Where does she go when she runs? What if she fell and hit her head and is wandering around with amnesia? Worse yet, what if she’s lying unconscious somewhere?
He shoves his dead cell phone back into his pocket. As he strides along Highland Street toward town, Mick realizes two things: he has no idea where to start looking, and it’s snowing even harder than it was when he first glimpsed it from Mr. Goodall’s office window.
She’s going to freeze to death if he doesn’t find her.
Find her . . . save her . . .
Rowan tells herself she shouldn’t be alarmed when Mick’s phone, like Jake’s, rings directly into voice mail. She knows too well that her son frequently forgets to charge it. The battery could have run down.
Even the fact that he skipped out of school wouldn’t be alarming under ordinary circumstances. Not if he felt trapped, and sick to his stomach, and if he thought he was in trouble.
Ordinary trouble—-the kind of trouble ordinary teenagers get into. Because her son, of course, is an ordinary teenager.
Then again, what does she know?
She had no idea he was buying gifts for a girl or visiting her house when he was supposed to be at basketball practice. Apparently, Mick has a whole secret life.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree . . .
Regardless of what she doesn’t know about him, though, Rowan is positive of one thing: he isn’t responsible for Brianna Armbruster’s disappearance. Not in the way the police chief and principal are insinuating.
That Mick is suddenly nowhere to be found—-with Rick Walker here in town—-strikes her as ominous.
It’s time to tell the police chief the rest of the story.
Clutching her cell phone tightly, praying it will ring and she’ll hear her son’s voice, she looks at Ron Calhoun.
“I need to speak to you,” she says urgently. “In private.”
When Steve Lindgren saw the security camera footage of Rick Walker coming home on Monday evening, it took him a moment to recognize the man beside him. He was bearded, and wearing glasses . . .
But it was Rick’s stepson, Kurt Walker.
Kurt Walker, who—-according to the neighbors who heard his screams—-was distraught when he discovered Rick’s body.
When Lindgren last saw Walker, he claimed to be on his way to notify his siblings of their father’s so--called suicide. He never did.
That was evident after a few phone calls. All three—-Derek, Liam, and Erin—-were stunned and devastated by the news. Steve broke it as gently as he could.
Now, trying to piece together the rest of the story, he sits across from Derek Walker, Kurt’s brother, in the Brooklyn loft he shares with a roommate.
Steve was taken aback, meeting Derek.
Kurt Walker had struck him as intense and socially awkward, but he’d attributed that to being in the midst of a personal crisis. Derek, while he didn’t walk in on his stepfather dead in a bathtub this morning, is dealing with the same loss. But he’s much more likable, and comes across as an average Joe.
Of course, he most likely has nothing to hide, and he doesn’t seem to realize that his brother does. Steve hasn’t told him yet that Kurt not only already knows about their stepfather’s death, but might very well have caused it.
“This is going to be really hard for Casey,” Derek says.
“Casey?” Steve makes a mental note. “Is that what you call him?”
“Yeah. He was named after our father. He’s Kurt Clark, Junior. But he hated that. He hates him. We both do, and so did our mom.”
That part of the story rings true, and understandably so: Steve’s earlier search revealed that the elder Kurt Clark is a convicted felon now serving twenty years for first--degree assault.
“So Casey was your brother’s nickname.”
“Yeah. It’s his initials. K.C.—-Casey. Rick came up with it. He even made the teachers in school use it when we were little, because my brother would get so upset whenever anyone called him Kurt.”