CHAPTER FIVE

Hawkins led Bill out to a small leather couch in the hallway. Nurses and technicians streamed past them, and Bill couldn’t stop turning his head to look back at the door to Summer’s room. He wanted to know whether anyone was coming or going from there, whether there were any hints of an emergency or a deepening crisis.

“Is there someone you want to call?” Hawkins asked, his big hands resting on his knees. “Family or friends?”

“My sister’s coming tomorrow. She lives in Ohio.”

“Good. You don’t have other family in Jakesville, right?”

“You know neither Julia nor I was born here.”

Hawkins got down to business by changing the direction of the conversation. “I wanted to bring you up-to-date on the investigation.”

“I’ve been wondering about something,” Bill said. “Has this ever happened here? I can’t remember any crimes like this in Jakesville.”

Hawkins pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Not recently, no. Nothing like a kidnapping. You know what it’s like here, Bill. We don’t have crimes like this. It’s a safe community.” He brought out a small notebook. “Bill, we’re trying our best to piece together where those girls were and what they were doing on Saturday. You said you didn’t know where they were going when they left your house.”

“I assumed they were going to Haley’s house.”

“Right.” Hawkins didn’t say more, but Bill knew what he was thinking. What everyone would be thinking.

“Yeah, yeah. I didn’t ask. I’m the clueless dad. They’re both fifteen, Detective. They’re going to be driving soon. Some of their friends already drive. I can’t know everything they do. And, like you said, what could happen to them in Jakesville? It was daylight when they left.”

“Sure.” Hawkins nodded, his face encouraging and calm. His demeanor said, No judgment here. He cleared his throat. “The problem is only a couple of people saw them walking together that afternoon. Someone saw them heading down Anderson Road, right by your house and on the way to Haley’s. So they could have been going that way.” Hawkins frowned. “And then another witness claims to have seen Summer walking in the opposite direction on Anderson Road. Back toward your house.”

“What does that mean?”

“We don’t know.” He held his hands out, pleading for patience. “This witness was an eighty-eight-year-old man who was driving by. And he had his license taken away by his kids because his eyesight is so bad. He saw a girl walking there. She may not have been Summer. And according to Haley’s mother, they never came to her house. We’re assuming they disappeared somewhere during that walk, but since we don’t know exactly where they were going...”

“So someone just took them,” Bill said. “A maniac pulled over and grabbed them. That happens, doesn’t it?”

“It happens, yes,” Hawkins said. “But it’s rare. We’re not ruling anything out at this point.”

Bill closed his eyes. He told himself it was foolish to keep hoping for a break, but he couldn’t turn his mind off. It worked to make him believe, to dangle possibilities, if only as a means of keeping his spirits up and his will strong. Don’t forget, he told himself, you just got the biggest break of all . She’s here. She’s alive.

“That has to be it,” Bill said. “Someone just grabbed them, threw them in the back of a van or something.”

“I wanted to follow up on some of Summer’s other friends,” Hawkins said. “You told me that there were a few boys in her extended social circle. Maybe two or three of them.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Hawkins checked the notebook again, holding the pad at arm’s length so he could read the writing. “We’re talking about Clinton Fields, Todd Stone, and Brandon Cooke. Right?”

“Yeah, that’s them. I guess. You have to understand that Julia knew more about Summer’s friends than I did. She talked to Summer more, you know? Mother-and-daughter stuff.”

“So how was your relationship with Summer? You said on Saturday that things could be tense between the two of you, but you never really told me why. Have you thought about that more?”

Bill lifted his hands, then let them fall back into his lap. He knew he seemed exasperated. He couldn’t hide it. “Look, she’s a teenage girl. I’m her middle-aged dad. I just didn’t always know if I was teaching her the things she needed to be taught. You know how teenagers are.”

“My kids are grown now, so it’s been a while. Enlighten me.”

“Okay, they’re a little contemptuous of their parents. Summer seemed that way with me.” Bill hoped that was the end, but the detective seemed to expect more. “We had tensions between us. Normal stuff, I guess. Shit, try being a man raising a woman. Her mother died a year and a half ago. It was just—” Something caught in his throat, and he paused, taking a deep breath. “It was Julia’s birthday a couple of weeks ago. Would have been her birthday. Still is, I guess. But...”

“It’s been hard for Summer,” Hawkins said, prompting Bill. “Losing her mother.”

“Yeah. It’s hard enough just being a teenager. Ever since Julia died, Summer’s been more rebellious, more mouthy. Standoffish to me. I thought we’d get closer because Julia died, and in some ways we have. We’ve cried together. Reminisced. But Summer is really hurting—I know that. She’s like me. When she hurts, she gets angry. Defensive. And she’s had a wall up since her mom died.”

