Alice knows this is insane, but she’s going to do it anyway. She’ll start with the basement. She gets up and grabs a flashlight out of one of the kitchen drawers.
* * *
? ? ?
Midmorning, Erin Wooler is standing at her living-room window, dead-eyed, staring at the empty street, as if willing her daughter to come home. There’s no one else out there now; the reporters have all given up, gone away. Nothing happening here.
Erin hasn’t left the house since Gully brought her home after she attacked Ryan in the Blanchards’ house yesterday afternoon. She wonders where all the reporters have gone. Nobody else’s daughter has been kidnapped. She knows, because she watches the news religiously, hoping there will be a break in the case, fearing what it will be. Detective Gully has been good about checking in with her regularly, but she hasn’t spoken to Gully yet this morning. She watched her knock on Alice Seton’s door and talk to her briefly, but Gully didn’t come over and talk to Erin. Probably because there is nothing to report. She’d noticed another car take up a position on the street; she wondered what it was doing there.
Erin knows they are still looking for Avery—the TV reporters tell her so, many times a day. They still have search parties out, beating the bushes, looking in ravines and dumpsters; they are looking for her everywhere. But if they’d gotten anything out of Ryan Blanchard, he wouldn’t have come home. And she knows he came home—she saw the footage of him leaving the police station last night on the television. Maybe the reporters are now stationed in front of the Blanchards’ house, farther down the street. She goes to the front door and steps outside, looking down the street. Yes. There are reporters clustered outside their house. She slips back inside.
She feels so alone, so powerless. She wishes she had someone to talk to. She doesn’t know what happened to her daughter. Perhaps William had nothing to do with their daughter’s disappearance. But she will never forgive her husband for his other, grievous sins—for slapping Avery; for then leaving her home alone to come to harm, if that is what he did; for lying about it. For his affair. She believes it’s Nora Blanchard he’s been having an affair with; of course it would be her. She’s so beautiful. And William is so shallow.
She picks up her phone and calls her husband’s new cell. He picks up immediately. When he answers, she says, not bothering to hide her hostility, “It’s Nora Blanchard you’ve been sleeping with, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t deny it. She waits for him to say something, and when he doesn’t, she hangs up the phone.
Thirty-one
We’re not aware of any complaints of that kind about Derek Seton,” the school principal, Ellen Besner, says.
Gully nods.
“If anything like that had come to the attention of one of the staff, they would have had to bring it to me,” the principal says, “so I don’t think it’s necessary for you to ask each of them directly.”
Gully agrees. She doesn’t want to do any unnecessary damage, and she knows that teachers are required to report any suspected abuse. She will leave it at that. She knows that teachers gossip, like everybody else. She has tried to be discreet, but she knows how people talk—even school principals. If Derek is innocent, she doesn’t want to cause him any harm.
“Thank you for your time,” Gully says, rising. As she does, her cell phone buzzes. She leaves the principal’s office and answers. It’s the plainclothes officer she’d had stationed outside of Alice Seton’s house. “Yes?” Gully says.
“Alice left the house, driving her car out of the garage a little while ago. She drove to the grocery store. I’m in the parking lot now watching her load groceries into her open trunk.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Gully says, ending the call. Alice Seton isn’t disposing of a body, obviously.
* * *
? ? ?
Marion Cooke watches the police officers coming down the opposite side of the street. They have knocked on her door before, on the day Avery Wooler disappeared, and she told them that she saw nothing that day. She admires their persistence, asking the same questions of the same people, expecting to hear something different, or something more.
It’s one of her days off from the hospital. She goes about her housework, every now and again peering out the front windows to see where they are now. They will be here soon; she lives eight houses down from the Woolers, and four houses up from the Blanchards on the other side of the street. She cleans and watches as they make their way to her house. Should she simply not answer the door this time? They’ve already spoken to her, so maybe they’ll let it go. But she decides she will answer the door, or they might just come back. She pops into the bathroom to freshen up, so that she looks presentable.
When the knock comes, she’s ready. “Hello,” she says to the two male officers in dark uniforms on her front step.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” says the older one, showing a badge and introducing himself and his partner. “We’re investigating the disappearance of Avery Wooler. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“Some other officers have already been here,” she says, but she smiles slightly, to show that she really doesn’t mind, that she understands it’s necessary.
“I know, I’m sorry, but we have to be thorough.” She nods. The officer says, “Perhaps you’ve remembered something. Did you see anything on Tuesday, the day Avery Wooler disappeared? Anything that you’ve remembered since you last spoke to the police?”
She shakes her head, frowning with regret. “I’m sorry, no. I’d like to help, I really would, but I didn’t notice anything. It’s so awful about that little girl. I’m a nurse, I work with her father at the hospital. I hope you find her. I hope she’s all right.”
Now the younger officer is observing her closely, his eyes alert. She finds him unnerving.
He speaks up for the first time. “Do you know the Blanchards at all?” he asks, out of the blue.
She’s taken aback. “The Blanchards?” she repeats. “I know them to speak to; I don’t really know them. Nora Blanchard volunteers at the hospital, so I know her a little.”
“Do you know what kind of car Ryan Blanchard drives?”
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve never paid much attention.”
“I think you do,” the younger officer says. His voice is kind, unthreatening. “I think you’ve been calling the tip line, haven’t you, without identifying yourself. I recognize your voice.”
She freezes. Shit. She didn’t want this to happen. She didn’t want to be identified, that’s why she called from a pay phone. Fortunately, there are still some left in Stanhope, though very few. Marion thinks about denying it, but she knows the young officer is certain. She denies it anyway.
“No,” she says. She feels her face coloring. “I never called the tip line.”
“We’d like you to come with us to the police station,” the other officer says.
No. She doesn’t want anyone to see her being taken to the police station in a cruiser. She can’t risk that. “I’ll come in, but not with you, not in a police car. I’ll go in a few minutes, in my own car.” The two officers look at each other; it’s not like they have much choice, short of arresting her. They already know who she is and where she lives.