must have missed after clearing the dinner dishes.
“You were expecting your daughter home earlier?”
“I expected her to be late. I told her to come home earlier, but she likes to test me. Did you catch her doing something?”
“What sort of thing do you mean?”
“I don't know.” He threw his hands up. “What's the deal here? Is she under arrest? What?”
“I'm sorry, Mr. Trent. I know I'm not very good at this part of the job.” He looked away. “I'm afraid your daughter has…passed.”
Something shuddered inside of Ethan as if he stood on the tracks of an approaching train. Any minute the train would turn him into a red mist and a stain on the tracks. No. He had to have heard wrong. “What?”
“There's a lot yet to be done,” Randy continued. “Questions need answering. Right now all I can tell you is how she was found.”
How she was found? What did that mean? Sounded like she was a misplaced set of keys or something. His lungs constricted. His breath wheezed in his throat. This was a mistake. Plain and simple.
“Some boys up to no good, spray-painting their names on an overpass, found her in the Red Run Drain.”
The images poured into Ethan's head before he could stop them, those same conjured clips that kept many parents up at night, showing infinite variations on a single theme—the loss of a child. Only this time one of those clips had come true.
“Did she drown?”
Randy's gaze drifted away.
“Detective?”
“Far as we can tell, she was dead before she ended up in the Red Run.”
“But how did she get there if…” He felt himself explode, the room turning white, the hanging light above the kitchen table a star gone nova. Ethan shook.
Detective Randy said something, but he'd been burned up by the supernova, blasted away to another universe. Ethan barely heard the man's voice over the nova's roar. Only it wasn't a supernova making that sound; it was the blood rushing in his ears. Jesus, he could hear his own heart beat. And that sent him to thoughts of Alison's heart beat. Gone. She was gone.
The hand on Ethan's shoulder brought him out of the supernova's white-hot center. He looked up and saw Randy gazing down at him, a calm, olive-toned and fatherly face.
“Do you want some water or something?”
“No.”
Randy took his hand off of Ethan's shoulder, leaving a cold spot in its absence.
Ethan waited until Randy returned to his seat, then asked, “Did somebody put her there?”
“Mr. Trent, we have a lot of time for questions and answers. It's going to be a long night. The hard part's yet to come. I'm afraid we need you to ID the body.”
That word: Body. So cold. “Please.” He looked Randy in the eyes. “I have to know what happened. How did she end up in the Red Run?”
Randy visibly swallowed. “We're not sure. That's what we have to find out.”
“That's not what I meant. How did she…” He turned his gaze toward the fridge. A magnet pinned an old photo of Alison and Graham to the freezer door. They stood side-by-side in front of the carousel at a local amusement park. It was their first family trip after they had moved into the new house. Alison was missing both front teeth, but that hadn't kept her from smiling. When she got older, she smiled about as often as a cool breeze blew through hell. Now Ethan would never see her smile again.
Randy placed a hand flat on the table and leaned forward a little. “You gotta know, everything is speculation now, based on what the medical examiner could gather from the scene and—”
“Just tell me.”
“There's a lot of trauma to the body. She was beaten pretty badly.”
Beaten? The skin on his neck and arms prickled and burned.
“ME noticed a nasty blow to the head,” Randy continued. “That seems the most likely cause of death.”
“Could she have fallen?”
“Obviously, this early we don't like to rule out anything. But for now we're treating this as a homicide.”
Impossible. The whole thing seemed too unreal. Why couldn't you listen to me, Ali? Do you see what's happened? Do you see?
Ethan clenched a fist, bounced it gently on the kitchen table. He couldn't blame her. She was fifteen. And what had Ethan been doing at her age? Becoming a father, for one thing. Rain gave birth to Graham a mere three weeks before Ethan's sixteenth birthday. A fifteen year-old father. And two years later, having learned nothing, they brought another baby into the world.
No. It wasn't Alison's fault. Despite everything Ethan had done in the last five years—leaving Rain, getting his teaching certificate, making a new home for them in the suburbs—he still hadn't been able to take the father out of his daughter. Graham was a lucky break. Ethan couldn't take credit for the kid's inexplicable mild temperament. From the start he'd shown no signs of taking after either of his parents. But Alison. Alison had inherited all of their worst traits.
The truth was Ethan should never have been a father. This was proof. He'd let his baby girl down in the worst possible way.
He clenched up, refusing to cry, not out of any kind of shame, but because the effort gave him something else to focus on besides the grief.
“I hate to do this,” Randy said, “but it's important. I need you to come with me and ID the body.”
A rusty hope jangled inside of Ethan. “Do you think it might not be Alison?”
Randy seemed to recognize the question, the way he lifted his shoulders an inch and shook his head slowly. “We found her purse nearby, had her learner's permit along with some other items bearing her name. But this is procedure.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“One meant not to spark any kind of false hope, Mr. Trent.”
Ethan put his palms flat on the table to help himself stand. He still shook, but some of the strength had returned to his legs. For now, at least. “Let me get my coat.” Then he froze. He glanced once more at the photograph on the refrigerator. In the picture, Graham hugged his little sister with one arm as if he meant to hold onto her forever.
Oh, God. I have to tell Graham.
Ethan stood in front of Graham's closed bedroom door. He sensed Randy's presence at the end of the hallway. He didn't want to do this with Randy watching. But that was an excuse. He didn't want to do this at all.
If I'm going to wake up from this nightmare, now would be a good time.
He blinked twice.
The floorboards behind him creaked. Randy shifting his weight. Was he impatient? To hell with him if he was. Ethan would do this on his own time, take as long as he needed.
Not too long, though. If he took too long he might spend the rest of his life frozen in this moment.
Should he knock first? Just open the door? He had left the hall light off so opening the door wouldn't immediately disturb Graham. A knock might startle him.
You're stalling.
He focused on the plastic nameplate on the door. Both Graham's and Alison's bedroom doors bore similar nameplates with cartoon animals dancing around the borders, installed when they had first moved into the house. Ethan remembered almost getting one for his own door. The nameplates had felt like badges, representing their place away from the hell they'd been living, their second chance.
Finally, he cracked open Graham's door. Without any light from the hall, Ethan expected the only illumination to come from the clock radio's green glow on the nightstand. But faint streetlight filtered through the window and cut a pale swatch on the carpet.
Why wouldn't Graham have closed the blinds before going to bed?
He pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside.
A breeze blew in through the window carrying the smell of Fall. The blinds were drawn all the way to the top of the window, the window itself open as wide as it would go.
Ethan's gaze dropped to Graham's bed, still made and empty.
He slapped the light switch, stunning his eyes with the sudden brightness. Squinting, he scanned the bedroom. There weren't many places to look in the small room—the chair at the desk, the floor, the open closet.
“What is it?” Randy asked from the hall.
Ethan rushed to the open window and peered out. The street stood quiet and empty. He could feel moisture in the air, cool against his burning face. Looking down behind the shrubs, Ethan spotted the window's screen resting neatly against the house's façade.
His first thought was that someone had taken him. But he’d seen this same scenario enough times with Alison to figure out the more likely explanation.
Graham had snuck out.