“What’s that?” the detective asked, setting his coffee down.
She pulled at the manila file folder and began pawing through it, suddenly desperate.
“Bex, you don’t want to look at that.”
Her gaze was steel. “Didn’t you bring them for me?”
“Let me just—”
But it was already too late. The numbness started at Bex’s fingertips and deadened everything inside her. A picture of Darla, nude, with an enormous, jagged-looking Y cut on her chest, her lips lightly parted and a haunting, deep purple was at the left. To the right, a four-by-six glossy photograph of what could have been Bex’s father, dressed in a slim-fitting flannel shirt, his hair unkempt and shaggy, brushing his shoulders. He was getting into a big rig, one booted foot balanced on the sideboard, the other still on the ground. The details of his face weren’t clear, except for the eyes. The eyes that had once been so warm and full of security and love were cold and black and vacant as he stared into the camera and out at Bex.
“That was taken three months ago,” Detective Schuster clarified, trying to close the folder. “Somewhere around Beaufort.”
“South Carolina.”
She snatched the picture and held it closer, squinting, trying to take in every detail. He was heavier than she remembered, with square, blocky shoulders and a stomach that was just starting to slide over his waistband. He looked much older too, with lips that seemed incapable of any expression other than the slight, disgusted frown he showed in the shot. Behind him, the truck-stop gas station had nothing to mark its character or give Bex a sense of anything but disconnection from the photo and its subject.
She took a long, slow breath, hoping that would be enough to process ten years of absence and longing and guilt. Ten years of abandonment, of hiding from the whispers and shadows and memories of what her father might have done. Finally, she shook her head.
“Look, as far as I know my father hasn’t tried to contact me in ten years.”
Saying that out loud hit Bex squarely in the chest. She cleared her throat, hoping to keep the wobble out of her voice.
“I don’t think anything would change just because he’s…” It was hard for Bex to say the word. “Here” meant that he was alive and out of hiding. He was living among his “targets”—potential victims and his accusers. And he didn’t care about the daughter he had left behind. Unease rolled through Bex.
“I don’t…I don’t even know how I would go about finding him or”—she made air quotes—“‘drawing him out’ like you said. I don’t really know that much about him.”
It pained her to admit that she knew little about her father beyond the few memories she had of him. Anything personal—anything more than the old truck, the Black Bear Diner, and that he always called her “Bethy”—had been forgotten or blotted out by newspaper headlines and what the attorneys and reporters called “cold, hard facts” about him. He was as charming as he was ruthless. He was a pathological liar. He had an inability to feel. He hunted his prey before making a move.
“Besides, if he’s trying to keep out of jail, he’s probably not going to be sending up rescue flares. Even if he does know where I am, he probably won’t come knocking on my door, right?” Another torrent of emotions surged through Bex. Would he come to her door? Would he want to see her at all?
Detective Schuster seemed undeterred, but there was a careful edge to his voice. “How aware are you of your father’s crimes, Bex?”
She gaped, rage overtaking her. “I know what my father is accused of, Detective Schuster. I don’t need a needlepoint to hang over my bed.”
He didn’t look at her, and for that, Bex was glad. She didn’t want him to hang on the word “accused.” She didn’t want to have to defend her father, especially when she wasn’t really certain how she felt.
“I’m sorry, Bex. I didn’t mean anything by that.” Detective Schuster paused and raked a hand through his brushed-back hair. “Your dad probably won’t have an email address or a website, but there are lots of websites about him. Did you know that?”
Bex dug her thumbnail into the layers of veneer on the table. “I knew that.”