The Forgotten Girl (28 page)

Jason didn’t run. His eyes had adjusted to the light inside the cabin, and stepping out into the night again left him blinded. He moved toward the road, and as he did, he saw two small circles of light, and then behind the circles of light the looming figures of two men.

“Get on the ground!”

Jason froze.

“Get on the ground, sir!”

He raised his hands, surrendering. The two figures reached him. He saw the uniforms, the flash of the badges in the reflected glow of the flashlights. As they came closer, Jason heard leather creak and equipment rattle.

Police.

The police had arrived. Tricia had done her job.

Jason fell to his knees. One of the officers came up to his right side and took his arm. Not so gently, he forced Jason to the ground, his chin and the side of his face thudding into the grass. The officer placed his knee against Jason’s back, while the other officer stood nearby.

“Are you armed, sir?”

Jason tried to answer, but the officer with his knee in his
back was already running his hand over Jason’s body, patting his back, his legs, the insides of his thighs, and then rolling him a little to get at his front pockets.

“No,” Jason said. He smelled the rich earth, which was practically inside his nostrils.

“Is there anyone else inside?” the standing officer asked.

“My brother-in-law.”

“Is he alone?”

“Yes.”

“Is he armed?”

“He has a gun. Please be careful. He’s upset.”

“Is anyone hurt in there?”

The officer rolled Jason onto his back. Saliva caught in Jason’s throat, and he tried to swallow to work it free so he could speak.

“Is anyone hurt?” the officer asked.

“One man,” Jason said, his words choked. “I’m pretty sure he’s dead. My brother-in-law beat him. Killed him.”

The standing officer spoke into his lapel microphone. He requested backup as well as an ambulance. He referred to a possible hostage situation.

“Is my niece okay?” Jason asked. “My niece and sister ran away from here.”

“Sir, for your own safety and for ours we’re going to place you in handcuffs.”

“Are they okay?”

“We’re dealing with the situation in the cabin right now.”

The officer pushed Jason over onto his side and took hold of his hands.

“Please,” Jason said. “Are they okay?’

“Just let us take care of this, sir.”

The officer drew his gun and stepped toward the cabin.

“Be careful,” Jason said, although he doubted they heard him.

Jason buried his head against the ground.

“Suspect with a gun in the building.”

Jason closed his eyes. His body went limp as another officer placed handcuffs around his wrists.

“Get him out of here.”

He was pulled to his feet, and he went along without even thinking. One officer held his arm and moved him back toward the road, while the other officers, including the one who had been standing over him, moved closer to the cabin. When they reached a police cruiser, Jason was placed in the back. Before he closed the door, the officer removed the handcuffs.

“Just sit tight,” he said.

Jason didn’t know what else he could do except worry about his
family.

More officers arrived, as well as an ambulance, and for the longest time Jason felt as though he’d been abandoned in the back of the police car. Close to twenty minutes passed and then thirty while police and paramedics came and went from the cabin. Their movements and gestures lacked any real sense of urgency, which confirmed what Jason already suspected. Jesse Dean was dead, killed by Derrick. And Derrick was inside the cabin with the police . . . confessing? Resisting? Had he been hurt or even killed by the officers who saw him with a gun?

Jason couldn’t open the car door once it was locked, and the air in the cruiser grew musty and close. He started sweating while he waited, and as the minutes ticked by, he worked hard to convince himself that Sierra and Hayden were okay, that they had managed to get down the road and were found by the police. What else could have happened to them once they left the cabin?
Jesse Dean was dead.
For all Jason knew, Sierra and Hayden were very close at that moment, safe in one of the other police cars that lined the small road in the middle of the woods.

Jason began replaying his final conversation with Derrick inside the cabin. He admitted that he and Jesse Dean killed Logan
on graduation night. He knew that Hayden covered for them. But he didn’t know
why
any of it had happened.

He looked out the window of the cruiser, where a light rain had started to fall, spitting against the glass and partially obscuring his view of the comings and goings around him. He wondered if he’d ever know.

*   *   *

Eventually a figure appeared outside the window of the cruiser and pulled the door open, letting in a welcome rush of fresh air. The man bent down, and Jason saw a familiar face.

