The Forgotten Girl (16 page)

Jason returned to work the next day. Nora took one more day off, agreeing to stay home with Sierra, to keep a close eye on her and try to distract her from thinking about Hayden. Jason felt conflicted. On the one hand, he worried that he should be staying home with Sierra as well, that it might take both of them to keep his niece distracted. On the other hand, he welcomed the chance to get away, to feel like some aspect of his life was returning to normal. When his mind started down the track that asked the question
What if Hayden never comes back?
he tried to turn his thoughts in another direction.

He spent that Monday playing catch-up. E-mails. Page after page of e-mails. He deleted most of them. He went to a couple of meetings. The people he worked with didn’t know why he had been gone lately, and he didn’t tell them. He let them think he’d been sick, laid low by a stomach virus or something. They didn’t know much about his personal life or his family—or anything about Hayden and Sierra. He wanted it to stay that way. The little bit that ran in the paper used Hayden’s married name—Borders—so people couldn’t make the connection between them. The situation with Hayden had been years in the making. It felt like it might take years to unravel again.

He did make one phone call. He dialed Colton at his office.
Jason had tried Colton’s cell phone twice the day before, hoping to understand how and why the miscommunication occurred about the body found on the Bluff. But Colton hadn’t answered. When he called the law office and told the receptionist who he was, he expected to be put off again. Instead the call went through, and Jason found himself greeted by Colton’s mellow voice.

“Hey, buddy.”

Colton sounded relaxed, a man without a care in the world. And maybe he didn’t have any. A wife, a couple of kids, plenty of money. A secure future. No disappearing siblings. No questions about what the future might bring. Colton was home. Always at home. All of these things irritated Jason. He wanted Colton to feel as uncertain as he did.

“I left you a couple of messages yesterday,” Jason said.

“I know, I know. Crazy Sunday. Family stuff left and right.”

“You said you would let me know what you found out up on the Bluff. I never heard from you. Instead Olsen told me it wasn’t my sister’s body up there at all. You turned our whole house upside down. Sierra thought her mother died.”

Jason felt his voice starting to break as he spoke. The emotion came unexpectedly, and he cut off his words before he said or showed more.

“I know, I know,” Colton said, his voice soothing and lawyerly. “That’s all my fault. I can’t apologize enough for that foul-up.”

“Foul-up? It’s more than that.”

“I can only apologize, okay? Look, think about it from my point of view. I was up there, and I heard that they’d found a body. I figured it was Hayden, and I thought to myself that rather than you hearing the news in an impersonal manner from some cop, you’d rather hear it from a friend. That’s why I came over, okay? I overstepped a little. You’re right. Hell, I already got a visit
this morning from Detective Olsen. He gave me a verbal spanking. I’m chastened. Really, I am.”

Jason’s temperature cooled. Venting at Colton brought some relief, and then hearing that Olsen had stepped in made him feel even better. At least someone in a position of authority was keeping Colton in line. Jason wasn’t sure anybody could.

“What is your interest in all of this, Colton?”

“My interest? You know. You all are my friends, people I grew up with. This is my community. If things are going on, I want to know. I want to help if I can.”

“Is this a campaign ad, Colton?”

There was a pause. “Now, that’s a low blow, Jason. There’s no call to say that to me.”

Jason agreed. He didn’t like the hurt-puppy routine Colton was pulling. It felt like something his mother would do when he talked back—act hurt instead of angry—and Jason never thought that was fair. But it was effective. He didn’t know why he was taking shots at Colton. The guy had apologized. What else did Jason want?

“Okay, I’m sorry too. It’s been a long few days.”

“I know,” Colton said. “I hear you. I can see it’s been a terrible time for your family. But at least . . . Well, I don’t want to say it’s good news, but at least you didn’t get the worst news about Hayden. Right?”

Jason tried to see it in a positive light. He’d been trying for twenty-four hours to get to that place. “Yeah.”

“That’s about all we can do,” Colton said.

“Say, Colton, do you remember anything about Logan and Hayden in high school? I mean, did you ever suspect the two of them were a couple?”

