Hiding Place (9781101606759) (23 page)

“But he didn’t tell you he was your brother?” Stynes asked.

Color rose in Janet’s cheeks. “I did something weird,” she said. “I called him ‘Justin.’ When he started to leave, I called out that name to see how he would respond.”

“And?” Stynes asked.

“He said something like, ‘Not yet.’ Whatever that means.”

Ashleigh looked at her mom and said, “So maybe he’s going to tell you soon. Maybe he can’t right now.”

“Why would he not be able to?” Janet asked. “Does someone want to hurt him?”

“Was there anything else, Janet?” Yes, Stynes was more involved with this case than any other. He could admit that to himself. Then all the more reason to remain sharp, to not let the emotion of the Mannings possess him and interfere with finding out what he needed to learn. “Anything he said or did that might be pertinent?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he talk about anything from your childhood? Did he ask about your parents or other family members?”

Janet swallowed. She lowered her voice. “He said his mother was dead. And that his father didn’t care about him.”

Even Stynes felt a chill on his neck when he heard that. The room grew quiet. Someone needed to break the tension, and to his credit, the kid, Kevin, did.

“Detective?” he said.

Stynes looked up.

“Didn’t you do a DNA test on the body you found in the woods back then? Or something?”

“We didn’t do DNA testing back then. I know it’s hard for you kids to understand, but it just didn’t exist.”

Ashleigh said, “I always hear about bodies being checked with dental X-rays.”

“Your uncle was so young when he died that he’d never had dental X-rays taken.”

“Then how did you know it was him?” Ashleigh asked.

Stynes resisted the urge to tell the two teenagers to keep their mouths shut and quit bothering the grown-ups. But they were right. People were going to be asking the same types of questions once the news broke. And it would break. Yes, it would.

“Justin disappeared from that park,” he said. “We found the body of a child in the woods near that park. The remains were the same approximate age and size as Justin Manning. We had a suspect. We had witnesses, including Janet here. That’s how we make a case.”

But the words didn’t ring true as they came out of Stynes’s mouth. He felt like an actor reading from a script he thought was terribly written. None of it made sense. None of it at all, unless Stynes believed that this Kollman/Manning guy was just a nutjob who wanted to harass the family of a crime victim.

But Stynes had never heard of such elaborate manipulation. If the guy was just a nut, he was so far out there the scale would need to be recalibrated.

Stynes stood up. “I have to go. We’re going to head over to this Kollman guy’s apartment, see if there’s anything else we can use to help establish his real identity. I suspect he doesn’t mean to do any of you any harm. If he wanted to, he would have done so already. But I’m going to ask the officers who patrol around
here to keep a special eye on this house. You never know. At the very least, he’s probably guilty of harassment and identity theft. If he comes around, call us.”

Janet looked at Stynes. “What if he needs our help?” she asked. “Are you saying I should not have contact with the man who might be my brother?”

“I’m asking you to be careful, Janet. Just be careful.”

“Detective?” Janet said.

“Yes?”

“The other day with the reporter and then tonight—I was right, wasn’t I?”

“About what?”

“You don’t think Dante did it.”

Stynes couldn’t lie. But he wasn’t ready to admit anything because too many things were coming at him at once.

“Let’s just say, things appear to be in a state of flux right now. And do me a favor? Keep the doors locked. And if anything happens after I’m gone, make sure you share it with me this time.”

Janet went down the hall to the closed door of her father’s bedroom. Everyone else had left—Stynes to pursue evidence against both the man who’d assaulted Ashleigh and the man who might be Justin, Kevin back to his home and his family. Janet thought about leaving the old man alone, leaving him to stew in the bed-room with his own miserable thoughts, whatever they might be.

But she couldn’t just walk away from him. Something had changed, something profound. Justin might be alive. And in the wake of their earlier conversation, the one in which the darkest thoughts Janet had ever experienced about her father came to her mind, she felt a need to see her father’s face, to know how the news Ashleigh brought home affected him.