“Hello, Mr. Danvers,” Detective Olsen said. “Are you doing okay in here?”

“I’m hot. And I want to know if my family is okay.”

“They’re doing just fine. We’ve been talking with both your niece and your sister to get their versions of events. We have to get yours as well.”

“But they’re okay?”

“They’re okay.” Olsen reached up and wiped some rain off his forehead. “Understandably they’re shocked by the turn of events here. Your brother-in-law is in some trouble.”

“Is he okay? I was worried because he had . . .”

“He’s lucky. The responding officers showed a lot of restraint when they went into that cabin. He had a gun. Things don’t always end well when someone has a gun out.”

“But he’s okay?”

“He’s settled down now,” Olsen said. “He’s telling us a lot. It’s going to be a long night of talking to him. And then . . . well, we’ll just see where things go from here.”

“Is he going to be charged with something?” Jason asked.

“Something. But let’s worry about that later. Would you like
to stand up and get out of that car? We can talk out here. It’s raining a little, but you’re probably tired of sitting.”

Jason left the vehicle. It felt good to move and stretch his legs. The night air had cooled, and the drops of rain that pinged against his head and shoulders were much more of a relief than an annoyance. He leaned back against the car with Detective Olsen facing him.

“Can you tell me what happened in there?” Olsen asked.

Jason did. As he spoke, he remembered certain details more vividly than others—especially the smell of fear coming off Derrick and the wild, haunted look in his eyes. Jason left nothing out, even going so far as to include Derrick’s comments about Jason’s judgment of him. He felt like that part of the story needed to be shared.

“So your brother-in-law admitted being involved in the killing of Logan Shaw?”

“Yes. He said he and Jesse Dean killed him and buried him on graduation night.”

“And he didn’t say why?”

“No. The police arrived. That’s when he sent me away.”

“And you didn’t see the fight between the two men?”

“No. Jesse Dean was dead when I arrived. Like I said, the first thing I did was help Hayden check his pulse.”

Olsen absorbed the story without showing any emotion. There was a pause while he reached into his pocket and brought out a small notebook. He flipped it open and looked it over. He didn’t say anything.

“Detective?”

“Yes?”

“I realize my wife doesn’t know where I am. And I can’t call her because my phone doesn’t work out here. She’s going to
worry, and I don’t want that. Is there a way you could reach her and tell her what’s going on?”

“Sure. We’ll be done here pretty soon.” Olsen stepped away and summoned a uniformed officer. He had Jason give the man in uniform the pertinent information—Nora’s name and address—and instructed him to take care of the notification.

As the officer turned away, Jason said, “And can you make sure to tell her that Sierra and Hayden are okay as well?”

“He will,” Olsen said.

When the officer was gone, Olsen flipped the notebook shut and tucked it back into his pocket. The rain had picked up a little, and Jason squinted as a couple of drops hit him in the eye and face.

“Your sister has already given a partial statement tonight,” Olsen said. “We still have more to talk to her about. Understandably, she’s worried about her daughter right now. We’re aware of that.”

“Thanks.”

“What I’m saying is . . . she still has more to account for. And it’s possible you will as well.”

He turned and walked off toward the cabin.

Jason walked along the line of cars. He counted six police cruisers as well as two ambulances and two unmarked sedans. No one paid much attention to him as he made his way down the row. He looked inside every car he passed until he reached the ambulance. Hayden leaned against the side of the large vehicle, wrapped in a blanket. She smoked a cigarette, but when she saw Jason, she dropped it on the ground and came toward him.

“Jason, my God.”

They hugged and held on to each other tight. He held her a long time, her body pressed against his, listening to her sniffling. He was prepared to hold Hayden as long as she needed it, but she gently slipped free from his grip and took both of his hands in hers and looked up.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I was going to ask you that. And Sierra? Where is she?”

Hayden nodded toward the ambulance. “They’re checking her out in there. Just routine. They have to do it, I guess. They did it to me first.”

“Does she know they’re going to arrest Derrick?”

Hayden nodded and turned her eyes down to the ground. “They told us. That crazy kid, she didn’t run out to the road like
you told her to. She was coming back to help you and me—that’s when I ran into her out here. I grabbed her and said, ‘Let’s go,’ and we ran away. We came across the police on the way out. And Tricia was still there, too, down at the end of the road. She waited until the police came and made sure they knew where to go.”

