“I should go,” she says.
“No—not yet,” he pleads.
They stay on the line, breathing together, saying nothing. Unsure of each other.
Finally, William says, “I know it’s impossible, but I wish I could see you.”
“It’s impossible,” she agrees dully.
He’s suddenly swamped by despair. He’s lost everything. And the police are probably going to charge him with murder.
“I think Al suspects us,” she says.
“How would he know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he followed me one day. Or maybe somebody at the hospital suspects something and told him. He’s being weird.”
“No, we’ve been so careful,” William protests.
Her voice catches. “He’s convinced you killed Avery.”
“No! Nora, I didn’t.” She doesn’t say anything. “Don’t get rid of your second phone,” he tells her. “I’ll call you again—for as long as I can,” he says. “I’m staying at the Excelsior. Erin has kicked me out.” And then he immediately regrets it because she asks him the question he’s been dreading.
“William, why did you lie to the police?”
* * *
? ? ?
Nora holds her breath. She had to ask. Everyone is asking, Why did William Wooler not tell the police he was at home that day? But now he has been found out. He was seen. There was a witness.
She wonders if he’s going to hang up. But finally he answers.
“It’s complicated,” he begins, his voice unsteady. “After you ended things with me, at the motel, I was really upset. I thought no one would be home, and I wanted to be alone for a bit, to process it. But Avery was home.” He pauses; she can hear him swallow. “She’d gotten into trouble at school, and we had an argument and I stormed off, went for a drive. And then later, I knew how it would look if I admitted I’d been home. I couldn’t account for my time because I’d been at the motel with you. So I panicked and didn’t tell them when I first had the chance, and then it was too late . . .” He adds, “God, I was so stupid. I just didn’t think.”
It sounds almost plausible, she thinks. “I have to go,” she says and hangs up.
She sits on the edge of her bed for a long time. She’s alone in the house—Al at work, Faith at school, Ryan doing his community service. She begins to cry. William had sounded horrible—on the edge of losing it. But he’d protected her. How does she feel about him now? Does she believe him?
That’s the thing. She’s not sure she does.
Twenty-one
Ryan Blanchard moves like an automaton through his morning shift at the homeless shelter, keeping his head down. He doesn’t want to be noticed. He still finds it embarrassing to be here, in a place he doesn’t belong. He’s middle class, college bound; the shelter, and the lost and downtrodden people in it, make him uncomfortable. He feels out of place here, freshly showered, in his clean, good-quality clothes. In a flash of maturity one day, not long ago, he’d realized how privileged he was, born to well-off parents who took good care of him. But it was like a glancing blow, quickly shrugged off. Mostly he resents having to be here—the smells, especially, are hard to take—urine, vomit, and body odor so thick and so embedded into their filthy clothes that it makes him gag. And the visuals are pretty awful too. Seeing people reduced to nothing, to rags. He can’t wait for his probation to be up and his community service to be finished. Two hundred hours. He’s counting them down.
It could have been much worse. He knows he’s here because of his own actions. But acknowledging this, even to himself, is painful, so he usually quickly thinks about something else—about his friends at college, going to parties, meeting girls. But he’s not thinking about any of that today. Today, he’s thinking about last night at the police station. Remembering how antagonistic that Detective Bledsoe was, how piss-scared he was. A drug charge is nothing compared to a kidnapping or murder charge.
When it was over, he was alone with his attorney for a couple of minutes. Oliver Fuller had looked him in the eye and said, “This is some serious shit, Ryan.”
“I didn’t do it,” he insisted.
Fuller merely nodded. “Just keep your nose clean. With any luck, the witness won’t come forward.”
He looked up then, frightened. “What do you mean?” He didn’t understand. “I thought there was no witness?”
“There’s obviously an anonymous witness, one they can’t produce. But if they come forward and go on the record—”
“But I didn’t see her! She didn’t get into my car, I swear,” Ryan said, panicked. “They’re lying!”
Fuller had said, “Let’s go see your mother.”
And then when they got home there’d been the inquisition with his father, and Faith coming down the stairs. They’d had to tell her what was going on; she’s not stupid. He’d seen the fear in his parents’ eyes—he recognized it. It was the same look they’d had when they’d been blindsided by his arrest for possession of Oxy. They simply couldn’t believe it. Their boy, with drugs.
Only this time their fear and revulsion were amplified because it’s a child missing, possibly dead. The look in their eyes was almost feral. He knows they no longer trust him. He shocked them with the Oxy. They thought it was so out of character. But they don’t know him, and they don’t know everything. They don’t know how it is, how many of his friends do Oxy, and other shit too. They don’t know how it feels, all the pressure building in your head, how good it feels to let go of it. But his other friends didn’t get caught. He can think of at least two people who should be here with him, cleaning up piss and vomit in the homeless shelter. But he kept his mouth shut.
He relives it all as he mops floors, washes dishes, changes bedding. How did he get here? He doesn’t know who he is anymore. His life is so different than it was a few months ago that it makes no sense to him at all. Fuller had managed to keep him out of jail. His parents had paid a fine, and he’d gotten probation and community service—and a criminal record. It could have been worse; he could have gone to jail for up to a year, for a first offense.
It hasn’t been easy; it feels like each day is a struggle against temptation. Sometimes the pressure, the tension, is too much.
Is he going to end up like the people in here? It’s all he can do not to panic and run out the door, desperate for freedom and fresh air.
* * *
? ? ?
Gully observes the scowl on Bledsoe’s weary face. They’ve just learned that William Wooler had had his car completely cleaned and detailed at Euro Autobody the previous Sunday, only two days before Avery went missing. That would explain why his car was so pristine.
“Fuck,” Bledsoe mutters. “So if he took her anywhere, he must have wrapped her in plastic or something.”
Gully chews her lip thoughtfully. They’d found a roll of plastic sheeting—vapor barrier—in the Woolers’ garage in the initial search. No way to tell if William had used some of it to wrap the body in before he placed it in the trunk. But he could have. That might be why they found no trace of Avery there. Or maybe he didn’t do it.