Ruin Falls (11 page)

A slip of paper tucked into her cell phone case snagged her attention. The babysitting cop’s card.

He answered with, “This is Grayson,” and Liz realized that in those desperate, frenetic eight hours at the hotel, she had never learned his name.

“This is Liz Daniels,” she said. “I wanted to thank you—thank your friend—for going up to check the farm.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t lead to anything,” Grayson said.

If only Grayson’s friend had gotten there a little sooner.

“My children were there,” she said. “I found—” She had to break off.

Grayson’s reply was instant. “You found your kids?”

“They were gone by the time I arrived,” Liz said. “But I found Ally’s doll.” She reached down to her pocket to touch it, the most tangible link she had to her children now.

Grayson didn’t say anything.

“Can the Junction Bridge police do anything else?”

“I can’t see that there’s anything to do,” Grayson replied. “There’s the nature of the matter, for one thing. This is a family concern.” As if sensing the understatement contained in that assessment, he went on. “Also, as you say, your kids are no longer there.”

He was right. Liz stared out the windshield, which was coated with bug splatter and dust. The view to wherever her children might be seemed just as occluded.

“It seems almost cruel,” Grayson said.

The word hit her like a hammer.

“Not only for your husband to plan some happy, jolly family trip in order to make off with your children. But also for him to have stuck around all morning. Stupid, too—we could easily have detained him.” Grayson paused. “As a cop—if this were my case—I’d be asking why he did that. Because it might give you some idea where he wound up.”

Liz felt baffled. Grayson was right, of course; those were bizarre moves on Paul’s part. But she had no idea how to uncover their justification.

“Can I ask you a question?” she said after a moment.

“Sure, go ahead,” Grayson said.

“How did you figure it out? That my husband …”

She didn’t have to finish.

“Two things,” Grayson said. “One took place that day, one a little later. First, when your husband went to check on the children’s belongings—”

It was Liz’s turn to break in. “He lied. He did take their things with him.”

Of course he would have. Paul hated waste. Especially when the items to be squandered had been made by what he called overseas slave labor. Clothes so cheap they were painless to replace when outgrown or lost or their wearer just took a sudden dislike.

“No.” Grayson spoke over the voice in her head. “He was smart enough not to do that. Everything was pretty much left intact, except the doll.” He paused, as if aware that his words would cause pain. “It was that your husband didn’t check in an authentic way. At least that’s how it looked to the officer we sent to watch him. Your husband looked like he knew what he’d find before he went rifling through it.”

Liz realized she hadn’t blinked. The light blinded her, bringing on a sting of tears, and she forced herself to shut her eyes. “What was the other thing?”

Grayson hesitated. “An eyewitness came forward. Kind of a strange man; there was a delay before he reported what he’d seen. According to the hotel, he doesn’t speak much outside of his required duties. But he observed your husband escorting the children out in the middle of the night.”

“What?” Sunlight broke over her, a million flashing pieces. “Who did?”

Grayson’s breath emerged audibly. “We’ve already checked him out, Mrs. Daniels. An employee of the hotel who was working the night shift.”

Liz didn’t have to speak; the pressure of her question ballooned in the air between them.

Grayson paused, checking his notes or maybe the report.

“His name is Larry Arnold,” he said at last. “He’s a bellhop.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

H
ow stupid Paul had been to flip that lock on the top of the door. Liz had been thinking of the mistake as just an unthinking, automatic gesture, the act of a man who spent much of his life in books and research, in his head, rather than staging crime scenes. Or else it had been some kind of telltale-heart tic, an admission to the world of his guilt. But now she wondered if her husband hadn’t in fact made several errors out of naiveté and lack of cunning, and if one of them might actually help her.

She started the car. The temperature inside had climbed to a broil during her conversation, and Liz’s skin felt slick, her shirt wetted through. Praying she could find her way back along the tangle of roads, she left Matthew and Mary’s farm behind in a yellow storm cloud of dust.

