Finding Hannah (18 page)

I looked at Alyssa and thought about the ropes that had bound Hannah’s ankles. I wasn’t allowed to stay when they removed her body. The autopsy showed she died from asphyxiation roughly three weeks earlier, which meant Hannah had lived for almost a month after being kidnapped. I couldn’t imagine the hell she’d gone through the last month of her life. No one would talk to me about what had happened to Hannah, and I hadn’t asked. I’d seen enough to put it together for myself. I didn’t need to know any more.

Any hope of finding the person who had murdered her vanished when investigators found no evidence either on her or around the area where she’d been buried.

The anger I had felt the past weeks was gone, replaced with a peace explained only by the fact that Hannah’s suffering was over. Even as I looked at her casket, my sadness mixed with the tremendous relief of having found her. I had wanted so badly to find Hannah alive in one of the houses Molly and I had watched or in the cave we found. Finding her dead and buried was a possibility I’d refused to accept until I was forced to do so.

Blake Weldon stood in front of her casket for a few minutes while classmates put their hands on his shoulders as they passed by. I remembered him saying he hoped Hannah was still alive when Molly and I came across him and his friends sitting around the campfire in the woods.

Blake spotted me looking at him and walked over to me. “I’m so sorry, Dylan. Hannah didn’t deserve this.” He put his hand on my shoulder and then walked away.

Wiz came with his parents. He greeted me and said, “Hannah was always nice to me.” He also thanked me for finding her. I thanked him for the equipment he loaned me and told him it was helpful. His parents offered their condolences, gave me a hug and told me to stop over anytime.

I spotted Father Whitmore, dressed in his usual priest clerical uniform. He had stopped by our house the night I found Hannah.

He sat down next to me. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay.”

Father Whitmore looked around the room. “Seeing all these people here reminds me of how Hannah affected people’s lives in such a positive way,” he said. “She really was special.”

I nodded.

He told me how Hannah had inspired one of the younger girls in youth group to join the swim team. It made me sad that Molly, who would be joining in the fall, and Hannah would not be teammates.

Father Whitmore spoke for a few more minutes and then stood. “If you ever want to talk, just let me know. I’m available anytime.”

I thanked him, and he went to talk to my parents.

The number of people in the funeral home continued to grow. One of my teachers, who also had Hannah as a student, was talking to me when Amy wrapped both her arms around my leg.

Amy looked up at me with those big brown eyes on the verge of tears. “I don’t want to be here anymore.” I didn’t either.

I nodded and picked her up. I said goodbye to my teacher and found Dad. “Amy and I will be at the park across the street.” He nodded.

I carried Amy outside into a misting gray sky.

Everyone left us alone as we walked to the small park. Amy climbed up the steps to a platform with a large tube connecting it to another platform. She crawled in and lay facedown, burying her head in her arms. I climbed onto the platform and sat down behind a wall to hide myself from those filing in and out of the funeral home. I looked up at the sky, letting the mist hit me in the face.

I thought of Molly, who was still waiting to be released from the hospital, and then I thought about her dad. I remembered the picture of Mr. Beckstrand hugging a much younger Molly and then imagined Hannah and Mr. Beckstrand standing next to each other, looking down on me from heaven. I couldn’t help but smile as I pictured them. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the picture of Hannah and me.

My lip was still healing and the cut on my forehead was almost unnoticeable. The invisible metal band was gone. My joints felt normal again and I could breathe easily for the first time in a long time.

I saw that Amy was shaking from the cold. Molly had been right. I needed to talk to her, but this wasn’t the time. I’d been gone so much since Hannah was taken that I figured Amy must feel like she’d lost both of her siblings. I made a silent promise to help her any way I could.

I covered Amy with my coat. “I’m right here, Amy. I’m not going anywhere. It’s just you and me now.”

* * *

Hannah’s funeral Mass was held the next day at our church. The large crowd forced people to stand in the aisles.

Father Whitmore spoke of Hannah’s love for family, a family who had never given up hope of finding her. He spoke of how Hannah, at a weekend church retreat, had told him of her love of swimming and how excited she was at the prospect of getting her driver’s license.

