Familiar Lies (9 page)

He started with the Internet and it didn’t take long.

A few web searches brought him to websites featuring missing and exploited teens. He narrowed down the results based on general area, returning a grid of nine faces per page. There were eight pages of results.

As Max sifted through the photos he found that most of them were female; children, pre-teens and teenagers alike. When Josh was young, Katie did periodic Internet checks on registered sex offenders living within a twenty-mile radius of their neighborhood. Maybe one out of a hundred had been female, the rest of them all had been men. Max thought about Gabe and the still unidentified Caldwell and he wondered just what in the hell was wrong with men.

On page four Max stopped cold. There was no mistaking Amanda’s photo. It stared back at him from the third row on the left, her smile wide and her eyes bright. A pretty young girl, not the spaced out shell of a person he’d seen on the video. The website had her age listed at sixteen when she’d disappeared a year ago.

Her last name was Potter. Amanda Elizabeth Potter.

A pretty name for a girl who Max feared was probably now dead.

But at least he had a name now and that was a hell of a lot more than he’d had an hour ago. Max opened a new tab in the browser and searched for Amanda by her full name. Those results came back instantly, the first in the list being a Facebook page dedicated to finding her. He found a contact page with a form he could fill out, should he have any information leading to the search and recovery effort underway.

Recovery, not rescue. Even her parents thought she was dead.

Max stared at the blank form, but his fingers froze. He had no idea what to say or where to begin. How could he tell them what he’d seen on that video? And how could he prove it? He didn’t even have the DVD anymore. He had nothing to offer in the way of proof, outside his statement and the address of the basement where the video had been filmed.

Maybe it would be better to say nothing. Amanda’s parents would never know what happened to their daughter and maybe that was a good thing. If she was never coming back to them, did it make it any better to know the terrible things she’d done?

But as he considered that notion, he realized how important it had been for him to know what happened to Josh. It wouldn’t bring his son back, but Max would know.

And he might just have a chance to make somebody pay for it.

He had an obligation to tell Amanda’s story, horrific as it might be. Max began typing, clicking the send button before he could second-guess himself.

* * *

Max napped for a few hours. By the time he awoke, night had fallen. He reached for the lamp beside the bed and flipped it on. The energy-saving fluorescent bulb burned dimly, casting the room in a pale, artificial glow.

As he sat up and attempted to get his bearings, he rubbed his eyes and allowed them to adjust to the brightening light. A minute or so passed and he stood, taking a much-needed bathroom break before sitting down at the laptop again.

He checked his email to find a response from Amanda’s mother waiting. He froze, staring at the subject line, not wanting to open the message. He almost wished now he hadn’t sent it.

But he had sent it, so he opened it. He read the email wherein Liz Potter told him to contact the police with his information because they could no longer sift through false leads. She provided the name of a local homicide detective, Jack Cook, along with his number, before thanking Max for his time.

He had more than a false lead; Max had a smoking gun. He only needed to convince Mrs. Potter of it. He thought back to the video, fighting through the disgust that came with it and retrieved a piece of information from memory that he thought might persuade Liz Potter to meet with him.

The surgery scar on Amanda’s abdomen.

Twenty minutes later Max found himself in his car, on his way to meet Liz Potter.

Liz Potter was a year younger than Max though she looked five years younger. Random strands of gray hair intermingled with an otherwise jet-black mane of long, curly hair that stretched just past her shoulders. Tiny crow’s feet formed around her eyes when she smiled at him, a perfunctory gesture at best. Max couldn’t necessarily blame her for not trusting him. Had the circumstances been reversed, he wouldn’t be so sure that he’d have even agreed to meet.

After their introductions and a handshake, they both sat. Liz had agreed to meet him at the closest restaurant, which in this case happened to be a Waffle House. It would do in a pinch. A waitress behind the counter placed two napkins on the table, followed by a knife, fork, and spoon on top. Liz ordered coffee, Max ordered coffee and wheat toast.

