The Wreck (18 page)

Twenty minutes later, she arrived at the appointed
spot but found no sign of the chief. Several hundred yards down the beach, a
few scattered families were enjoying a warm day at the lake, despite the crisis
unfolding in town. Carly supposed the kids couldn’t be held captive inside
forever.

Where is he?
Tugging the slim cell phone from her back
pocket, she sent him a text message. “Where R U? I’m at the lake waiting 4 U.”

While she awaited his reply, she wandered
over to the willow and was assailed by a flood of memories and feelings. What
would it hurt to step inside just for a minute? Fingering the delicate shower
of leaves, she summoned the nerve to part the curtain. She closed her eyes,
took a deep breath for courage, and walked through the branches. When she
opened her eyes, she found Alicia Perry’s lifeless, naked body in the very spot
where she and Brian used to make love.

Carly opened her mouth and screamed.

Michael
wore a path in the conference room rug as he heard an update from the patrol
officers and detectives who were finishing their shift. “Nothing new,” they
reported for the third straight day. “There’s no sign of her anywhere.”

“It’s like she vanished, Chief,” one of
the younger patrolmen said, his eyes wide with dismay.

“She did,” Michael snapped, annoyed by
the stupid statement. “Anyone who can stay for second shift is requested to do
so.” His department’s overtime expenses were threatening to bankrupt the town,
but that was the least of his worries at the moment. “That’s all.”

He stormed into his office and slammed
the door, feeling impotent and exhausted at the same time. Except for quick
runs home to shower and change clothes, he had worked around the clock since
Alicia’s disappearance but was no closer to finding her today than he’d been
three days ago. For at least the tenth time, he stood in front of the TV to
watch the video they had taken at the candlelight vigil. Every face was
familiar to him, but they’d captured nothing out of the ordinary on the film,
no sign of a monster in their midst.

The frustration settled in his chest as
he collapsed into the chair behind his desk. He popped two more antacid tablets
and rested his head against the soft leather. Matt had called to check in from
out of town, and was cutting his vacation short to get back tomorrow.

In his absence, Michael had found himself
relying more and more on Nathan Barclay, who’d turned out to be a pretty good
guy—for a fed. If Michael were being honest, he’d have to admit that Barclay
had been tremendously helpful and supportive. That the feds were equally stumped
by the case also made Michael feel less like a loser.

A week before Alicia’s abduction,
Barclay’s request for additional agents had been denied. Since the abduction,
four more agents had been assigned to the case. He prayed it wasn’t too late
for Alicia and hoped the extra manpower would result in an arrest this time.

With his eyes closed, Michael released a
deep breath. They had nothing. Not a scrap of evidence, not a clue to follow,
and nothing they could do but wait. Bloodhounds had followed Alicia’s scent for
a quarter mile to where it had abruptly disappeared. So they knew she had been
transported in a car. A complete sweep of her neighborhood hadn’t yielded a
single witness, nor had multiple aerial searches by helicopter told them
anything new.

When Michael imagined the torture that
girl was suffering through, his stomach began to ache as badly as his chest
did. Too much time had gone by. They should’ve found her by now. He never kept
them this long, so Michael was further tormented by the image of Alicia
injured, naked, and alone in the woods hoping someone would find her.

“
Damn
,” he whispered with a hand
on his chest. “This frigging heartburn is killing me.”

His cell phone chimed with a text
message. “What the hell?” He read Carly’s message a second time. “Why’s she
waiting for me at the lake?” A heartbeat passed before panic set in. Leaping to
his feet, he bolted for the door, stopping short when a sharp pain ripped
through his chest. Bent in half in the doorway, he tried to breathe his way
through it.

“Chief,” the dispatcher called to him.
“They found her. They found Alicia.”

“Carly!” Michael cried, gripping his
chest.

“Chief!” The dispatcher tossed his
headset aside and ran to Michael. “What’s wrong?”

Michael collapsed. “Find Carly Holbrook,”
he gasped. “At the lake.”

Brian
was hammering out a plea agreement in the conference room when Sally, one of
the administrative assistants, came in with a message from his mother. He took
one look at the pink slip of paper and said, “I’m sorry, we’ll have to do this
another time.”

“Where’re you going?” the defense
attorney sputtered.

In the hallway, Sally handed Brian his
cell phone and held his suit coat for him. “Run home and pack a bag. I’ll get
you a flight out of LaGuardia.”

Thirty minutes later, his cab inched
along FDR Drive in the late afternoon traffic, leaving Brian with far too much
time for recriminations. He should’ve gone home when his mother first told him
she was worried about his dad. He should’ve put aside his own selfish concerns
and done what was best for his parents. After all, he
was
their only
child. And now, if his father died… Collapsed at work, collapsed at work… What
did that mean? Was it is his heart? A stroke? What did collapsed
mean?

After Sally called with his flight
information, Brian dialed his mother’s cell phone again. Mary Ann still didn’t
answer, which only added to Brian’s anxiety.
Why isn’t she answering her
phone?
He tried unsuccessfully to reach her numerous times before he
boarded the five thirty shuttle to Providence.

When the plane touched down at T.F. Green
Airport just after seven, Brian was back on Rhode Island soil for the first
time in almost exactly fifteen years. He turned on his cell the moment the
plane landed. A message from his mother told him his father was in stable
condition and had been admitted to Rhode Island Hospital for tests. He
immediately called her back.

“He’s in room seven twenty-two,” she
said, sounding weepy. “He’ll be so glad to see you. Thanks for coming, Bri. I
know how difficult it is for you to come home. I’ll see you soon.”

Brian realized coming home wasn’t
difficult at all under these circumstances. He jogged through an airport that
was much bigger than he remembered and emerged into the humid evening to find a
cab.

