Where Angels Rest (20 page)

She took the page, then looked back up at Nick. “Yes. When he used to go by his real name. Why?”

“Margaret, I’m sorry about this.” And he was. “This is a copy of Jack’s signature at a clinic. Jack
was
having an affair with Lauren McAllister. He went with her to abort a baby.” Her eyes widened then slid away.
The wife is usually the first to know.

“You already knew that, didn’t you?” he asked. “Jack
was
having an affair with Lauren.”

She didn’t look at either Nick or Quent, but moved to the sink.

“You lied to authorities in Florida,” Nick said, then just waited. Chances were good she was about to start leaking. Men would stick to a lie no matter how stupid it was. Women, when they felt the truth closing in, started explaining.

“I wasn’t sure,” she said, “but always wondered. Lauren McAllister was in one of my pottery classes. She was… loose, as my father would have said.”

“If Jack was angry enough—like over a pregnancy or abortion—could he have killed her?”

She turned on him and Nick expected that tears weren’t far behind. He was surprised when her eyes turned fierce instead. “Of all the people in the world, you ought to know how it feels to have horrible rumors spread about you. You ought to know, Nick.”

Yes, he knew. It didn’t matter now. “Has Jack ever stayed out all night before?”

Margaret closed her eyes, fondling the pendant. “Occasionally.”

“But you don’t have any idea where he might be.”

“No.”

Finally, she opened her eyes, seeming to notice the pendant in her hand for the first time. She swallowed and opened it up.

“Could I see?” Nick asked, when he realized it was a locket.

Her hands trembled as she held it out to him. Two young women; identical twins. Utterly beautiful.

“You and your sister?” he asked, wondering why he’d never seen her wear it before.

She nodded and touched one of the faces in the tiny frame. “You know, I married John to help get custody of Rodney. I just wanted to take care of Claire’s son. Did you know that?”

No, he hadn’t, and felt a pang of regret for such a marriage. He didn’t think he was noble enough to have settled for a sexless marriage, under any circumstances. “Margaret, did Jack also have an affair with Sara Daniels? Were there others? A girl named Shelly Quinn?”

Her lips tightened and she looked down. Answer enough.

“We’ll need a list,” he said gently. “And we’d like to take another look around. You okay with that?”

She met his eyes, a little steel in them. “Does it matter?”

Earlier in the morning, deputies had searched the inn and the outbuildings for clues as to where Jack might have gone. Now, Nick and Quent found nothing more.

“Did anyone question Rodney yet?” Nick asked.

“Fruth rooted him out of bed this morning. Rodney didn’t even know Jack was gone.”

“We still gotta talk to him about Jack’s affairs. He may remember something.”

They took the Tahoe, bumping along the narrow stretch of road to the cabin. “Rodney,” Nick called, knocking. He could hear music going inside. “It’s Nick Mann.”

“I’m coming. Hold on.”

A minute later, the music died and the door opened. Rodney wore brown corduroys and a blue flannel shirt. His dark glasses. “Sheriff? Did you find Jack?”

“No, not yet,” he said. “Deputy Vaega’s here, too. Mind if we come in?”

“Come ahead.”

The cabin had been here for as long as Nick could remember, a good fit for a man who was almost entirely independent, yet who needed to be able to walk or drive a three-wheeler to work. Nick looked around. It was neat in the way a blind person would keep house: everything in its place. The furniture was sparse but functional, the floors pine planks with one woven rug stretched out beneath a sofa and sticking out from under the coffee table. The walls were empty, and there were no shelves of knickknacks or clutter except for one, above a peninsula that divided the kitchen from the living area. Nick strolled past it, taking a look at Rodney’s keepsakes: an old Mardi Gras mask decorated with fake jewels and feathers, and a bowl containing plastic beads, also from Mardi Gras. Nick remembered that Rodney had lived in New Orleans as a child, before coming to live with Margaret and Jack. He didn’t seem to have much else in the way of keepsakes from that part of his life.

On the back wall of the living room stood a unit with a TV and sound system, a couple dozen CDs, a number of books in Braille and several that weren’t. A high-powered magnifying glass sat on the coffee table near a copy of the
Gazette,
and a desk in the corner held a large-screen laptop. It had Braille keys but Nick knew Rodney didn’t need them. He handled the computer at Hilltop all the time, just enlarged the type and adjusted the brightness, and leaned close or used a magnifier—

“Don’t talk, don’t talk, don’t talk.”

