The Voice inside My Head (20 page)

“Maybe I’ll just have to go along with her for a while,” I suggest, biting my lip to stop the happiness that’s blossomed somewhere in the vicinity of my heart from taking over my whole face.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It’s risky, but if you think you can pull it off, just till we come up with a way to let her down easy …”

“Just till then,” I say, and I feel a ray of hope amid the darkness of my sister’s disappearance.

W
hen Zach bursts into my room at the Shark Center a scant six hours later, I’m passed out on my bed still in my clothes.

“Dude, get in the shower,” he orders. “Reesie’s going to be here any minute. Unless you want her to see you all puffy-eyed and grubby like that.” He pauses to consider this. “Nah.” He shakes his head decisively. “That won’t work. To a girl like Reesie, it would just be more proof that you need her.”

He follows me into the shower room, completely fixated on how we’re going to handle the “Reesie situation.” It crosses my mind to tell him that if he’d just give me a few minutes alone with her, I’ve already figured out how I want to handle it, but something tells me Zach’s not ready to hear that his new best friend is hot for a girl who terrifies him.

He talks non-stop about ways I can dump her as I let the water cascade over me. I don’t hear most of what he’s saying as I’m preoccupied with wondering if I’ll get to kiss her again, though technically I didn’t actually kiss her the first time. But if I get a second chance, I’m definitely going to be
ready. The question is, how do I get a second chance with Zach bird-dogging my every move?

Back in my room, Zach plumps down on the extra bed while I pull on some clothes and inspect my T-shirt — clean, but after drying on the desk, so rumpled I might as well have slept in it.

I’ve never given much thought to being tidy before. I’m not a pig. I shower and everything, but I’ve never touched an iron in my life and I’m pretty sure my parents haven’t either, so scruffy’s always been my look. But I have a feeling Reesie’s not the kind of girl who goes for scruffy.

“What do you think?” he demands.

“What?” I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“The plan,” he prompts.

I gawk at him. Still not a clue.

“To get rid of her,” he prompts again.

“Oh, right. Sounds great.”

“We’ll need to be strong and stick together,” he says.

“Okay.” I wonder how I’m going to break it to him that I don’t want to get rid of Reesie. We both jump at a rap on the door. Zach gives me a conspiratorial nod before he opens it.

“I’ve been waiting out front for ten minutes. What have you boys been doing in here?” Reesie stomps in, shouldering Zach out of the way.

“Working on strategy,” I say, which is sort of true.

“Well, your first strategy should be to get your lazy butts to the meeting place on time since we already agreed we’re going to the police station.”

“We’re coming now.” I guess this probably isn’t the best
moment to swoop in for a kiss, but seeing her again makes it really hard to put the idea out of my mind.

“We can’t let her take over our investigation,” Zach hisses as we fall into step behind Reesie, who strides down the path out of the Shark Center.

The sun’s high in the sky and the heat is intense as we enter the narrow main street and walk single file, dodging pedestrians and the usual vehicles, mostly ATVs. When we turn off onto a side road going up the hill, huge trees on either side provide welcome, if steamy, shade. We spread out across the uneven cement track. It’s just wide enough for a single car, though there’s not much traffic beyond the occasional motorcycle. We walk in companionable silence. I catch Reesie’s eye and she smiles. I smile back, even though I’m starting to feel anxious about what the police are going to say about my sister. Whatever they say, I know it will be bogus, just like the report they gave my parents. I’m just not sure I’m ready to hear it firsthand. Something of what I’m feeling must be visible on my face because Reesie swerves in and catches my hand and doesn’t let go. I curl my fingers through hers and feel a little better, even though I catch an anxious look from Zach out of the corner of my eye.

“I didn’t tell Jamie about last night,” says Reesie, as we walk along. “He’s gone off to talk to Bobby and his boys today. I told him there was no point to it, but he’s a dog with a bone, now that you’ve put the thought in his head they might have done something to Tricia. I’d like to keep him out of this as much as we can, though.”

