Daddy's Little Girl (5 page)

She wasn’t there.

All the way back from the forest, the barking dogs leading the way in the gloom, Carnes had felt an unnatural optimism about the fate of his daughter, a euphoria he later recognized as a condition of shock.

He had an image of her sitting in the motel office, snuggled safely in the corner of the couch.

In the fantasy, he had bent down to kiss her sleeping eyes, only to find her opening them suddenly in a gaze so loving he knew it forgave all his shortcomings—his being a bad husband to her mother, a sometimes inattentive father, a selfish man.

But ... she wasn’t there.

Sheriff Wayman, sensing the overwhelming despair gathering up inside Carnes, made a clucking sound and said, “Doesn’t mean she won’t turn up.”

Carnes spun toward the man, all his frustration and anger telling in his voice. “Why don’t you lay off the reassurances and get your ass to doing something helpful?”

Instantly, Carnes regretted his words. Wayman had been quite helpful, quite supportive.

“I—” Carnes began.

Wayman raised a halting hand. “No need for apologies. I’d be just the same way.”

The two men went inside the office. The clerk was asleep in an arm chair, the TV set nothing more than snow.

Wayman went to the phone, checked with his office.

In the small bathroom, Carnes splashed water over his face. He knew he needed to remain as calm, as reasonable as possible. He didn’t want to become the kind of man he detested—the kind of men too many of his clients were; bullying, hysterical, unhelpful to themselves or anybody else—and so he made a pass at saying another prayer, one with two intents—finding Deirdre and helping himself behave better.

When he emerged from the bathroom, he saw another man standing there, a short, stout man in a windbreaker and khaki pants. In his fifties, the man had the air of a suburbanite, surprising for somebody in Burton. The handsomeness of his face was being buried in his jowliness. His carefully combed salt-and-pepper hair marked him as a man of some pride.

He saw Carnes and a kind of professional sympathy filled his blue eyes. He crossed the room and said, “I’m Kevin Heath. I’m the local Methodist minister.” He assessed the surprise in Carnes’s expression and said, “The sheriff just thought it might be helpful for you to talk to somebody. He said he was afraid he was beginning to irritate you.” Heath nodded to the pickup truck outside. “The sheriff’s helping load up the truck.”

“No word came into his office about my daughter?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Shit,” Carnes said, then realized he was swearing in front of a minister. He flushed.

“Quite all right,” Reverend Heath said in his very polished manner. “It’s a word I am given to using myself on occasion.” He nodded to the Mr. Coffee behind the counter. “How about if I pour you a cup of coffee?”

“I’d like that. Thank you.”

Reverend Heath went back and found them two cups and filled them. When they were seated, Heath said, “You know, most of them turn up.”

Carnes had been staring morosely into his cup. “I’m sorry.”

Reverend Heath smiled. “I was just saying that most of them turn up. The great majority. Of kids who disappear, I mean. They have their own reasons for going and they go to some place you’d never think to look for them and then they turn up. Perfectly safe.”

Carnes could hear the man in the pulpit. There was no doubt the man was very good. The impression of a city person grew stronger the longer the reverend talked.

“Yeah,” Carnes said. “Maybe that’s what’ll happen. She’ll just turn up safe and sound.”

“I’m saying prayers for that, Mr. Carnes. Prayers can cure a lot of ills.”

“It’s been a long time for me, I’m afraid.”

“Praying, you mean?”

Carnes nodded.

“Well, God doesn’t mind if we’re less than poetic when we address Him.”

“I suppose not.”

“I always say to people to forget formal prayer. Just say what’s in your heart.”

Carnes wished Sheriff Wayman would come back. The unctuous piety of the reverend was beginning to annoy him.

The door opened. Wayman walked in. He looked at the clerk—still asleep despite all the conversation—and then at the reverend and Carnes. Then he walked over and helped himself to some coffee.

The reverend stood up, ambled over to the sheriff as if reporting to him on Carnes’s condition.

“We had a nice chat, Sheriff. I’m sure everything’s going to be working out fine.” The reverend glanced at his wrist watch as he spoke. He gave every impression of wanting to leave. Very badly.

“Well, glad you two hit it off,” Wayman said.

The Reverend Heath came over and shook Carnes’s hand. “You need to talk or anything, Mr. Carnes, feel free to call me.”

The sheriff and the reverend exchanged a look that unnerved Carnes.

