Twisted (17 page)

Joy swelled through her. She wanted to scream at all the talking heads that had accused her father, that said he was unfeeling and unable to form attachments. He wasn’t a sociopath. He wasn’t a serial killer. He was her dad. Bex wanted to tell him everything, but caution dulled the sharp edges of her glee.

“Can I ask you something?” Bex stared straight ahead, her father’s breathing a steady in-out, in-out, heavy in her ear.

“Anything, Bethy.”

“There were…signs.”

“Signs?”

She could hear her father shift on his end of the phone. She tried to imagine where he was. She could hear the faint whooshing of cars or waves, but Bex couldn’t tell if that was on her end or his. There was nothing else, no telltale squeak of furniture or din of coffeehouse chatter.

“When I first got here to school, there was something in my locker.” She swallowed. “A postcard.” She pressed her eyes closed, and even though she hadn’t looked at the card since, the cheery greeting, the ominous scrawl on the back was forever burned in her mind. “It said, ‘Daddy’s Home.’”

There was a long, pregnant pause, and Bex counted the seconds. “Did you put it there?”

“No, sweetheart, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, Bethy.”

“And there were Missing posters.”

“Were those in your locker too?”

Bex pressed her palm to her forehead. “No, they were on my friend’s car. Hundreds of them. They were all…” She took a deep breath. “The victims.”

“Victims?”

She gritted her teeth. “The Wife Collector’s victims.”

Her father cleared his throat. “I didn’t do that.”

“Who would? And why would someone?”

“I can’t explain everything right now. There’s not enough time. I can’t stay here.”

A sob lodged in Bex’s chest. “You just… I just found you. You can’t just go.”

“It’s not safe right now. I’ll make contact with you. I promise I will.”

“Dad, I—”

“Look, Bethy, I’ve got to go.” A siren wailed long and low in the distance. “I’ll call you again soon, okay? I’ve got to go.”

He hung up the phone and Bex stood there, her phone pressed to her ear, listening to the dull silence. Finally she hung up, wondering why she felt so empty inside.

Bex walked through the next day in a daze, checking her cell phone call log to make sure that the previous night’s phone call had actually happened, that she hadn’t imagined it.

She remembered talking to Laney and Chelsea but couldn’t say what it was about. She remembered sitting down and having lunch with Trevor, then kissing him good-bye when she slid into Denise’s car.

“Good day today?”

Bex nodded, her hand still on her cell phone.

Denise was silent until they were nearly home. “Is something going on, Bex?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve been holed up in your room. You barely talk when you do come downstairs, and it’s been like pulling teeth to even get you to go out with your friends the last few days.”

Anger swelled in Bex’s chest. Denise wasn’t her mother. Denise had no idea what she was going through, what she had gone through. Her father did.

“We’re going to talk to your teachers at Back to School Night. I hope they’re not going to tell me you’ve been out of it in class too.”

Bex shook her head, then forced the words out of her mouth. “No. I’m doing okay. I’m just distracted. Schoolwork and—”

“You’ve played the schoolwork card a few too many times, hon. And the distraction one. You need to let us know what’s going on with you. Is it something with Laney and Chelsea? With Trevor?”

Bex gritted her teeth, feeling annoyed and violated. What right did Denise have…?

“I’m fine,” Bex said.

Denise pulled into the garage and Bex slung her backpack over her shoulder, deliberately lingering a few extra minutes in the kitchen so Denise would get off her back. She unwrapped a granola bar and sat at the table while she ate, and she and Denise at a frosty standoff.

“Can I go upstairs now?”

“You can go upstairs whenever you want. I’m just worried about you, Bexy.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said, pushing past her foster mom.

Bex padded up the stairs, not bothering to check the readout when her cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“It’s Detective Schuster. I’m just checking in—”

“No,” she said, “he hasn’t made contact.” Bex hung up without waiting for Schuster to respond. She threw her cell phone onto her bed and dumped her backpack, then opened up her laptop. She had no new messages. She stared at the bright screen and her empty mailbox until she drifted off to sleep.