Nick swiveled toward the kitchen. “Calvin,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Don’t talk, don’t talk—”

“Rosa let him stay home from school today,” Rodney said. “I told him he could hang here.”

“Don’t talk, don’t talk.”

Rodney looked in Nick’s direction. “Dorian told him to keep his mouth shut around you.”

Of course.

“I’m not here to interrogate you, Calvin,” Nick said, but the kid backed up against the countertop in the kitchen, incoherent words passing his lips at record speed. Nick had greeted him this morning with a tour of the jail. Showed him the slots where food trays were shoved to inmates, the toilets sitting out in the open with cameras in the ceilings. The place he’d be living if Nick found out he’d committed the vandalism at the motel and didn’t confess. If he confessed—and here Nick had shrugged—he’d probably be spared some hard time at juvey.

He hadn’t, but Nick knew he understood every word.

“Don’t talk, don’t talk,” Calvin said, rocking on his feet. The muttering began. “Forty-six degrees Fahrenheit, ten-twenty-eight a.m., November twelfth, two-thousand-twelve…”

“Sheriff, is there any word on Jack?” Rodney asked, drawing a hand along the back of the sofa to find his way around it.

“We were hoping you might know where he is.”

“I don’t,” he said. A little bitterness there. “I already told you people that.”

“Could he be with a woman?”

Rodney shrugged, but his expression, even behind the
dark glasses, betrayed the casual gesture. “Could be. Has been before. I guess you know that or you wouldn’t be here.”

“We know he did have an affair with Lauren McAllister, though all three of you are on record denying that.”

“We didn’t know then. And it doesn’t mean he killed her.”

“And Sara Daniels?” Quent asked.

“I don’t know anything about her. Except… except that he was pretty shaken up when he heard that she was missing.”

Nick frowned. He’d gotten the same impression the first time he mentioned her to Jack. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

“Jack came back to Hilltop after talking to you yesterday morning and looked up news about Sara Daniels’ disappearance. I followed the history on his computer when he left.”

“You saw him leave?” Nick asked.

“To the extent that I see anything. He was upset. I could tell by his voice.”

“Did you ever hear the name Shelly Quinn?” Quentin asked, and Rodney shook his head.

“What about drugs? Did you ever see Jack with cocaine?”

“No.” Rodney’s jaw tightened. “But I never saw him fucking women behind Maggie’s back, either, and it doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.”

Nick winced and glanced at Calvin, who stood whispering numbers, then went back to Rodney. “You’re mad at Jack? He’s been like a father to you.”

Even without seeing Rodney’s eyes, Nick could sense the cold glare. “What’s he been to Maggie?”

On the way back to Hilltop, Quentin said, “It’s gotta suck when your wife and kid—or nephew—both hate you.”

“Yeah,” Nick said.

“You think he bailed? Saw the sky about to fall and decided to just take off?”

“I don’t know.” Nick looked around, trying to
feel
Jack here. The air was too still. So still he actually jumped when his phone rang. “Yes,” he said, answering. It was Dispatch.

“Rawling County just called,” the dispatcher told him. “They have a truck that went into a quarry bed sometime early this morning, burned up pretty good. It belongs to Jack Calloway.”

N
ICK WALKED TO
within a few feet of the ledge of the quarry, his heart jammed in his throat. Jack’s truck was snagged on a ridge fifty yards down, a charred black tangle of metal clinging to the side of the steep gully, tingeing the air with the scents of smoke and gasoline. Thirty feet farther down sat a pool of water. A couple of rescue workers climbed around the wreckage, having rappelled down the side of the quarry bed; they looked like orange-clad ants crawling around the remnants of a Tonka toy.

“Truck got caught on the way down,” the Rawling County sheriff told Nick. “The license plate was all melted but the guys called up a partial VIN number. We found twenty-eight trucks registered in the state of Ohio with that partial, but you’re the only one of the twenty-eight who was actually looking for one.”

Nick nodded. Rawling’s sheriff was about fifteen years older than he, a round man who would never have to worry about hair loss. His eyebrows were as bushy as his head. He might’ve been taken for a bumpkin except for his eyes, which were two keen spots of intelligence.