He knew that, under such anxiety and strain, he had to guard himself against paranoia.

Still, their look—

“Something wrong?” Sheriff Wayman said.

“No,” Carnes said.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

The reverend said, “Maybe you’d like an aspirin or something.”

Carnes felt a sense of dislocation—the sense that all this was a bad dream came rushing back.

“We’ll find her, Mr. Carnes,” the reverend said.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll be praying for her.”

Carnes nodded.

Sheriff Wayman said, “Maybe a little nap would help you.”

“I don’t think I could fall asleep just now.”

The reverend smiled. “There’s a special kind of herbal tea. I happen to have some in the car. I keep a thermos of it handy.”

Carnes shook his head.

He just wanted them to leave.

He needed to be alone.

At least for a few moments.

A terrible weariness had settled into him. He felt as if huge weights held him down.

“Going to be a nice dawn,” the reverend said.

“Yes.”

They stood looking at the dawn.

Why didn’t they leave?

The reverend came up next to him. “Faith is very important, Mr. Carnes.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes you have to keep hope even when hope seems foolish.”

Sheriff Wayman came up. “C’mon, Reverend, I’ll take you back.”

“Things will work out, Mr. Carnes. I’m sure.”

“Thank you.”

Finally, they left, walking to the reverend’s car, saying a few words to each other that Carnes couldn’t hear.

The dawn was yellow and red.

Against it birds arced.

Sheriff Wayman came in, joined him at the window. They looked at distant pastureland on the horizon, said nothing.

But Carnes couldn’t help his mood. Demons were inside him.

Depressed, anxious, becoming increasingly violent in his emotions, Carnes decided to unburden himself of his suspicions.

“Why did you have him come here?” Carnes said.

The sheriff turned around. “The reverend, you mean?”

“Yeah. The reverend. If that’s what he is, in fact.”

Sheriff Wayman smiled sadly. “You don’t think he’s a reverend?”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“Well, he is. And it’s an easy enough thing to prove.”

“Say he is a minister. Why did he come here?”

“I thought maybe you’d like to talk.”

“He got here awfully quick, wouldn’t you say?” I went in to wash my face and when I got back he was here.”

For the first time, the sheriff’s expression indicated that Carnes might have caught him in something. “Well,” the sheriff said.

Carnes stared at him. “Obviously, you called him before we left.”

Wayman nodded. “Yes, I did, matter of fact.”

“And obviously, you brought him here not for me but for you.”

“For me?”

“You wanted him to see me, talk to me, figure me out or something.”

Wayman put down his empty coffee cup. He shrugged. “I guess there’s no harm in telling you, Mr. Carnes.”

“Please.”

“In addition to being a minister, Kevin’s also a psychologist.”

So that explained the air of urbanity about the man.

The sheriff went on, “So I decided maybe I’d like him to get kind of a, uh, well, professional judgment of you, as it were.”

“Professional? To see if I was making it all up or something?”

Wayman’s expression got tight again. “Well, something else, too.”

“Such as what?”

Wayman obviously decided to be blunt. No more sparing Carnes’s feelings.

“To see, Mr. Carnes, if you struck Kevin as a man with something to hide.”

Finally, Carnes caught on to what had been going on. He was both shocked and enraged at the same time.

“You think I killed her?”

“It’s a possibility, Mr. Carnes.”

“Jesus God.”

“As sheriff, I’ve got to allow for all kinds of things happening. It’s a very strange world, as we all know. You could have killed her, pretended that she’d just up and vanished and—”

Wayman surprised Carnes by shaking his head. “It just isn’t a pretty world, Mr. Carnes.”

Carnes made fists of his hands and came toward the big lawman. As if this night were not crazy enough—his daughter gone, his having spent two hours in deep woods and covered with chigger bites and a swampy smell as a result—now he was being accused of the worst crime of all, a parent killing his own child.

“I don’t believe it,” Carnes said.

“That’s how I was when I was your age,” Sheriff Wayman said. “I didn’t believe things like that either, I just couldn’t imagine how anybody could do things like that. The terrible thing is, they can. They do it all the time.”

Raspily, Carnes said, “I didn’t kill her, Sheriff. She disappeared.” He felt as if he were fighting for his sanity. “Now you can waste your time on this stupid theory or you can help look for my daughter.”

