These were the rooms of hard-working people of small and honest means. If she had to guess, Lydia would say that Joe Matthews, Greg’s father, was a former military man that conducted his business and his home the way he had been taught in the barracks. Greg’s mother had either left them or died young because there was no feminine warmth in any of the rooms, and Greg seemed fairly self-reliant in the kitchen, not like a mama’s boy used to being coddled.
She tossed it out. “You live here alone, Greg?’’
“No, with my dad. My mom passed on when I was ten from cancer.’’
“I’m sorry.’’
“Me, too. But my dad took real good care of me. A little strict, though,’’ he chuckled without much mirth.
“But what do you expect from a former Marine?’’
“Mind if I record our conversation?’’ Lydia asked, pulling a small tape recorder out of her bag and laying it on the table. She never went anywhere without it but almost always forgot to use it, relying more often on pen and paper.
“No. How do you like your coffee?’’
She looked over at him and noticed that he was peering into an empty refrigerator. So much for light and sweet.
“Black,’’ she answered. “‘No,’ you don’t want me to record this? Or ‘no,’ you don’t mind?’’
“I don’t mind, Ms. Strong. I’ve got nothing to hide.’’
He sat down across from her, placing a chipped white cup in front of her, filled with coffee so black it looked like tar. The chair creaked beneath his weight and screeched against the floor as he pulled it toward the table.
“Your name sounds familiar,’’ said Greg.
“Well, I’m a writer.’’
“I’m not much of a reader. Is that why you’re here? You’re going to write about Shawna?’’
“Not exactly. I also consult with a private-investigation firm.’’
“Did somebody hire you to look for Shawna?’’
“Not exactly. Let’s just say I’ve taken a personal interest in this case and I have the time and the resources to see what I can do to further the investigation. Shawna is not the only person missing.’’
“You mean that other woman who went missing yesterday?’’
“Yes, and others, too.’’ She didn’t want to be the one to tell him that Maria wasn’t missing anymore. He’d read about it in the papers soon enough.
“Why are you interested?’’
She considered her answer before speaking. “I lost someone once, too, Greg. A long time ago. And even though I know what happened to her, I still don’t know why. So I guess I’m always looking for answers, in a way.’’
He nodded as if he understood that. Lydia wasn’t even sure why she said it that way, having never vocalized the thought to anyone. She’d never revealed anything about herself to a stranger before, especially someone she was interviewing. But the fact that she’d shared something personal with Greg seemed to have put him at ease and he began to speak.
“Most people just assumed Shawna ran away, Ms. Strong. And while she might have run away from her foster parents, she never would have run away from me. We were just waiting for her to turn eighteen so that we could get married and live here. I was going to keep working for my father and someday we wanted to buy a house.’’
Greg’s eyes glistened and Lydia felt him searching her face for faith and compassion. He had paused waiting for her to question his words, offer judgment, but she nodded her head and remained silent.
When he didn’t continue, she encouraged him. “Tell me about the night she disappeared.’’
“She called me on the phone about eight on Sunday, August fourteenth. She was real upset and said she was on her way over. I told her to stay put, that I would come and get her. But she said no, she had to leave the house that second. It was a short walk, about a mile, and she needed the time to cool off. She had had another fight with her foster parents. They are good people but they were strict with Shawna and she was headstrong, so they were always going at it.
“I told her to get moving because it was getting dark. I waited about a half an hour and then I set off to find her down the only road she would take. I went all the way to her house and knocked on the door. Harden, her foster father, told me she had left. I didn’t believe him, so I pushed my way into the house and ran up to her room. She was gone but it didn’t look like she had packed anything.
“I was angry. She had promised me she would try to get along with them because we only had four months to go and I didn’t want her to be sent away. I got back in my truck and drove home fast, hoping I would find her there. But the house was empty. I swear to God, as soon as I walked into this kitchen and didn’t see her where you are right now, smoking a cigarette, I just had a feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right. I don’t know how many times I drove up and down that road looking for her.
“She’s gone,’’ he said, voice trembling, betraying a boyishness that his physical bearing did not. “Something terrible happened to her that night. I can just feel it, you know?’’
Lydia was thinking of Maria Lopez’s gutted body rotting in the woods.
He paused and looked away from Lydia. His voice was softer, almost a whisper when he began speaking again, and she noticed his hands were shaking slightly.
“I would have made her stay put if I could have. But no one could tell Shawna what to do, not even me. She had a real problem with authority. I wish she had listened to me only this once.’’
She didn’t have to be a mind reader to see how much Greg had loved Shawna, and that he would rather be dead than ever hurt her. There was no way to fake grief like that. Lydia hated to probe further, knowing that the more he had to recount for her, the more painful this conversation would get, but she needed to know who Shawna was, where she had spent time, what her routines were.
“Greg, tell me what you can about Shawna, what she was like. I need to get a sense of who she was.’’
“Other people only saw the worst of her, her bad temper, her lack of interest in school, her rebelliousness. But to me, she was an angel. God, she was sweet. Loving, thoughtful.’’
The earnestness in his voice moved Lydia more than she liked. She steeled herself against the wave of sadness and sympathy that welled within her.
“No one I know had a harder life than Shawna. Her parents both died in a plane crash when she was five and she was turned over to the state because she had no living relatives. A lot of people who take in foster kids do it for the money. They don’t really care about the children; some even resent them. Shawna had a real run of bad luck when it came to that. Most of the time she wouldn’t even talk about it. But she had scars all over her body – cigarette burns, a long gash on her back. If you raised your hand too fast, too close to her, she’d flinch. If I held her too tightly, too close to me, she’d panic, fight to get away like a coyote in a trap.
“Meg and Harden Reilley, her foster parents up the road, never hurt her, she said. But she was more than they could handle, stubborn and wild. They tried to love her, I think. But she wouldn’t let anyone close to her but me. She distrusted everyone – for the most part.’’
“‘For the most part’?’’
“She loved to go to church. She said it was the only place that gave her peace, the only place where she didn’t feel like a black sheep. She was close to Father Luis and his nephew Juno at the Church of the Holy Name. She helped out with things like the bake sale, bingo night, the Christmas party. She said they accepted her without judgment, like I did. Trusted her with responsibilities that no one else would dream of. They made her feel special, trustworthy. It was very important to her – the church. But she kept it a secret. She would sneak off there, like she was going to do something wrong. I asked her why she didn’t want anyone to know. She said she was afraid someone would take it away from her. She wanted to guard with her life the things she loved, always afraid of losing them. It broke my heart.’’