The Hiding Place

She opened her eyes, and it took a moment for them to adjust to the bright sun. Impulsively, she raised her right hand to her mouth, kissed it, and then cast the “kiss” toward the ground where her uncle’s body was discovered, a gesture that felt a little childish and immature. She’d never done anything like it before, but something about the gesture just felt right, almost required.

Ashleigh pushed herself to her feet. She knew she had to get home. She knew the reporter was coming by their house, and her mother had begged her to be there for the interview. “It sends the message that we’re all united in this,” she had said.

But Ashleigh couldn’t convince herself to believe that either. It too felt like a fairy tale, a child’s myth. Her grandfather never spoke about his dead child or dead wife, and the man barely gave the time of day to Ashleigh or her mother. Ashleigh couldn’t say why, but she even felt a distance between herself and her mother. She thought about it often, searching for the source, and could only conclude that it had to do with the sadness of her mother’s life, the black cloud that seemed to hang over everything the woman did. Ashleigh knew a better daughter would have reached out to her mother, talked to her about it, and tried to be the support system she so clearly lacked. But Ashleigh couldn’t bring herself to do that. She feared the wellspring of emotion that might pour out if the two of them even tried to talk about something real. Instead, Ashleigh decided to take the indirect approach. She’d find the man from the porch, and in the process, she’d find the truth about her uncle’s death. That would help her mother. That would put everything back on track.

When she first heard the twig snap, she assumed she had made the noise. Ashleigh looked down and saw that she was standing on dirt with no twigs nearby.

The noise came again, and when Ashleigh looked up, toward the same path to the clearing she had just come down, she saw the man looking at her, his body frozen in place next to the pond. A green scum was growing across the surface of the still water.

She recognized him. Didn’t she?

He was black. His eyes were large, the lids heavy and droopy. The man looked tired. Not like someone who hadn’t slept well, but rather like someone who had been knocked around, someone whose life had encountered a series of wrong turns and dead ends. The man’s eyes widened when he saw Ashleigh. He looked guilty, as though he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. Ashleigh didn’t think-didn’t know if-the man would even recognize her.

But she knew him. She had seen his picture in the paper that very morning.

“Hey,” she said. Her voice sounded low, tentative. She felt as if she were in a dream, the kind in which she would try to cry out but her voice wouldn’t make a sound. To prove this wasn’t a dream, she spoke again, her voice finding itself and rising louder beneath the trees. “Hey.”

The man started backing away. He held up one hand, the palm toward Ashleigh. She thought he wanted to say something but could manage only the gesture. And what did that gesture say to her?

Stay away from me.

No, that wasn’t it, Ashleigh decided. It was something else, something more benevolent.

I’m sorry. Is that what it said? I’m sorry.

The man turned away and started jogging. He didn’t move fast. Ashleigh took several steps after him but then just as quickly stopped. Why would she run after him? What would she do if she caught him?

What could she have to say to Dante Rogers, the man who’d killed her uncle?

Chapter Seven

Detective Frank Stynes brought his car to a stop, then checked his face in the rearview mirror. Sick, he thought. I look sick. The air-conditioning in his city- owned sedan was on the fritz, so he drove to the Mannings’ house with the windows down, the hot summer air swirling through the car, rearranging his remaining strands of hair into a comical mess on his head. Without fail, his allergies kicked in with the arrival of the first official day of summer. The whites of his eyes were more pink than anything else, and the tip of his nose was red from repeated blowings. A good day to meet the press and pose for photos, he thought as he climbed out.

Stynes couldn’t remember the last time he had been to the Manning place. Five years, maybe seven. Whenever Dante Rogers had been up for parole the last time, and Stynes had gone over to brief them all on what to say before the board. Whatever he told them or whatever they said worked-for a time. But after twenty-two years of being a model prisoner and repeated claims of being a born-again Christian, Dante was released back into the community. And so Stynes came to the Manning house one more time-probably the last-to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the murder of a four-year-old.

Stynes’s right hip creaked as he climbed out of the car. He needed to have it replaced-so his doctor told him-and he planned to have it done as soon as he retired. He’d do that in two years, when he turned fifty-seven. He’d opted to stay in for the full thirty. He told himself because he wanted the full pension and then some, but he knew the truth. Some people looked forward to traveling after retirement. Others to gardening or time with the wife and kids. Stynes had been a widower for four years, no kids. He hated to travel and paid a neighborhood teenager to cut his grass and pull weeds out of the cracks in the sidewalk. As far as he could tell, all he had to look forward to in retirement was a new hip.

The Mannings lived in a decent middle-class neighborhood in Dove Point, one planned and built in the sixties that had always housed schoolteachers and bank managers and salespeople. Kids ran or rode their bikes through the streets, and everyone spent their weekends grilling burgers or washing their cars. Janet Manning told Stynes she had moved back in because her father was contemplating early retirement. Stynes read between the lines of what she said, and he understood. Her dad-a guy a few years older than Stynes-had been laid off and didn’t think he could find another gig. At least you have that going for you, Stynes, he said to himself. Bad hip or not, no one is forcing you out.

Stynes climbed the steps to the porch, and just a few seconds after he’d hit the bell, Janet Manning opened the door.

“Hello, Detective,” she said, stepping back so he could enter. The living room caught a lot of light through the open curtains, and the place looked clean and orderly. Stynes assumed the woman’s touch-either Janet or her daughter or a combination of both-kept the house looking in good shape, but then stopped himself for being sexist. Maybe her dad liked to keep a neat house? Maybe he spent his enforced retirement vacuuming and dusting? The thought depressed Stynes more than he could have anticipated. He caught a quick flash of himself tending to his own little house-cooking meals on one burner, washing one dish and one cup in the sink…

Maybe he could land a private security job or do some consulting once the hip was fixed…

“So,” he said, “you’re back in the old homestead.”

“The house you grow up in always seems like home, doesn’t it?” Janet said. She looked trim and fit in her work clothes, and despite the grim news they discussed, her voice and movements possessed a lively energy. “And with me working so much, and Ashleigh in her teenage years, I thought it would be good to have another parental influence around.”

Stynes nodded, but he could tell Janet wasn’t fully convinced by what she was saying. He’d always liked Janet Manning. Even as a kid, in the swirl of her brother’s disappearance, she seemed pretty tough. As a seven-year-old, she didn’t cry or act scared when they interviewed her in the wake of the disappearance. Over the years, she always put on her best face and marched to the parole hearings without hesitation. Stynes knew her mother had died about seven years after her brother, and somewhere along the way Janet ended up pregnant and raising a kid by herself. He never knew-and never asked-who the father was. But she worked and supported herself, and Stynes sensed a measure of ambivalence about moving back into her childhood home. No independent person wanted to move back in with Dad. They did it, but they didn’t like it. Stynes concluded that if he’d had a daughter, he’d want her to be like Janet Manning.

Janet pointed to an overstuffed couch, so he sat. The TV played a political show with the sound down, the screen dominated by a wildly gesticulating host in a tricornered colonial-style hat. “Dad watches that junk,” she said, turning the TV off. She sat in a love seat perpendicular to the couch.

“You’ve done all this before,” Stynes said, “so I don’t see that I have to give you any pointers.”