“I know exactly what you mean,” Somers says. “We all hear about the flashy cases. The Zoe Westmans who make the front page of the newspaper. That footage of volunteers in formation scouring parks and ravines and beaches. But what if you’re dealing with a young woman who just didn’t come home one night? Who had the wrong boyfriend or a drug problem or who’d gotten herself mixed up with the wrong crowd.” Somers frowns, her voice dropping. “I have daughters too, you know. This stuff feels personal to me. The Norton case? No evidence of foul play, my colleagues would all say. Looks like she’s just another runner. Is that what they said about your daughter?”
Douglas nods.
“I’m sorry about that,” Somers continues. “I swear, I’ve always made an effort to take cases like this seriously. But you’re right, Mr. Bentley. A lot of cops don’t.”
A silence passes between them. Clare can see the emotion on Douglas’s face, his jaw pulsing in the effort to maintain composure. He lifts their plates and turns his back to wash them in the sink. Somers grimaces at Clare. When he’s finished at the sink, Douglas waves for Somers and Clare to follow him to the basement. Downstairs, he stands aside, hands in his pockets, shifting his weight uneasily as Somers studies the photographs and notes lining the wall.
“You’ve been at this a long time,” Somers says.
“It gives me something to do.” Douglas points to the top corner of the wall where Malcolm’s photo is displayed next to Zoe’s. Clare can see a paper with her own name, an enlarged photocopy of her business card. “I put that up there because of what you told me yesterday. Your connection to Malcolm. I don’t mean anything by it. I’m just trying to keep things straight.”
“Makes sense,” Somers says, shooting Clare a look.
Clare retreats to a corner and chews her fingernails as Somers continues to follow the map on Douglas’s wall. Above Kendall’s photograph is one of Stacey Norton, the few small articles about her disappearance cut out and stapled neatly next to her photo. Clare wants to rip her own name down from the wall. But she is part of this matrix whether she wants to be or not. Malcolm hired her, she worked for him. To see it so plainly on the wall, Clare only one step removed from Zoe, from the Westman family, sends a chill down her spine. Somers pauses next at Jack Westman’s photograph. There is a sticky note attached to it. Autopsy? Somers taps at it.
“What’s this?”
“Jack Westman’s autopsy was never released. With public shootings, with something like this, usually the autopsy is released. Neither was the coroner’s report. I asked around. Wanted to see if I could get my hands on it.”
“Wouldn’t it be pretty straightforward?” Clare asks. “Gunshot wound to the head.”
“That’s what they said about JFK,” Douglas says.
Somers allows a small smile. “Conspiracy theorists unite.”
A cell phone rings sharply. Somers jolts, then fumbles to extract hers from her satchel and answer the call. She lifts a finger to say give me a minute, then disappears up the stairs. Clare and Douglas stand in place, listening to Somers’s muffled voice upstairs. What do you mean? she is saying. He’s where? Does Clare hear her say a name? No. She does not hear her say Jason. Clare must be imagining things. Douglas approaches the wall and touches his daughter’s photograph at its center.
“You know what’s made me the maddest?” he says.
Clare shakes her head. “The cops ignoring you?”
“No.” Douglas runs a finger along the outline of the photograph. “The cops who suggested she’d killed herself. There was one guy, one detective, this really crusty asshole. Not an empathetic bone in his body. I came to him with some information, and he listened to me like I was a child inventing fairy tales. Like I was amusing to him. And then he leaned forward in his chair and said to me, ‘Maybe the problem is that you feel guilty. Maybe you pushed her too hard, and she went over the edge. She was under a lot of pressure.’ He was implying to me that Kendall killed herself because her mother and I couldn’t lay off her.”
Douglas faces Clare. In his grief, he might best understand the loneliness, the isolation that Clare feels. He might be the only person she can trust in all of this.
“I ran away from a really shitty husband,” Clare says.
“Oh,” Douglas says. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah,” Clare says. “Just before Christmas. Nine months ago. Up until two months ago I was sleeping in a different cheap motel every night. I had a gun. I kept it under my pillow. Sometimes I’d toss and turn and my hand would jam itself under the pillow and land on the gun and for a split second I’d think about it. I’d think about putting it to my temple and pulling the trigger. Because I left my life…” She pauses and scratches hard at her scalp. “I left everything because I was afraid I was going to die. But after I was gone, it was hard to imagine anything at all. I was still so afraid, but there was this void too. Every day, everything around me changed. I had no footing.”
Douglas removes his glasses and wipes away the sweat forming on his brow.
“When I finally did stop in one place,” Clare continues, “when I saw this HELP WANTED sign in a window and tried my hand at staying put for a while, that hopeless feeling got even worse. Because I took this job at a restaurant, and right away it set in just how hard it would actually be to build a life from scratch. Everyone else already had their lives, they were settled with their families and their routines. The cooks, the other waitresses. The clientele.
