Buster.
“Did he leave a note here telling her to stay away?”
The girl shrugged. “He changed his mind, I guess.”
I took a step forward and bent down, trying to get closer to the girl’s eye level. Buster came up beside me. “Who are you, honey?” I asked. “Who are your parents?”
“I go back to them sometimes. They don’t care.” She ran the back of her hand across her nostrils. “He said he doesn’t need me anymore when he gets your girl back.”
“It’s not right for you to stay with him like that,” I said.
“We should call the cops-” Buster cut in.
“No,” she said and took two big steps back. Her voice was full of fear, like a child waking from a nightmare. “No. You can’t call the police.”
“We have to,” Buster said.
“He’ll run away,” she said. “He wants to run away. He doesn’t want to stay here. The police will take him. They’ll lock him up.”
“That’s what should happen,” Buster said. He reached in his jacket pocket and brought out a cell phone.
“No,” she said again.
“Hold it,” I said to both of them. “Just hold it.”
Buster held the phone in his hand, but stopped. He didn’t flip it open or dial. The girl stood still, staring at me, her eyes still wide.
“What does he want?” I asked. “Colter. What does he want from Caitlin?”
“Tom-”
“Quiet. Listen.”
Again her eyes moved between the two us. She looked like she could run at any moment. She finally settled her gaze on me. “He just wants to see her again,” she said.
“You said he’s leaving.”
She nodded. “He wants to. He wants to go away.”
“So he wants to take Caitlin with him?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Buster’s hand landed on my arm. “Tom, you need to stop this.”
I shook free. “Does he want to take her?”
The girl fixed her eyes on Buster. I looked. He held his phone and used his thumb to dial a number. “I’m calling the cops,” he said. “This is bullshit.”
“Goddamn it!”
I swung and knocked the phone out of his hand. Then I heard the scurrying.
I looked back. The girl was gone. She ran off into the darkness. I watched her disappear into the night, a faint blur moving jackrabbit quick. I took three steps in the same direction, then stopped. She was gone. Long gone.
When I came back, Buster was picking up his phone.
“Don’t,” I said.
“It’s dead. I never got through.”
“Good.”
“Good? That little girl is under the control of that creep. She must be the same age as Caitlin-”
“I get it.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t know.” I paced back and forth in the dark, moving between the headstones, my shoes kicking the leaves around. I started to sweat, and when the wind picked up and cooled the sweat, a chill came over me. “He’s going to get away with this, Buster. All of it.”
“You’ve got this girl right here. He took her.”
“She’s gone. We’ll never see her again. You scared her off.”
“They’ve got the other witnesses. They can put it all together.”
“And prove what exactly? That my daughter likes to date older men?”
“Don’t joke about this, Tom. Don’t fucking joke around. This is serious. This is your daughter you’re talking about here.”
“Is she?” I asked.
“What are you saying?”
“Is she my daughter after four years?”
“Yes. Some animal came along and took your daughter, and he did do those awful things to her. Unspeakable things. But you can’t just let that go. You’ve got to fight for this. You’re in a fight, Tom.”
“Unspeakable things?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the key right there, isn’t it? Caitlin refuses to speak of them. Not to me or Abby or the police. But we all know what we mean when we say unspeakable. Right? Just because it’s unspeakable doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. It doesn’t mean I don’t visualize it. Every night I see it.” My words came in a rush, so I paused to collect myself. “I see them in a bed. Or on the floor. I see that pig grunting and breathing over her. Mounting her. Kissing her. Everything. And worst of all, she’s doing it back and enjoying it.”
I couldn’t look at him. My rear molars ground against other.
“Do you think the truth is going to be worse than what you’ve imagined?” he asked.
“It can’t be.”
He put the phone away and crossed his arms. He looked like he understood.
He reached into his pants pocket again and brought out the slip of paper. “My car’s over by your house,” he said. “We can leave right now.”
I started to leave, then noticed Buster wasn’t by my side. I looked back into the darkness and saw his shape leaning over Caitlin’s headstone. He started grunting and huffing. I went back.
“Help me,” he said. “I’m tired of this fucking abortion standing here.”
He started pushing against the stone again, trying with all his might to tip it over. I moved in beside him. It was tough, resistant, but after a few minutes it rocked loose and fell into the soft grass with a heavy thud.
Buster straightened, wiped his hands on his pant legs.
“Now I’m ready to go,” he said.
Chapter Forty-five
Colter’s mother lived on the north side of town. I drove by the neighborhood on my way to the interstate, and from the highway I remembered seeing a few factories, some strip malls, and lots and lots of trailers and small homes, the kinds with debris scattered in their yards and blank-eyed occupants sitting on the stoops smoking and drinking soft drinks from plastic bottles.
“Looks like this is a pretty shitty neighborhood,” Buster said.
“That’s fitting.”
“I guess not too many professors live on this side of town.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Buster drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “You know, you called me Paul back there in the cemetery.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did. You looked me right in the eye back there, when you were holding me by the collar, and you called me Paul. Clear as day.”
We took an exit ramp and came to a stoplight. I opened the glove compartment and took out a map. While