“Hayden and Logan?” Colton said. “She was always with
Derrick—that’s all I know for sure. She certainly liked other guys. We all knew that. You know, I was never really on the inside with that crowd. I wasn’t really on the inside with any crowd. I might have been the last guy to know back then who was going with who.” He paused. “What are you getting at? You think Hayden might know something about Logan?”

“I guess I’m just thinking of everything,” he said. “Every angle.”

“That’s natural,” Colton said. “Speaking of other angles . . . they found this body up on the Bluff. A skeleton.”

“Right.”

“Jason, have you thought about who that might be?”

Jason had thought about it plenty, turning it over in his mind like the churned earth of an excavated grave. “You mean Logan.”

“I do.”

“How could that be?” Jason asked.

“I don’t know. I just don’t. Well, I’m sure we’ll be talking about this more. If you need anything else from me, just let me know. And if I hear anything, I’ll give you a call.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“And don’t worry about the poster.”

“The what?”

“The poster for the summer festival. Don’t worry about it.”

It had slipped Jason’s mind, the reason he ended up having lunch with Colton in the first place right before everything started to happen.

“I can get back to it soon.”

“Like I said, don’t worry. The committee found a company in town that can do it. You’ve got enough on your plate. Really.”

After he hung up, Jason decided that Colton had never wanted him to do the poster in the first place. He just wanted an excuse to ask about Logan.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Jason left work just before seven o’clock. Only a few cars remained in the parking lot, and they likely belonged to members of the cleaning crew who came through the offices during the evening and overnight. On the factory side of the complex, which Jason couldn’t see, the lot would be full. The factory workers went twenty-four hours a day manufacturing the cupcakes and pastries that were then shipped around the world.

Jason carried his keys in one hand and a satchel full of work in the other. A dented pickup truck sat two spaces down from his car, one of its taillights broken. Jason unlocked his doors with the remote and threw his bag in the backseat. As he closed the back and opened the front, the driver’s side door of the pickup swung open. Jason barely glanced up. He slid into his seat, ducking his head a little, and pulled his door shut. Before he could lock the car—something he always did, even in Ednaville—someone pulled the passenger door open and came into the car with him.

Jason jumped. He turned his body a few degrees, so that he faced the passenger side of the car. The man wore a baseball cap, a flannel shirt, and a denim jacket. Jason saw his face in profile. It was unshaven, and the nose in its center stood out like a blade.
The thought crossed Jason’s mind:
I’m being robbed. This is how it happens when someone gets robbed.

Jason hadn’t even buckled his seat belt yet. He grabbed for the door handle, hoping to push it open and get out. But the man reached a long arm across the cabin of the car and clamped down on Jason’s wrist.

“Don’t,” the man said.

He didn’t shout or yell. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded certain, like all he needed to do was say one word and Jason would obey. And Jason did. His hand went slack, and the man’s talonlike grip eased.

“You can have my wallet,” Jason said.

The man let go of Jason’s arm completely. “I don’t want your wallet. Or your car.”

Jason took in the face under the cap. There was something familiar about it. And then the man leaned back in the passenger seat, and he pushed the hat back on his head, revealing more. It had been nearly twenty-seven years, but Jason knew the face right away. Older. More wrinkled. A scar ran from the corner of the left eye out to his hairline. But he knew the face.

He was sitting in the car with Jesse Dean Pratt.

*   *   *

Jason’s heart thumped. “Where’s my sister?” he asked.

Jesse Dean acted like he hadn’t heard. He wasn’t even looking at Jason. He stared out the front windshield of the car as though he were contemplating the scenery. And there was nothing to see out there. Just parking lot and buildings. Few cars. And no people. Jason realized he was sitting on his phone. He had stuffed it in his back pants pocket before leaving the office.

“Where is she?” he asked again.

“Shut up,” Jesse Dean said, looking over. He still didn’t sound angry. By not raising his voice, he seemed more menacing to Jason, like the quiet before a bad storm.

Nobody said anything. Jesse Dean looked at Jason, studying him, then passed his eyes over the interior of the car. He shook his head. “I don’t even think I remember you from school. Are you sure you went there with me?”