• • •

“Beth Anne! Beth Anne!”

She knew that voice, remembered that voice. It was far off in her dreams, in her memory, coming from somewhere deep. “Dad?” she heard herself murmur.

“Yeah, Beth Anne, it’s me. It’s your daddy. Now I’m going to put my hand over your mouth here. Don’t you scream, okay? Don’t you scream.”

“Why would you—”

Bex felt fingers on her cheeks pressing carefully but firmly. A thumb on the bone just under her eye socket. The heavy, far-off scent of tobacco and old sweat was overwhelming.

“Now don’t scream.”

Her eyes flew open.

His grip tightened across her mouth. She blinked. His eyes widened, round, black marbles in the darkness.

“Promise me, Bethy.”

Bex could feel the tears running over her temples and pooling in her ears as she nodded her head. She wouldn’t scream.

Her father took his hand from her mouth, his dry lips cracking into a smile.

“It’s been such a long time, Beth Anne. Just look at you.”

Bex didn’t dare move. A man was beside her, hulking, bigger than she remembered, with a face that was familiar but more lined, more seasoned than the one she saw in her memory, in her dreams. She was in her mint-green bedroom in Michael and Denise’s house where she was Bex Andrews, and her father was right there, kneeling by her bedside. Her two worlds crashed together.

“How did you get in here?”

Her father’s eyes went round, hurt and surprise playing in them. “It’s been ten years, Bethy. Look at you. You’re like a young woman now. So pretty.”

Bex’s heart hammered, thoughts streaming at record speeds. This was her father. This was a murderer. This was a man who came to find her against all odds. This was a man who broke into her house and slammed a palm over her mouth and told her not to scream.
This was her father.

“Dad?”

She could see him blinking in the darkness, the faint light from the streetlight outside catching the glisten from his eyes as he blinked back tears. “I’ve missed you so much, Bethy.”

He scooped her up in a rib-crushing bear hug, and Bex could feel his shoulders shaking as he cried, as he murmured into her hair, “My sweet Bethy girl, how I’ve missed you.” Bex wanted to hug him back. Tears burned at her eyes, and she wanted to cry and fall against him and tell him how much she’d missed him too, but her body wouldn’t relent and she remained still, her eyes dry.

“What are you doing here, Dad?”

He held her at arm’s length, his whisper hoarse and choked with emotion. “I came for you, Bethy.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I had no choice. I tried…I tried to get to you earlier, but there was always someone there. It was too risky.”

Bex thought back to the football game, the throaty voice calling her name under the bleachers, the burning touch on her arm.

“We can’t talk here. Those people are asleep in the next room. We can’t risk them finding me—finding us.” He held out a hand. “Come with me, Beth Anne.”

She thought of her father staring down at sleeping Michael and Denise, and she felt anger, violation, suddenly protective.

“You can’t just come in here…”

Her father kept his hand outstretched to her. “Just talk to me, Bethy. That’s all I want. I know you must have questions, hundreds of them, and I’ll answer them all. What happened when you… When they…” He glanced at her, his face contorted in pain, then looked away as if he couldn’t bear to see her. “It was all wrong.”

Bex’s breath hitched, her throat burning. She’d done it. She’d turned him in. “I’m sorry.”

“Come on, Beth Anne.”

She stared at his outstretched hand, watching her own, shaking, unsteady, reaching out for him. Bex wasn’t sure what she expected to happen—lightning sparks or one of those bright-light, hair-blown-back movie montages where she would see everything her father had done over the last ten years, but it was simply her hand slipping into her father’s.

“Put some clothes and shoes on. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

“I’m not going with you.”

Her father let out a long sigh that seemed to have ten years of angst and hope built up in it, and it broke Bex’s heart. “I know, honey. I wouldn’t expect you to up and run off with me. It’s been a long time. You don’t even know me anymore. I’ll be waiting outside for you.”

Bex watched the careful way her father moved across her floor, the gentleness he used when closing her door behind him.

