Everyone Here Is Lying(12)

Seven


William excuses himself to go to the bathroom. There’s a powder room on the main floor, but he goes upstairs instead. He can feel the eyes of the detectives on his back as he leaves. He makes his way along the upstairs hall and closes the bathroom door and locks it behind him. And then he leans over the toilet and heaves into the bowl. He remains there, sweating, thinking he wants to die. He pictures his little Avery, not as he last saw her, but smiling and happy, and he cries silently. Finally, he struggles to his feet and flushes the toilet, runs cold water over his face, and washes his hands. He can’t bear to look at himself in the mirror; he hates himself.

He must decide what to do.

The damn jacket.

He’d hung up the jacket, which Avery had dropped on the floor, tidying up on autopilot while he was asking her why she was home by herself. He’d forgotten all about it until the detective found it. And now the police know someone was in the house with her, and he’s missed every opportunity to say it was him. If he now tells them he was here, and saw her, that he hung up the jacket, and tries to tell them that she was fine when he left, they will never believe him. So he must continue to claim that he was never here. But where will he say he was? He was gone for a long while that afternoon—he was with Nora and then he came home—and he can’t admit to either of those things. He wasn’t at his practice or at the hospital, and he has no one to confirm he was with them. He’s fucked.

The police are going to search the house. They won’t find strange fingerprints or anything else, because nobody else was in the house. And then they will focus on him and Erin. Isn’t that what they do? Accuse the parents if they can’t find anyone else? And he doesn’t have an alibi.

Then it occurs to him that he has another problem, something they will find. His burner phone. For a moment he can’t even breathe. Nora will be dragged into this, too, they will be found out, her worst fears realized. Oh, Christ. Nora had ended it—today, of all days. It’s like she had some premonition of the shitstorm that was about to come. He wonders what she will think if it starts getting reported that the missing girl’s father is the number one suspect.

They must be wondering what’s taking him so long. He straightens up, takes a deep breath. As long as no one saw him—saw his car coming and going from the garage. He feels a disorienting surge of fear that he must deliberately tamp down. There’s a good chance he wasn’t seen, because someone would have mentioned it by now, surely? They’ve already had cops questioning neighbors up and down the street. It’s a calculated risk, but one he must continue to take. Worst case, he can deny it, say they’re mistaken.

Their house is at the top of Connaught Street, which runs north-south, parallel to the river, ending in a cul-de-sac. The only other street it connects to is Greenley Avenue, which leads east toward downtown. To the north of their house is undeveloped land, just scrub, that meets up with the forest as it curves down to the river. The houses are set some distance apart, and as far as he knows, nobody has cameras. There’s no crime in Stanhope. It’s a small place. Safe as houses. Until it isn’t.



* * *



? ? ?

Gully remains at the Woolers’ house as the difficult night wears on, yielding nothing about Avery’s whereabouts. The family has been moved to a downtown hotel—the Excelsior—for the night, the female police officer accompanying them. Bledsoe has returned to the station to set up a command post. From there he will run the investigation, in constant contact with the search parties, the officers in the field, the ones in the station running down sex offenders.

Gully observes the technicians doing their meticulous work. They’re looking for fingerprints, evidence of blood that has been cleaned up, fibers, hairs, anything. Of course, the scene has already been compromised. But maybe they’ll get lucky. Gully feels that the area is too tidy if the little girl was home after school. Wouldn’t she have had a snack? Perhaps she didn’t have time. Or perhaps whoever was here with her tidied up so it would look like she was never here and simply screwed up about the jean jacket. Not everyone thinks clearly when they’re committing a crime. Gully can’t help thinking that hanging up a jacket is the sort of thing a parent would do.

Gully goes upstairs to Avery’s room. Wearing a pair of gloves, she flicks on the overhead light and takes a long look. The room is painted off-white, the bed neatly made with a pretty pink-and-yellow quilt on it. There’s a white nightstand next to the white bed, a small white desk and matching chair, some pictures on the walls—something undoubtedly chosen by her mother. It’s hard to get a sense of Avery from looking at her room.

The dark and the rain press up against the bedroom window; the soft light makes the room feel cozy and safe. Gully feels a stab of anxiety for the missing girl—it’s late at night, and she’s out there somewhere, instead of here, tucked up in bed where she belongs. Gully moves farther into the room and opens the bedside-table drawer. She riffles carefully through its contents—pens and paper, a chocolate bar wrapper, some lip balm, and underneath all that, a diary. It’s the kind that has its own little gold lock with a key attached, on a red string. She sets it down to read in a bit. She looks under the bed, beneath the mattress. She searches behind the pictures, through the desk and dresser drawers. She lifts up the small area rug on the floor. She’s looking for anything that will help her understand what might have happened to the little girl. Even children of nine can have secrets.