“I was a little behind you,” Jason said, picking up the scent of cigarettes and a trace of alcohol, as though the liquid were leaking through Jesse Dean’s pores.

The man made a noise low in his throat. It might have been a laugh. “I was behind everybody.”

“You knew my sister, Hayden Danvers.”

“I knew her,” he said. “Sure. She told me she had a brother. I remember some skinny kid with preppy clothes. She’d point you out and say, ‘That’s my big brother,’ and I’d think,
That little turd is related to Hayden?
” He shook his head. “You never can tell, though. I have a cousin who’s a history professor at Ohio State. I bet you can’t believe that, can you?”

“Sure.”

“Sure you can’t or sure you can?”

“I can believe it.”

“I can too. Guy was always an asshole.”

Jesse Dean’s voice carried the country twang that a lot of the locals spoke with, and beneath that, his voice possessed the husky timbre of someone who had smoked for many years. Jason imagined that mornings for Jesse Dean consisted of a lot of coughing and throat clearing. Despite his calm demeanor, Jesse Dean gave off a sense of power. He looked like a man ready to fight, someone who didn’t doubt his ability to prevail in a physical confrontation.

“What do you want?” Jason asked.

“What do I want? What do
you
want? You’re the guy who showed up at my house, bothering my wife. For all I know, you’re the one who sent the cops around. So let me ask you—what’s your problem? You’re wanting to know where Hayden is?”

“That’s a start.”

“I don’t know where she is,” Jesse Dean said. “Knowing her, she probably fell into a bottle somewhere.”

“She was with you. Someone saw you together.”

“A few days ago? Sure, I hung out with her a little bit. She came back into town and looked me up. We used to be friends, so we went out the one night. That’s it. We had a good time, and then we moved on. Maybe she went back to that little house of hers in Redman County.”

“You’ve been there?”

“I know things.”

“Was Hayden drinking?” Jason asked.

Jason couldn’t look at Jesse Dean after he asked that question. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Which do you care about more?” Jesse Dean asked. “Where she is, or if she was drinking?”

“You already said you don’t know where she is,” Jason said.

“Let’s just say that some things about Hayden seemed different. She was older. Not quite as sexy as she used to be, but that happens with age. Her clothes were better. But she still knew how to have a good time. I’d say it’s hardwired into her, like in her genes or something, but that must have skipped you.”

“Did she say where she was going when she left?” Jason asked.

“Nope. And I don’t care. You shouldn’t either. You can go
back to your nice little life here and to your house with your wife and your niece—”

Jason looked up at the mention of Sierra.

“I know the girl’s staying with you,” Jesse Dean said. “Hayden told me.” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “She told me she figures you and your wife think you’d be better parents for the girl anyway, seeing as how you have some money and jobs and stability and all that. Hayden . . . well, if she’s here partying, she’s probably not doing much to hold on to that job she has in the dentist’s office in Redman County, is she?”

“Was Derrick with you? Have you seen him?”

“Derrick?” Jesse Dean scrunched his forehead as though he was trying to place the name and match it to a face. “He lives in Indiana. He’s a Hoosier now.”

“So you haven’t seen him?”

“He’s your brother-in-law. Ex, I guess.”

Jason felt both physically and emotionally lower. He sank into the seat, his shoulders slumping as if under pressure. He said, “They found Hayden’s car up at the Bluff. The keys were still in it, and there was some blood on the seat and in the trunk. We don’t know where she is, and we’re worried about her. She has a daughter. You have to understand that. Do you have any children?”

Jesse Dean considered Jason for a moment. Then he said, “I have a boy. He’s up in Michigan with his mom.”

“So you understand that it’s important for Hayden to get back to her daughter. Her daughter needs her. Now, do you have any idea where she went? Or where she might be?”

Jesse Dean used his index finger to trace random patterns on the passenger-side window. Jason thought he wasn’t going to say anything else or answer the question, but eventually he lowered
his hand into his lap and said, “I have a theory about these things. They have a way of working themselves out.”