The Forgotten Girl (25 page)

Jason waited again in Colton’s office. He walked over there after leaving the police station. He didn’t bother to call first. He didn’t want Colton to duck him. He had no reason to think the lawyer was intentionally avoiding him, but Jason hadn’t heard anything from him for a couple of days.

The waiting room in Colton’s office suite was well-appointed. A middle-aged receptionist handled the phones, and magazines about financial planning and retirement were fanned out across a coffee table in an order too casual to be anything but staged. Jason couldn’t think of any subject more boring than those. He crossed his legs and jiggled his foot in the air. After ten minutes, the receptionist’s phone buzzed. She listened for a moment, said, “Yes, sir,” and then stood up and led Jason through a wooden door and down a long hallway to Colton’s office, where the lawyer stood in the doorway, a smile on his face, when Jason arrived.

“Come in, bud,” he said.

Jason did, and Colton closed the door behind them. Colton lumbered to the other side of his desk and clicked a few things on his computer before turning away and looking at Jason. Colton wore a white shirt and a red tie, the knot pushing against his neck and creating a bulge of cleanly shaven skin.

“How’ve you been?” he asked in his best sincere voice. “Heck of a few days for news, isn’t it? I’m deeply sorry to hear about Logan. I know you two were close. I know it must be tough.”

“Thank you,” Jason said.

“It’s a real gut punch,” Colton said.

“I went out there the day I heard the news.”

“To the Bluff?”

“To the Shaws’ house.”

“Oh.” Colton perked up a little. “What were you doing out there?”

“I know I should have been going to offer sympathy or whatever to the old man, but I had my own agenda. I wanted to see those cards that the old man got from Logan. Have you ever seen them?”

Colton shook his head. He wore a cautious look on his face. “No, I haven’t.”

“I talked to Pauline, the housekeeper.”

“What did
she
say?”

“Nothing. You don’t sound like you like her.”

“She’s fine,” Colton said, although he clearly thought she wasn’t. “Mr. Shaw would never let anyone remove her from her position in the household. It’s confidential, obviously, but he’s made provisions for her in his will. She’ll be well taken care of.” Colton drummed his fingers on the desktop. “What about the letters?” he asked. “You saw them?”

“Pauline showed some of them to me, the ones the police hadn’t taken.”

“And?”

“Obviously they weren’t written by Logan.”

“I could figure that out,” Colton said. “Do you know who did write them?”

“Hayden.”

Colton mostly maintained his poker face. His eyes shifted just a bit, a quick glance away and then back to Jason. “Hayden,” he said, almost under his breath. “That is a surprise.” The phone trilled on Colton’s desk. He looked irritated as he picked it up and said, “Yes.” He listened for a moment, then sighed. “Ten minutes.” He hung up. “Sorry,” he said. “I have a meeting at city hall. So, Hayden sent those cards. It makes sense in some ways. She was kind of a rolling stone, and I’ve heard that those cards came from all over the country.”

“Exactly.”

“But the question would be why she’d do it. Who would she be helping?”

“What about Mrs. Shaw?” Jason asked.

“What about her?”

“Pauline didn’t seem to be a fan of hers.”

“No one in the Shaw house was a real big fan of hers,” Colton said. “Even Logan. Right?”

“He didn’t talk about her much. I figured it was because of the divorce. He ended up with his dad, so there must have been a reason for that.”

Colton didn’t say anything, but Jason saw the knowing look that washed across his face. There was something else there, something Colton knew about Mrs. Shaw.

“What is it?” Jason asked.

Colton opened his mouth and just as quickly closed it. He pressed his lips tight. But Jason suspected that Colton really did want to spill whatever he knew. The man was a lawyer. If he wanted to hold his cards close, he could. Colton didn’t seem to want to.

“What?” Jason asked. “What’s the deal?”

Colton cleared his throat. “Well, Mr. Shaw is a decent man. Very decent. He likes to take care of people. He doesn’t like attention.” Colton pointed at Jason. “That’s why he still lives in the same house. He could afford more and bigger, but he just doesn’t feel that he needs it.”

“What are you driving at?” Jason asked. “Is there something about Mrs. Shaw?”

“Mrs. Shaw had some problems when Logan was growing up. A drinking problem. Some emotional instability as well.”

“She was sick.”

“You know better than I do about the effect these things can have on families,” Colton said. “Hayden’s been a parent all this time, and a pretty good one to hear you tell it.”

Jason remembered Derrick’s story about Sierra being left alone while a baby. He shivered a little. “Mostly.”

