“Excuse me?” Alecia’s head snapped up then, the remnants of the bagel from breakfast slick and rolling in her stomach.
“You all act like it doesn’t matter. A girl is missing, maybe dead, and no one cares.” His hand rolled around his forehead, dirty fingers pushing his shaggy hair to the side, slicking it against his eyebrows.
Oh my God. It was Jimmy Hamm. Back from God knows where, and judging by the looks of him, nowhere good. Alecia opened her mouth to speak and found she had nothing to say.
“Nonyas care!” Jimmy shouted, and spun around. Bea and Jennifer scurried out the front door, the sun gleaming off Bea’s blond hair as they tipped their heads together and watched the scene through the glass door. Bea whipped out her phone and made a call, her hand waving and pointing toward the door.
“Next!” The teller called, oblivious, and Alecia scooted away from Jimmy, who’d started to pace, his foot dragging slightly behind him, step, whoosh, step, whoosh. Alecia closed her eyes. Jimmy reached from behind her and slapped the wooden counter, his hand wizened and black under the fingernails.
“Why is no one looking for Lucia?” he demanded, and Alecia backed up, her hand behind her gripping the counter; she clutched her purse to her chest.
“Hey!” The teller leaned forward, finally realizing Jimmy was there and there was about to be a scene in the bank. “Jimmy Hamm!” she called. “Where you been, honey?” She was older, in her sixties. Everyone looked familiar in Mt. Oanoke, but Alecia couldn’t have produced her name.
Jimmy swayed on his feet, his eyes fluttering back then snapping on Alecia’s face. Her heart thudded in her neck. “You’ve seen her, though, eh? I read the paper. I usedta know your husband, back when he’d come to the Quarry Bar. He do something with my little girl?”
Alecia shook her head, her tongue swollen in her throat.
“What do you know about it? Or is the wife always the last to know?” He cackled and inched closer. He smelled like mildew and smoke, whiskey and something fetid, his teeth gray and glistening.
“Hey now, Jimmy,” A voice from the door and Jimmy whipped around. A uniformed officer was silhouetted in the doorway. He moved slowly, his hand on his waistband, a deceptively easy smile on his face, and Alecia sagged back, relieved. “Ronnie from the QB called me and said you were in town. That your Chrysler out there?” The cop motioned to the parking lot, where Bea and Jennifer still huddled. Behind them a gray, paint-stripped Chrysler station wagon sat idling, the engine still running, the air thick with diesel.
“I don’t want no trouble.” Jimmy walked slowly past the cop, toward the door, his hand on the push-bar when the officer stopped him.
“I can’t let you leave here, Jimmy. You’re drunk as a skunk at ten in the morning. You can’t get in your car and roll back out of town as fast as you rolled in. You wanna come with me and sober up in the tank? Just for the day. Have a meal on the county?”
Jimmy thought about it. A decent meal, even one as gluey and greasy as he’d get in the drunk tank, seemed better than what he could scrape together at the QB. Alecia held her breath, praying he’d say yes.
“Nah, I’m okay, man. I’ll just walk around.”
“Hey, have you seen Lucia around?” the cop asked.
“Not since last year.” Jimmy’s voice was low, his back against the door blocking the entrance.
“Where you been, Jimmy?”
“Had a job at Fizz’s.” Jimmy’s voice trailed off. Fizz was the soda bottling plant about thirty miles south, in Allentown. Alecia saw, for the first time, what shutting down the paper mill had done to the town and the people in it. She wondered about the Mt. Oanoke of Nate’s youth, the one he used to talk about, with a thriving industry, a stable economy, enough jobs for people to stay.
“You still got that job?” he asked softly, and Jimmy shook his head.
“Why’d you come back here?” The officer reached out and gripped Jimmy’s elbow gently, and Jimmy let him.
“I read the paper. This town’s gone to shit.” Jimmy whirled around to Alecia and the teller and said, “I sent them money, you know. Every month until a few months ago. Ever’one thinks I just skipped out on ’em. I sent money. No one knows that.”
Alecia thought about Lenny and how that money probably went right into his veins or his lungs and wondered if Lucia had even been aware of it.
“I ain’t a shit father,” Jimmy yelled again, and this time the cop guided him out to the waiting car in the lot. “Ever’one thinks I am but I ain’t.”
The car pulled away, its lights whirling just once, out of the parking lot, and Bea and Jennifer scurried to their cars and drove off. The only people who remained were Alecia and the bank teller, the lobby so silent that Alecia could hear the seconds tick from the clock on the wall.
“Hon, you still want that check cashed?” the teller asked from behind the counter. Her name tag read Yolanda. Alecia realized she still held the check, and with a shaky hand, passed it to her, along with the deposit slip. She counted money, her eyes flicking to Alecia’s face every so often, until she handed fifty in cash across the gate.
She pushed the two twenties and a ten into the pocket of her purse and barely mumbled good-bye. Yolanda shook her head, her mouth pursed like a lemon. “That Jimmy,” was all she said, but Alecia didn’t reply.
She stumbled out of the lobby and into the bright May sun, shining like it was any other day, the rays hot on her skin even though for the life of her, Alecia couldn’t get warm.
She couldn’t stop shivering.
CHAPTER 29
Bridget, Tuesday, May 12, 2015
“I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Peterson, Officer Harris.” Harper leaned forward, adjusted his glasses on his nose, his mustache twitching. “This video is disturbing, there’s no doubt. I’m not convinced it has bearing on the case. On Mr. Winters’s case. There’s never been a question that Ms. Hamm is a troubled teenager.”
“This isn’t a video about a troubled teenaged girl,” Bridget said, the hair on her neck rising, and Harper’s brows furrowed at her tone. “This is a video about a troubled teenage boy. Maybe more than one. There has been bullying at the school. The kids call Lucia a witch. They almost set her on fire.”
Harper shook his head. “Then go to the school, Ms. Peterson. Go to Bachman and tell him about it.”
“I intend to, but I really think there’s something else going on here, that Lucia’s disappearance maybe has nothing to do with Nate at all.”