“It feels like it requires divine intervention.”
She laughed a little. “True story: My parents had a baby for a weekend, placed by Lutheran Services on a Friday evening. This is back… I was nine or ten, I think. So the baby gets placed on a Friday evening, and on Monday morning the placement department from Lutheran Services calls my parents to ask them the name of the baby they had that weekend. They didn’t know its name.”
“Oh, man.”
Bobbi nodded then shook her head. “So, you know, everyone – and I mean everyone I’ve encountered – their hearts are in the right places, they’ve gotten into it for the right reasons, but it can be a total mess.” She tilted her head toward her sandwich and took a bite.
Mike said, “So it’s possible a caseworker like Lennox – back when he was a caseworker, more than ten years ago – he could have been involved in something like a placement of a child into foster care, but not show up on the paperwork.”
She swallowed and said, “I think, unfortunately, yes, it’s completely possible.”
Mike seemed to think about it, took a bite of his sandwich, and cleaned his mouth with a napkin. “What do you know about Lennox?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what kind of… What’s he into? Who does he hang out with? Who are his friends? He ever go bowling?”
“Lennox? No. Definitely not a bowler. He’s a homebody.”
“You ever go out with him, though – after work, anything like that? Who does he socialize with?”
She shook her head. “No. Never. I mean, he’s friendly with Yari Fennel, I think. And he hangs out with Trevor a little bit, that’s about it.”
“Trevor – that’s your IT guy. Trevor Garris?”
“Yeah.”
Mike seemed to know what she was thinking. “We’re going to find Lennox,” he said. “There are state troopers out right now, going door to door, an organized search; we’re keeping watch on all the hospitals, hotels, jails. His cell phone looks like it’s totally ruined but we’re pulling anything off it that we can.”
“Someone took him,” Bobbi said.
“Someone might have.”
“God,” she said. “I hope they don’t hurt him.”
* * *
Al Green was playing on the clock radio. The thing had just come on, like it was set to a certain time. Clay didn’t like it; that kind of music hurt his head, that crooning, romantic bullshit. And why the hell would anyone want to listen to something reminding them that they had no one and weren’t willing to do anything about it?
“Who listens to this shit?” Clay asked.
Lennox didn’t have an answer. He couldn’t have; he had the duct tape over his mouth.
“The Doors,” Clay said to Lennox. “That’s the kind of music; it means something. Not this old horny lovesick shit. Or radio pop – ugh – this new stuff. You know what I mean? All that shit – and they don’t even sing in their real voices; they use auto-tune. Everything is supposed to be a party. Oooh-oooh! You listen and picture some movie with animated characters all singing along, talking about shaking their ass, and, uh…”
He lost his train of thought. What was he saying? Then he focused on Lennox. “What’s the matter with you?”
Lennox’s eyes were bulging; it sounded like he was gagging, really struggling for breath. There was snot coming out of his nose. Clay heard him trying to suck the air through his nostrils, but his nasal passages sounded clogged or something. Figured. It just fucking figured.
Disgusting.
First, he needed to kill that fucking music. He located the source – some old piece of equipment from Radio Shack sitting beside the bed. Classic. He bent and tried to make sense of the buttons, breathing hard in his mask.
Snooze. That was the big button. Hit that and it just comes on again in a few minutes. Where the Christ was the off button? He grabbed the cord and yanked on it. But the cord didn’t just pop from the wall – he chased it along and found it snaked behind the bed, wrapped around the bed frame, so the tension kept the plug in the socket. He put a knee on the mattress, reached back, got closer to the plug, jerked it free, and the music stopped, mercifully, at last, cutting Al Green off in mid-sentence about being a helpless loser.
He hefted the clock radio, examining it, thinking it was vintage like his cassette player in the car. Might be a nice souvenir when this whole thing was over with.
But he got stuck again, like he was on pause, looking at the clock radio.
Then he remembered…
The cool rush of air. The bad smell, the sense that his brain was cooking from the inside…
He threw the whole thing against the wall where it smashed and left a dent and a black smear. Fuck it. The home owner should have known better than to have left a stupid alarm clock on, tuned to oldies radio, or whatever it was.
He moved back to where Lennox was tied up.
“Oh, shit.”
Lennox was bucking and thrashing in the chair, his eyes rolled back white, snot really streaming from his nose, eyes running. Clay leaned in and ripped the tape off the guy’s mouth just as he toppled over in the chair and his head hit the floor.
Ouch.
Clay lowered down to his knees, put his head to the guy’s face. Listened to the ragged, wheezing breaths. Lennox’s eyelids fluttered. He wasn’t quite passed out. Good – the whole thing would be pointless if Lennox died now. There’d be nothing for Bobbi to see, and her death wouldn’t be nearly as poignant.
Grunting and cursing under his breath, Clay righted the chair, Lennox with it. Not much to him – he was pretty skinny, pretty pathetic. Probably a faggot. Typical.
Eyes opened all the way, Lennox started to look at him in a different way, like his senses were returning, and then he spoke. Slurred, really, through his snot and tears and bloody lips. “Stop, man – please. You don’t have to do this.”
Yeah, pure terror in his eyes. Good. Clay brought out the new rifle, laid it across his knees as he squatted down. Now Lennox knew what was up. “Yeah,” Clay said, “I do.”
Twenty-Four
Driving back from the morgue again. Another body on the table. Another tearful relative, not understanding who or why or what.
Mike had shown Maybelle Spruce pictures of Jamie Rentz, pictures of Dodd Caruthers – but nothing. Just a broken woman who had now officially lost her last family member.
He headed for Lake Haven, driving with the window cracked, feeling the anger creep in. The kind of anger he’d felt after Molly died. The kind that courted rage, insanity, and no turning back.
He took a call from Lena.
“Mike, got a woman from Lake Haven who says she saw Harriet’s Kia the night she was killed.”
“She’s just telling us now?”
“Name is Marcia Carroll. She lives up on McIntyre; it’s off River Street.”
“Yeah, I know it. What did she see?”
“She left town the next morning, was gone for that weekend and this past one, came back and heard all about it.”
“Where did she go, to a cave?”
“Camping. Turned off her digital life. Anyway, she was driving past at about 8 p.m. on the twelfth. Saw the car, last car in the lot. Thought she saw someone behind the wheel, it looked like they were waving.”
“Jesus. She drove by right when it was happening.”
“Sounds like it.”
“So what does that do? That just… We already got time of death. Did she say anything else? See another car? What about when she went up onto River Street? To turn on McIntyre, she goes right by the old house…”
“Right. Exactly. I asked her that. She said she saw a car, that’s it.”
“White?”
“Nope, said dark blue. Said it looked like a cop car. Like an unmarked cop car.”
“Chevy Caprice, maybe an Oldsmobile Cutlass?”
“Yup. Or a Buick LeSabre, something like that. From her description, I’d say late-nineties model; she said she thinks there was rust.”