A nurse walked past, her pace quicker than anyone else’s, and Bill turned his head to follow her. But she passed Summer’s room, her white shoes squeaking against the tile floor.

“I understand. A young girl needs and wants her mother.” Hawkins’s voice pulled Bill back. “You never really answered the question of whether Summer was sexually active.”

Bill turned all the way around, his eyes fixing on the detective, his teeth grinding together again at the back of his mouth. “I did answer that.”

Hawkins sounded more assertive, more determined. Some of the Kentucky charm dropped from his voice. “You actually said you didn’t want to talk about it. But now I think it’s imperative that we know everything there is to know about Summer.”

“She’s fifteen. She’s not sexually active. Why are you asking me this?”

Hawkins kept his blue-gray eyes trained on Bill, the scrutiny slicing in like sleet. “We have to understand every aspect of Summer’s life if we’re going to figure out who did this to her.” He pointed theatrically at the door of Summer’s room, conjuring the picture of the battered girl into Bill’s mind. “We’re looking into everything in this town. Her online communications. Her friends and teachers at school. Local sex offenders. You’re our best resource about Summer.”

Bill felt unnerved by where Hawkins was going. The conversation was causing a small pain to grow in the pit of his stomach. “Is there something I need to know?”

“Was she sexually active?” Hawkins asked. “Did she spend a lot of time with these boys from school? Or any boys that you know of?”

“Sure, they were friends.” Bill chewed on a piece of loose skin near his thumbnail. “They’ve been to the house. Hell, Summer’s known some of them since they were in grade school, so I’ve seen those kids the whole time they were growing up.” Bill shifted in his seat, trying to articulate his thoughts about the boys Hawkins had mentioned. “They seemed like pretty normal kids. I know what boys want from girls. I know how pretty Summer and Haley both are. I thought I’d be dealing with this a little later. And I always thought I’d be dealing with it with Julia’s help. Not on my own.”

“And that’s it about them?”

“She went to a dance with the Stone kid, but she told me they were just friends. Hanging out, I think she said. He and Summer went to junior high together. The other one, Cooke? Isn’t he on the cross-country team at school?”

“He’s a good runner, yes. He might go to state this year as a sophomore.”

“And so the other one is Clinton Fields, right?” Bill asked. “Yeah, he’s in their extended social circle. Kind of a jerky kid.”

“Why do you say that?” Hawkins asked.

“I don’t know. He’s arrogant, snotty. Sure, he’s polite to my face when he comes around, and he’s a smart kid, a good student. But there’s a hint of aggression and disrespect beneath everything he says. I can imagine him walking out the door and badmouthing me. High schools are full of those kinds of guys.”

“Was he dating Summer?” Hawkins asked.

“They’d all been spending time together the past few months. They were always with a group of kids, but I guess that’s how they date now. Groups of kids.”

“Is that it?”

“Is there something else I need to know about any of them?” Bill asked. “Did I miss something?”

“Remember, I’m investigating. Everything is on the table. And everyone.”

“Where were they when Summer and Haley disappeared?”

“We’re checking their alibis. We’re checking everyone’s alibis. They’re kids. They weren’t punching a clock at work or anything like that, but they say they were at the Fields house, playing video games. The parents weren’t there.”

Bill felt a jagged pressure growing behind his right eye, a pulsing sensation that made him squirm in his seat. “Just arrest them,” he said. “Bring them in and get them to talk.”

“It doesn’t work quite that way, Bill.”

“Do you think I care about their fucking civil liberties? You shouldn’t either. Not when my daughter is in a coma and another girl is dead.”

“Has Summer been in trouble lately?” Hawkins asked. “Anything? You said the two of you weren’t getting along, that it’s been tough since your wife died.”

Bill thought back over the past year and a half, the series of ups and downs, arguments, and strained silences between Summer and him. “I told you already. It’s been hard on her. And she’s been pushing my buttons a little. Missing some curfews, not answering my texts when she’s out, that kind of thing.”

“I wanted to ask you about—”

“Wait,” Bill said. “That Fields kid. Wasn’t he into something a couple of years ago?”

An alarm started ringing overhead. An insistent beeping that probed at the headache growing behind Bill’s right eye.

Two nurses rushed by, and Bill watched them.

They dashed into Summer’s room.

“Jesus,” Bill said. “No.”

He followed in their wake and was cut off by Dr. Davis, who went in ahead of him. When Bill entered the room, he heard one phrase that stuck in his mind like a driven nail.

Her oxygen level’s dropping. hP5RsqgzCaUD8YLI5ACkCEtQ86EuMrnN6gosh36zYDyK8stR5m4QTn+dlYvWpdNl