“Thank you for meeting me,” Max said after the waitress left their table. “Is your husband coming?”

“Ex-husband.” Liz appeared nervous and apprehensive. “He’s out of town at the moment.”

“I see.”

“Your information,” Liz said, getting right to the point, “tell me what you know.” She seemed to nearly come out of her seat with anticipation.

Max began the story. He told Liz Potter about Josh, his suspicious death and the letter found in his son’s room. He told her about Ruby, how he’d followed Gabe to the house and the DVD he’d found with Amanda’s name scribbled in black marker. At some point during the conversation, the waitress returned with two cups of coffee and the wheat toast.

When he described the video Liz came apart. He gave her time to recover as she blotted her eyes with cheap Waffle House napkins. He mentioned the scar he’d seen and where it had been on her body. He needed her to believe him, he needed her to know this wasn’t some crackpot story made up by a lonely father in an attempt to get attention.

After Liz had regained some of her composure she mentioned the scar. “She had her appendix out when she was eleven. She was always self-conscious about the scar.” She paused, thinking. “Where is the DVD now?”

Max told her the truth. “I’d give it to you if I had it,” he added, but it felt hollow.

“Why didn’t you take it to the police?” Liz asked. “You had those assholes, dead to rights.”

Max shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was afraid they’d arrest me.”

“Why would they do that?”

“A middle-aged divorced man in possession of a video like that? Cops are only interested in getting arrests, no matter how they come.”

“That’s not true.”

“Maybe not, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s gone, my house is trashed and I’m living out of a hotel room because I’m afraid that someone might try to kill me. Maybe cut me some slack.”

Liz sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. This whole thing—”

“It’s a clusterfuck.”

Max chuckled. Liz smiled in return. None of this was funny, not in the least, but the laughter came from a place of stress and exhaustion and was much-needed. He’d been through so much and he was sure Liz had been through even more.

Liz leaned back in the booth and sipped her coffee. “This is a lot to take in.”

“I understand.”

“I was going to tell you that you don’t understand. I say that all the time to people because they can’t understand what it’s like to lose your only child.” She looked at him closely. “But you can, can’t you?”

Max looked her in the eye for a few uncomfortable seconds. “Did you and your husband divorce after Amanda disappeared?”

“Six years before. We made it twelve years, but the last few years of the marriage were tough. We grew apart. You?”

“I guess Katie and I grew apart too. We just didn’t realize it until after Josh died.” He paused. “Or maybe I just didn’t notice.”

“We lost Amanda years before she actually disappeared. She was moody, distant. We thought it was a phase. Normal teenage stuff, you know?”

Max said he did.

“I had all the best intentions. I ask myself all the time what happened. What went wrong. I never get an answer I’m satisfied with.” Several more uncomfortable seconds passed as Liz stared into her coffee. Max took a bite of the toast and chewed absentmindedly as their waitress returned and refreshed the coffee.

“What happens now?” Liz asked.

“I guess that’s up to you. You know what I know. You can go to the police if you want, to that detective who’s working Amanda’s case.”

“Detective Cook.”

“Yeah. I’ll agree to talk to him. I owe you that much for losing the video.”

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know they’d come for it.”

“I should have. I underestimated these people.”

“What are you going to do now? You can’t live in a hotel forever.”

“I have some more leads to follow up on. I want something solid to give to the cops, something actionable.”

Liz opened a container of cream and dumped it in the coffee. She stared into the dark brew as she stirred it with a spoon. “I could help.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked up at him. “Getting information. Getting leads. Finding something solid to give to the cops.”

Max shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You don’t have to ask. I want to.”

“Look, Mrs. Potter—”

“Liz.”

“Liz, this is getting dangerous. The best thing for you to do is contact that detective and let the cops handle it.”

Liz looked at him, cocking her head to the side. “You seem to be able to give advice, but not quite as able to follow it.”

