At first, Bex didn’t answer.
“You want to know if I’m guilty? You want to know if I did it?”
She didn’t know her father well enough to read the intonation in his voice—was it angry? Exasperated? In the darkness, the planes of his face were shadowed and Bex couldn’t read him at all. It didn’t matter because she couldn’t look at him. She stared at her hands in her lap.
“Did you?”
“Of course not! You know me, Beth Anne. I’m your daddy!” He touched her shoulder awkwardly, trying to get her to face him. “You know I couldn’t do something like that.”
But Bex didn’t know. This man was a stranger to her.
“How come you never wrote to me or tried to call?” The anger was softening, her words going from sharp and deliberate to a softer, more needy tone. Bex hated it.
“I thought it would be better for you if you just forgot about me, you know? Got on with your life. Tried to be normal and all.”
“So why now? Why did you decide to show up and come find me now?” Again, Bex was getting worked up. She could feel the hot blood pulsing through her veins, her every cell on high alert.
“I heard that your gran had died. I knew that they were going to put you in the system. I couldn’t let that happen.” He slid a single finger under her chin, edging her head up to face him. “I couldn’t let that happen to my little girl.”
Bex didn’t realize she was crying.
“If you didn’t do this, Daddy, why didn’t you fight? Why did you run?”
“You don’t think I was going to try that? I couldn’t afford a good lawyer, and they had the best and the fanciest lining up to have my head based on what they said I’d done. I knew then that you can’t fight the law, Beth Anne. They wanted to put someone in jail. And I just happen to fit in wherever there were holes. I had to go.”
Bex inched back. “What are you talking about?”
Her father looked down at his hands, then up at Bex. There was moisture in his eyes. “You know I’m innocent. I was framed, Beth Anne.”
Bex felt like someone had sucked all the air out of the truck’s cab. “What?”
“I was on that website because I was looking for the real killer.”
“They’re masters of manipulation…”
“I know who it is. I was sure that he would show up on one of the sites, but of course, I got distracted.”
“Dad, if you know who framed you… I mean, this is huge. This could change everything.” Bex got up onto her knees on the bench seat, feeling herself bounce as excitement mounted. “We can go to the police and—”
“Bethy, Bethy, hey. Settle down. Look, I’d love nothing more than to do that, but I can’t just go to the police. I’ve been on the run for ten years, and in their book, that makes me guilty.”
“I can go. I can tell them that I talked to you… Maybe, like, say you emailed me and then you can come out of hiding when they catch the guy and, and—” The tears rolled steadily now and Bex could taste them on her lips. “Dad, this is great.”
“We can’t go to the police. The man who did this—the man who killed all those women and framed me for it, Bethy—he’s a police officer.”
Bex was struck dumb. Though her tears were hot and she was covered in the sheen of a nervous sweat, she shivered. “What?”
“The detective—shit, you probably don’t even remember. You were just a little kid. You talked to him, told him some story…”
Bex felt herself coming apart, piece by piece. She was the reason he had to run. Her father wasn’t guilty; she was.
“He was some young buck cop trying to make a name for hisself.”
“Detective Schuster.”
“That’s the guy! Schuster.”
Bex closed her eyes. “He framed you.”
“He killed those women, Bethy. I didn’t know it at the time, not really. But when my DNA started turning up—I knew it wasn’t right. I wasn’t there, Bethy. I wouldn’t have hurt those women. I wouldn’t do that. This Schuster guy, he’s sick. I had to find you before you disappeared into the system because I was afraid he would be able to track you down and, and maybe”—he looked away, squinting his eyes at the dark ocean in front of them—“he might try to do to you what he did to those poor girls. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t.”
“He did find me.” Bex’s voice was a barely audible whisper. “He wanted me to find you, to draw you out.”
Her father’s profile was sharp in the low light.
Bex went on. “So you risked coming out… You did all this…for me?”
He pumped his head. “I’d do it again for you, Bethy girl. I’d do anything to keep you safe.”
Bex felt herself teetering. Could Detective Schuster really be responsible for the murders, framing her father all those years? When her father reached out and squeezed her hand, Bex felt herself falling over the edge. It made sense. Detective Schuster had handled all the evidence in her father’s case. The eyewitness reports were all people that Schuster had tracked down. The murders all happened within the Research Triangle, which was her father’s trucking territory—and wouldn’t be that far for a rookie cop to travel. She thought of the detective in his leather jacket, the way his lip curled downward and his nostrils flared each time he talked about Bex’s father.
