DEPUTY SHERIFF LOUIS
Fitzgerald and I have gone our separate ways for the moment. Fitzgerald is focusing on getting a search dog over here, and on trying to trace the whereabouts of Griff from the GPS in his cell phone. I will be meeting with the other deputies to give and receive updates on our progress in finding Calli and Petra.
Our sheriff, Harold Motts, is getting on in years, and has taken a mostly hands-off approach to his job in the past year. He’s passed as many of his duties that he could over to me. There has even been talk that I should run for sheriff in the next election. Most of the staff have been accepting, though grudgingly, of my leadership role, but one. Deputy Logan Roper has tried to make job as a deputy sheriff hell. I figure it had more to do with Roper being a close pal of Griff Clark more than any genuine dislike that he has for me, but who knows? We’ve come to a mutual understanding. We show professional respect toward one another and communicate when we need to, but that’s all. It’s too bad, actually, but as long as our tension doesn’t interfere with the job, I can live with it.
Griff and Logan were five years ahead of Toni and me in high school. I never really knew much about them, just that they were wild and could be mean. I’m not sure how Griff and Toni were first introduced, but I suspect it was through her job as a clerk at the Gas & Go, a convenience store on Highway Ten. Toni worked there on weekends and after school. I told her I didn’t like her working in a gas station so late at night and so close to the highway; anyone could take off with her and would be well on his way without anyone knowing. Toni would just laugh and call me “cop boy.” I hated that.
By April of our senior year of high school, Toni wasn’t talking to me and was dating Griff, apparently hopelessly in love with him. I thought she was trying to make me jealous and it worked, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of letting her know that. I didn’t think, however, that a year later she would be married to him.
November of our senior year was when Toni and I really started talking about our future together and what we wanted. We had spent a chilly early winter morning walking through the woods. She wore an old brown barn coat that belonged to one of her brothers and a multicolored hat knit by her mother, who had died earlier that fall. She had cropped her hair short and it made her face seem even younger than her seventeen years; she had lost weight since her mother passed and she looked breakable. I was excited. She knew I wanted to go to college. Toni said she was supportive of that, but I could tell she wasn’t really. I couldn’t afford the tuition at St. Gilianus so a state college was my only option. The problem was that the University of Iowa was over a hundred miles away from Willow Creek. I had already filled out my application and had been accepted; I would leave the following August.
As I told Toni, she wouldn’t even look at me. She sat on the edge of the fallen tree we called Lone Tree Bridge because it fell across a portion of Willow Creek. Her normally unguarded face went stony as I described to her that the college wasn’t really all that far away and that I’d come to see her on holidays and on weekends. I went on to say that there was nothing stopping her from coming with me. She could enroll in classes or get a job. We could still be together.
“Everybody leaves me,” she whispered, tucking her arms into the pockets of her coat.
She meant her mother dying and her brothers moving away. It was just her and her dad in their house, and according to Toni, her dad was thinking of moving to Phoenix to be with Tim, his oldest son.
“I’m not leaving, not for good,” I told her. But she shook her head.
“You won’t come back. You’ll go to college with all these important people and important ideas. You’ll outgrow this place,” she said matter-of-factly.
“No,” I insisted. “I will never outgrow you.”
“All I’ve ever wanted was to live in a yellow house,” she said softly before she walked away, leaving me standing alone among the naked trees. I could hear crispy leaves crunching under her feet long after I couldn’t see her anymore. We tried to carry on as we always had for the next month or so, but something had changed. She would shrink from my touch, as if the feel of my hands on her hurt her somehow. She would become uncharacteristically quiet when I talked about college and a shadow came across her face whenever I tried to make love to her. I hadn’t even left yet, but she was already gone.