“What happened to you, Hayden? What were you doing out here?”

“Jesus, I wish I had another cigarette. One of the cops gave me that last one.”

“Did you know they killed Logan? Is that why you came back to town?”

“Oh, big brother, there’s so much to tell. So much you don’t know.”

“I’m listening. You’ve been out here with these guys for over a week, haven’t you?”

Hayden looked up, anger in her eyes. “I didn’t
choose
to stay out here with them, with Jesse Dean.”

“They held you somehow?”

She crossed her arms across her chest. “It wasn’t that rigid or restrictive. I wasn’t a hostage or anything. But I sure wasn’t free to just walk out the door. I didn’t care about that so much, but I knew you and Sierra would be worried. I was still in town when I texted her that time. I was just seeing that things weren’t going the way I wanted them to go with Jesse Dean. I probably scared her more than anything, but I knew she’d be worried.”

“She was a little freaked out by that text.”

“I figured, but I had to say something. Then Jesse Dean took my phone away. I snuck it back from him once, but there was no service out here. He took me with him to the little grocery store up the road, and I called you. Do you remember that?”

“I do.”

“He got the phone back and that was that. I was talking to Jesse Dean most of the time and it was usually pretty calm. ‘Negotiating’ is maybe the right word for it.”

“Negotiating what?”

“I was trying to get them to tell the truth and come clean. About Logan. About all of it. If they’d listened to me . . . if they’d gone along with me . . .” She raised her arms and gestured toward the police cars and the ambulance. Her gesture encompassed the dead body in the cabin as well as her ex-husband in custody. “None of this,” she said. “None of this.”

“You’ve known all these years that they killed Logan?”

“I used to think I just suspected that they did it,” she said. “That was the lie I told myself.” She contemplated those words for a few moments, and then she said, “I knew. I was a fool, and I guess I always knew.”

“Were you with them when they killed Logan?”

“No. I wasn’t on the Bluff that night. Don’t you remember? I was grounded. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me out on your graduation night because they’d caught me—”

“Taking the money from Mom’s wallet.” Jason remembered it all. Their mother had been so angry she cursed at Hayden and grounded her for two weeks. It was one of the rare times that grounding Hayden worked, probably because she’d been so shocked at their mom’s display of anger. “That was right before graduation.”

“They let me go to the ceremony, so I could see you get your diploma. But they dragged me home afterwards. They said I couldn’t go to any parties. Jesus, Mom was furious. And all over twenty bucks.”

“So you weren’t there.”

“I wasn’t. I didn’t find out that Logan was gone until his dad
called our house the next day looking for him. That’s when you found out too, right?”

“Right.”

“I didn’t see Derrick for another five days because I was grounded. Mom wouldn’t let me talk to him on the phone. Nothing. It would have been longer, but he showed up at our house one night. Late, after everybody was asleep. He came by and threw little pebbles at my window. Then he climbed up the downspout and came in.”

“And nobody heard him?”

“Hell, no. We always did that. We had it down to a science. But this time Derrick wasn’t looking for what he was normally looking for. He just laid in bed next to me, cuddled up like a little boy, and let me stroke his hair. He acted like he wanted to talk, but really he just laid there. I could tell something was wrong. I thought maybe his parents had a fight. He got that way sometimes when his parents fought. I asked him if that’s what was going on, and he said no. Shit, I’d been locked up in the house so long I wished he had wanted sex, but that didn’t happen. And then I started to wonder . . .”

“Wonder what?”

Hayden shook her head. “I asked him about partying on graduation night, and he got real quiet. He just said it was a bust, that nothing happened. You know how strange that would be for Derrick or Jesse Dean. And then I mentioned all the stuff that had been happening in our house, the stuff that had to do with Logan being gone. The police coming over and pushing you so hard. How upset Mom and Dad were that their son was getting dragged into the middle of a police investigation just as he was supposed to be going off to college. I tried to talk about that. I thought he’d be interested. He knew Logan a little. And he knew
you pretty well. But when I brought it up, he just shut the whole conversation down. He said he knew that Logan had run away, and they were making a big fuss over some spoiled rich kid who was having a temper tantrum. To be honest, I kind of thought the same thing.”

