Chương 2
“Hey, buddy. My name’s Officer Torres. Are you hurt anywhere besides your cheek?”
Ethan shook his head.
“Did anybody hit you?”
“No.”
“Did anybody threaten you?”
He hesitated.
Claire saw it.
So did Torres.
“Take your time.”
Ethan looked at Daniel again.
“He said if I kept kicking the window I’d cut myself.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
Torres glanced toward him.
“Did he tell you why you were in the vehicle?”
“No.”
“Who put you inside?”
Ethan pointed.
Daniel did not protest.
The second officer was already walking toward him.
Daniel lifted his hands.
“I’m not armed.”
“Keep them where I can see them.”
“I am.”
The officer turned him toward the sedan and began a pat-down.
Claire watched with a detached kind of satisfaction that disappeared almost immediately.
Daniel had put Ethan in the vehicle.
Whatever else was true, that was true.
But Daniel had also told him their mother was alive.
And Ethan had a key from their father’s office.
And the suitcase.
The suitcase.
Officer Torres followed Claire’s gaze.
“Is that yours?”
“No.”
“You recognize it?”
Claire’s mouth was dry.
“My mother had one.”
“Where is your mother?”
Claire said, “Dead.”
Ethan whispered, “Maybe not.”
Torres looked between them.
“How long has she been deceased?”
“Nine years.”
“Was there a funeral?”
Claire stared at her.
The question seemed offensive until she tried to answer it.
There had been a memorial.
White flowers at St. Matthew’s.
A photograph of their mother at thirty-eight, smiling beside Lake Michigan.
No casket.
Her father had said there could not be one because there was no body.
Laura Hale had driven onto the Lake Street Bridge during a winter storm. Her abandoned Lexus had been found on the shoulder. Her coat and shoes had been found beneath the railing.
Search teams had dragged part of the river.
They had never found her.
Three years later, Richard Hale had petitioned to have his wife declared legally dead.
Claire had been sixteen when the judge signed the order.
She had not attended.
“No body,” Claire said.
Torres’s expression changed slightly.
“Okay.”
Daniel was being handcuffed.
He looked toward Claire.
“Don’t let him take the key.”
She took a step toward him.
The officer pushed Daniel’s shoulder gently against the sedan.
“That’s enough talking.”
Daniel said louder, “Your father knows where she is.”
“Daniel.”
“He has always known.”
The officer opened the rear door of the cruiser.
Claire moved before she could think.
“Wait.”
Torres put an arm across her path.
“Ma’am.”
Claire stopped.
Daniel ducked his head toward the car.
“Why?” she shouted. “Why would he do that?”
Daniel looked at her through the open door.
“Because she knows what he did.”
The officer placed him in the back seat.
The door closed.
Claire stood in the rotating red and blue light with Ethan pressed against her side.
Marcus came over.
His face had lost color.
She noticed that before anything else.
Not the radio in his hand.
Not the blood on his knuckle from the broken glass.
His face.
“You know,” Claire said.
Marcus looked toward the elevator.
“No.”
“You know something.”
He rubbed his thumb over his knuckle.
“Not what he’s talking about.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Torres turned. “If there’s information relevant to a possible kidnapping, now would be an excellent time.”
Marcus breathed out through his nose.
“I worked here in 2017.”
Claire almost said, So?
Then she saw his eyes move toward the red suitcase again.
“What happened in 2017?”
Marcus gave a slow shake of his head.
“I need to call hotel counsel.”
Claire laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“My nine-year-old brother was locked in a car, and you need to call a lawyer?”
“I’m an employee.”
“You’re head of security.”
“That’s why I need to call a lawyer.”
“Marcus.”
He looked at her.
She had known him since she was a teenager. He had once driven three hours to bring her a passport she left in her father’s safe before a college trip. He sent Ethan a birthday card every year because Ethan had decided, at age five, that Marcus was the only adult in the hotel who understood dinosaurs.
Now he would not meet her eyes.
Claire’s stomach tightened.
“You knew my mother.”
“Yes.”
“Was she in Room 317?”
Marcus’s silence answered before he did.
Torres said, “Sir?”
Marcus looked toward the police cruisers.
“I saw her come out of that room once.”
Claire’s hand fell from Ethan’s shoulder.
“When?”
“February 2017.”
Three weeks before Laura disappeared.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead.
Ethan whispered, “Claire?”
She took his hand.
The brass key pressed cold between their palms.
“Don’t let go of that,” she said.
The red suitcase was treated as evidence.
That annoyed Claire in a way she could not explain.
Officer Torres called another unit. A crime-scene technician photographed the elevator, the suitcase, the broken SUV, the glass, the damaged luggage cart, Ethan’s cheek. Marcus provided the garage surveillance system information while maintaining, repeatedly, that the hotel would cooperate fully once corporate counsel arrived.
Daniel was taken downtown.
Ethan was examined by paramedics and refused a ride to the hospital.
“I’m not getting in another car,” he said.
Nobody argued.
Their father arrived twenty-six minutes later.
Richard Hale did not run.
Claire noticed that.
He came down the employee elevator wearing navy trousers, an open-collar white shirt, and the gray cashmere coat he wore when he wanted people to recognize money without recognizing a brand. He was sixty-one, silver-haired, straight-backed, handsome in the way men remained handsome when other people handled the inconvenient parts of their lives.
He saw Ethan.
His face changed.
“Buddy.”
Ethan stepped behind Claire.
Richard stopped.
The change in his expression was almost invisible.
Almost.
He looked at Claire.
“What happened?”
She said, “You tell me.”
He glanced toward the shattered SUV, the police officers, Marcus, the open elevator.
Then he saw the suitcase.
His face emptied.
May you like
It lasted maybe half a second.
Claire knew her father too well to miss it.