“Rhode Island Hospital,” he told the
driver. “And hurry. Please.”

The drive from Warwick to Providence
along Interstate 95 was surreal in that nothing had changed. The Thurbers
Avenue curves were as treacherous as Brian remembered, and the big blue termite,
known locally as Nibbles Woodaway, still sat atop the New England Pest Control
building. With the State House dome looming in the distance, the cabbie took
the hospital exit.

Brian tossed two twenties to the driver
and bolted from the car. On the seventh floor, he asked for his father at the
nurse’s station and was directed to a room at the end of a long corridor. After
taking a moment to prepare himself for whatever he might find inside, Brian
pushed the door open.

Mary Ann turned and let out a happy yelp
as she launched herself into her son’s arms.

“Tell me you did
not
call the boy
home over this,” Michael groaned to his wife.

Overwhelmed by the sound of his father
talking—and bitching—Brian released his mother and bent to kiss his father’s
forehead. “Shut up, Dad.” Michael was pale and his hair had gone completely
gray in the few months since Brian had last seen him, but otherwise he looked
fine. Brian could have collapsed himself from the sheer relief.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Michael
grumbled even as he reached for his son’s hand. “It’s nothing. Just a bad case
of heartburn.”

Brian turned to his mother. “What’s the
real story?”

“Thankfully, it wasn’t a heart attack,”
she said. “They want to rule out any arterial blockages, so he’s having some tests
tomorrow. They think it could’ve been an acute anxiety attack.”

“Stupid waste of time. I need to get back
to work.” Michael pushed himself up, chafing against the monitors attached to
his chest.

“You’re not going anywhere, Dad. Not now,
anyway.”

“They found her,” Michael said with a
grim set to his face. “They found Alicia Perry, and no one will tell me
anything other than that. I’m the freaking chief of police! This is
my
case! I need to know what’s going on!”

Mary Ann went around to the other side of
the bed and eased her husband back down to the pile of pillows. “You need to
relax, Michael. All that stress is what landed you here in the first place.”

“If you expect me to relax, you have to
find out,
please
, if they located Carly and if everything’s all right
with her.”

“Carly?” Brian said. “What does she have
to do with it?”

“I got a text message from her, right
before this happened,” Michael said with a gesture to the monitors. “That she
was waiting for me at the lake. I never asked her to meet me there, so I need
to know they’ve got her and she’s safe.”

“Mom?” Brian asked, his own chest
tightening with tension. “Do you know if she’s okay?”

Mary Ann appeared to be weighing whether
she should tell them what she knew. She rested a hand on Michael’s shoulder as
she said, “Honey, Alicia’s dead.”

“
No, no, no
.”

“Dad, take it easy.”

Mary Ann took a deep shuddering breath.
“Carly found her under the willow at the lake.”

“Under the willow?” Brian gasped. “Are you
sure that’s where she was?”

Mary Ann nodded. “Dave DeSilva picked me
up at home and drove me here to meet Dad,” she said, referring to a Granville
patrolman. “He filled me in on what was happening. Carly’s safe. There were
people on the beach who heard her screaming and went to help her. One of them
called the police.”

“She screamed?” Michael asked,
incredulous.

Mary Ann nodded. “That’s what Dave said.”

“Why would he put Alicia there, of all
places?” Michael wondered.

“I might know why.” Brian swallowed hard
as the implications swirled through his mind.

His parents looked at him with interest.

“That’s where Carly and I used to go when
we, um, wanted to be alone.” Brian couldn’t believe how embarrassed he was,
even at thirty-three, to be confessing such a thing to his parents. “That’s
where we were the night of the accident.”

Michael ruminated over that information
for a moment and then glanced at his son. “Did anyone else know that was your
spot?”

“I never told anyone, and I doubt she
did, either.”

“Then whoever this guy is, he somehow
knew about it, and that’s why he sent Carly there to find Alicia’s body.”
Michael was all but bursting to get out of that bed. “Any doubt I had that this
is somehow connected to Carly and the accident just disappeared. Call the
station,” he directed Mary Ann. “Tell Nathan Barclay I need to see him.
Tonight.”

“Michael, surely it can wait until
tomorrow—”

“Tonight, Mary Ann,” he said in a tone
that left no room for argument.

Agent
Barclay drove Brian and his mother home to Granville close to midnight. Slumped
against the back seat, Brian was drained and mortified after the grilling he’d
withstood about how often he and Carly had gone to the willow, exactly what
they’d done there, and whether he was sure no one else knew about it. They were
the secrets of his youth, secrets he’d never expected to share with his
parents, of all people, and secrets he’d never imagined would factor into a
murder investigation.

“You’re sure Carly is safe?” he asked
Barclay. He’d learned earlier that she was spending the night with her parents.

“We have people keeping an eye on the
house. Don’t worry.”

Right, don’t worry
. “She really screamed when she found the
body?”

“That’s right. Apparently, she was also
able to tell the people who came to her rescue that there was a body under the
tree.”

“Amazing,” Brian said. “Those are the
first words she’s spoken in more than fifteen years.”

“So I’m told,” Barclay said.

“Does this mean she can talk again?” Mary
Ann asked.

“We don’t know yet if it was temporary or
not,” Barclay said. “She was a mess, so we decided not to push her for a
statement tonight.”

“Poor Carly,” Brian said. “Like she
hasn’t already been through enough.”

Mary Ann turned around in the front seat
and reached for Brian’s hand. “I’m sorry, honey. This is not quite the
homecoming I’d imagined for you.”

Brian shrugged and worked up a wry grin
for her. “I left in the midst of high drama, so why not come home to it, too?”