She heard the TV playing through the closed door. When she and Ashleigh had moved in, her dad had immediately gone out and bought his own television for the bedroom, something that allowed him to retreat from the shared living space of the house and be alone. He’d done this with more and more frequency in the six months since he’d stopped actively looking for work. And until that night, Janet rarely disturbed him. She rapped lightly, expecting an immediate response. But none came.

She knocked louder.

“Dad?”

Still nothing.

She placed her hand on the knob but didn’t turn it. Even as a kid, she wouldn’t have gone into her parents’ room when the door was closed. She couldn’t bring herself to do it as an adult. And a part of her felt relief. If he wanted to lock himself away, that was his problem.

But she’d let him off the hook so many times, given him so much space just to make his life easier and less confrontational. And, Janet had to be honest, to make her life easier as well. She didn’t want to tap into whatever the old man was thinking, so she avoided it. But the time for avoidance was past.

She made a fist and used it like a club, rapping against the door. The volume on the TV dropped and the door opened. Her dad stood there, still dressed, but his hair mussed in the back.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I want to know what you think of all this now,” she demanded.

“Oh, Janet—”

“No, you can’t just turn away,” she said. “Tell me something about tonight. What do you think about the fact that Justin might still be alive? Just say something.”

“I think it’s unfortunate that all of this is stirring your fantasies,” he said.

He tried to close the door, but Janet put her hand out and stopped it.

“This isn’t going to go away, Dad. We’re in the middle of it now, and we’re going to know something. Finally. We can’t avoid it.”

He met her eye and stopped trying to close the door. “I know that as well as you do, Janet.”

She let go of the door and straightened up. They stared at each other across a distance that felt much greater than the physical space separating them.

“I have to go somewhere tonight,” Janet said.

“So go.”

“I wouldn’t go anywhere if it wasn’t important,” she said. “But there’s someone I need to talk to.”

“The cop?”

“No. Michael Bower.”

“Jesus.” He rolled his eyes. “What’s he doing in town?”

Since the real explanation seemed too complicated, Janet made it short and sweet. “He’s visiting his mother. And I want to talk to him about everything that’s been happening. He’s a good friend, Dad.”

“That cop said not to leave the house.”

“He said to be careful,” Janet said. “I’m just going to see Michael—that’s it. But I didn’t want to leave without talking to you.” She lowered her voice. “I’m worried about Ashleigh. I
don’t
want her leaving the house.”

“So? Tell her.”

“I will, Dad. But I’m asking you to help, too. That man, he’s been hanging around our house. Make sure Ashleigh doesn’t go anywhere. Can you do that for me? Or do it for her if that makes it easier.”

His face lost some of its hard edges. He nodded. “But you shouldn’t be out running around either. Who knows what this maniac is doing.”

Janet recognized that her father had just issued the strongest statement of concern he could muster.

“Thanks, Dad.”

He left the bedroom door open but turned the sound on the TV up without saying anything else.

Janet stopped outside the door to Ashleigh’s room, which was, as usual, closed and probably locked. Janet tried to remember when Ashleigh started retreating to her room and shutting herself in. Had she been eleven? Twelve? Janet remembered the disappointment she felt when Ashleigh began locking herself away. Janet had hoped that she would have a few more years of a preteen daughter, a little more time before the full force of adolescence hit the house. But that wasn’t to be. Ashleigh walked her own path and kept her own counsel.

Obviously.

Janet didn’t know whether to be impressed or terrified that her daughter had managed to keep such a huge secret for so long. Well, she thought, raise an independent kid and suffer the consequences.

She knocked on the door and wondered why she was always knocking on someone else’s door inside the house. Did they ever come and knock for her? Or was she always the one reaching out?

Janet thought she heard Ashleigh say she could come in, so she did, only to be greeted by a scrambling on the bed.

“Jesus, Mom,” Ashleigh said.

“I thought you said to come in. I’m sorry.”

Ashleigh tucked something away beneath her pillow, a scrap of paper or a note. Janet wouldn’t have been able to tell what it was anyway, but if Ashleigh felt better hiding it, so be it. Probably a love note from Kevin, if Janet had to guess.