“But I’m right and you know it. You should go to the cops.”

“That’s what you think you should tell me to do.”

“It’s what you
should
do.”

“What should
you
do then?”

Max found that he couldn’t answer.

“I want to find these motherfuckers,” Liz said, her eyes cold. “I want to make them pay. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want the same thing.”

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Max sat in the driver’s seat of his car in the parking lot of the Waffle House, with Liz beside him in the passenger seat.

“Her name is Vanessa Simmons,” he said. “She had a relationship with Josh.”

“Wasn’t your son a minor?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Good, because I sure as hell don’t.”

“What did she say when you confronted her?”

“That it was a mistake. Same as what Josh said.” Max removed Josh’s letter from his back pocket and handed it to Liz.

She opened the letter and read through it twice before handing it back to Max. “This letter…how much of it do you think is true?”

“You don’t think it’s all true?”

“I’m not saying your son was a born liar, Max, but he was caught up in something bad. Same as Amanda. She lied to her father and me, mostly to cover up the shit storm she’d found herself in.”

“I see.”

“What I mean is that it’s done for self-preservation. Our kids got themselves into something that most adults couldn’t handle. Hell, I don’t know that I’m handling it even now. So it begs the question as to whether or not Josh might have been fibbing in that letter.”

“Lying to who?”

“Who knows? I just think that we need to take some of this stuff with a grain of salt. Confirm our suspicions first. Be methodical.”

“Sure. That’s reasonable.” He remembered Vanessa saying that Josh tended to make things up and wondered how right she might actually be.

“You’re too close to your son to see things objectively. I can try to provide some objectivity. I’d ask you to do the same with me when it comes to Amanda. Deal?”

Max nodded. He found this very much agreeable. “Deal.”

“Back to this Vanessa…she knows more than she’s letting on, I think.”

“How do you figure?”

“Only when you pressed on her did she offer up something actually valuable.”

“But she did open up.”

“Some, it seems. But did she tell you everything?”

“I assumed she did. Why would she continue to hold out?”

“She’s afraid. Probably ashamed too. The fewer secrets she tells you the less she has to face up to what she did. And if she’s convinced that you think she’s not going to provide you with anything useful then you’re more likely to leave her alone. She wants to forget what happened and move on. Understandable, but it’s not that easy.”

“If you’re right then I want to know what she’s still hiding. There’s something about a cabin and some more girls in that letter. She told me she didn’t know what that meant, but now I’m not so sure that’s true.”

“Then let’s pay miss Vanessa a visit.”

Max started the car and backed out of the parking lot, leaving Liz’s car behind.

Max and Liz arrived at a crime scene.

Yellow police tape roped off the Simmons’s front door and windows, along with the entire front yard of the house. A crowd of looky-loos had gathered at the tape’s edge while a few uniformed police officers stood with arms crossed, maintaining the perimeter.

“What the hell?” Max said as he parked the car at the edge of the subdivision street a block away.

Liz watched the scene. “Doesn’t look good.”

Max surveyed the scene closely. In addition to the perimeter police tape, he saw two squad cars alongside an unmarked police cruiser parked outside the residence. The front door stood open as uniformed officers moved around inside, visible through the large front windows.

A vehicle drove past, drawing Max’s attention. On the back, he read a single word that froze him where he sat.

Coroner.

He glanced at Liz and she returned it, neither speaking as they watched the ambulance-sized vehicle park in front of the house. Two men dressed similarly to EMTs got out of the front and unloaded a gurney from the back. After dropping the wheels they rolled it past the onlookers and under the yellow tape, disappearing into the house.

“They got to her,” Max said. “This is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault. Besides, you don’t even know what happened.”

“The coroner only shows up for one reason.”

“It’s still not your fault.”

“She told me to leave well enough alone. She told me this would happen.” He studied the scene unfolding before him, sick to his stomach. “She’s dead because of me. Maybe her entire family is dead too.”