part0013

Gwyn jerked the wheel and crossed the double yellow line. Facing oncoming traffic, if there ever happened to be any, she stopped halfway into the patch of grass in front of the yellow cottage.

The mood had been deflated since the two-minute conversation with Zoe’s parents. While they were able to get some information, it hadn’t been anything useful. Perhaps the couple was skeptical about giving too much detail to a group of strangers. Perhaps there was nothing to tell.

Either way, they had been standoffish. The man in particular. But Blake couldn't blame him. Fathers should be protective of their daughters.

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if they would have been more helpful if it were only the two women who were asking. Blake’s outward appearance tended to put people on alert.

His whole purpose of being there was to help find Lucy and, so far, he was not proving to be much help at all.

“I’ll leave you two here.” Gwyn grasped the shifter. “I’m needed at the restaurant.”

Christa rubbed the back of Gwyn’s hand. “Can’t Rupert handle it? What’s the point of having a manager if he can’t manage?”

“Don’t start,” Gwyn said. “I’ll be back in a little while. You know I—”

Blake saw himself out of the conversation by climbing out and closing the door. The airtight seal of the Range Rover was effective in keeping whatever else was being said private.

A few feet away, behind his parked car and across the knee-high hedgerow, stood Lucas. Waving with all his might.

Blake gave a quick circular wave to relieve him from his duty. “Hi, Lucas.”

“Hi, Mr. Blake.”

“You remembered,” Blake said as he walked closer.

“Yeah.” Lucas said. “I remembered.”

Every syllable Lucas spoke was elongated, as if he were intentionally building suspense. With the addition of a slight lisp and a tendency to use the same rising inflection for every sentence, it sounded as though he was perpetually facetious.

Blake leaned on the hood of the Nissan. It felt awkward speaking with someone over a couple of obstacles. But it was as close as he could get without walking around and either shimmying between the cars and the bushes or going into Lucas’s yard. He wanted to be friendly, not invade the guy’s space.

“You keeping an eye on the neighborhood?” Blake asked.

“Yeah,” Lucas responded.

Blake got the sense that Lucas would have responded in the affirmative to pretty much any question he posed. He wondered if Lucas understood anything he said. There were two viable scenarios. Either Lucas was extremely low functioning or just not very talkative. He had yet to figure out which.

Behind Blake, the SUV’s engine whined as it made the U-turn and headed back the way they came. Christa hurried toward the house. Her head was low and she wiped her cheek. She didn’t give him or Lucas a second look.

Blake’s first instinct was to check on her, but decided it would be better to give her some space. He didn’t want to give the impression he was meddling.

Instead, he’d shoot the shit with Lucas for a few more minutes. After all, he didn’t see anyone else lining up to keep the poor guy company.

“How old are you, Lucas?”

Lucas paused as if lost in thought, then shifted his attention to the oversized plastic watch on his wrist. The neon digital readout was so large that Blake could almost read it from where he stood.

Blake smiled. “Okay, or you can tell me the time,” he muttered to himself.

“Thirty-five years, two months, fourteen days, five hours, and sixteen minutes.”

Mouth agape, Blake stood speechless. He had known he liked Lucas. His cheerful energy, his endearing manner of speech. But now Blake was downright captivated by him.

“Jeez,” Blake chuckled, “couldn’t you be a little more precise?”

Lucas burst out with a barking laugh, which stopped as abruptly as it started.

Yep , they were going to be fast friends.

A faint knocking sound caught Blake’s attention. It was tinny, as if someone were tapping on a window. He looked back at the storm door, expecting to see Christa trying to flag him down. The inner door was open, but she wasn’t there. He scanned the other windows. Nothing.

It wasn’t until he glanced at the side of Lucas’s house that he noticed the old woman’s face hovering in the second-floor window. It looked as though she was saying something, although he couldn’t hear a word through the thick panes. By the dirty looks she was throwing at him, he guessed whatever it was, it wasn’t anything nice.

“I don’t think your Mom likes me talking to you,” Blake said.

“Yeah. Mommy lives in heaven with the angels,” Lucas said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I assumed.... Who’s that in the window?” Blake motioned to the second floor.

“Auntie,” Lucas said. “Yeah. I take good care of Auntie.”

“I’m sure you do,” Blake said.

“I go get the groceries. Monday and Wednesday and Friday. At the market. But not if it’s a holiday. They said you can’t go inside ‘cause it’s a holiday. Even on Monday or Wednesday or Friday.”

“Wow,” Blake encouraged. “I’m sure that’s very helpful. You walk all that way by yourself?”

Blake could see that Lucas was coming out of his shell. He seemed more relaxed. And a whole lot more talkative.

“Yeah. I walk to see Doctor John. He’s in Newport. Tuesday and Thursday. Don’t be late he said.”