Despite her secretive nature, there were times Janet saw
Ashleigh as the kid she still was. Lying on the bed, wearing a pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt, Ashleigh looked small, vulnerable even. Janet couldn’t forget the danger the girl had found herself in earlier that day and decided right then that she wasn’t going to leave the house, that Michael could come here or they’d talk on the phone or something. But she couldn’t leave her daughter alone. Not so soon.

“What?” Ashleigh said.

“It’s nice to see you, too.”

Ashleigh smirked. “I mean, what are you doing here?”

“Remember when you came home today and you were so sweet and emotional and vulnerable? Remember that girl?”

“You’re not funny, Mom.”

“I thought I was,” Janet said. “I was coming to tell you that I was going out for a little bit, but I changed my mind.”

“So you’re coming to tell me that you changed your mind?”

“I guess.”

Ashleigh looked at the clock, then back at her mom. “It’s almost nine. Where would you go anyway?”

“I was going to see a friend of mine.”

Ashleigh looked even more puzzled. Janet understood that the notion that her mother had friends, let alone friends she would socialize with on a weeknight, seemed too much to imagine. Real friends? People she had fun with? No way.

“Michael Bower,” Janet said. “You know who he is, right?”

Ashleigh perked up, suddenly interested. “Your friend,” she said. “He was in the park that day.”

“That’s right.”

“Why aren’t you going to see him?”

Janet came farther into the room, stopping at the foot of Ashleigh’s bed. “Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” Janet said. “Not after today. I just don’t think it would be right.”

“Does he know anything about what happened to Justin?” Ashleigh asked.

Janet wasn’t sure how to answer that. “He certainly has some questions about what happened that day.”

“Then you should go.”

“Why are you so certain about this?”

“What if he knows something? What if it helps?”

What if he does? But everything Michael said ran counter to what they’d found out earlier. Michael thought his father was involved in the crime, not that Justin was still alive. But Janet also knew that a part of her—a bigger part than she cared to admit—wasn’t just going out to discuss Justin’s disappearance with Michael. She wanted to see him and would have whether there had been a break in the case or not. The news about the case just gave her a bit of cover when she showed up at his house asking to see him.

“I don’t know,” Janet said.

“Mom, I’m not a kid. Look at what I did today.”

That’s what worries me,
Janet thought. Ashleigh didn’t quite know the location of the line between stupid and brave.

“Grandpa’s home,” Janet said. “I told him I was going out and to keep an eye on you.”

“I’ll bet he’s thrilled.”

“He’ll keep an ear out. He likes you.”

“I’ll probably be asleep in an hour,” Ashleigh said. “It’s been a long day.”

Before Janet left, she said, “It was nice of Kevin to come home with you today.”

Ashleigh nodded.

“Maybe we should have him over for dinner some night. You two used to spend a lot of time together at our house, but now I hardly ever see him.”

“This isn’t our house,” Ashleigh said.

“It
is
our house. Now. And I grew up here. What do you say? Should we have Kevin over for dinner some night? Maybe play a game or something? I feel like I should see more of him since you two are so close.”

“I can tell you’re fishing,” Ashleigh said. “We’re just friends.”

At the door, Janet stopped and looked back. “Hey,” she said. “Are you worried about me? The police said I should stay home.”

Ashleigh gave Janet a long look. She really seemed to be considering her mother, weighing her pros and cons and making a balanced judgment.

“I think you’ll be okay.”

“Because I’m tough like you?”

Ashleigh tried to hide the little smile that grew across her face. “No, because there are cops outside and if the bogeyman tries to get you, they’ll save the day. You’ll be fine.”

Janet smiled. “Are you sure
you’re
okay?”

“I am. Are you?”

“Yes, I think I’m getting there.”

It was high summer, and even after nine o’clock in western Ohio a faint tint of pink remained at the horizon. They were just past the longest day of the year, and as Janet stepped outside into the warm night, she was aware of the slow unwinding of the days, the sense that summer could go on forever.

But she was old enough to know that it wouldn’t. Even then, the days were starting to reverse, the daylight growing incrementally shorter until it was time for Ashleigh to go back to school and time for the students to return to Cronin.