For the first time in ten minutes, Sheriff Wayman resembled the warm man Carnes had first met. “I’m sorry if I shocked you, Mr. Carnes. But I guess I owed it to you to tell you why I brought Kevin out here. I hope there are no hard feelings.”

Carnes started to feel foolish. Paranoia was always an embarrassing spectacle.

He felt that Sheriff Wayman was, in fact, trying to help him, just as the reverend had been.

It was just being away from home—

Your daughter missing—

The unfamiliar surroundings of a small town—

Carnes looked at the sheriff and offered something like a smile.

“I just want to find my daughter,” Carnes said.

“So do I,” the sheriff said.

“You think we’ve got a chance?” Carnes asked.

The sheriff shrugged. “I guess that’s exactly what we’ve got, Mr. Carnes. A chance.”

Beth Daye fished the bloody paper towels she’d used to wipe Richard’s hand clean of blood and examined them in the light of her office.

Twenty minutes earlier, she had sent Richard on his way back to the church basement for sleep. She had been unable to get any kind of answer from him about where the blood had come from. Richard was like that sometimes. You just couldn’t communicate with him. He was like trying to unscramble a code without any key or guidelines. He just sat there and you played little word games with him and he didn’t cooperate in any way. Sometimes she wondered if he weren’t being perverse. But then she felt guilty. Richard didn’t know any better.

The paper towels in the light shone with dried redness that was blood. Human blood? She wanted to be certain—and not make a fool of herself—before she called Sheriff Wayman. Like most men in Burton, the sheriff was skeptical about a woman running a newspaper. Any time the
Sentinel
ran anything remotely resembling hard news, the townspeople wondered if it were true. A woman just couldn’t be as dependable an editor or reporter as a man....

There could be no doubt but what the red tinge was blood. Now the question was ... where had Richard encountered it? After a reasonably thorough examination of him, she could see that he hadn’t suffered any injuries or wounds.

So ... the blood was someone else’s.

But whose?

Dawn was starting to tint the windows of her office. Beth slumped down in her chair next to the typewriter and put her head in her hands. When she went this long without sleep, she tended to get depressed, anyway. But with Richard and the mystery of the blood, her mood was worse than it would normally be after as many grinding hours. Ever since the death of Sam she had discovered that the world was not always the golden and glorious place she had once felt it was. Not at all.

Her mind filled with images of Sam’s journal, of the peculiar words:
the insatiable animal is born.

Who or what was the “animal”?

What had he meant by “insatiable”?

Then there was the June 8, 1953 reference. What had happened on that date?

Her husband’s death had been so sudden and unexpected that sometimes she still couldn’t believe he was gone. And now sometimes all she could think of was June 8, 1953 and wonder if that distant date had anything to do with her husband’s death.

So many questions.

And no answers.

She reached for the phone and dialed the sheriff’s office, ready to ask what time Bill Wayman usually got in in the morning. She suspected early. Bill had been a farmer for twenty years. He was used to dawn hours.

The night man, Deputy Hastings, answered the call.

“He’s up already,” Hastings said after her question. “Something happened out at the motel last night.”

Richard had walked past the motel last night,
she thought.

Richard and the blood on his hands...

“What happened out at the motel last night?” Beth wanted to know.

“A guy just traveling through, his daughter disappeared.” The young deputy’s voice dropped to a stage whisper. “Between you and me, I think Sheriff Wayman’s got some suspicions about the guy.”

“You mean, that he might have done something to his daughter?”

“Exactly.”

“Where is Sheriff Wayman now?”

“Out at the diner with the guy. His name is Carnes. Sheriff said he’s in real bad shape. He even had Reverend Heath go out there and look him over.”

Reverend Heath, Beth thought disparagingly. Because the man had his degree in psychology, the entire town credited him with powers of understanding and insight that he simply didn’t possess. Beth had visited with him a few times after Sam’s death—at the reverend’s insistence—and had found him to be far more interested in talking about himself than his visitors.

“So I could catch him out there?”

“Sure,” the deputy said. He laughed. “If you’re nice to him, he’ll probably even buy you breakfast.”

“I’m always nice to the sheriff,” Beth said. “He’s a good man.” With very few reservations, she meant exactly what she said.

“Maybe he’ll have a good story waiting for you. Maybe this Carnes guy will already have confessed.”

Beth shuddered. She had never seen a monster close up before, a man who’d kill his own daughter.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to.