“How long ’til we can haul it up outta there?” Nick asked.

A firefighter—the chief, said his emblems—came over. “A couple of hours, maybe. Gotta give the guys a chance to process the scene. They still had hot pockets until an hour ago.”

“And no body?” Nick said, though he knew.

“Nope.” The sheriff handed Nick a pair of high-powered binoculars. Nick took two steps closer to the edge and peered down. Jesus. There was nothing left. A couple of thin scraps of metal jutted out from the front left of the wreckage. “Driver’s side door was open. He bounced out along the way?”

The sheriff nodded. “Could be. Or he got out and ran when the fire started. We’ll start dragging the quarry as soon as we can get a team together. Wanna get the truck up first. It’s too teetery for me to put men under it right now.”

“Okay,” Nick said. It was the right sequence of events. “How did it get reported?”

“There’s a private airstrip thirty miles south of here. The pilot of a Cessna that took off this morning spotted the end of the fire, called it in.”

Nick used the binoculars to scan the whole path down the gully—imagined Jack, battered but alive, climbing up from under a rock—but knew that wasn’t going to happen. He lowered the binoculars and looked behind the tape that marked off about thirty square yards. “Anything up there, where the car went over?”

“Silt. Anything that might have been there got rained out overnight. We may never know if the car went over trying to skid to a stop or at sixty miles an hour.” He noticed Nick’s grimace and added, hastily, “But we’ll process the
whole thing good. If there’s anything foul, we’ll find it.” The sheriff paused, stroking his chin. “You suspect something foul? I mean, I’ve been hearing a little news about Calloway. Sounded like the guy had his troubles.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, and a pulse of anger tapped at his chest.
Damn you, Erin Sims, bringing this shit to my town. Damn you, Jack, for being part of it.

He handed the binoculars to the Rawling County guy and started back up the slope. “I’m gonna send one of my guys out here with you today, okay? His name is Hogue, and he’s already on his way. I’d like to stay close.” He didn’t say
just in case you guys fuck it up
, but everyone understood the game.

“No problem. An extra set of eyes is always welcome.”

Nick stuck out his hand, and they shook. “Do me a favor,” Nick said. “Check the truck for damage on the right side. It might have hit another car before it went over.”

The older sheriff whistled. “We’ll check,” but Nick knew what he was thinking. No way any evidence like that would show up now.

Nick started back to his Tahoe.

“Hey, Mann?”

Nick turned, lifted a brow.

“This guy a friend of yours?”

“Yeah.” Nick swallowed. “He was.”

Back to Margaret. Nick called Valeria and asked her to put in a call to Reverend Whitmore: Margaret was going to need him. He didn’t tell her why; the media would have it soon enough. Then he asked about Erin and found she’d moved from talking to Jensen to working the phones, helping track down Mansfeld dropouts.

Good girl.

“Leni Engel called,” Valeria told Nick. “She’s pretty upset.”

“What happened?”

“Carroll County let Ace Holmes out. Rebecca won’t press charges.”

Nick ran a hand over his face. “Ah, shit.” He sat in the front seat of his truck feeling as if the threads of the life he’d built here were slipping through his fingers. He blew out a breath and asked for Erin.

“Erin,” he said, and knew how much he was asking. “I need a favor.”

“What is it?”

He told her about Rebecca. “Oh, no,” she said, sounding like a shrink. “Do you think Holmes got to her?”

“Or Holmes’s lawyer.” Either would be enough to scare a woman away from testifying. “Things are moving with Calloway, I promise. Do you think you could—”

“Go talk to Rebecca?” Erin asked.

He could hear her thinking about it, pictured her rubbing her temple. “I’ll go. But only if you get someone to cover my phone and keep working the college list.”

“You got it.” And then he added: “Make sure a deputy drives you over.”

At Hilltop House, Margaret met him in the front lobby, her hand shaking on a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” Nick asked.

“I found it after you left, inside my pillowcase,” she said, her voice breaking. “I went to make the bed and—”

Nick unfolded the page. A few lines, computer-printed:
Maggie, forgive me. Reverend, forgive me. God, forgive me.

“Ah, jeez,” Nick said.

She looked at him with hollow eyes. “He’s gone, isn’t he? That’s why you’re here.”