I shot up from the couch, disoriented, my pulse matching the pounding. I’d been dreaming of playing the drums. Had I carried that thunder into the waking world? Then the phone started ringing and the barrage against the door ramped up to include the doorknob jiggling furiously.
“Wake up, dammit! Gary, wake up!”
Dad rushed into the living room, tying his robe, looking worried. He’d come from his office. He’d either been working late or had been sleeping in there.
He unlocked the door and pulled it open. Jerome Nillson stood on our porch, hair sticking out in every direction, outlined by nightfall. He was clothed, but barely—slacks, a stained white undershirt. Someone had woken him up just like he was waking us up.
“What is it?” Dad asked.
But Sheriff Nillson’s eyes found me. He shoved Dad aside and strode into the living room, the pungent smell of liquor preceding him. “Where’s Brenda Taft?”
I felt as if I’d been dropped from our living room and onto a well-lit stage. I tried to swallow, but it went the wrong direction and I started coughing.
Sheriff Nillson gripped my shoulder and gave me a quick shake, like you do a candy machine that won’t drop your gumball. “Is she here?”
“No,” I said, eyes watering. “She was supposed to come over, but she never showed up.”
He grabbed my chin, his fingers sending wires of pain along my jawline. “Is it a suicide pact? Is that what you girls have?”
“Jerome, that’s enough,” Dad said, pulling him off me. “What’s this about?”
Sheriff Nillson ran his hands through his cotton-candy hair, zipping it back into place. His words came out tight. “Roy Taft was leaving for his fishing trip. Bright and early gets the worm. Figured he’d check in on Brenda before he left, give her a peck. Except Brenda wasn’t in her bed, wasn’t anywhere in the house. He called me, and I came straight here.”
Sheriff Nillson stared down at me as I rubbed my stinging jaw. “If you’re hiding something from me, so help me,” he said. “I’m not having two girls disappear on my watch.”
He put the emphasis on the “two”—“not having two girls disappear”—like one would have been acceptable but two was vulgar. Or maybe, like he’d known about the first one, had a hand in it, but the second was an unwelcome surprise.
I was struggling to take a full breath. “If Brenda is missing, ask Ricky,” I said. “Ricky and Ant and Ed. They’ll know. Ed’s back in town. He bought Brenda earrings.”
Dad and Sheriff Nillson shared a weighted look.
“Do you know where Ed’s staying?” Dad asked.
I shook my head, then thought of the cabin where I’d attended my first and only party. “He mentioned a friend’s place out by the quarries, the one behind Dead Man’s. It’s a smaller one, Quarry Eleven, I think. If you drive down that road as far as you can and park, the cabin’s one hundred yards north through the trees.”
The place where Ant had taken my picture.
Sheriff Nillson glared at me, gears turning. “How about the carny, the one who sold Brenda marijuana. Have you seen him around? He’s got an Abraham Lincoln beard. If you saw him, you’d know.”
My chest tightened. How did he know that Brenda bought weed from the carnival worker? “I saw him in Pantown last week. While the fair was still in town. Not since.” I paused. “He was in your part of the neighborhood.”
Sheriff Nillson looked like he was about to yell at me again. Instead, he collapsed into a nearby chair like God had dropped his strings. He ran his hands over his face. They made a raspy sound against his stubble. “I know what you think you saw in my basement, Heather.”
Dad made a squawking sound, but Sheriff Nillson held up his hand to silence him before continuing. “We need all our cards on the table, Gary. The cases might be connected.”
The ground suddenly disappeared like one of those hanging bridges in Tarzan, me halfway across until Sheriff Nillson cut one end, turning the bridge into air a thousand feet in the sky. I’d been horrified when Dad revealed he’d told Sheriff Nillson that Brenda and I had seen Maureen in his basement. But Dad swore he hadn’t named us.
No, of course not, he’d said. I protected you. I told him it was a rumor.
Dad had lied. He hadn’t protected me and Brenda at all. Betrayal crawled like tattoo needles, deep and sharp, across my skin.
I couldn’t look at my father.
“Whatever you think you saw that night, your eyes were playing tricks on you,” Sheriff Nillson continued. “You understand? Sure I had a party, innocent as all get-out. That’s all. I need you to put anything else out of your head so you can help me figure out what’s going on with you girls.”