News cameras were rolling as we left the church and followed the hearse to the cemetery. Amy didn’t leave Dad’s side. When we arrived at the gravesite, she didn’t leave mine. She walked in a daze. I knew she hadn’t gotten much sleep.

Mom sobbed through the whole funeral and cried even harder at the cemetery.

When we arrived home, Amy threw herself on Hannah’s bed and refused to move. She had done the same after the wake.

My aunts and uncles spent the rest of the day at my house helping cook, clean and mostly just show their support. Shawn and I spent several hours in my room swapping stories about Hannah.

Later that night, I sat on the couch alone and looked at the bottom of the stairs. It was the last place I’d seen Hannah alive. I remembered her smile. I walked into my room and stared at the maps on my wall covered in marks and highlights of all the places I’d been. I thought about all the ground Molly and I had covered and how the river had spat me out right where Hannah was buried.

I called Molly in her hospital room and we talked for an hour. Molly had seen video from the funeral on the news. I told her about all the people who had come. Dad and I were to pick up Molly in two days, when she was scheduled to be released. I slept soundly as I thought of seeing her again.

The next morning, I biked to Wiz’s house to return his GPS and night-vision goggles.

“Check this out,” he said, leading me to his room.

We walked in the door and I saw two tables and Wiz’s desk covered in computer parts.

“Imagine, if you will,” he said, “a man shot twenty-five times, then having the man tell you the killer’s name before his heart stops. Only then can you understand the magnitude of what I’ve done.”

He motioned to a table he’d set up next to Becky, his computer. The table was covered in wires, Wiz’s soldering iron, and three multi-meters, which were next to a beat-up metal box which must have come from Molly’s laptop.

“I mean, look at this mess!” Wiz picked up the twisted empty shell that had been Molly’s laptop. “Any shop dealing with memory recovery would have taken one look at this and told you to go screw yourself.” He dropped the laptop shell in the wastebasket with a bang.

“That’s why I didn’t bring it to any ordinary shop,” I said.

“And you were right to bring it to me. I want to show you my masterpiece!” Wiz said, leading me to his desk.

“This is Molly’s old hard drive.” A dented metallic box was connected to a rat’s nest of wires and connectors, which disappeared into a larger metallic box, which was connected to Becky.

“I had to re-solder each connection, because look,” Wiz held up pieces of the old connector, “it’s completely smashed. It took me twenty-four hours of surgery to reconstruct this, and I still didn’t know if I was going to get it to fire up when I flipped the switch.” He pointed to the power supply on his table. “I gave up three times and then came back to it because I refuse to be bested by a piece of crap like this.” He chucked the pieces of the connector in the garbage.

“So were you able to get any info off it?”

“It took me forever, but I got it all. The rest of this laptop is completely screwed. So allow me to introduce you …” Wiz reached under his bed and pulled out a brand-new white laptop with subtle pink flowing veins that reminded me of a piece of marble, “to Aphrodite.”

“Aphrodite?”

“That’s right. Now why Aphrodite you may ask. Because this computer is just beautiful, and so is Molly.”

He flipped it open.

“She is going to love this,” I said.

“This has ten times the performance and a hundred times the storage of the relic she was using. It’s got all the bells and whistles. She’s got a DVD burner, tons of RAM, and the biggest video card I could cram into the shell. This is like upgrading from a Model T to a Ferrari.”

“This is great, but I don’t know if she’s going to be able to pay you for this.”

“Molly’s money is no good at this shop! This one is courtesy of the slumlords.” Wiz smiled. “What they don’t know they’ve purchased won’t hurt them.”

I knew Wiz’s parents would probably be mad when they found out, but I wasn’t going to turn Wiz down. “Molly is going to freak out,” I said. “Your timing is good. I haven’t told you she’s in the hospital.”

“What? What happened?”

I told him about the car accident but didn’t say anything about what she was doing in Boston. I told him Molly’s mom and her mom’s boyfriend died and that she was in the hospital.

“I was wondering why I didn’t see her at the funeral,” Wiz said.

“Dad and I are bringing her back tomorrow.”

“She’s going to stay at your house?”