“I’m just going to go talk to him,” she reasoned, mumbling. “Just talk to him outside and come right back to bed and…”

Bex pulled the laces on her sneakers and avoided her own questions. “I’m just going to talk to him.” She stood and Lauren’s voice pulsed in her ear:
He was just a man, you know?
Bex swallowed hard, a tremor rolling through her.

The night air was a wild, cold burst when Bex opened the front door, and she zipped her hoodie up to her neck. Her mind spun:
He came for me! He wanted to see me!
Why,
why would he want to see me? He wants something; he did something; he’s an animal who can’t make connections, can’t feel.

She looked around, hissing in the darkness. “Dad?”

The only answer was a dull silence pierced by the vague sounds of trucks on the highway and waves crashing somewhere in the distance.

“Oh my God,” she mumbled, sweat pricking the back of her neck. Her hands tingled, and this time she couldn’t control the tears. “I’m going crazy. He was never here. I was dreaming…” She plopped unceremoniously to the ground, her tailbone thunking the cement hard when she heard the hum of an engine, saw the faint shadow of white parking lights.

There was a truck at her curb, and her father was in the driver’s seat. She looked at him and she was seven years old again. The wrinkles and the gray hair that she had been so focused on were obscured by the darkness, and it was as if no time had passed as he curled a finger out to her, his grin wide and welcoming. Still, Bex was tentative, hesitantly walking toward the car and approaching the driver’s side.

“Well, come on. Get in. Wait. Do you want to drive?”

She shook her head. “I thought we were just going to talk.”

“We are, Bethy. But it’s almost four in the morning. I think we’re going to be a little conspicuous sitting out front of your house, don’t you? And as much as I’d like to keep all this on the up-and-up…” He screwed up his face into some approximation of apology or shame.

“O-okay, but we’re not going too far.”

Her father threw open the passenger side door and Bex looked up at him, a daughter seeing her dad. He was innocent. He was harmless. He loved her.

“Aw, Bethy,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Don’t tell me you believe all the lies they’ve fed you.”

Cold betrayal shot goose bumps down Bex’s arms, and she shook her head again, then stepped into the car, belting herself in.

“He was just a man, you know?”

They drove in silence for a few moments, until the truck’s tires began to spin under the dusting of sand on the blacktop of the beach parking lot. He pressed the car into Park and killed the engine.

“Is this your car?”

He shook his head. “You know…my circumstances, don’t you, Bethy?”

Bex bit her thumbnail and looked away, nodding curtly.

“I was so glad when you reached out to me.”

She turned back with a start. “When I reached out?”

“On the site.” He touched his chest.

Bex’s tongue went heavy in her mouth, her muscles liquid. She knew that he was GAMECREATOR, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d hoped it wasn’t true, hoped her father wasn’t lurking on a page that praised a madman. “So that was definitely you.”

“Well, yeah.”

“He’s a narcissist, Bex. He’ll be trolling the sites, enjoying that people worship him.”

“Why?” There was anger in her voice, and Bex could feel her nostrils flare.

“I wanted to find you.”

“That’s not why. You had no idea that’s where you would find me.”

He shrugged, his shoulders bigger and meatier than Bex remembered. “But I found you just the same.”

They stared at each other in dark silence for a beat until her father unclicked his seat belt. “What do you want to know?”

At first, Bex didn’t answer.

“You want to know if I’m guilty? You want to know if I did it?”

She didn’t know her father well enough to read the intonation in his voice—was it angry? Exasperated? In the darkness, the planes of his face were shadowed and Bex couldn’t read him at all. It didn’t matter because she couldn’t look at him. She stared at her hands in her lap.

“Did you?”

“Of course not! You know me, Beth Anne. I’m your daddy!” He touched her shoulder awkwardly, trying to get her to face him. “You know I couldn’t do something like that.”

But Bex didn’t know. This man was a stranger to her.

“How come you never wrote to me or tried to call?” The anger was softening, her words going from sharp and deliberate to a softer, more needy tone. Bex hated it.

“I thought it would be better for you if you just forgot about me, you know? Got on with your life. Tried to be normal and all.”

