He started fresh. New. But he didn’t start over.
The guest room walls are plastered with news stories. Some are yellowed and crumbling, some are more recent, printouts from online crime websites and missing persons’ networks, websites that sometimes revisit the case and speculate as to the perpetrator. He entertained every theory they threw out, even those that blamed him, claiming he hired someone to kill his wife and sell his baby into the world of traffickers.
Those people are insane, as everyone is aware. He passed a lie detector with flying colors and was never a legitimate suspect. Not really. Not with his alibi. No one could make the timing work, no matter how hard they tried.
He fingers the most recent story, done three years earlier. It is an age progression analysis of what Violet might look like as a teenager.
He stares at the stranger’s face, at his own tilted eyes, at Vivian’s strong nose, the lips not thin, like his, nor full, like Viv’s, but somewhere in between, teeth an amalgamation of his and hers based on an algorithm of age and length and root depth, and knows it isn’t even close to being right. This is not his daughter. He might not know what she looks like, but she doesn’t look like this.
Of course, he’s never seen her. Never felt the warm round of her head in his palm, saw the strong flexibility of her body, smelled her skin. She was taken while he was burying his mother in the quaint town of Gulf Shores, Alabama, and he never had a chance to meet his little girl.
He’s always suspected the crime wasn’t committed by a stranger. No, the villain was, is, closer to home. It has to be someone he came in contact with, someone who felt he did them wrong. Someone who wanted to punish him. His old job was in intelligence, the people he worked with were criminals of the worst sort, hidden from the world, taking money to divulge secrets. They were whores, all of them, himself included.
Of course, the police saw it differently. They’d looked at him hard from day one, but his alibi was ironclad. He’d been standing over his mother’s grave, with 100 witnesses, six hours away. When he got home the next day, worried after several calls home went unanswered, the blood was dried black on the floor.
No matter, they still investigated him six ways to Sunday, took apart his finances and phone records, interviewed every person he’d come in contact with, everyone they knew in Nashville. It was Gorman who’d finally put a stop to it. Gorman knew Zack was innocent. There were no hard feelings. They were doing their jobs.
Unfortunately, after Zack, there were no other suspects.
He sits on the desk chair and stares at the walls. Kat pads in and sits by his side, putting her head under his hand. Support. She gives him unconditional love, support, and protection. Better than any person he knows.
The cut crystal glass is empty. He debates a moment—more? He hasn’t eaten, and he has a mound of papers to grade. Zack always eschews the services of his TAs in favor of doing his own work. He likes to see the students’ progress, detemine if they are becoming better writers under his tutelage. Another drink will send him into the stratosphere, and he won’t get any more work done tonight. But it is a three-day weekend, so who the hell cares when he gets the papers graded?
“Come on, girl,” he says quietly, and Kat follows him out. He stands in the doorway for a moment, staring at the detritus of his life, then closes the door with a gentle snick, goes to the kitchen, and the open bottle.
35
The hangover is bad. It is made worse by the need to rise from the rumpled bed and answer the calls of nature, for both Zack and the dog. The sun’s incessant climb burns his eyes, and of course, Kat decides it is a morning to be happy, to run and frolic, tugging hard at the leash until Zack relents and guides them to the dog park. He unsnaps her lead and she takes off running, long legs loping over the dead winter grass, to the very edge of the park, the border of the woods, where she stops, on point, and stares into the darkness. The thick fur ruffles along her back, and a soft growl comes from her throat.
A deer in the woods probably, or some other creature. He whistles for her, sharply, a hand going to his head as if the pain can be contained, but she doesn’t move.
He finally stalks across the park to get her, and even then she resists, looking back over her shoulder and whining as he pulls her away.
“Come on, Kat. Knock it off, and I’ll go by Publix and get you a bone. Wanna bone? Wanna yummy bone?”
Kat is not in the mood for his kind of play. She wants to growl at the trees. She hangs her head and plods next to him, the very picture of dejection.
They are a pair.
Walking away, he smells hyacinth. Strange, since it is late winter, and nothing is blooming yet. Vivian wore a similar scent, but not exactly the same. His heart squeezes, as it does every time he thinks about his dead wife. He sniffs again, but the smell is gone. All in his mind. Nothing unusual there. Over the years, he’s caught a perfumed whiff at the strangest times, and almost always when there are no flowers in sight. He went to a doctor once, after looking up olfactory hallucinations and finding out it could actually presage a stroke or other terrible illnesses. The doctor checked him out thoroughly, told him he was still in mourning, and reassured him there was nothing physically wrong.
Mentally, on the other hand...
Back up the hill, he unlocks the front door and practically has to push the dog inside. She finally gives in and trots to the kitchen, ears perked. He follows, slightly chagrined to see the mess. The empty bottle—no wonder he feels like hell warmed over—is sideways in the sink, the glass on the counter, a sticky pool of dried Scotch next to it.
“Impressive showing, Zack.”
He cleans up, then makes himself some eggs and bacon. He scarfs them down straight out of the pan, standing over the sink, tops it with orange juice, reheated coffee from yesterday’s pot, and a handful of Advil. He throws a crunchy bone to Kat, who eyes it but doesn’t pounce. He heads to his office.
He boots up his computer, pulls his cell phone from the charger. He’s missed a call, and there is a message. The number is one he recognizes—Metro Nashville Police.
Crap, the call came in half an hour ago, while Katerina acted up in the park. He fumbles with the phone in his hurry to return the call, not bothering to listen to the message.
“Can I speak to Bob Parks, please? Homicide.”
A click, then silence, then the phone starts to ring. And ring. And ring.
Finally, a voice answers, “Homicide.”
“I’m looking for Sergeant Parks.”
“He’s out. Leave a message?”
“I’ll call back.”
He clicks end, then presses the button to play his voice mail.
“Mr. Armstrong, this is Sergeant Parks. I have meetings this morning, but if you are free this afternoon, I’d like to sit down and chat about your wife’s case. Please call me back and let me know if I can stop by your place. This is my cell.”
Heart pounding, Zack writes the number on the flap of a torn envelope, then dials it from memory. One of his talents, long numbers stick with him as soon as he sees them written down. It makes him fun at parties, where he can recite Pi out through a hundred numbers.
When he used to be fun, that is.
“Parks.”
“It’s Zack Armstrong. You called?” He sounds hopeful. He can’t help it; it has been so long since there’s been anything from the cops.
“Right. You around after lunch? I’d like to sit down and talk.”
“Have you found something?”
“Not really, I just wanted to get briefed and up to speed on the case. I work a little differently than Gorman. I like to have my hands in things. Especially cold cases.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Great. See you in a couple of hours, then.”
What exquisite torture, Zack thinks, and sets about cleaning up the house.