She was tired, but couldn’t sleep. She sat at her laptop in her motel room, listening to the night creep by outside her window and through the walls. A couple argued in the parking lot. Drunk hicks hooted and hollered from the bar down the road. The woman in the next room talked loudly to someone on the phone about ungrateful children and a useless husband.
Dani searched the Internet for a missing girl in Cornwell, but came up empty. She searched for churches in the area, but found too many to choose from. Pastor Tom had consumed too much of the homemade whiskey to recall the name of the church or preacher he’d spoken to about the missing girl.
She tapped away on her computer keyboard for hours, clicking on link after link, trying to find something, anything that would give her hope that a child couldn’t just go missing without anyone caring.
She sat at her computer using every search query she could think of, and still she turned up nothing. Just as she was about to give up she typed, “Jephthah, missing girl.” Her heart pumped a little faster when she got a string of hits.
It was a private message board that only members had access to. Membership required approval by one of the administrators. Dani quickly filled out the request form and groaned when a window popped up informing her that administrators would respond to her request within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
The room phone rang, and she looked at the clock before retrieving it. It was almost four in the morning. She stood and walked toward the ringing phone on the other side of the bed like she was being led to the gallows. She listened to it ring one more time before picking up. “Hello?”
Silence.
“Hello?”
Breathing.
“This is Deputy Dani Savage with the Baptist Flats Sheriff’s Department. Who is this?”
A warbled chuckle.
“Ima hang up—”
“Whore.”
She swallowed. “Who is this?”
“Daddy’s little whore.”
Her cheeks turned rosy red in an instant. “Daddy?”
“You ruined my life.”
“How did you get this number?”
“I had everything before you come along. Everything! I was the Word! I was the Heart! I was the Mind! I was the Path!”
She couldn’t bring herself to respond. There was no point. He was drunk. He wouldn’t remember even calling when he sobered up. If she was going to tell him how she really felt about him, she would wait until he could recall every word.
“As soon as everyone found out that my girl killed a baby, it was done for me. They kicked me out of town.”
She bit her lip and listened. She wanted to hear what he had to say so she could hate him even more.
“That man should’ve beat you dead.” She heard him take a swig from a bottle. “He was doing God’s work.”
“What do you know about God?”
“What do I know about God? I am God!” He took another drink. “I am God, and I condemn you to hell, you little cunt!”
Dani sneered back a grunt. “Ima hang up now, old man. You call me again, and Ima beat you dead. You hear me?”
He laughed, and she slammed the phone down over and over again until it cracked.
The woman next door banged on the wall. “Shut the hell up over there!”
Dani stood and stared at the wall. The thought of storming next door and beating the hate she had for her daddy out on the woman crossed her mind. She had a good idea that she’d get a great deal of satisfaction out of doing such a thing. She even made a move toward the door, but good sense grabbed hold of her before she took her second step. Instead, she collapsed to the bed and nodded off to sleep somewhere between visions of shooting her old man and dancing at his funeral.