“So why now? Why did you decide to show up and come find me now?” Again, Bex was getting worked up. She could feel the hot blood pulsing through her veins, her every cell on high alert.

“I heard that your gran had died. I knew that they were going to put you in the system. I couldn’t let that happen.” He slid a single finger under her chin, edging her head up to face him. “I couldn’t let that happen to my little girl.”

Bex didn’t realize she was crying.

“If you didn’t do this, Daddy, why didn’t you fight? Why did you run?”

“You don’t think I was going to try that? I couldn’t afford a good lawyer, and they had the best and the fanciest lining up to have my head based on what they said I’d done. I knew then that you can’t fight the law, Beth Anne. They wanted to put someone in jail. And I just happen to fit in wherever there were holes. I had to go.”

Bex inched back. “What are you talking about?”

Her father looked down at his hands, then up at Bex. There was moisture in his eyes. “You know I’m innocent. I was framed, Beth Anne.”

Bex felt like someone had sucked all the air out of the truck’s cab. “What?”

“I was on that website because I was looking for the real killer.”

“They’re masters of manipulation…”

“I know who it is. I was sure that he would show up on one of the sites, but of course, I got distracted.”

“Dad, if you know who framed you… I mean, this is huge. This could change everything.” Bex got up onto her knees on the bench seat, feeling herself bounce as excitement mounted. “We can go to the police and—”

“Bethy, Bethy, hey. Settle down. Look, I’d love nothing more than to do that, but I can’t just go to the police. I’ve been on the run for ten years, and in their book, that makes me guilty.”

“I can go. I can tell them that I talked to you… Maybe, like, say you emailed me and then you can come out of hiding when they catch the guy and, and—” The tears rolled steadily now and Bex could taste them on her lips. “Dad, this is great.”

“We can’t go to the police. The man who did this—the man who killed all those women and framed me for it, Bethy—he’s a police officer.”

Bex was struck dumb. Though her tears were hot and she was covered in the sheen of a nervous sweat, she shivered. “What?”

“The detective—shit, you probably don’t even remember. You were just a little kid. You talked to him, told him some story…”

Bex felt herself coming apart, piece by piece. She was the reason he had to run. Her father wasn’t guilty;
she
was.

“He was some young buck cop trying to make a name for hisself.”

“Detective Schuster.”

“That’s the guy! Schuster.”

Bex closed her eyes. “He framed you.”

“He killed those women, Bethy. I didn’t know it at the time, not really. But when my DNA started turning up—I knew it wasn’t right. I wasn’t there, Bethy. I wouldn’t have hurt those women. I wouldn’t do that. This Schuster guy, he’s sick. I had to find you before you disappeared into the system because I was afraid he would be able to track you down and, and maybe”—he looked away, squinting his eyes at the dark ocean in front of them—“he might try to do to you what he did to those poor girls. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t.”

“He did find me.” Bex’s voice was a barely audible whisper. “He wanted me to find you, to draw you out.”

Her father’s profile was sharp in the low light.

Bex went on. “So you risked coming out… You did all this…for me?”

He pumped his head. “I’d do it again for you, Bethy girl. I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

Bex felt herself teetering. Could Detective Schuster really be responsible for the murders, framing her father all those years? When her father reached out and squeezed her hand, Bex felt herself falling over the edge. It made sense. Detective Schuster had handled all the evidence in her father’s case. The eyewitness reports were all people that Schuster had tracked down. The murders all happened within the Research Triangle, which was her father’s trucking territory—and wouldn’t be that far for a rookie cop to travel. She thought of the detective in his leather jacket, the way his lip curled downward and his nostrils flared each time he talked about Bex’s father.

Then she thought of Dr. Gold.

“Dad, did you know Dr. Gold?”

He frowned, his fingers going up to pinch his chin. “Dr. Gold?”

“She was a psychiatrist.”

He wagged his head slowly. “No, Bethy, I can’t say that I do.”

Bex remembered the first time her child advocate had steered her toward Dr. Gold’s office. Detective Schuster had been there, his eyes grazing over her as she was ushered through the door.