Then she thought of Dr. Gold.
“Dad, did you know Dr. Gold?”
He frowned, his fingers going up to pinch his chin. “Dr. Gold?”
“She was a psychiatrist.”
He wagged his head slowly. “No, Bethy, I can’t say that I do.”
Bex remembered the first time her child advocate had steered her toward Dr. Gold’s office. Detective Schuster had been there, his eyes grazing over her as she was ushered through the door.
Is that how Schuster found her?
“Bethy, I don’t know—”
“The necklaces and the jewelry,” Bex said quickly, shaking her dad’s hand from hers. “How did you get the necklaces?”
He shrugged. “Different ways. The ring that I gave you? I found it in my truck. I’d give ladies a ride from time to time, hitchhikers, you know? I thought one of them must’a dropped it, and I thought it’d be something that you like. A couple of the necklaces and stuff I just picked up here and there, found ’em when I was on my route, but now I know that Schuster must have planted them there for me to find.”
Bex bit her bottom lip. “So he was framing you all along?”
Her father held out his hands, palms up. “I don’t know about that. I just know that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was the type of guy they were looking for. They thought the person who did that must have been nomadic, you know, on the road a lot? Well, I was. The guy would have been big and pretty athletic, and they supposed that he didn’t have a lot of connections keeping him in one place—like he was probably not married. That’s me too. I think I just fit and this Schuster guy jumped at the chance to get himself off the hook and look like a big hero at the same time.”
Her father shook his head, eyes downcast. Even in just the sliver of moonlight streaking in through the window Bex could see how tired he looked, how downtrodden—like a man who knew he never had a chance.
“I couldn’t fight him, Bethy. I just couldn’t.”
Bex scooched closer, for the first time in ten years feeling her father’s warmth beside her, feeling the smooth pull of his arms around her. She breathed him in, his soap and seawater smell, something she didn’t remember but was already starting to love.
“We could end this, Dad. I could help you and then”—she sniffed, tearing up again—“and then we could really be a family.”
He rested his chin on Bex’s head, squeezing her tightly. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Bethy. You and me to be together as a family.” He pulled away, a small, wistful smile on his face.
“Detective Schuster came here, you know. He came to my house. How did you find me, Dad? How did you find me here?”
“So you’ve seen him.”
“Yeah.”
“You got a cell phone on ya?”
Bex nodded, showing it. Her father took it, popped the little compartment open, and took out the SIM card. “He’s probably tracking you with this.”
“No.” Bex shook her head, guilt crashing over her again. She wouldn’t lead Schuster to her father a second time. “I don’t think so.” She pushed the SIM card back in and showed her father as she turned off all location markers.
Her father looked pained, his shoulders slumping. “I can’t stay around here, Bethy. They’re going to find me.”
“No they won’t. I’ll hide you.”
He shook his head. “I gotta move on.”
“Tonight? Right now?”
There was a pause, the air in the cab of the truck heavy and electric.
“Come with me, Bethy.”
She blinked.
“Come with me. Tonight. Right now. We’ll find some town where no one’ll ever know us and become new people and live out our lives. Whaddya think about that, Bethy? I could be, I don’t know, called Howard or Matthew or something.”
“And we could work on your case.”
“Sure.”
It sounded like a good idea. But then Bex thought about Trevor and Laney and Chelsea, and everything else she was leaving behind. “I can’t go with you tonight. I have to say good-bye to someone.”
“Bethy—”
“Friday. It’s Back to School Night. I’ll leave with you on Friday.” She paused, then put her hand on his arm. “Then we can be a family.”
“If only your mother were here to see it.”
Bex felt like she had been punched in the gut. “Mom? Do you think…?”
His eyes were steady on hers, and her voice dropped to a low, terrified whisper.
“Do you think Detective Schuster was the reason Mom left? Do you think he…” Bex couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, to say the words, but a new flare of anger raged up inside her. It was Detective Schuster who had taken everything from her, who had started to dismantle Bex’s family before she was even old enough to read.
She thought of the way he’d removed the lightbulb on her porch and pummeled her, hand over mouth, his calves pinching her rib cage, tightening like a corset, just waiting for her bones to snap. An honest detective wouldn’t have had to trick her. A respectable police officer wouldn’t have wrestled her to the ground in her own home.
She thought about how she’d lain, chin pressed against the carpet, as he dropped the newspaper clipping in front of her. He said he kept it in honor of her. Was it truly a remembrance—or a trophy?