Thread of Hope (The Joe Tyler Series, #1) (29 page)

Two women walking past us glanced in our direction.  Mike stared them down until they moved their eyes away.  He waited a few more seconds.

“The I.V. guys come back after finding the second girl, wondering if they’ve got some sort of serial killer or Green River fucker on their hands.  So they ask him if there are anymore.”  Mike paused, rubbed harder at his chin.  “And the motherfucker gives them Elizabeth’s name.”

I shut my eyes, tried to slow down my heart, tried to find air to breathe.

“I.V. guys run her name and eventually they call me.  I listened to what they had to say, listened to what he told them, decided he was worth a look.”  He bit down on his bottom lip.  “Almost called you as I was driving out there, then figured I better wait.”

I tried to nod, but the muscles in my neck were locked up and I managed only a small, awkward jerk forward.

Mike looked at me.  “Jesus, Joe.  I’m sorry.  Do you wanna hear this?  I just started in and...”

“I’m fine,” I said, my voice sounding strained and small.  “Tell me.”

He studied me for another moment before continuing.  “So I get in the box with this guy and I thought it was him, Joe.  Bad, bad guy.  He was giving me details about your house, about the neighborhood, about Elizabeth.  He just felt like the guy.  He fit.”

Each word was like a newly sharpened razor blade into my skin.  Into my heart.

“And then he started going off about how he saw Lauren in the doorway as he drove away with Elizabeth,” Mike said and his voice trailed off.

I shook my head, choked out a dry laugh.  “Message board freak.”

Mike nodded.

In the Internet age, message boards had become both a help and a hindrance in finding missing people.  If you went to the right places, knew how to filter out the garbage, you could find details and people that could legitimately help your case.

But filtering out the garbage wasn’t that easy.  One of the things I learned early on was that both cops and investigators would float phony details out to the public to root out the nut jobs and weirdoes that would try to leech onto cases, either as a supposedly helpful witness or as the perpetrator.  If that info came back to you, you knew a liar was sitting in front of you.

Mike and I had thrown several phony bits out to the Internet and one involved Lauren standing in the front doorway, maybe having caught a glimpse of the car that carried Elizabeth away.  Lauren never left the kitchen the entire time Elizabeth was outside by herself and no one would’ve seen her in the doorway.

“Motherfucker was telling me what Lauren was wearing, what her face looked like, how she was standing in the doorway, all of it giving him a hard on as he said it to me,” Mike said, a sour expression gravitating upward from his mouth to his eyes.  “I broke both of his wrists before the I.V. guys got me off him.”

I stood from the car, took a couple of deep breaths, glanced up at the sky.  “Good.”

“It’ll happen, Joe,” Mike said.  “One day, something will shake loose.  We’ll know what happened.”

I knew that wasn’t true, but I appreciated him saying it.  “Check with vice, alright, if you wouldn’t mind, on Jordan’s wife?  I’ll let you know if anything turns up on my end.”

Mike nodded and I walked away, images of my daughter clouding my vision.

FIFTY-EIGHT

One of the first things I told people when they asked for my help was that they had to take care of themselves first.  Take care of themselves, take care of their spouse, take care of the children still in the home, take care of their lives.  If you allow those things to break down, the rest comes crumbling down around you.

I learned that the hard way.  My marriage to Lauren collapsed before either of us had realized what happened.  We were so focused on the enormous crack that had fractured our lives that we missed the fissures that radiated out from that initial crack, me far more than Lauren.

To get anything done, I had to take care of my own life first.

So I drove to Lauren’s house.

Our old home.

The one where I'd last seen Elizabeth.

I parked across the street and got out.  I didn’t cross the road, just stood there, my back against the car, as if some invisible forcefield was between me and the house.

The house was originally a one story, but we'd built an upstairs addition.  Beige stucco with big, wide windows.  A giant tree in the center of the front yard.  Small cracks in the short driveway that had grown longer and wider since I’d last seen them.  Fresh flowers, blues and reds and yellows, bloomed along the narrow path to the front door.  The grass was green, the windows were spotless and the paint on the trim looked fresh. 

I tried to remember other details about what it looked like when I lived in it.  Was it the same color?  Were those the same kind of flowers?  Was the tree always that big?

The only thing I knew for certain was the lawn in front of me was the last place I’d seen Elizabeth.

I wanted to walk to the door and knock, but my legs wouldn’t move.  My stomach cramped, the anxiety gripping the muscles inside and squeezing them.  Heat radiated up the back of my neck and into my head, tiny beads of sweat lining up along my forehead, just beneath my hairline.

It physically hurt to stand there and look at the house.  I was making a mistake.

My hand slid along the car door, found the handle and grasped onto it, as much for balance as to open it.  I heard a car coming from down the street and turned in that direction.