Is that how Schuster found her?

“Bethy, I don’t know—”

“The necklaces and the jewelry,” Bex said quickly, shaking her dad’s hand from hers. “How did you get the necklaces?”

He shrugged. “Different ways. The ring that I gave you? I found it in my truck. I’d give ladies a ride from time to time, hitchhikers, you know? I thought one of them must’a dropped it, and I thought it’d be something that you like. A couple of the necklaces and stuff I just picked up here and there, found ’em when I was on my route, but now I know that Schuster must have planted them there for me to find.”

Bex bit her bottom lip. “So he was framing you all along?”

Her father held out his hands, palms up. “I don’t know about that. I just know that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was the type of guy they were looking for. They thought the person who did that must have been nomadic, you know, on the road a lot? Well, I was. The guy would have been big and pretty athletic, and they supposed that he didn’t have a lot of connections keeping him in one place—like he was probably not married. That’s me too. I think I just fit and this Schuster guy jumped at the chance to get himself off the hook and look like a big hero at the same time.”

Her father shook his head, eyes downcast. Even in just the sliver of moonlight streaking in through the window Bex could see how tired he looked, how downtrodden—like a man who knew he never had a chance.

“I couldn’t fight him, Bethy. I just couldn’t.”

Bex scooched closer, for the first time in ten years feeling her father’s warmth beside her, feeling the smooth pull of his arms around her. She breathed him in, his soap and seawater smell, something she didn’t remember but was already starting to love.

“We could end this, Dad. I could help you and then”—she sniffed, tearing up again—“and then we could really be a family.”

He rested his chin on Bex’s head, squeezing her tightly. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Bethy. You and me to be together as a family.” He pulled away, a small, wistful smile on his face.

“Detective Schuster came here, you know. He came to my house. How did you find me, Dad? How did you find me here?”

“So you’ve seen him.”

“Yeah.”

“You got a cell phone on ya?”

Bex nodded, showing it. Her father took it, popped the little compartment open, and took out the SIM card. “He’s probably tracking you with this.”

“No.” Bex shook her head, guilt crashing over her again. She wouldn’t lead Schuster to her father a second time. “I don’t think so.” She pushed the SIM card back in and showed her father as she turned off all location markers.

Her father looked pained, his shoulders slumping. “I can’t stay around here, Bethy. They’re going to find me.”

“No they won’t. I’ll hide you.”

He shook his head. “I gotta move on.”

“Tonight? Right now?”

There was a pause, the air in the cab of the truck heavy and electric.

“Come with me, Bethy.”

She blinked.

“Come with me. Tonight. Right now. We’ll find some town where no one’ll ever know us and become new people and live out our lives. Whaddya think about that, Bethy? I could be, I don’t know, called Howard or Matthew or something.”

“And we could work on your case.”

“Sure.”

It sounded like a good idea. But then Bex thought about Trevor and Laney and Chelsea, and everything else she was leaving behind. “I can’t go with you tonight. I have to say good-bye to someone.”

“Bethy—”

“Friday. It’s Back to School Night. I’ll leave with you on Friday.” She paused, then put her hand on his arm. “Then we can be a family.”

“If only your mother were here to see it.”

Bex felt like she had been punched in the gut. “Mom? Do you think…?”

His eyes were steady on hers, and her voice dropped to a low, terrified whisper.

“Do you think Detective Schuster was the reason Mom left? Do you think he…” Bex couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, to say the words, but a new flare of anger raged up inside her. It was Detective Schuster who had taken everything from her, who had started to dismantle Bex’s family before she was even old enough to read.

She thought of the way he’d removed the lightbulb on her porch and pummeled her, hand over mouth, his calves pinching her rib cage, tightening like a corset, just waiting for her bones to snap. An honest detective wouldn’t have had to trick her. A respectable police officer wouldn’t have wrestled her to the ground in her own home.

She thought about how she’d lain, chin pressed against the carpet, as he dropped the newspaper clipping in front of her. He said he kept it in honor of her. Was it truly a remembrance—or a trophy?