“A lot of us did.”

“He was very sympathetic to you.”

“Really?”

“He said that they were treating you like a criminal because Logan was rich, and that it just went to show that the police would push anybody around when they think a rich kid got hurt.”

“I was Logan’s friend. And we had a fight that night. It wasn’t out of the blue for them to question me.”

“I know. But then Derrick said the most interesting thing of all. At least it’s interesting looking back now. He said that if someone did do something to Logan, if they really hurt him or killed him, then Logan definitely deserved it.”

“He didn’t explain any more?”

“I asked him, and he wouldn’t say. I thought it was just his typical anger at a rich kid.”

“But?”

She turned away and looked toward the end of the ambulance where Sierra was being treated. She listened to the muffled voices for a second and then turned back. “I’m worried about my baby.”

“I know. Do you want to go check on her?”

“I’ve been smothering her ever since I got out of there,” she said. “I hadn’t seen her in days. I hate that. And now . . . who knows what’s going to happen to Derrick . . . ?”

“He’s with the police now. They’re questioning him. He’s lucky they didn’t shoot him.”

Hayden sniffled, reaching up and wiping at her nose and eyes with the backs of her hands. Jason stepped forward and put his arm around her.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Let’s talk about this another time.”

“It’s okay. There isn’t that much more that I know anyway. What I know is that about six months after graduation night, Jesse Dean came to me. He came alone. Derrick didn’t know about it. We hung out on our own sometimes, but he seemed to be up to something. He had a fifth of Wild Turkey with him, and he started getting me to drink it. He drank it too, don’t worry. We both threw back our fair share.”

The rain had mostly stopped, and the clouds overhead were parting again, revealing a crisply defined half-moon.

“What did he want?” Jason asked.

“He said he wanted me to do a favor for him and for Derrick. He emphasized that
Derrick
would really benefit from the favor. He implied that if I wanted to be able to keep dating Derrick, I needed to make this thing happen.”

“He wanted you to write those cards and send them to Logan’s dad.”

Hayden looked up, the surprise on her face almost comical. “How do you know that?”

“I saw them. I thought I recognized your handwriting. And a couple came from Chicago in 1999. Remember that?”

“Shit. Of course.” Hayden looked down. She shuffled her feet. “I know I committed a crime. Covering up a murder or conspiracy.” She shook her head. “When Jesse Dean asked me to do that, I knew they’d probably killed Logan. But I went along with it.”

“Why did you?”

“Why did I, Jason? I can hear the judgment in your voice.
You’re thinking that poor dumb Hayden couldn’t say no to any guy and couldn’t avoid trouble if her life depended on it. Is that what you’re thinking? Is it?”

Jason didn’t answer.

“You’re right, of course. That’s true. I was a dumbass who couldn’t say no to a man. I was a drunk and a mess. Those aren’t excuses, but there they are.” She spread her hands apart. “I was worried about Derrick, okay? I loved him. And I was afraid of saying no to Jesse Dean.” She laughed a little, a bitter sound. “Jesse Dean even let me pick out the Father’s Day cards. It was like he was saying I was the little woman, the secretary or something, who was going to do the big man’s bidding. And I did. I bought the cards and wrote them. I tried to copy Logan’s handwriting out of one of your old yearbooks. When I ran off out west, I mailed them, and I sent more from Chicago. Later on, Jesse Dean knew some guy out west who mailed them for him. I wrote the cards because he wanted the handwriting to match every time. I never thought that stupid plan would work. What parent wouldn’t know their kid’s handwriting? I mean, dads can be pretty clueless, but a mother? Wouldn’t a mother know her child’s handwriting?”

“Logan’s mother had some issues, apparently.”

“I guess so. I’d never win mother-of-the-year. I took some years off being a mother, so maybe I’m no one to talk. Look at tonight. I got my daughter dragged out into the middle of this. But I’d always know my kid. Always. Her handwriting. Her smell. Her voice.” Hayden started crying again. “That girl’s mine. I’d never forget anything about
her.”