“How do you walk to Newport?” Blake was trying to keep him engaged, but it was also a legitimate question. Did he walk over the bridge? He couldn’t imagine that was even possible.

Lucas let out another abrupt laugh. “Eight twenty-six, A.M. I show Captain Bill my ticket. Then I can go on.”

Using his right hand to pull open the edge of his pants pocket, Lucas reached in with his left and retrieved a laminated card. He held it out toward Blake.

“I see. Very nice,” Blake said.

Lucas reversed the process, returning what Blake assumed was his ferry pass to his pocket. “He leaves at eight thirty. Then he says ‘Ann Street’ at eight forty-six or at eight forty-seven. Once at eight forty-eight. Then I walk to see Doctor John. He helps me because I have some conditions, he says.”

Blake was amazed, both at Lucas’s independence and at how easy it was for him to assume that Lucas wasn’t capable of holding a conversation, let alone taking the ferry in order to get himself to a doctor appointment. Blake had always respected those who had the grit to persevere. In battle and in life.

He had originally set out to befriend Lucas because he felt bad that he was standing by himself with no one to talk to. Now, Blake felt lucky to know him.

Lucas checked his watch. His eyes widened. “Four minutes. Then I go on my walk.”

“That sounds fun. You like to walk, huh?”

“Yeah. I walk to Sheffield’s Cove. Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday.”

“Every day. Impressive.” Blake said.

Even if Blake was only trying to be supportive, he was rather impressed. It was clear that Lucas’s schedule was highly regimented. Blake figured it was a kind of coping mechanism. It was like what they always say about toddlers. They need structure. A routine. Otherwise, they feel uneasy. Hell, the same could be said about most of the military men he knew.

Lucas stared at his watch. “Yeah. Every day. Sheffield’s Cove. Sometimes I see nice people. Ms. Mary is nice. She says don’t listen to the mean kids. Even when they laugh at me and call me bad names.”

“Well, you tell me if someone’s being mean to you and I’ll have a talk with them. Okay? Will you do that?”

Lucas pinched either side of the watch with his free hand and stood as anxiously poised as a sprinter waiting for the report of the starter pistol. Although, with a considerably less athletic posture.

Fifty feet beyond Lucas, Chief limped up the pitched roadway toward them.

As the enormous LCD display flipped to the anticipated digits, so did Lucas’s internal switch. He dropped his arm, turned, and walked away without another word. He shuffled past Chief, giving him a silent but vigorous wave, then set off down the side street that ran along the west side of his house.

“Strange kid,” Chief said as he rounded the Nissan. “Seems to like you, though. Never says two words to me. What happened at the police station?”

“You were right, it wasn’t Lucy,” Blake said.

“I told ya. To fall off a yacht and drown, you gotta actually have a yacht. That kid she’s runnin’ around with doesn’t even have two cents to rub together.” Chief walked as he spoke. Blake kept pace until the two of them stood on Christa’s front porch. Chief took the liberty of sitting in one of the wicker chairs. “I knew his father when he was a young boy. Dickey, they called him. He was a loser too, even back then. Always in trouble. What did Hopkins say about Lucy?”

“Not much of anything,” Blake said.

“I’m not surprised. That guy Hopkins is useless. If you ask me, I don’t think he could solve a littering complaint. I wouldn’t’ve hired him. But I’m not in charge.”

“You say you know this kid Owen’s family. Do you know where he might be? Christa said she spoke with the grandmother. Where’s the father, then? Could they be with him?”

“That’d be a trick,” Chief said. “He died about ten years ago. Drank himself to death. I don’t know what the kid is up to. Probably off somewheres, knockin’ up Lucy.”

“Jesus, let’s hope not.” Blake blocked out the mental image. “What about the Mom?”

“She was never in the picture. Don’t even know what her name was. Dickey moved away for a little while, then showed back up with a baby. I guess the mother didn’t want it, so he ended up with it. Dickey moved back in with his mother, Betsy, and she took care of the kid.”

“Lucy’ll turn up. She’s a good kid. Just being stupid. Right now she’s thinkin’ with her hormones, but it won’t take long for her to figure out her boyfriend’s a loser.” Favoring one leg, Chief used his arms to push himself out of the chair. “I’d better get back, my wife’s gonna send a search party. Tell Christa I stopped by. And tell her not to worry.”

Blake couldn’t tell Christa not to worry. Not anymore. Christa may not have been exaggerating when she said that Chief knew everything that was happening in town, but even he didn’t seem to know about the murder. Or that another girl had gone missing.

From what little they could gather from Zoe’s parents, her disappearance couldn’t be rationalized by raging teenage hormones. There didn’t seem to be a boyfriend, defiant behavior, or a history of running away. She had simply vanished.