“Temporarily, until they find her a foster home in the area. They’re working on it now.”

“Either way, a foster home would be a lot better than living with Tony,” Wiz said.

I looked at him. He seemed to realize what he’d just said. “What did you say? How do you know about Tony?” I asked.

“Oh, um, well—.”

“You’ve been reading her journal!”

“Now hold on a minute. I had to make sure the files weren’t corrupted.”

“How much of it did you read?”

“Well ...”

“How much?”

“Okay, okay, I admit I read some of it.”

“How much?”

“Most of it.”

“Wiz—.”

“Now, hold on a minute—.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Before you get mad at me, let me ask you this. A tree didn’t really fall on this laptop, did it?”

Wiz waited a moment for me to respond, then dug the frame out of his garbage can. He held it up. “This thing was hit in multiple places and, last time I checked, trees usually just fall once. This looks like it was attacked by a bat. Am I wrong?”

I opened my mouth to lie, but nothing came out. I sighed. “No. You’re not wrong.”

“Tony did this, didn’t he? Probably pissed off from all those pictures Molly took of those addicts coming to her house. Those were on her hard drive as well, plus she talked about taking the pictures in her journal.”

“Wiz, Molly will love you the rest of her life for saving all of the info off her computer, but don’t say anything to her about this. Please let her tell you what happened if she wants to. As far as she knows, you don’t know anything about what’s in her journal.”

“Fine,” Wiz said, and then he smiled at me. “You know, the last few entries mention you. I think she really likes you.”

“Wiz, please stop. Those letters weren’t meant for us to read.”

“I know, I know,” he said, holding up his hand. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re big-time lucky.”

* * *

Dad and I arrived at Molly’s hospital room the next day just as Dr. Foster was telling her goodbye. Molly greeted me with a big hug. Molly wore new shorts and a shirt I guessed Heidi had gotten for her.

“It’s so good to see you,” I said.

“Thank you for the flowers,” she said.

Dad winked at me while hugging Molly as he pointed to a bouquet near the window.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

The doctor shook Molly’s hand and wished her well. Dad excused himself, saying he’d be back in a minute, leaving Molly and me alone in the room.

“I’ve got something for you that I know you’re going to like,” I said. “Have a seat.”

Molly sat down while I took off my backpack.

“Do you remember how I went to your house to get the penguin and the picture of you and your dad?”

Molly nodded.

I smiled, “That wasn’t all I took. I swiped your broken laptop, too. I took it to Wiz and he, being the genius he is, was able to get all the info off your hard drive and put it on this.” I pulled out the white and pink laptop and placed it in her lap. “This is for you. Wiz wanted you to have it.”

“Oh, my God. Are you serious?” She ran her fingers over it. “This has all my letters to my dad?”

“And everything else from your hard drive.”

Molly stared at me with awe. “That laptop was so smashed. How did he do that?”

I threw up my hands. “That’s why we call him Wiz.”

She turned it on and we saw Wiz had set the background to say,
Aphrodite awaits your command … hurry up and get well soon!

“Aphrodite?” Molly said, rolling her eyes at me.

“It’s Wiz’s way of telling you you’re beautiful, and I couldn’t agree more.”

Molly got up, put the laptop down, and threw her arms around me. “Thank you! Thank you so much! You’re amazing, you know that?”

“And I’m lucky to have amazing friends, and I’m not just talking about Wiz,” I said.

We sat down and I showed her where Wiz put her files and tried to remember all the features Wiz mentioned.

Molly closed the laptop. “How are Amy and your mom doing?”

“Mom is okay. She’s got all her sisters around helping, but Amy … isn’t doing so well.”

“Have you talked to her? Did you apologize?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Dylan,” Molly said, sounding disappointed.

“There were too many people around. I’ll do it soon.”

Molly looked at me. “You swear?”

“I swear. If I can, I’ll do it tonight.”

“She’s your sister. Talk to her. Even if she won’t talk to you, just talk to her.”

“I need to do it, I know.” Molly was right. I’d waited way too long to try and talk to Amy. I promised myself I would do it as soon as possible.

Dad reappeared at the door. “Are you two ready?”