The attorney looks grim. He turns away, walks down the hall, and knocks on the door of interview room 2. The door opens and he disappears inside. Nora feels her world collapsing. She can hardly breathe. She pulls her cell phone out and calls Al to tell him that Oliver Fuller has arrived.
* * *
? ? ?
It’s after two o’clock in the morning, and Gully could use a coffee. At least the attorney has now arrived. There are introductions all around. “I need a moment with my client,” Fuller says, and Gully and Bledsoe leave the room.
They turn to the lunchroom for coffee, avoiding Ryan Blanchard’s mother, sitting anxiously in the waiting area. Gully can’t help feeling sorry for her. She seems like a nice enough woman, a caring parent. Gully hopes for her sake that her son isn’t a kidnapper and possibly a murderer. But there’s another woman out there whose daughter is missing, and her life has been horribly upended. Gully has to consider her too.
“What do you think of him?” Bledsoe asks her.
She shrugs. “I don’t know yet.”
“He was awfully quick to call a lawyer.”
“You can’t blame him for that,” Gully says, although she’d noted it too. She’s bothered by the fact that they don’t know who this witness is. If Ryan Blanchard doesn’t give them anything, they’ll have to let him go.
They hear the door open down the hall, the attorney beckons, and they return to the interview room.
They videotape the interview. After the introductions for the tape, Bledsoe begins. “Ryan, as we told you earlier, we have a witness who saw Avery Wooler get into your car at the corner of Connaught and Greenley, at approximately four thirty Tuesday afternoon.”
Gully watches the boy stare straight ahead, his face unnaturally pale. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.
“Who is this witness?” the attorney asks.
“We don’t have to disclose that at this time.”
“Let me ask you this,” the attorney says. “Are you able to produce this witness at will?”
Fuck, Gully thinks. He’s got them. Bledsoe doesn’t answer.
“I see,” Fuller says. “So you have nothing on my client except that he willingly admitted that he drove down the street that he lives on, on the afternoon that Avery Wooler went missing.” He asks, “Are you detaining him?”
“No.”
Fuller stands up, turns to his client. “We can go, Ryan.” He says as he’s leaving, “Let’s not have any more nonsense, Detectives.”
* * *
? ? ?
Erin Wooler wanders restlessly around the house, unable to sleep, pale and distraught, as if she’s some kind of tortured ghost, unable to find peace. The October wind wails around the house. It’s after two in the morning, but every time she closes her eyes, she sees Avery—and the pictures in her mind are impossible to bear. She looks in on Michael again; he is mercifully, finally, asleep. He’d seen his father pack a bag and leave the house. William has gone back to the Excelsior Hotel. Michael must have heard everything; he knows as much as she does about what his father has done.
It twists her heart in knots that Michael still seems to think that somehow this is his fault. She’s tried to reassure him that he’s not responsible for other people’s decisions, for other people’s actions. Her mind drifts to something she read once about plane wrecks—that it’s never just one mistake, but a series of mishaps that lead to disaster. That’s what they have here—a series of mishaps that have led to disaster. If only Avery hadn’t misbehaved in choir. If only Michael hadn’t sent Avery home that one day and told her where to find the key, she might have waited for him. If only her husband hadn’t come home early that day; if only he hadn’t been having an affair; if only he’d been at work like he was supposed to be, instead of with his lover; if only this other woman hadn’t broken it off, he might not have come home at all. If her husband isn’t guilty, he certainly left Avery here, alone in the house. If only Avery hadn’t opened the door to someone, or left the house again, to be snatched by some monster. If only, if only, if only.
* * *
? ? ?
Al is standing in the living room, staring at his wife and son, who have just returned from the police station and are sitting together on the sofa. He’s never seen Ryan look so shaken, not even when he had the problem last spring with the drugs. He hadn’t been able to go to college this fall because he’d had to perform community service. Now, the boy looks sick and frightened. Should they be frightened too?
Nora meets his eyes; she’s obviously scared, but she’s pretending she’s not. She’s pretending that everything is fine now. “So that’s it, then?” Al asks. “Fuller thinks they don’t have a witness at all, that they were just making it up? Why would they do that?”
Ryan glances up at him. “He thinks that someone called in a tip anonymously, saying they saw her get in my car. But it’s not true. I never saw her that day.”
“Why would someone do that? Call in a fake tip?” He looks at the two of them in disbelief. But maybe he shouldn’t be so incredulous; he knows what people can be like. People lie all the time. Just look at his wife. People can be vindictive and manipulative. Maybe even more so in a smaller town, where everyone seems to know everyone else’s business. But who would have it out for his son? “Who would do that?” he repeats, his doubt in his voice.
“I don’t know!” Ryan cries loudly.
He seems defensive, and so young. He’s just a kid, really. Al remembers uneasily how Ryan has denied things before and then the truth came out. His parents were frightened then, too, and disappointed in him. But possession of drugs is a common enough problem with teenagers. His son is not a kidnapper. His son is not a child molester. He likes girls his own age, that’s clear enough. He dated Debbie for almost a year, until she went off to college at the end of August. Someone is lying, and it’s not his son. Not this time.
“It’s obvious the father did it,” Al can’t resist saying. His wife looks up sharply at him but remains silent. He wonders if she feels as protective of her lover now.
They all hear it at the same time, a sound on the stairs, and turn to see Faith coming down the stairs in her nightie. “What’s going on?” she asks.
It breaks Al’s heart to have to tell her. She took it so hard when her brother was in trouble. She had some problems with the kids at school, and her schoolwork suffered. They’d been worried about her. She was just getting her stride back. And now this.
Eighteen
William is back at the Excelsior Hotel, without his wife and son this time, sitting in the only chair in the room in the middle of the night, thinking about his situation. He had caught the furtive glances when he checked back in, alone this time. He knows what they’re saying on the news. It was obvious that his wife had kicked him out; he’d felt his face burn with shame.
William Wooler is now a pariah. He used to be respected in this town. How quickly things change. His wife hates him. Her face as he told her what he’d already admitted to the police—the disbelief, disgust, rage, hatred. She’d thrown him out of the house, probably for good. His son must hate him too. He must have overheard their harrowing argument, so he knows what a lying, deceitful shit his dad is. Michael had watched him pack, numb horror on his face. William has taken indefinite voluntary leave from work. The police think he’s a killer. The media think he’s a killer. Is there anyone anywhere who will believe he is innocent? Will the hospital, or the patients in his practice, ever want him back?