Paul tightened his grip on Jeffrey's hand. "She was such a sweet girl."
"I know she was," Jeffrey agreed, squeezing back. "My wife, Sara, saw her." Jeffrey realized suddenly that he had mis-spoken. "I mean my ex-wife. She's a pediatrician. Sara."
He looked up, hope in his eyes. "She saw Wendy?"
"Yes," Jeffrey told him. "Sara said she was a bright girl. Very intelligent, very sweet. She had a caring heart."
"Was she healthy?"
Jeffrey lied on purpose this time. There was no reason to tell this father what his daughter had been through. "Yes," he said. "She was very healthy."
Paul released Jeffrey's hand and picked up the photograph of his daughter. "She was always sweet, even as a baby. You can just tell with some kids. She had such a good heart."
Jeffrey took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. At the last minute he realized he should have offered it to Paul.
"I'm sorry," Jeffrey said.
"I don't blame you," Paul told him. "I blame her. I blame Wanda. She took my child. She did those horrible things to her." He cleared his throat and wiped his nose with his hand. "She put all of this into motion by being the kind of person she is." He locked eyes with Jeffrey. "I don't blame you," he repeated, his tone vehement. "Don't live with that guilt, Mr. Tolliver. I've lived with guilt my entire life. What if I had never married her? What if I had listened to the rumors? What if I had let the police check my little girl to see if her mother…?" He put his hand to his mouth, and again his body shook as he cried.
Jeffrey felt himself tearing up again, and tried to collect himself. All he could think of was Lacey Patterson's school picture on the flier in his desk drawer. He thought about what Jenny had been through, and what Mark still had ahead of him if he managed to pull out of the coma. He thought of Sara, too, and what she must be going through, the guilt she had to be feeling because these were her kids. Hell, they were Jeffrey's kids, too. Maybe because they didn't have any of their own they felt responsible for the whole town. And look at what Jeffrey had let happen. How many children had been hurt because Jeffrey had been blind to the evil going on in his own backyard?
"You did your job," Paul told Jeffrey, as if reading his mind. "You did what you had to do to protect that boy."
Jeffrey had not helped the girl he knew as Jenny Weaver. He had not rescued Mark or Lacey Patterson. He had not protected anyone but Dottie Weaver, who had sat in this very station house and spoon-fed them her lies.
Paul said, "So much came out after she left town." He looked down at his hands. "She did some baby-sitting on the weekends. Those children were abused, too."
Jeffrey sat up, trying not to let his own grief overshadow Paul's. He asked, "Was a warrant ever issued?"
"No," he said, then gave an ironic smile. "A couple of days later, they issued a warrant to arrest the other woman, but she had left town, too."
Jeffrey felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as he thought about Lacey Patterson. "What was her name?"
"Markson," Paul said, wiping his nose again. "Grace Markson."
Chapter Sixteen
Lena sat beside Grace Patterson's bed, listening to the slow beeps of the heart monitor beside her. The blind was drawn on the window overlooking the hospital parking lot, but there wasn't much to see at this hour, anyway. Teddy Patterson sat across the bed from Lena in a tall recliner, his head leaned back, his mouth opened as he snored, seeming not to have a care in the world. He had laughed in Lena 's face when she suggested Grace had anything to do with what had happened to their children. Patterson was a con, and he had an innate distrust of cops. Of course, if he was involved in this thing up to his eyeballs, he wasn't likely to come clean and tell Lena where his daughter was being held. Teddy had actually demanded Lena leave, but for some reason Grace had requested she be allowed to stay. He had grumbled, but acquiesced. Patterson's wife had her nails dug so deep into his balls he didn't take a shit without getting her permission first. Grace seemed to be the center of Teddy's life and the longer Lena was in the same room with him, the clearer it was to her that Teddy didn't give a shit for either of his children.
Lena looked at Grace Patterson, watching her sleep, wondering at the power the woman seemed to have over her family. She had refused to be put on a ventilator, but a mask gave her oxygen to help her breathe. Pillows were propped around and under her body to keep her comfortable, but there was no mistaking that the woman was dying an extraordinarily painful death. In the few days since Lena had seen her, Grace Patterson had declined rapidly. Maybe it was being in the hospital that had done it to her, but Grace looked as much on her deathbed as she was. Her skin was sallow, her cheeks sunken. Her eyes were rheumy and constantly wept what on a normal person would have been tears.
Lena shifted in her chair, trying to get into a more comfortable position. Her tailbone felt as if it had been beaten with a bat, and her hands and feet were aching like they had after the attack. She had figured out an hour before that this was because she kept clenching her fists and curling her toes. Her body was tight with tension, and just being in the room with the Pattersons made her stomach clench like the rest of her body. She wanted to throttle them both, to remind them that every second ticking by could mean something horrible for Lacey.
Maybe they were being quiet because Lena was in the room. Teddy wasn't exactly acting the part of the grieving husband, as far as Lena could tell. He had watched television while his wife slept, laughing at sitcoms, then narrating for no one in particular the events unfolding during an action movie.
"He's gonna whup his ass," Teddy would tell them. Or, "Give that brother something to think about."
Teddy had fallen asleep during the news and seemed to be a heavy sleeper. Even when the nurse had come in to check Grace's stats, he had not stirred.
All this left Lena with was time to stare at Grace Patterson and think about what had happened in the last few days. Mark was at a different hospital than his mother because the ambulance crew had taken him to the closest emergency room. There was no telling what was going to happen to him, but none of his doctors seemed to think he would ever recover from what he had done to himself.
Lena thought about Mark, who was just like any other boy, just wanting love, wanting his mother's attention, and taking it any way he could. She also remembered herself at that age, and how fucked up she had been. Everything had been so emotional, and she had been desperate for anyone but Hank's approval. She had denned herself by what a small handful of outcasts at school thought of her, and used how she looked to get what in retrospect could only be called the wrong kind of attention.
Lena was fifteen when she first started sleeping with Russ Fleming, and while her body had been ready for the physical side of the relationship, emotionally, she had been a wreck. Russ was twenty-two, something Hank had a really big problem with, but Lena had thought she loved him, and Russ had played her like a pro. Anything he wanted, she gave him. He was a moody asshole, and Lena reacted to him like a thermometer, trying to soothe him one minute and seduce him the next. Her days were constant ups and downs, depending on how Russ was treating her, and if she wasn't crying in her room, she was sitting on the front porch, hands between her knees as she nervously waited for him to show up. She had been so young and so stupid, and Russ had given her what she thought was love.
Looking back now, Lena knew that he was just a paranoid pothead, getting his rocks off screwing a teenage girl, but at the time Lena had thought he was the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was amazing how stupid kids could be, and how desperate they were for love and attention. Mark must have been such an easy target for his mother. He must have felt like an open wound, convinced that only his mother could heal him. And now everything that he had survived had made him want to die. Lena understood the dichotomy all too well.