A dark blue Toyota Camry slowed as it approached.  I stood up straighter, tried to look normal, not as if I was about to pass out in the street, and attempted a smile and a half-wave at the driver.

The driver was Lauren and my hand stayed frozen in the air.

She pulled the car into the driveway and sat there for a moment before she got out, looking at me, expressionless.

She wore a black pant suit with a red blouse and black pumps.  A thin gold chain hung around her neck, standing out against the red of the blouse.  Her hair was down and I didn’t see any earrings.  A flash of light at her right wrist revealed a watch the same color as the necklace, a watch I remembered giving her.

She stood there for a moment, looking as unsure as I felt.  She opened the driver-side rear door and pulled out a leather satchel and placed it over her shoulder.  She shut the door and stared at me.

“Hi,” I said, my voice loud enough to carry across the street.

She just nodded.

“I owe you an apology, I think,” I said.

She shrugged as if I’d asked her a question about something she couldn't have cared less.

“I’m sorry,” I said anyway.  “For the other night.  I handled it poorly.”

The look in her eyes shifted, but I couldn’t tell what was there.  Anger, sadness, nothing?

“I wasn’t expecting it,” I said, my knees shaking, my eyes moving to the exact patch of grass where I’d left Elizabeth to go get that fucking extension cord.  “I didn’t know what to do, Lauren.  I’m sorry.”

Tears distorted my vision now.  I lifted my arm.  It was heavy, uncoordinated, as if it had fallen asleep.  My knees weakened and my back began to slide down the car. 

“Joe?” Lauren finally said.  “Are you okay?”

I shook my head, still sinking to the ground, still pointing at the lawn.  “She was right there, Lauren.  Right there.” 

The tears pooled in my eyes and spilled onto my cheeks and I could barely see Lauren crossing the street toward me.  I felt her hands on my arm.

“Right.  There,” I said.

Lauren’s arms went around me.  I buried my face in her shoulder and cried for a long time.

FIFTY-NINE

“Are you alright?” Lauren asked.

We were sitting on a rock near the Hotel Del, watching the ocean roll in and out.  She’d gathered me up out of the street, put me in my car and driven us over to the hotel and the beach.  It was a narrow strip of sand that we'd walked hundreds of times together and she knew it was a place that would settle me. 

I hadn’t said a word since she’d crossed the street.  My eyes were dry, but the breeze off the water put a mild sting in them.

“I think so,” I said.  “I’m sorry.”

“For missing our daughter?” she asked without looking at me.  She shook her head slowly.  “If I get through a week without a mini-breakdown, I’ll let you know.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d collapsed so thoroughly under the weight of missing Elizabeth.  I thought about her every day, but I’d steeled myself against the tendrils of emotion that tried to find their way inside me.  I'd managed to develop an ability to keep it all inside, not letting it crack my exterior.

But seeing the house again triggered everything I didn’t want to think about.

“How can you live there?” I asked, picking up a handful of sand and letting it fall through my fingers.  “I could barely look at it.  But you?  You live there, see all of it every day.  How?  Why?”

Lauren ran a hand through her hair, pushing it all over to one side.  “You see the bad.  I see the good.”  She glanced at me, a small, sad smile on her lips.  “I go sit in her room, think about her, talk to her.  I sit at the kitchen table and remember what an amazingly slow eater she was.”

We both laughed.  Neither Lauren nor I were particularly fast eaters, but Elizabeth could stretch a meal out for hours, talking about anything, getting up from her chair, refusing to eat as we cajoled, ordered and begged her to finish the small plate of whatever was in front of her.  It was the kind of thing that drove parents nuts, but given perspective, it was more charming than annoying.

“I go outside and remember how much she loved to work in the flower beds with me,” Lauren said.  “Go out back and think of her sitting on the patio, swinging her feet on the chair.”

She turned to face me fully.  “I don’t wanna forget those things, Joe.  And I feel like if I left, they would just fade away.  Staying here in Coronado, in the house, I stay connected to her.  To us, as a family.”  She paused.  “I need that.”

The sun glimmered on the surface of the water, the white caps washing it away every few moments before it reappeared on the watery glass top.

“I miss her as much as you do, Joe,” she said.  “But I do it in a different way.  Your way isn’t for me.”

She’d said something similar to me when I’d left, but I couldn’t recall her exact words. 

“And I don’t mean that in a critical way,” she said, touching my arm.  “I don’t.  There’s no right way to handle it.  But I can’t do what you do.  Couldn’t do it.  The way you felt when you saw our house?  That’s how I’d feel every time I went looking for someone else’s son or daughter.  You don’t understand how I can live in the house?  I can’t fathom how you can spend all your time looking for missing kids.”

A small wave rose up out of the water and crashed down, long lines of white foam rolling at us.

“I see the good, you see the bad,” I said.

Her hand was still on my arm and she tapped her fingers against my skin.  “Exactly.”