It had been two years now since Sandra left him, marrying Howard Mitchell six months after that, but no matter how much time passed, Bill knew he would always feel a momentary tug of sadness, of pain and regret, whenever he laid eyes on his former wife.
“Bill,” she said in surprise, brushing a stray hair out of her eyes, stepping back into the foyer out of the unseasonable late-afternoon heat. “What are you doing here? Are you all right?”
“Sure, I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Why wouldn’t you be? You’ve been all over the news this afternoon. Fighting with that horrible I-90 Killer. You could’ve been killed!”
“Oh, that, yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I don’t know why, but it didn’t occur to me you might have seen the reports. I mean, I saw all the news trucks and the reporters at the rest area, but it all seemed a little unreal to me.
“Anyway,” he said, suddenly feeling silly but not letting it stop him. “I was wondering if I could see Carli for a couple of minutes. It’s been…I don’t know…kind of a long day, and I just wanted to say hi to her.”
She hesitated for half a second and then pulled the heavy door open wider. “Of course. Come on in out of the heat. Wait right here and I’ll get her.”
Bill stepped inside, and his ex-wife pushed the front door closed. The house felt cool and comfortable, a far cry from the stifling temperatures he knew he would face when he went home. A window fan moving stale air around a second-floor one-bedroom apartment could not compare with the comfort of central air conditioning. He stood awkwardly on the gleaming hardwood floor of the foyer as Sandra brushed past, stopping at the foot of the stairway and yelling upstairs to his daughter. To their daughter. “Carli, your dad’s here!”
From somewhere down the second-story hallway came a muffled reply. “Be right there,” it sounded like, but Bill could not be sure. She was obviously in her room behind closed doors. Sandra smiled at him, and his heart ached.
“So, what the heck happened today?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It all went down so fast, I’m not exactly sure. I was having a cup of Smokin’ Joe’s Coffee at the highway rest stop—”
She laughed. “You always loved their coffee, and I never understood why.”
“Hey, it’s really good,” he protested. “Give it a chance and you’ll be hooked. Anyway, there I was, minding my own business, getting ready to go back out to the van, when this guy pulls a gun on a teenage girl. He was right in front of me when he did it, Sandra, and nobody else saw a thing. He was hustling her out to the parking lot and, in about three seconds, would have had her out the door and she would have been gone. And still nobody noticed. So I just reacted and did what I had to do. What anyone would have done, hopefully.”
From the top of the carpeted stairway came an excited shriek. “Dad, you’re a hero!”
Carli bounded down the stairs like a whirlwind, taking them two at a time, launching herself at him off the bottom step and nearly driving him through the closed door and into the front yard. Bill laughed and caught her, wrapping his arms around her slim body in a bear hug, one he wished he could hold forever. Sandra turned and walked up the hallway toward the kitchen. “I’ll give you two some privacy,” she said as she rounded the corner.
“Dad, are you okay? The whole school was talking about what you did today. Even the principal made a big speech during closing announcements about how you saved some girl from the I-90 Kidnapper, and guess what?” she said, her eyes shining with excitement.
Bill smiled. His day was looking up already. “Yes, I’m okay. And what?”
“Cody Small—he’s the captain of the football team, Dad—he came up to me and talked with me all the way to the bus. Cody Small has never paid any attention to me before. I didn’t even think he knew who I was!”
“Well, then, it was all worth it.” He looked his daughter in the eyes gravely. “Can I let you in on a little secret?”
“Of course. You know you can always tell me anything.”
Bill laughed. “Hey, that’s supposed to be my line—you stole it from me! Anyway,” he said, “that was the whole reason I decided to help that poor girl. I figured you needed a little boost with Cody…what was his name again?”
“Small, Daddy, Cody Small.”
“Oh yeah, Cody Mall. That’s why I saved that girl, so Cody Mall would talk to you.”
Carli laughed. “Small.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” he told her. “I can’t do anything about his height. I’ve given you all the help I can with this Cody Mall character. The rest is up to you now.”
His daughter shook her head. “You’re hopeless,” she said, but she was smiling widely, and Bill knew the trip over here had been well worth it. She kissed him on the cheek. “I’ve got to get back to my homework.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I know you’re really texting Lauren, telling her this whole Cody Mall story, embellishing it and making up all kinds of cool details that didn’t really happen.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Maybe so, but I’m getting my homework done, too!”
Bill opened his arms and gave his daughter another hug. She might be seventeen and going off to college next year, but she would always be his little girl. “I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you, too, Dad.”
CHAPTER 16
MARTIN KRALL SELECTED A DVD and pressed the “Play” button on his remote before firing up his computer. Instantly, the high-definition flat-screen TV taking up half of one living room wall was filled with the image of a well-endowed blonde writhing and moaning. She had the hard-edged appearance of a woman who had once been beautiful, but now, after years of drug and alcohol abuse—not to mention the rigors of dozens upon dozens of porn flicks—simply looked used-up.