thought I could ask you one more thing.”
“Shoot.”
“You read the paper, right? And saw the story about the press conference where the police released the sketch? You know that I mentioned seeing something-someone-in the park where Caitlin disappeared.”
“The ghost,” she said, holding her hands up and making air quotes.
“What do you make of that?” I asked. “Is it possible? Did I see something. .?”
“You saw something,” she said. “I’m an open-minded person by nature. I tend to think it’s possible there are things we just don’t understand in this world. People and things we don’t understand. Maybe you just saw what you wanted to see.” She paused and studied my face. “We all have ghosts, Tom. We trail them along behind us like banners.”
“Or like weights,” I said.
“What are you going to do with your weight?” she asked.
I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.
But I didn’t get up to leave. I stayed in my seat.
“The police. .” I said.
“What about them?”
“The police think Tracy might know the man she saw in the strip club. And she came by my office at the university and hinted at the same thing.”
“I told you I shouldn’t-”
“And then she asked me for money.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Did you give it to her?”
“Am I being played here?” I asked. “Is she up to something?”
“Tracy is not fully healed. You need to keep that in mind when you have dealings with her. If she asks you for money again, I suggest you don’t give it to her. I’ve made that mistake with her before.”
“I guess it’s hard to resist the urge to help,” I said. “It’s hard to forget she’s somebody’s daughter. Somebody somewhere.”
“We all are, aren’t we? We all are.”
Chapter Twenty
The cell phone woke me the next morning. My eyes fixed not on the buzzing, vibrating phone, but on Caitlin’s red coat, which I’d tossed across a chair the night before. The coat that had held that red flower.
I looked at the clock: 6:15. Early. It was still dark beyond the curtains. Predawn.
I didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID. I thought about letting it go to voice mail, but I looked at the coat again. Something wasn’t right. The phone shouldn’t be ringing so early. .
“Hello?”
“Tom? This is Detective Ryan.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Tom, I need you to come down here right away.”
I kept my eyes fixed on the coat. I felt cold, the blood in my body icy.
“What is it? What happened?”
“We may have found Caitlin, and we need you to come down here and see this girl for yourself.”
I tried to work my mouth, but no sound came out. My jaw moved up and down like a broken hinge.
“Tom? Can you come down here, or should I send a car to get you?”
“You found her,” I said. “And you need me to identify. .”
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t refer to my daughter as simply a body, a pile of remains or dust scattered by the wind and wild animals.
“No,” Ryan said. “She’s alive. This girl is alive, and we need you to come down to the station right away. Now, can you drive yourself or do you need me to send that car?”
“Alive. . Caitlin? Are you serious?”
“No joke, Tom. This girl is alive.”
I closed the phone and spoke at the same time.
“I’m on my way.”
My hands shook. I gripped the wheel tight to steady them, and the pressure I exerted made my knuckles ache. I thought they might crack open and bleed. My speed crept too high, so I overcompensated and drove so slow other drivers came within inches of my bumper. My heart thumped at twice its normal pace, and my extremities felt numb, as though they’d been severed from the rest of my body.
When I reached the station, I parked my car at a crazy angle and barely managed to shut the door before running inside.
I was two steps inside when Ryan intercepted me.
“Where is she? Where?”
“Come with me.”
He clamped his big hand on my biceps and led me down a short hallway to the familiar conference room. He guided me inside. My eyes darted around the room. It was empty.
Ryan closed the door behind us.
“Where is she?” I asked. “Are you bringing her in here?”
“Sit down.”
“I want to see her.”
“You will. But sit down first.”
“I don’t want to sit down. I want to see my daughter.”
I started past him, my right arm brushing against his left. Ryan took hold of me again, but this time I shook loose and reached for the door. Ryan grabbed me from behind like a wrestler and pressed his mouth close to my ear. I felt his hot breath as he spoke.
“Not yet,” he said. “You need to sit down.”
His voice was steady but laced with steel. His arms encircled me, dug into my rib cage. I couldn’t get loose. He was too big, too strong. Surprisingly so. I struggled a little more, but we both knew it was futile.
“Are you going to sit?” he asked, his voice practically inside my head.
I nodded, went limp. “Sure, sure.”
He didn’t really let go, but with less force turned me away from the door and back toward the conference table.
“Sit here,” he said.
I sat, straightening the collar of my jacket, which had shoved up under my chin during our struggle.
“We need to talk about a few things before this goes any further,” Ryan said.
“Is it her?” I asked. “Is it really her?”
Ryan nodded. “We think it is. Caitlin wrecked her bike when she was little, right? It left a pretty distinctive round scar.”
“Yes, of course. She got eight stitches.”
“This young woman allowed a female police officer to look at her knee. She rolled her pant leg up. The scar is there. We’ve gone ahead and fingerprinted her in order to make a comparison with the prints that were taken when she was little. That will take a few hours, but I don’t have any doubt, looking at her and comparing her to the pictures of your child. This is your daughter. It’s Caitlin.”
I felt the sharp pain in my chest, the same one I’d felt in Caitlin’s closet. My heart swelled like a balloon, expanding until it reached my throat and choked off the passage of air. I put my head in my hands, closed my eyes. I squeezed them tight until I saw firework patterns on my eyelids, great starbursts of red and green.
