"No, no," Paul said, taking the seat Jeffrey indicated.
"We've got a fresh pot in the back," Jeffrey offered, walking around to the opposite side of the desk. He knew who this man was, and what he had to be told. Jeffrey wanted to keep some distance between them. He needed space.
"This is a picture of Wendy when she was three," Paul said, showing Jeffrey a photograph of a happy-looking child. Though it was taken several years ago, Jeffrey was still able to tell that the girl in the photograph had grown up to be Jenny Weaver.
"Was this just before she disappeared?" Jeffrey asked, sliding the photo back across his desk.
The man nodded, showing Jeffrey another picture. "Wanda took her shortly after that."
Jeffrey studied the next photograph, though he knew from first glance that Wanda Jennings was the person he knew as Dottie Weaver. He slid this back across, and watched as Paul stacked them together, putting the picture of Dottie Weaver on the bottom so he would not have to look at her while they talked.
Jeffrey asked, "Can you tell me when it was your wife and daughter disappeared?"
Paul shifted in his chair. "We were living in Canada while I went to graduate school," he said. "Vinyl siding wasn't how I planned to spend my professional career. But when Wendy was taken from me…" He paused, a sad smile on his lips. "Wanda was working as a nurse at the hospital. I guess she was there about five months when the allegations started."
"What kind of allegations?"
"She worked in the maternity ward," Paul said. "There were rumors that something wasn't right. That something was going on." He took a deep breath. "I didn't listen to them, of course. We had been married for three years by then. I loved my wife. I would never have thought she was capable of… And women don't really do that kind of thing, do they?"
Jeffrey was silent. They both knew the answer to that.
"So," Paul began. "She was put on administrative leave while they investigated the charges. Babies can't really tell you what happens to them, but there were rumors of some physical findings. I still didn't believe what people were saying, until one day there was a knock on the door. Two cops wanted to talk to me."
"Where was your wife?"
"She was out doing the shopping. I suppose they were watching the house, because they knocked on the door ten minutes after she left."
Jeffrey nodded for him to continue.
"They told me about the physical evidence," he said. "They had photographs and…" He stopped. "It was graphic."
"You don't have to tell me what they found," Jeffrey told him, and Paul seemed relieved.
"They wanted to check Wendy to see if she had been…" He paused. "I still could not accept that Wanda had done these things, let alone that she would ever harm our daughter. Wanda is very good at making people think she's trustworthy."
"Yeah," Jeffrey agreed, because he had seen that firsthand.
"When Wanda got back from the store, I confronted her with what they had said. We argued. Somehow, she convinced me that the police were wrong, that it was another woman at the hospital. A nurse I had met a couple of times and, honestly, did not like."
"People like your wife can be pretty persuasive."
"Yes," Paul said. "A week went by, and it was still in the news. The police actually did investigate this other woman." Tears came to his eyes. "We believe what we want to believe, don't we?"
Jeffrey nodded.
"I suppose it was three weeks later that the police came back. They had a warrant this time, and wanted to search the house." Paul looked at the picture of his child, resting his hand beside it. "They had talked to her the day before. It was an official interview. I guess they had finally found enough evidence to do something." He looked back at Jeffrey. "They came very early, about six in the morning. I was still asleep." He gave a humorless laugh. "I had stayed up late studying for a final. How something like that could have seemed important to me…"
"We all cope in different ways."
"Yes, well," he said, obviously not accepting this. "They were gone. Wanda had taken Wendy sometime during the night. I never saw or heard from them again."
"What brought you here?"
"A friend of mine called me," he said. "He runs credit checks for us at work, for the siding, and I had asked him a while back to keep an eye out for their social security numbers. About a week ago, Wendy's came up on a Visa application. The address was a post office box in your town."
Jeffrey nodded, thinking that Dottie Weaver, or whatever the hell her name was, had probably thought it was safe to use her daughter's identity after all of this time. She would have gotten away with it if Paul Jennings had not been so vigilant.
"Do you have the address?" Jeffrey asked, feeling hope for the first time. Dottie obviously wanted that credit card. She would have to come back for it.
Paul Jennings handed him a slip of paper. Jeffrey thought he recognized the address as that of the Mailing Post over in Madison. He copied it down and handed back the paper, hoping they might use this to trace Dottie and maybe find Lacey Patterson.
"I just had to come down and see for myself," Paul said, tucking the page back into his pocket. "To see if she was here."
Paul waited for Jeffrey to speak, but Jeffrey could not think how to tell the man what had happened to his daughter. What's more, Jeffrey was not sure how he could admit to this man, who had been searching for so many years, that the person who had killed Wendy Jennings was sitting across the desk from him.
"Is she here?" Paul repeated, a hopeful tone to his voice that cut Jeffrey in two.
"I don't know how to say this, Paul, but Wanda has disappeared and Wendy's dead."
Jeffrey did not know what he had been expecting the other man to do, but the look Paul Jennings gave him was surprising. For a split second, he seemed almost relieved to finally know for a fact where his daughter was, then it seemed to hit him that after all of this time, all of his searching, she was dead. His face fell, and he covered his eyes with his hands for a moment as he started to cry.
"I'm so sorry," Jeffrey told him.
Paul's voice shook as he asked, "When?"
"Last Saturday," Jeffrey said, then explained to Paul exactly what had happened, leaving out the fact that his daughter had been mutilated. Through the entire story, Paul shook his head, as if he could not accept what he was hearing. When Jeffrey revealed his own involvement in Jenny's death, the father's mouth dropped open.
"I didn't…" Jeffrey stopped, because he had been about to say that he did not have a choice. He wasn't so sure about that. Maybe there had been another choice. Maybe Jenny Weaver had not had it in her to pull the trigger. Maybe Jenny Weaver would be alive today.
The two men stared at each other over Jeffrey's desk, neither of them really knowing what to say. Paul's eyes were glazed like he was too shocked by what he had heard to go on.
"With her mother," Paul finally said, "I expected the worst." He pointed to the pictures on Jeffrey's desk. "That's how I think of her, Mr. Tolliver. I think of my little girl. I don't think of what Wanda did to her, the kind of horrible life she must have lived." He stopped, choking on a sob. "I think of my happy little girl."
"That's best," Jeffrey said, picking up on the man's grief. Tears came to his eyes, and when Paul saw this, he seemed to lose his reserve.
"Oh, God," the man said, putting his hand over his mouth. His body shook as he sobbed. "My poor little girl. My baby. My baby." He rocked back and forth to soothe himself.
"Paul," Jeffrey said, his voice thick with his own grief. He reached across the desk to pat the man's arm, but Paul Jennings took Jeffrey's hand in his own. Jeffrey had never held another man's hand before, and it felt odd to be doing so now. Though, if it helped Paul Jennings through his grief, it was the least he could do.