Chương 5
"She asks when you're coming back every twenty minutes."
Daniel stopped.
Naomi folded her arms.
"That's why boundaries aren't cruelty."
He looked through the living-room doorway.
Lily was sitting cross-legged on a rug watching an animated movie with the sound low. A foster parent named Denise sat nearby folding towels.
Bunny was back.
The forensic team had returned him in a clear evidence bag after finishing the examination. Denise had washed her hands, opened the bag under Naomi's supervision and given him to Lily.
The blue seam remained open.
Lily had refused to let anyone repair it.
She saw Daniel.
Her face brightened.
It lasted less than a second before she deliberately erased it.
"Hi," he said.
"You left."
"I told you I would."
"You didn't say goodbye."
Daniel had no defense for that.
"No. I didn't."
She looked back at the television.
He sat on the far end of the couch.
The movie involved talking dogs.
After five minutes Lily said, "This is stupid."
"Seems complicated."
"Dogs can't drive."
"That's the part you object to?"
She looked at him.
A tiny smile appeared and disappeared.
Naomi saw it.
Daniel saw Naomi seeing it.
He suddenly understood her concern better.
Lily said, "Did you find Mom?"
"No."
The smile was gone.
"Did you find the hole?"
Daniel looked at Naomi.
She nodded once.
"Yes."
"Was Mom in it?"
"No."
Lily stared at him.
"Then I was wrong."
"No."
"I said he buried Mom."
"You saw him digging. You saw your mom disappear. You told us what you believed happened."
"That's wrong."
"It's not lying."
"I didn't say lying."
Daniel rubbed his palms together.
"No. You didn't."
Lily picked at the rabbit's torn seam.
"What was in the hole?"
"Some of your mom's things."
"Why?"
"We don't know yet."
"Gary knows."
"Probably."
"Ask him."
"We have to find him first."
She frowned as if police work was unnecessarily inefficient.
"He's at the other motel."
Daniel went still.
"What other motel?"
Lily looked at him.
"The one with the green doors."
"What green doors?"
"Gary took us there before."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
Daniel leaned forward.
Naomi immediately said, "Don't interview her."
"I'm not."
"You are about to."
He stood.
"Lily, I need to call Detective Cole."
Lily shrugged and turned back to the dogs.
Cole arrived twenty-five minutes later with a trained child forensic interviewer.
The interview was recorded.
Daniel watched from another room.
Lily described a motel with green doors, a swimming pool covered by a blue tarp, and a vending machine that had a picture of an orange on it.
She did not know where it was.
She remembered that Gary had been angry because Claire refused to get out of the car.
She remembered a train horn.
She remembered a sign across the road with "a big chicken wearing a hat."
That sounded ridiculous until Vega searched businesses along the regional freight line and found a fried-chicken restaurant whose roadside sign featured a cartoon rooster in a cowboy hat.
Across the highway was the Cedar Rest Inn.
Its doors were green.
Its pool was covered with a blue tarp.
Room 317 did not exist there either.
But the motel office rented long-term storage lockers in an outbuilding behind the pool.
They were numbered 301 through 324.
Cole looked at Daniel.
"Now it's a locker key."
They obtained a warrant.
Locker 317 contained no drugs.
No money.
No body.
It contained a laptop, two external drives, a spiral notebook, a hospital ID badge belonging to a pharmacy technician named Russell Vane, and a cheap digital voice recorder.
The notebook documented dates, quantities and initials.
The drives contained hospital access schedules, loading-dock camera stills and photographs of controlled-medication disposal bins.
Gary Rusk had not been acting alone.
Russell Vane was arrested before midnight.
He asked for a lawyer immediately.
Hospital administrators stopped describing Claire's concerns as an internal personnel matter.
The story became larger.
That did not make Claire easier to find.
Forty-eight hours passed.
Gary's pickup was discovered at a shopping center sixty miles away.
A bus-station camera showed a large man in a baseball cap buying a ticket with cash, but image quality was poor and investigators could not confirm it was him.
Claire's bank cards had not been used.
Her phone remained in evidence.
Her body had not been found.
Neither had she.
Lily's father arrived from Arizona.
Daniel met him by accident in the child-services lobby.
Evan Mercer was thirty-seven, thin, sunburned and furious.
"You Reed?"
Daniel stood.
"Officer Reed."
"My daughter keeps asking for you."
Daniel did not know what answer would make that better.
Evan looked toward the visitation room.
"She barely talks to me."
"You've been gone a while."
The sentence escaped before Daniel could stop it.
Evan's head turned.
"You know anything about my divorce?"
"No."
"Then maybe don't."
Daniel nodded.
"Fair."
Evan seemed disappointed not to have an argument.
He sat down.
After a moment he said, "Claire made it hard."
Daniel stayed standing.
Evan rubbed both hands over his face.
"That's what I've been telling myself."
Daniel said nothing.
"I moved for work. Then I missed a weekend. Then two. Flights cost money. Claire would get pissed, I'd get pissed back. You know how it goes."
Daniel knew exactly how it went.
That irritated him.
Evan looked up.
"Do you?"
"Enough."
"She seeing this Gary guy?"
"That's part of the investigation."
"Meaning yes."
"Meaning I'm not discussing it."
Evan laughed without humor.
"Everybody suddenly protects Claire."
Daniel looked at him.
Evan immediately regretted the sentence.
"That came out wrong."
"It came out."
"She kept Lily from me."
"Did she?"
Evan's jaw worked.
"Sometimes."
"And the other times?"
He looked at the floor.
Daniel sat beside him.
For a while neither spoke.
A vending machine buzzed across the room.
Finally Evan said, "The other times I made it easy for her not to expect me."
Daniel thought about Caleb's baseball game.
"Yeah," he said.
Evan looked over.
May you like
Daniel did not explain.
Three days after the motel, the investigation found the first indication Claire might still be alive.