“No problem,” I say.

“He hasn’t been the same since your sister disappeared. I didn’t know what was wrong at the time.” She can’t help but let a little irritation slip into her voice. “But a lot of things make sense now.”

A part of me is annoyed that Jamie didn’t launch his own investigation when Pat disappeared, but now that it’s my mission, I’m not sure how I feel about accepting his help. I definitely don’t feel like commiserating with his loss, since Pat’s
not
dead, just missing. But what will happen when I do find her? Will she go back to Jamie? Will this be just a bump in the road to their happily-ever-after and I’ll still be left without my sister? I know I’ll be grateful to find her, no matter where she decides to spend the rest of her life, but I’m honest enough to admit I’d like her to be closer to home.

“I just think it’s best we don’t give Jamie any more false hope till we know where things stand,” Reesie continues. “No point opening the wound again.”

“Sure,” I agree.

After ten minutes, mostly straight uphill, we reach the police station, which sits on the edge of a soccer field. It’s a long, two-story wooden building with what are likely bedrooms on the second floor, judging from the freshly laundered sheets fluttering from the railing. It looks like nothing more than a rundown hotel or maybe a youth hostel. Like everything in town, it’s surrounded by towering trees, both fruiting and flowering, and is strangely picturesque in spite of its peeling yellow paint.

“You best let me do the talking,” says Reesie as we cross the packed dirt past a young officer in khaki pants and a
gray T-shirt. He doesn’t look up from the motorcycle he’s tinkering with.

“Luke should talk,” argues Zach, scowling at our joined hands. “It’s his sister.”

“Luke speaks Spanish?” Reesie says.

Zach looks at me hopefully, but I shake my head.

He sighs as we walk through the only open doorway. We enter a cramped, cluttered room furnished with several desks, filing cabinets and a low table laden with cups and a thermos. A paunchy middle-aged man is sitting behind a desk. A younger officer has pulled up a metal folding chair beside him and they’re both glued to a TV show, which I would almost swear is the same one my mom tunes into every day, except that the characters are all speaking Spanish. Neither officer so much as glances in our direction.

“Hola,”
says Reesie, louder than necessary.

The older man, obviously the one in charge, gives Reesie a cool look. It occurs to me she probably dealt with him last night. He looks none too happy to see her back again so soon. Reluctantly, he stands up and meanders around to our side of the desk. The young guy barely glances up from the program as Reesie and his boss start talking. The exchange goes on for quite a while. Zach shoots me quizzical looks, but I have no more idea what they’re saying than he does. Finally, they seem to reach some kind of conclusion and the guy disappears into a back room.

“He just repeated what was in the report about where they found Tricia’s clothes,” Reesie explains. “I asked him to get them for us. I explained you were her brother.”

“They still have her clothes?” I ask, surprised.

“They were holding on to them as evidence, but I got him to see they should hand them over since they’re not looking for her anymore.”

I stifle an angry comment about how easily they gave up. “You speak good Spanish,” I say.

“We go to school in Spanish. In Honduras, the Bay Islanders have always been English-speaking because the islands were settled by British Caymanians. The government wants to change that though. Classes in our schools used to be taught in English, but that’s not allowed anymore.”

“So do they have any suspects in Pat’s disappearance?”

“No. According to them, your sister drowned and the investigation is closed. They’re just waiting for her body to come ashore so they can tie up the paperwork.” Reesie reaches out and squeezes my hand, but I feel as if I’ve been punched in the gut. I can’t breathe, and the heat is suddenly unbearable. I look longingly out the open doorway.

The officer comes back with shorts and a T-shirt. My heart starts pounding when I recognize the shirt. It was one of Pat’s favorites from when she was a swim instructor at our neighborhood pool. She loved the logo on the back, with dolphins swimming through it. Even more, she loved the memory of a job where she got to brainwash unsuspecting kids with her aquatic obsessions. The officer hands Reesie the clothes, then turns to me and says what sounds like an apology.

