'Of course. He parked over the ridge but he was heavy-footed. He couldn't hear himself, how loud he was.'
No, Crease thought, because the first thing that goes when you're drunk is the hearing.
'What did you and Purvis do then?'
'We left,' she said.
'What?'
Her gaze locked with Crease's and she nodded. 'That's right, I pushed Mary forward and told her to go see the nice policeman. Daniel said he spotted someone else in the woods, and we left. There are logger trails criss- crossing the entire hill. We drove away on one of them.'
'Without the money? You couldn't have walked away from it that easily.'
'But we did,' Sarah Burke said. 'I didn't want my niece to be hurt, and I couldn't afford to lose Daniel, not under any circumstances. As I said, this wasn't a kidnapping. I didn't want ransom. I wanted a gift. A gift from my brother. When I realized I was to be denied, we left.'
'Where did you set her free in the mill? The far side? The north side?'
'Yes, that's right.'
Way on the opposite end of the factory. His father should've seen a little girl walking up on him, at that point. But he was there for at least five hours before he noticed she was there, and when he did, he shot her.
Crease tried to see it from different angles. Maybe Mary fell asleep and only awoke at sunset, when Edwards started his move on the mill. But no, it made no sense. Could she have tried to follow after Sarah and Purvis after they left? Wandered around in the woods, lost for hours, before she found herself back at the mill? Just in time to snuff it. Too big a coincidence. It didn't really play.
He eyed Sarah Burke. She wasn't lying.
'Daniel drove me into town. He let me off in front of my brother's store, and then he just kept driving. I never saw him again. Perhaps he was only using me to get money. Or to have someone to care for him, at least for a while. Maybe he had grown tired of me. I realized that was possible from the start. Perhaps he did it to protect me from the men who would soon be coming for him. But it-'
'It didn't matter,' Crease said. 'You didn't care.'
'I didn't care, it didn't matter. Nothing did. Surely you see that.'
He shook his head, kind of sadly, the way he did when he saw somebody about to do something stupid during a deal. Some idiot reaching for a gun, Tucco moving, Crease raising his. 38, shaking his head.
'Not even the consequences,' Sarah Burke said. 'I understood what they would be. Even if we'd gotten the money and run away together, sooner or later he would've abandoned me. I'd have nowhere to go but home again to my brother's house. And then I'd go to jail.'
'The police never questioned you?'
'Of course they did,' she told him, 'but Sam covered for me. You see, he knows I did it. He's always known, although he can't admit it to himself. That's why Vera left him. That's why he's so mincing and clean and proper. He can't relax. He can't let go. If he does, even for an instant, in any way, he'll vanish. That's what he says.'
'Yes.'
'That's what he's most afraid of-disappearing, the same way Mary did. The truth would destroy him. It may still.' She let out a rictus smile that was no lip and all teeth. 'As I've vanished. I suppose in my heart I always knew I'd wind up here or a place like it. There's no bars on the windows but I'm trapped. I dwindle. Where can I go? Where could I ever possibly go? I live in expectation. Every morning, every night, I fully expect him to walk through that door and kill me. I dream of it. I hope for it, you see. He thinks vanishing is a torture. For me, it would be a blessing. A godsend. Is that why you're here, thirteen? Did God send you after me?'
'No.'
'Are you sure you won't share my poisonous pills?' she asked.
'No,' he said, and started for the door, 'you keep them all.'
Chapter Twelve
The rearview drew his eyes. The sense that someone was following him, or worse, hiding in the back seat, was overwhelming. Was it his old man, sitting there with a pint in his hand, vomit crusted on his shirt front? His father sobbing, wishing he had another chance to do things right, or maybe just to steal a little more. Crease couldn't tell.
Over the miles, the presence became much stronger. Maybe Mary, trying to tell him what a waste it had all been? He knew who'd killed her. He knew why it had happened. All that was left was finding the cash, and a dead girl wouldn't care about that.
Teddy on her lap, her small hands petting the bear, hugging it tight. What he'd done so far, what was the point of any of it?
Maybe it was Mimi's lost husband, longshoreman Lenny back there, who took off after the fourth or fifth kid, urging Crease to just cut loose and keep running. Skip out while he still could.
Man, when you didn't have your cool left you really had nothing at all.
Halfway to Hangtree, the window down and the breeze coursing through the car, rushing against him even as his forehead burned and the windshield fogged, he felt a wistful ache. It took him a minute to recognize the emotion for what it was. He wanted to check on Joan and Stevie.
He hit a cheap motel along the highway, paid for the night, showered, settled in, and reached for the phone. It was almost midnight. Joan would be sleeping but she wouldn't be angry if he woke her. He wondered if there was anything he could do to make her furious. And if so-if he had found whatever it was in time-if it would've somehow saved their marriage.
He called Joan. He wanted to hear her voice. Even if he didn't feel like saying much, she'd understand and do all the talking, trying to soothe him about things she didn't understand. When you got down to it, that's probably why his son hated him so much. Not for what Crease had done to Stevie, but what he'd done to the boy's mother. The kid had real pride and felt as great a sense of responsibility to protect her as Crease had felt about his father.
Instead, Mimi answered. 'Hello, who's that?'
'Mimi, what are you doing there?'
'Your back screen door has slipped out of the track. I tried to get it back in but it won't go, it's bent. You'll have to fix that. I don't want Freddy getting out. Your side gate doesn't close either, the little thing, what do you call it, the latch, you have to jiggle it so it'll lock, except it doesn't work.'
Crease tried to remember if Freddy was the kid with the beady eyes, or if it was the dog. He said, 'But why are you there?'
'I can't visit my sister?'
'You never visit your sister.'I could if I wanted to, though. Anyway, my oven broke. I'm afraid of a gas leak, so I packed the kids in the car and brought them over here.'
He pictured her house. 'Mimi, you've got an electric stove.'
'What?'
'You have an electric stove, didn't you realize that?'
'How do you know? All of a sudden you're a mister fix-it, you've got plumbing skills, you're a carpenter? You haven't even fixed your side gate or the screen door.'
'Your stove is electric. The coils turn red when they get hot. Somebody probably just knocked the plug out.'
'Yeah, and what if you're wrong? We could all suffocate in our sleep. The gas company's there right now, checking it out. The only time they show up is when you tell them there's a leak, then they come, even if it's eleven o'clock at night.'
He wasn't sure if Mimi was starting to become a serious attention-getter or if all the kids were driving her blood pressure up high enough to bake her brain. He'd seen it happen to guys on the force. Sharp, first-rate cops who, after having two or three children in short order, started falling asleep on the job, couldn't remember the call
