“No, go ahead, what are you saying?”
She looked right at me. So did Trina. The fact is, I knew what Ellen was going to say before she said it.
“Tom’s no longer up to the job. Mentally, I mean. I know you may not be ready to face it, but that’s the truth. He’s going the way of his parents.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Take off the blinders, Shelby. I’m sorry, it’s sad, but that’s what it is. You think I didn’t hear him ask Adrian the same question twice?”
“One question. Come on.”
“It’s not just that. It’s been getting worse for months. Everybody in town has seen it.”
I looked at Trina. “Everybody?”
Trina turned her eyes down to her feet and said nothing.
“Violet already talked to the county board,” Ellen went on like a steamroller. “They’ve been in touch with the governor. He contacted the FBI and made a formal request for their child abduction team to take over the investigation. They’ll be here in a few hours. It’s done, Shelby. Tom is out.”
Hours later, at two in the morning, I broke from the tangles of the national forest land onto the dirt road. I’d gone back there to join the search, but my flashlight battery was dead. I was exhausted, and the sweat on my body had turned cold. My skin was bleeding where the branches had scratched me. I bent and put my hands on my knees as I got my strength back. Gnats swarmed around my warm breath. The noise of the crickets in the brush was deafening.
When I stood up again, I stared out into the nighttime woods. Dozens of other dancing lights dotted the forest like fireflies. Every few seconds, someone called Jeremiah’s name in the distance. Shoulder to shoulder, the people of Mittel County hunted for the boy through the dark hours.
My father stood alone by his cruiser. His car was parked near Jeremiah’s bicycle, which lay where it had been abandoned and was now cordoned off by police tape. Dad still had his thermos of coffee in his hand, which he’d refilled at least three times over the course of the night. He’d had that dented thermos as long as I could remember. It was the same one he’d been using on his boat the night he was visited by the owl. The night he’d found me.
I walked over to him. He didn’t even notice me at first, because he was so caught up in his thoughts, as if thinking hard would bring Jeremiah back. He held himself with the stiff, proud bearing of a tin soldier. As a kid, I remember thinking that bullets would just bounce off him.
“Jeremiah’s not out there, Dad.”
He drank his coffee. He was still focused on the forest. “I know.”
“If he’d wandered off by himself, we would have found him by now. He couldn’t have gone that far.”
“You’re right.”
“We should call off the search until daylight. Someone’s going to get hurt out there.”
My father noticed the blood on my face. “What about you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. But we’re not going to find him like this.”
“No. We’re not.”
The lights of the searchers reflected in his eyes and made his face look pale. A mosquito landed on his forehead and began feasting on his blood, but Dad didn’t even bother brushing it away.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Go home, Shelby. Get a couple hours of sleep.”
“You should, too.”
“No, I’ll bring the people in. Then I’ll go back to the office.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He shook his head. “Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. You need to be ready for it.”
I was too tired to argue with him. “Okay. Good night, Dad.”
I began walking past the lineup of vehicles parked together like train cars on both sides of the dirt road. My own cruiser was near the far end.
“Shelby,” he called after me.
I stopped and turned around. “Yes?”
“I’ll find that boy.”
I tried to summon a smile, because as of the next morning, I knew he wasn’t going to be the one in charge of finding him. “I know you will, Dad.”
Then he went on as if a brand-new thought had sprung into his head. “Listen, it may be nothing, but Mrs. Norris was complaining about a Peeping Tom outside her bedroom window last night. She thought it was someone staying at the motel. You should probably check it out.”
I stared at him. He was dead serious.
“Sure,” I replied, my voice cracking. “Sure I will.”
I made it all the way down the road to my cruiser before I began to cry.
Chapter Eleven
I squinted through the windshield into the darkness as I drove home.
Around here, you have to be alert for night creatures. I had to brake hard near the ranger station to avoid a raccoon that rose up and gave my headlights a cold, disinterested stare with its masked eyes. The animal hunched its craggy shoulders at me and then slouched into the woods. He was lucky. Over the years, like most of the people here, I’d left behind my share of roadkill. Your first deer is a rite of passage for the young drivers of Mittel County.
The glow of stained glass windows welcomed me home. From the outside, our house still looked like a church. The steeple still pointed at the sky, although Dad had long ago replaced the cross with a weather vane. He kept the wooden siding painted church white, and he always left the downstairs lights on overnight to illuminate the windows for passersby. The multicolored panels told the story of Jonah and the whale. When I was four years old, I used to hide under my blankets with a flashlight and pretend that I was inside the belly of the beast. It felt surprisingly safe there.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor. My room was at the back, with a sharply slanted ceiling and hardwood floor. A row of windows overlooked the cemetery. My walls were filled with pictures of me and my father. My first day on the job, with him next to me, beaming with pride. Me in a dress for an eighth grade school dance. Dad’s twentieth anniversary party as sheriff. Things like that. I had volleyball trophies on my dresser and yellowed copies of the newspaper from our state championship and one of the balls we’d used in the winning game. Ten stuffed owls of different sizes were lined up on my window ledges. In one corner of the room, beside the bed, was a rocking chair, along with my guitar.
I took a shower and washed off the day. I opened one of the windows, which made me shiver because I was still damp. I spent a long time staring at the woods. I was naked, but I didn’t worry much about modesty, because no one was around to see me, and the animals didn’t care what I looked like. Eventually, I crawled under the blankets, and I wasn’t even aware of falling asleep. I blinked, and the darkness was gone, and early morning light streamed into the bedroom.
It was five thirty.
Someone was ringing the bell at our front door.
I put on a robe and ran downstairs. When I threw open the door, I found Keith Whalen standing there. He was still dressed as he had been in the cemetery the previous day. His beard line was heavy on his face. He didn’t look as if he’d slept.
“Keith.”
“Sorry to bother you so early.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, actually, I never went home last night. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to leave the cemetery, so I slept in my car. I was heading out this morning, but I saw your cruiser and figured you were here.”
“Not for long. I have to get ready to go.”
I hoped he would get the message. I didn’t want him here. But he lingered on the doorstep anyway. He flipped his hair back, his usual nervous gesture. “Hey, would you mind if I used your bathroom?”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
I opened the door wider and let him inside. It was pretty impressive coming into our house, because Dad had left the great space of the church wide open when he converted the place. Voices echo, and you still feel as if you should talk in a hushed tone. Keith had never been here before, and he drank in the arched windows and the high ceiling with its crossbeams.