Blake could have filled Chief in, but the information hadn’t been officially released yet and he didn’t want to step on Hopkins’s toes. Not if he was ever going to get Hopkins to trust him.

Chief hobbled down the single step and onto the grass.

“Quick question before you go,” Blake said.

“What’s that?”

“What’s the deal with the old woman next door? She seemed angry that I was talking to Lucas.”

“Cathy?” Chief said. “She’s angry at the world. Hasn’t been out of that house in years.”

“You mean at all?”

“Cathy’s lived there for forty years, if not longer. She used to be out in the neighborhood when we were younger. She had these big flower beds in the front yard, and she was always planting and watering. I’d stop and talk with her quite a bit. The woman’s loaded. I mean, loaded. But she was a hoarder. And a bad addict. It got to the point where she stayed in her house and would only come out to go buy her dope. I went inside to give her a hand with something, years and years ago. It was horrible. You could barely walk around, there was so much trash. Can’t imagine what it’s like in there now.”

“That’s a shame. Lucas has to live in those conditions.”

“You’re not kiddin’. But it was good he came. As soon as Lucas moved in with her, she stopped the dope. Just like that. Best thing that coulda happened, in my opinion. ‘Cept for one thing. ‘Cause she didn’t have to get her fix and she could send the kid to run her errands, she shut herself in completely. I don’t think she’ll ever come out again. She’ll die in that house. Alls I know is I wouldn’t want to be the fire department when they’ve got to go in there and get her.”

“Hell of a thing,” Blake said.

There was no way for Blake to know whether Chief’s stories were true. He figured they were probably based in truth if nothing else. But he was a natural storyteller and Blake could have listened to him all day.

Chief gave another, “See ya later,” and sauntered off with his uneven gait. He almost made it to his own driveway before stopping to talk with a tall woman who was walking a large, puffy dog.

Blake rested his elbows on the half-wall that enclosed the porch on three sides. He wondered what sensational tale Chief had spun to draw the woman in and cause her head to bob in increasingly amplified nods. Even the dog seemed to be paying close attention.

Behind Blake, the rattle and squeak of the storm door announced Christa’s return.

“You just missed Chief,” Blake said.

“I know. I wasn’t in the mood to talk.”

“Funny guy.” Blake turned toward her. “Gotta love the accent.”

“We do have some colorful characters around here,” Christa said.

Blake noticed the iPhone in Christa’s hand. The sparkly purple case screamed teenage girl. “Is that Lucy’s?”

“Yes,” Christa handed Blake the device. “I tried guessing the passcode. Her birthday. Our birthdays. No luck.”

“That’s okay, it won’t be an issue. I’ll hook it up now.” He started for the door, then paused. “Hey, did Chief tell you he knows Owen’s family?”

“He did. That’s how I found out where Owen lived. I only had to mention his name and Chief knew exactly who I was talking about. He told me he lived with his grandmother in the apartments on Pemberton. It was lucky I even found out that Lucy was hanging around with the kid. I happened to be downtown and saw them outside of Spinnakers.”

“It’s a little ice cream shop on the pier,” Christa said. “I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he didn’t have his arm around her and his hand on her ass. I was so pissed I marched right up to him and asked him who he was. Ya know what he says? ‘Who the F are you?’ Can you believe that? I say I’m Lucy’s mom and tell him he’s not to come around her anymore. Lucy says his name is Owen and that he’s only a friend. I could see she was embarrassed, but I didn’t care. The kid looked like he was twenty-five.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s nineteen. But a fifteen-year-old girl shouldn’t be hanging out with a nineteen-year-old.”

“No, you’re absolutely right. But this Spinnakers, is that where Lucy normally hangs out?”

“I don’t think so,” Christa said. “There’s a whole group of kids that she usually hangs out with. I really don’t know any of them. There’s a girl named Sam, I know that. From what Lucy’s told me, they basically meet up and walk around. They go to the park up the street. Downtown. The beach. God knows where else. It’s a small island, there isn’t a whole lot to do.”

“I’m guessing I’ll be able to track down some of these friends by looking at her social media, her contacts, that kind of thing. Was it like her to leave her phone behind? You’d think, at her age, she’d be glued to the thing. Maybe she was worried you’d track her down if she took it with her.”

“No.” Christa’s voice cracked and her top lip began to quiver. “I took it away. As a punishment.” Her effort to maintain her composure failed. Tears flowed freely. “What if she needed help and she had no way to call me? If I had just let her keep it…”

Blake didn’t know what to say. He had no condolences, no answers. Not yet. In a couple of minutes, he would go to work dissecting Lucy’s digital life. But right now, he did what felt necessary. He wrapped his arms around the fragile woman before him and let her cry.