She broke up with me at the beginning of December and from then on, it was as if I didn’t exist. She didn’t take my phone calls, didn’t answer the door when I came over, walked right past me in the hallways at school. I finally cornered her in Willow Creek Woods. She was walking slowly, her head down, her eyes on the trail before her. It was snowing, the flakes impossibly big. I briefly considered scooping up a snowball and pelting her in the back with it. I was pretty pissed at her. But I didn’t. There was something about her walking there alone that made her seem as naked and vulnerable as the giant, leafless trees. “Toni,” I called softly to her, trying not to startle her. She whipped around, clutching her chest. On seeing me, she dropped her hands, fists tight, as if preparing for a fight. “Hey,” I said. She didn’t respond. “Can we talk?” I asked.
“There’s really nothing to talk about,” she said, her voice as cold as the air around us.
“Do you really want to do this?” I asked.
“Do what?” she asked as if she didn’t know what I was talking about.
“This!” My voice echoed through the trees. She took one step toward me and then stopped, as if coming any closer to me might make her change her mind.
“Lou,” she said firmly. “For months I watched my mother die…”
“I know,” I said. “I was there, remember?”
“No, you weren’t there. Not really. For months I watched my mother dying. There was nothing, nothing, that I could do to make her better, to make her live. Now I’m losing my dad. In a completely different way, but the minute I graduate he’s out of here. Out of Willow Creek forever. He can’t stand the thought of living here without my mother. I do not want to end up like that. Ever!” She looked at me fiercely.
“It’s not the same,” I pleaded with her.
“It’s exactly the same,” she shot back. “You’re going to leave, and that’s fine, whatever. But I’m not going to spend the rest of my life waiting for you. I spent way too much time on you as it is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked angrily. “That I was just a waste of time?”
“It just means that I’m not going to invest one more minute in someone who isn’t going to stick around, who doesn’t love me enough to stay. Just leave me alone!” She turned away from me and moved noiselessly through the woods. I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. At that moment, I hated her. I bent down and scraped up a handful of the wet snow, forming a perfect white ball. I didn’t throw it hard, but at the last second she turned to say something else to me, and the snowball pelted her right in the face. She stood stone still for a fraction of a second and then turned and ran. I tried to follow her, to apologize, but she knew the woods better than anyone, plus she was faster than I was. I never caught up to her, never said I was sorry. Never found out what she was going to say to me before the snowball hit.
In the end, she outgrew me, or maybe I outgrew her, I guess. I knew I was starting to look like a fool. Everyone knew I loved Antonia and that she wanted nothing to do with me anymore. She married Griff that next year, while I was away at school, and had Ben soon after. I learned about Toni the way strangers learned about her, through newspaper clippings and idle gossip. We had become strangers, she and I.
I met Christine four years later and we married. She reminded me nothing of Toni, and I didn’t mean to hold that against her, but I guess I did. I’m surprised, actually, that Christine was this patient with me, especially after I brought her here to Willow Creek to live and raise a family. She never quite settled in, always felt out of place, unwelcome. It’s not her fault that the people of Willow Creek are intertwined by a common history and by blood. Maybe she doesn’t fit in because she doesn’t want to, or maybe because I don’t want her to. I don’t know. But I don’t have time to waste on this; I have to focus on the matters at hand.
As soon as I walk into the station, Officer Tucci is there, waiting for me.
“We got some info on some of the names you wanted run,” he tells me. “There’s not much. Mariah Burton, the babysitter, is completely clean. Chad Wagner, one of the students, was arrested when he was in high school for underage drinking. Got a hold of him and he’s home visiting his mom and dad in Winner. Nothing’s come up on this Lucky Thompson, but we can’t contact him. He isn’t at home or he isn’t answering his phone. The men from the furniture store are accounted for and are being interviewed. We’re also checking on all the teachers at the girls’ school. Calli spent a lot of time with the school counselor, a Charles Wilson. We haven’t been able to contact him, either. Only other red flag was on Sam Garfield. He teaches at St. Gilianus. Been here for about three years. Before that he was at another college in Ohio. Left under a cloud. Had an affair with a student.
“Oh, and Antonia Clark called about twenty minutes ago,” Tucci says. “She says she’s found footprints that