“The kid turned out okay, right?” Colton asked.

“She did.”

“How is she, by the way?”

Jason swallowed. “She’s spending some time with her dad.”

“Derrick’s in town?”

“He came to get her. You know, until Hayden . . . until we know more about Hayden’s situation.”

Colton gave Jason a sincere look. He seemed to recognize and understand Jason’s attachment to and concern for his niece. “Anyway,” he said, “Mrs. Shaw. She struggled with these things. Not a good recipe when you have a little one, especially not a boy like Logan who could be . . . high-spirited, I guess is the term. Smart-mouthed. Rambunctious. ‘Challenging,’ I think is the word the parenting books would use now.”

The phone rang again. Colton picked it up and snapped one word. “Wait.” He hung up, shaking his head. “People don’t even
know how to tell time.” He tugged at his earlobe. “There’s no way to sugarcoat it. When Logan was about ten, not long before Mr. and Mrs. Shaw divorced, Mrs. Shaw shoved Logan down a flight of stairs at their house. The stairs into the basement out there.”

Jason’s hands were gripping the armrests of his chair tighter than he realized, but he couldn’t seem to let go. He looked down and saw the veins standing out on the back of his hand, rising from the pressure he exerted.

“Are you okay?” Colton asked.

“No.”

“Shocked?”

Jason’s mouth felt dry. “Yes, I am. He never said anything about it.”

“He loved his mother, Logan did. I’m sure of it. But the old man wanted to keep her away from Logan as much as possible. That’s the arrangement they made. She was allowed supervised visits with him. Eventually, she saw Logan a little more. But always in the Shaws’ house and always with someone around, usually Mr. Shaw. Sometimes Pauline, I would gather. Mrs. Shaw remarried, as you know. She has stepchildren. To be honest, I don’t know how she’s doing. I guess she’s living a normal life now. But she wasn’t allowed to have a normal relationship with Logan when he was growing up. That’s why you really didn’t see her, even if you spent a lot of time out at the house.”

Jason loosened his grip on the chair. His knuckles hurt, and he flexed his hands, trying to get them to feel normal again. He wasn’t sure they would.

Colton stood up. “Look, I have to run to city hall. Thanks for coming by.”

“Thank you.”

“People surprise us, don’t they?” Colton said, as he slipped
into a sport coat. “I know I threw you for a loop with that news. I was surprised to hear about Hayden and those letters. Do you want to sit here for a minute and regroup?”

“I’m okay.”

Jason stood and walked to the door, where Colton rested his hand on the knob. Colton didn’t open the door yet. He held his hand out, stopping Jason.

“All that stuff I told you about Mrs. Shaw? It’s been hush-hush for years, of course. Only the family knew. I probably shouldn’t have told you, but with everything going on here, I thought you should know. Maybe you can understand Logan a little better. Maybe you can understand the whole situation a little better.”

Jason nodded, but he wasn’t sure he ever would.

The brightness of the day hurt Jason’s eyes. He drove home with his sunglasses on and the visor tilted down, but the midday sun still poked at him, dug at him until he felt a headache developing. Colton’s bombshell reverberated in his mind. Logan’s mother had pushed her son down a flight of stairs. She was so abusive she wasn’t allowed to see him. And Jason had never known this about his very best friend. It was a secret shame Logan carried with him all his life, something he shoved away and wouldn’t or couldn’t share.

Jason had to ask himself: What else didn’t he know about Logan? What else lay buried beneath the surface of his friend’s life?

Nora was scheduled to work until the late evening. When Jason went inside their house, he again noticed the quiet. It hit him in the face like a blast of heat from the oven. No one was home. With Sierra gone, everything felt more empty.

He dialed Regan’s number. He didn’t expect her to answer, but she did. She sounded energetic, almost cheery.

“What do you know about Logan’s mother?”

“His mother?” she said, her voice flattening. “She wasn’t around much.”

“I know that. But did you have a sense of her? As a person?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I’m just curious. You mentioned her the other day. You said you liked her.”

“I did.”

“You said she talked to you from time to time about your career and your plans. Was that it?”

“Why are you asking me this again?”

Jason told her. He told her that Mrs. Shaw had shoved Logan down the stairs when he was just a little boy, that she was forced to keep her distance from her son. After he finished speaking, he listened to her breathing on the other end of the line. It took Regan a long time to speak.

“Did you know that when we were kids?” she asked.

“Never. Did you?”

“No. Logan wouldn’t tell me something like that.”