The hotel staff remembered her at first glance, and appeared both apologetic and relieved when they informed her that Larry Arnold wasn’t scheduled to work that day.

Liz had dashed inside from the parking lot and her heart was beating fast enough to interrupt speech. “I don’t suppose—would it be possible—can you give me his phone number?”

The woman behind the front desk traded looks with the man. “Larry doesn’t really talk to strangers.” She rolled her eyes, then seemed to remember why Liz was asking, and quickly looked away.

“I can call him,” the male employee offered. He tapped a few keys on his computer. “No harm in trying. What do you want me to say?”

“Ask him—” Liz was attempting to catch her breath while wondering what it was about Larry Arnold that Grayson and the hotel staff all seemed to know. She supposed that she too had sensed something off about the man. “Please ask if he’d be willing to meet with me.”

She registered the fact that the phone had been answered, and that this appeared to surprise the desk clerk. Also that Larry Arnold seemed to be agreeing to her request.

Starbucks
, she mouthed to the clerk. As she started to run again, she called over her shoulder, “The one in the next mall over.”

If Liz thought honestly about their lives, Paul had been preparing his family for something radical for years, getting them used to living without luxury or even the normal accoutrements of modern life—a constant stream of TV and Internet and video games—plus eating in a way that didn’t depend on the factory system, while the rest of the world went merrily along, driving and flying and buying, all things whose imminent crash Paul constantly predicted.

Only why had he taken the children without bringing her? It made no sense.

The parking lot radiated heat more intense than any Liz had felt yet. The asphalt had softened, giving way beneath her shoes, and making it feel as if the very surface of the earth was unsteady. Liz had to separate her shirt from her skin, like pulling off plaster.

On the rare occasions when she’d had cause to leave the Adirondacks, it always struck her how homogeneous the rest of the world appeared to be. Here she was in western New York, and aside from the thick, wet air, she might as well have been in California. In any strip mall she could eat the same featureless Italian or Chinese, buy the same item of clothing, solve the same first-world emergency, such as replacing a cell phone or repairing a chipped nail.

The coffee in Starbucks smelled the same too, although the refrigerated chill as Liz pulled open the door felt wonderful. The iced version of whatever she ordered would do nothing for her racing nerves,
so Liz decided to force down a bite to eat as well. It occurred to her how easy life was outside of Paul’s reach. No scouting options for a healthier alternative, or asking what kind of oil was used for frying. What was the point of asking? It was always a bad kind. It could’ve been a Joni Mitchell song. Give me back my butter, lard, and suet. Assuming they came from a grass-fed, grass-finished animal, of course. All of the fats that scientists claimed were bad for you had turned out to be far more healthy than factory-bred canola or the toxic mélange that became vegetable oil.

Liz took a table looking out on the parking lot. Heat shimmered over the baking black expanse.

She recognized Larry Arnold as soon as he got out of his car, a midsize sedan Liz knew she wouldn’t be able to describe five seconds after seeing it. The sight of the bellhop’s wan face and sparse mustache still brought on a queasy pang. She half rose in her seat, then forced herself to sit back down until Larry Arnold entered the shop. He crossed to the table she occupied, hands fussing with something invisible on his slacks.

Liz stood up. “Thanks for meeting me. Can I buy you a coffee?”

“No, no,” the bellhop said. He paused. “Or maybe you should. Or I can buy myself one. I always worry that the staff will feel taken advantage of by people who don’t order anything. So many people do that these days. Plug their computers in, and
peck, peck, peck
, but never spend a penny. I suppose corporate is aware of this, of course. Figures it into their bottom line.”

“Right,” Liz said. She took a step toward the counter. “How do you take it?”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Larry Arnold said. “Are you sure? There are so many choices. You can’t just know how you take your coffee anymore, light, two sugars. The sizes are strange and there are all those syrups and toppings …”

“Sounds like a latte would do,” Liz interrupted. She decided not to get into the complexities of iced versus hot.

