He probably knows exactly how many days it’s been. I think of my wife and daughter, and I think about what the last two years have prepared me for. Fate came along and destroyed the Tyler family, and a week later it destroyed mine.
‘People keep saying that time heals all wounds,’ he says. ‘They say we should get on with our lives. Like we’re just supposed to forget all about Rachel. Like we’re supposed to give up on wondering. Give up on our hope. They don’t get it. They think it’s like losing a puppy or misplacing car keys. They talk without experience; they offer advice, thinking they know what we need to hear, sure that the best thing for us is simply to move on.’
‘But you know all of that, don’t you,’ Patricia Tyler says.
‘Why are you here?’ her husband asks.
‘For Rachel.’
‘Shame you weren’t there for her two years ago,’ he says.
‘Michael…’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just that, well …’ He doesn’t finish. He sits back down in the couch and starts to look around the room as though he’s misplaced something.
‘I’ve spoken to David,’ I say.
‘You spoke to David!”
‘He said that Rachel liked to shop.’
Patricia looks to her husband. They stare at each other, the kind of look a couple share when trying to decide whether to let the rest of the world in on the big secret. It’s an innocent statement which I’m sure will have an innocent answer, but they’re both looking for a different question and answer here, they’re wanting the answers to what happened to their daughter. They’re trying to figure out how her shopping got her killed.
‘Sure, she shopped,’ she says.
‘Did Rachel use a credit card?’
‘The goddamn bank sent us a bill,’ Michael Tyler says. ‘They told us if we didn’t pay it they were going to get the debt collectors onto us. We explained Rachel had gone missing. Hell, it was in the news, so they already knew. Only they didn’t care. Their argument was nobody had any proof of what happened to Rachel and they shouldn’t end up footing the bill.’
‘It was awful.’ Patricia Tyler’s tears start to come now. For a few moments she does nothing to try to stop them, just lets them roll down her face as if she hasn’t noticed them. Then she raises a handkerchief and tries to dab them away, but they keep on coming. ‘Can you imagine that? Our daughter is missing, possibly dead — or, as it turns out, she was. Or is.’
‘Both, actually’ her husband interjects, and he looks close to tears too, and he shrugs a little, as if unsure why he made the comment. I know the moment I leave they will fall into an embrace neither of them will ever want to break.
And those heartless thugs at the bank register us with a debt collection agency’
‘Do you have that last credit card statement?’
‘We have everything,’ she says.
‘Can I see it?’
‘Why?’
‘It might tell me where Rachel was that day, or in the days before.’
‘The police already have a copy of it. It didn’t lead them anywhere.’
‘But it might lead me somewhere.’
She doesn’t argue the point. She just walks out of the room, leaving me and her husband alone in uncomfortable silence until she returns with the bill. She hands it over to me. I scroll down.
Clothes, CDs, more clothes. Petrol.
‘These are all standard places she went?’
‘They’re on all of her bills.’
‘Where was her car found?’
At the university. It was where she always parked it.’
And the florist?’ I ask, stopping my finger next to the purchase she made a week before she disappeared.
‘She bought flowers for her grandmother.’
‘Anything else here stand out?’ I ask.
‘Nothing.’
‘Okay. Can I take this with me?’
‘Don’t lose it,’ she says.
She walks me to the door. Michael Tyler stands up, seems about to join us, but sits back down. The hallway is warm and there seem to be more pictures of Rachel hanging up than there were when I was here last night, as if the Tylers thought they could use them to keep the bad news at bay.
‘The man last night. The reporter said his name was Bruce Alderman. You haven’t said it, but you think he’s innocent, don’t you? That’s why you’re here.’
I think of the look in Bruce’s eyes before he pulled the trigger.
I think of the key in his pocket with my name on the envelope.
“I don’t think he did it,’ I admit.
‘Will you find who did?’
‘I’ll try. I promise.’
I’m halfway down the pathway when it strikes me. I turn back around and Patricia is still standing there watching me, watching the person who two years after her daughter went missing came along and told them all was lost.
‘The flowers for her grandmother. Was there an occasion?’
‘My mother died a week before Rachel disappeared. It was one of the reasons the police thought she’d run away. Rachel and my mum were close. For the first few years my mother helped raise Rachel. The police assumed she was depressed and needed to get away. She bought flowers to take out to the cemetery for the funeral.’
‘Which cemetery?’
‘Woodland Estates.’