“Why not?” Jason asked. “He had a thing for you. And, as you so accurately pointed out, you were a girl. I thought maybe he’d feel more comfortable telling you than me. I never knew.”

“I—” She stopped herself.

“What? You what?”

“I don’t believe it. I don’t see how that nice woman could have done that.”

“Nice woman? She sounds like a monster. You’re a mother. Would you ever do that to a child? To any child?”

“Of course not. You don’t have to be a parent to know that. I’m just wondering why Colton is telling this to you now.”

“I went to talk to him about everything that’s been going on, and the conversation got around to Mrs. Shaw.”

“That poor woman,” Regan said. “She just found out her son is dead. She always seemed so alone. You know how you get a
sense of that from some adults, even when you’re a kid? I got that sense from her. She seemed very alone.”

“She deserved it.”

“I don’t know, Jason,” Regan said.

“Don’t know what?”

“How she could have done that. That sweet lady.”

“People manage to keep parts of themselves hidden.”

A sound came over the line like Regan had placed her hand over the mouth of the phone. He heard muffled voices.

A man’s voice?

“Regan?” he asked. “Are you there?”

“I have to go, Jason.”

“Are you at work?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Where are you?”

“Bye, Jason.”

*   *   *

Jason expected Nora home after nine. Just after eight, a knocking came from the back of the house. Jason sat up straight on the couch, where he was trying to distract himself with a Reds game. They were playing in New York against the Mets, but nothing looked the way Jason remembered it. When he lived in the city, the Mets played at Shea, and so the sparkly new stadium reminded Jason of how far removed from that world he really was.

He muted the sound and walked through the house. The skin at the base of his neck felt pinched and tight. He pictured Rose Holland leaving poor little Pogo out there. And then an image of Jesse Dean slipped into his head—the feel of his hand against Jason’s throat, the sound of the threats.

Should he call the police just because someone knocked?

Jason almost wished it were Jesse Dean, that some news about Hayden would be delivered to his house, regardless of the messenger.

Jason pulled the back door open. Tricia stood there in her all-black clothes, a cigarette between two fingers of her left hand, her right arm across her chest. She looked like she practiced the pose in front of a mirror.

“Hey, man,” she said.

“What do you want?” Jason asked. “And why are you at the back door?”

“Whoa,” she said. “Mr. Hostility. Careful or you’ll stroke out one of these days.”

“Sierra isn’t here. She left with her dad.”

“I know that.” Tricia took a drag and let out a long plume of smoke. She was polite enough to mostly send it away from Jason’s face. “She texted me and told me.”

“When did she text you?” Jason asked.

“Yesterday. Day before. I don’t know.”

“Is that all she said?”

“Dude, can I come in the house? I want to talk to you.”

Jason examined the girl. Her eyes, inside the circle of heavy eyeliner, looked sincere, almost pleading. He pointed to the cigarette. “Put that out.”

Tricia leaned over and rubbed it against the side of the house, then tossed the butt into the yard. “Cool?” she said.

Jason stepped back and let her enter the kitchen. Tricia moved along the counters, stopping to pick up a couple of objects as she walked by. A piece of fruit, a bag of coffee. She seemed in no hurry.

“Do you want something to drink?” Jason asked, trying to be polite.

“What kind of beer do you have?”

“I’m not giving you beer. You’re seventeen.”

“Jesus. Uptight much.”

“What do you want, Tricia?”

The girl turned around and leaned back against the counter. She was rail thin and pale under the overhead lights. Jason wondered if she ever ate or if she just smoked instead.

“I know you’re looking for Jesse Dean.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know things. You think he killed your friend.”

“Did Sierra tell you that?” Jason asked.

Tricia’s foot bounced against the floor, the sole of her shoe making a squeaking noise against the tile. Her knee went up and down. She said, “Look, let me tell you something. I know Jesse Dean. I’ve partied with him. The guy’s an asshole. That’s why I’m here, okay? He fucked me over. He wanted me to do something for him, and then when I did it—or I tried to do it—he didn’t live up to his end of the bargain. You see? He screwed me over, so I’m here to give you the lowdown. You can do whatever you want with it.”

“What are you talking about? What did he want you to do for him?”

“It’s your fault,” Tricia said. “You stopped me. You and your wife.”

Jason couldn’t make sense of what she was saying, but the girl didn’t offer anything else right away. It slowly came together for Jason while Tricia continued to pump her leg.

“Sierra? He wanted something from Sierra?”

“Not something.
Her.
He wanted her. I was supposed to bring her to him the other night, but you stopped
me.”