“He says sorry for your loss,” translates Reesie.

I mumble insincere thanks. It burns me that they gave up on Pat like so much flotsam, not even questioning the likelihood of her floating out to sea.

“What was the weather like on the night she disappeared?” I ask.

Reesie asks the officer, who scowls but walks over to a filing cabinet behind his desk. He mumbles something to the other officer, who shoots us an unfriendly look. The older guy pulls out a thin file and returns to us. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or skeptical at how quickly he locates it.

“Not a lot of crime here?” I ask.

“Difficult to do wrong when everyone knows everyone else’s business. I imagine that was why your sister chose McCrae’s dock. He closes the place up in the summer, visits his relations in America, and there’s no one else living too close by.”

My stomach plummets as I realize Reesie is assuming Pat did disappear off McCrae’s dock, but then I remember she’s still getting up to speed on a lot of facts about my sister. I want to set her straight right away. I start to say something, but the officer clears his throat. He’s now standing in front of us with an open file, which he reads aloud to Reesie.

“He’s saying it was a calm night, with a light drizzle early on that didn’t amount to much. There was wave action from the tides but no wind, so there wouldn’t have been much undertow.”

“So how can they believe she drowned?” I demand.

“It’s in the report that she’d been drinking.”

“Even so, my sister practically lived in the water. If she was sober enough to walk all the way to McCrae’s dock, how could they think she was so drunk, she’d drown on a calm night?”

Reesie hesitates, not meeting my eyes.

“Shark?” I ask.

She nods, her eyes misting up. “Sharks have pretty much disappeared from Utila — partly from people finning them, even though it’s illegal — but we still do get the occasional hammerhead and reef shark. We’ve even had a couple of tiger shark sightings, though not so close to shore as she would have been swimming.”

I try to think of something else to ask. The drowning explanation doesn’t satisfy me, and a shark attack is just too horrific to contemplate. As Reesie said, sharks are uncommon, particularly near shore, so I don’t see why that’s any more likely than drowning. But it’s obvious the police aren’t going to reopen the case unless I produce proof of some other explanation.

“What about the drug runners?” I ask. “They know Pat was on the wrong side of them.”

Reesie has an exchange with the officer that involves long questions from Reesie and extremely curt responses from the officer. Reesie persists but finally seems satisfied and winds up the interrogation.

“He said they’ve been keeping a close eye on the drug runners all along, including Bobby’s crew, so there’s no way they could have gotten away with doing something to Tricia.”

“Do you believe them?”

“It’s a small island. People don’t have a lot to talk about. It is hard to believe anyone local could have got away with a crime like that and kept it a secret.”

I try to hide my disappointment, but I think we’re all feeling the same as we slump out of the station and past the guy still working on his bike.

“Can I carry her clothes?” asks Zach.

It seems an odd desire, but I hand them over. We walk in silence, making our way back along the same roads and footpaths toward the center of town. I take Reesie’s hand this time and try to enjoy just being with her, but I can’t get the idea of a shark attack out of my head. It doesn’t help that every time I look over at Zach, he’s burying his face in my sister’s clothes.

“Dude.” I stop walking. “Are you sniffing Tricia’s clothes?”

He looks from me to Reesie, his face flushed with guilt.

“Buddy,” I say more gently, “even though you liked her, that’s kind of gross.”

“You should pay her more respect,” adds Reesie.

“Sorry,” Zach mumbles.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Just don’t do it again.”

He nods and we resume our journey. I keep an eye on him for a while. A motorcycle whizzing past distracts me, giving me an excuse to pull Reesie out of the way and closer to me. Zach seizes the chance to shove his face in Pat’s clothes again. I begin to wonder if he’s doing it to bug me. He has to know he’s crossing a line.