She handed Larry his drink, warding off a meandering stream of thanks with one raised hand. Fear and stress had lent her a dreadful efficiency.

“The police said you saw my husband leave the hotel with our children.”

Larry was rubbing that spot on his slacks. He looked up when Liz went silent, as if surprised she had finished speaking so quickly.

“Yes, I did,” he replied. “I know I should’ve spoken up sooner. But I didn’t understand how the children could be missing with your husband standing right there. It’s like something on TV. Only on TV, the person who sees something—that’s me—says so right away. But look what that leads to. Someone says something back. And then you have to—”

“It’s all right,” Liz said, in as soothing a tone as she could muster. She needed Larry calm and focused, but the man seemed likely to short out at any moment. “You did the right thing in the end. Can you just—can you tell me what happened?”

Larry didn’t meet her eyes. “I was coming off my shift. The night shift isn’t easy, but it lets me watch all my shows. I hear they have something that solves this problem now—you can watch when the show isn’t even on …”

The man gave no sign of stopping, let alone proffering the information she needed. Liz understood the hotel staff’s compunctions. She wondered how questioning could possibly have gone for the police.

“My husband,” she prompted.

Larry looked up, lip puckered so that his wispy mustache drew down. “Oh yes,” he said. “I thought it was strange because children aren’t usually up so late. I don’t have any children of my own—I was never even married—not because I wouldn’t have liked to be, but because I never met anyone. Not that I didn’t meet
anyone
, of course, just not the right—”

Liz’s exhalation of breath must’ve been louder than she intended.

“But that’s another story,” Larry said with apparent effort. “What I meant to say is that it jumped out at me how sleepy those children looked and I also wondered why they were being taken outside through the side exit. Instead of through the automatic doors in front, I mean. I would’ve used the front ones myself, except that I was coming back from my last cigarette break and they don’t like guests to see us smoking near the entrance.”

His pause didn’t give Liz time to interject.

“I know how unhealthy cigarettes are for you, but I don’t have many bad habits. Well, sitting too close to the television and—”

Liz was starting to feel a little desperate. The coffee sizzled in her veins and she had the urge to grab Larry’s thin arms and give them a shake. She might’ve done it, except that she suspected the act would only provide him more to chatter about.

She settled for speaking over him. “Mr. Arnold! Can you tell me anything else you saw? After my husband walked the kids out. Did you follow them to the parking lot?”

He stared at her blankly for enough time that his silence registered as alien.

“I might have,” Larry said. “I might’ve done that, but only to ask if they needed any help. That’s what I figured, you see. That they’d forgotten something in the car and were going out to get it. Maybe the man didn’t want to leave the children alone in the room. Who knows what can happen these days, right?”

Oh yes
, Liz thought with more than a shard of hysteria.
Anything can happen these days
.

“And it certainly would be my job to help them with their things, assuming they wanted help. That’s what a customer associate does, you know, among other tasks, but you never want to be intrusive, people get annoyed—”

Again, Liz spoke loudly, trying to come up with a question that would corral the man, get him to stay on point. “But you didn’t? Ask them if they needed help?”

“No,” he said. “I assumed that was what the other person was there for.”

Charges ignited all over Liz’s body. She looked down at her skin. “Other person? Do you mean a woman?” Thinking,
You pathetic cliché. An affair? That’s what this is all about?
And then,
Who the hell do you have caring for my kids?

But Larry was shaking his head, and when he spoke, the information she needed came out before his slipstream of associated thoughts.

“No, not a woman. A man.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

L
arry Arnold’s description of the man was too generic to mean anything. Tall, dark-haired. She wondered if the police had done anything with it despite knowing this could all be chalked up to a domestic dispute.

The two words were a hiss in her mind.
Domestic dispute
. How meaningless—utterly lacking in descriptive power—they were compared to the disaster that had befallen her.

It registered vaguely that Larry was talking again, and had been for some time.

“… better be getting home.”

Liz blinked away a scrim of tears. “Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry I disturbed you on your day off.”