“We were all hiding in the dark and when we heard the truck pull up and the driver’s door open and close…”
“I hit the button and up goes the garage door and there’s your father…” Mrs. Peterson starts laughing and can’t finish.
“Standing there with his fishing pole in one hand and his tackle box in the other,” Gwendy says, “and he’s naked as a jaybird from the waist down, those pale skinny legs of his caked with mud.” Gwendy throws her head back and laughs.
Mrs. Peterson places a hand over her heart and struggles to get the words out. “I’m covering your eyes with one hand and waving your father back to his truck with the other. I look over and see the expression on poor Blanche Goff’s face…” She snorts out a giggle. “I thought she was going to have a heart attack sitting right there in her lawn chair.”
And then both women are clutching their sides and howling with laughter—and neither one of them is able to get another word out.
55
WHEN MR. PETERSON WALKS out of the elevator and hears raucous laughter coming from somewhere down the hallway, his eyes narrow with annoyance. Whoever’s making all that racket better not wake up my wife or there’s going to be hell to pay.
It’s not until he turns the corner by the nurses’ station and sees the door to Room 233 standing wide open with a cluster of smiling nurses gathered outside that he realizes it’s his wife and daughter making the racket.
“What’s going on in here?” he asks, walking into the room with a puzzled expression on his face.
Mrs. Peterson and Gwendy take one look at him—and burst out in another fit of laughter.
56
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, AN orderly raps on the door. He’s a big fellow with a warm smile and a thicket of dreadlocks crammed into a bursting-at-the-seams hairnet. “Sorry to break up the party, folks, but I’m here to take Mrs. Peterson down to Imaging.”
“Winston!” Mrs. Peterson says, her face lighting up. “I thought your shift was over.”
“No, ma’am.” He shakes his head. “Not until I’m finished taking care of my favorite patient.”
Visibly touched, she says, “Thank you, Winston.”
“I’ll be right here when you get back,” Mr. Peterson says, squeezing his wife’s hand.
She looks up at him with those beautiful blue eyes of hers and gives him a little squeeze back. “I’m ready,” she says to the orderly.
“I’ll be here, too,” Gwendy says, doing her best not to cry.
“I know you will.” Mrs. Peterson pulls her other hand out from underneath the blanket and holds up a small white feather. Her hand looks very thin and delicate. “Thanks again for the loan, sweetheart. I’ll take good care of it.”
Gwendy smiles, but doesn’t risk saying another word.
57
BACK HOME, GWENDY SLIDES the button box into the safe and pushes the heavy door shut behind it, listening for the audible click as the lock engages. Then she spins the dial, once, twice, three times, and gives the handle a good hard yank just to make sure. She’s almost to her bedroom when the doorbell rings.
Freezing in the hallway, she holds her breath, willing whomever it is to go away.
The doorbell rings again. A double-ring this time.
Gwendy, still dressed in the clothes she’d worn to the hospital earlier, pulls her cellphone out of her sweater pocket. She punches in 9-1-1 and hovers her finger over the SEND button. Creeping down the hallway, she eases into the foyer, careful not to make any noise, and peeks out the peephole.
The doorbell rings again—and she almost screams.
Stepping back, she unlocks the deadbolt and swings the door open.
“Jesus, Sheriff. You could have called before you—”
“Another girl’s gone missing. Right down the road from here.”
“What? When?”
“Call came in about an hour ago.” Sheriff Ridgewick reaches down to his belt and adjusts the volume on his radio. “The girl’s father said she was ice skating at the pond with friends. Some of the older kids had a bonfire going and maybe twenty-five or thirty people were there. Another parent was supposed to be watching her, but she got to talking with a neighbor, and you know how that goes. No one noticed the girl was missing until it was time to go.”
“Your men checked the ice?” Gwendy asks, knowing it’s a dumb question even before it leaves her mouth.
“We did,” he says, nodding. “But it’s been solid for at least six weeks now. No way she fell in.”
“So now what? You search the area—and what else?”
“I’ve got officers combing the surrounding woods and side streets. We also set up roadblocks in a couple of locations, but if whoever took her stuffed her in the trunk and started driving right away, they’re long gone by now. The rest of my people are knocking on doors up and down View Drive, asking folks if they’ve seen anything suspicious the past few days.”
Gwendy’s face drops. “I think you better come in, Sheriff.” She takes a step back to give him room. “I have something I need to tell you, and I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
58
THE BLONDE REPORTER FROM Channel Five holds the microphone in front of Sheriff Ridgewick’s face as he speaks. She’s wearing a fluffy light blue winter beanie that matches her coat and her make-up is perfect, despite the whipping wind and freezing cold temperature. The sheriff, eyes watering and cheeks raw, looks tired and miserable.
“…is currently underway for Deborah Parker, a resident of the nineteen-hundred block of View Drive. Miss Parker is fourteen years old and a freshman at Castle Rock High School.”
A color photograph of a smiling teenage girl with metal braces and dark brown curly hair appears in the upper right-hand corner of the television screen.
“She’s five-foot-two-inches tall, weighs one hundred and five pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen earlier this evening at approximately 7:30 PM. ice skating with friends at Fortier Pond. If anyone has any information as to Deborah Parker’s whereabouts or witnessed anything out of the ordinary in the Castle View area, please contact the Castle Rock Sheriff’s Department at…”
59
GWENDY HAS NEVER LAID eyes on the man standing outside of the sheriff’s office before, but she can smell his press credentials a mile away. It also helps that she can see the mini-recorder he’s palming in his left hand.
“Congresswoman Peterson,” he says, cutting her off by the entrance. “Any comment on the missing girls?”
“And you are?” she asks.
He pulls a laminated ID card out from under his jacket and extends it as far as the lanyard will permit. “Ronald Blum, Portland Press Herald.”
“I’m here this morning to be briefed by Sheriff Ridgewick. I’ll leave it to him to issue any official statements.” She starts to walk away.
“Is it true that there’ve been other unsuccessful recent attempts to abduct young girls here in Castle Rock?”
Gwendy pulls opens the door and lets it swing closed in the reporter’s face. He shouts something else, but she can’t make it out through the heavy glass.
The stationhouse is buzzing this morning. A handful of officers sit at their desks talking on the telephone and jotting down notes. Several others are gathered in front of a bulletin board, examining a large map of Castle Rock. There’s a line at the coffee machine and another in front of the Xerox copier. Gwendy spots Sheila Brigham in her cubicle and heads that way.