Still, it was all she had at the moment.
Thackeray was a quiet place this time of year. The occasional student walked past. Once in a while, a car drove by.
Joyce was thinking she should have brought along some coffee, but that would mean, at some point, having to run to the nearest available bathroom. Just like when you’re waiting for the cable guy to show up, the two minutes you leave the house to mail a letter, that’s when he rings the bell.
At least she had music.
She had no way to run her iPhone through her old clunker’s stereo system, but she did have CDs. She opened up her folder of discs, found her favorite, and slipped it into the slot in the dash.
Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life.
Joyce loved Stevie. No other artist-not since the dawn of time-even came close.
She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, bounced her shoe off the side of the transmission hump. She played the entire disc, popped it out, replaced it with Original Musiquarium, which was made up of hits from 1972 to 1980.
Joyce was halfway through Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants when she saw him.
It was nearly ten, and he was running toward her on the other side of the street. Not flat out. A steady jog, pacing himself. As he got closer, Joyce sized him up. Late twenties, early thirties. Too old to be a student, she thought, and a little on the young side to be a professor, although she had to admit there were a few on campus who’d never seen a first-run episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
She couldn’t be certain this was the same guy she’d seen in the video, but it was certainly possible. He had the earbuds trailing down to a music player clipped to the band of his running shorts.
Joyce killed the music and got out of her car. She stood in the middle of the road, waved her hands at him when he got to be about sixty yards away.
He slowed, stopped about twenty feet from her, and pulled the buds from his ears. Between breaths, he said, “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Joyce showed him her ID, told him she was with Thackeray College security.
“Am I not allowed to run here?” he asked. “I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“You’re not affiliated with Thackeray?” Joyce asked. “Enrolled here, or work here?”
The man shook his head. “No. But come on, it’s not really private property, is it?”
Joyce smiled. “I don’t care about that. But I need to ask you some questions.”
The man glanced at his watch. “I’ve been trying to beat my previous time.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s important. So you don’t live on campus?”
“No, I live in town. But I like running through here. It’s pretty. And I only just kind of started doing it. I used to run years ago, but I’m trying to get myself back in some kind of shape. More exercise, less drinking, if you know what I mean.”
“Sure, yeah. Listen, were you running here the other night? Around midnight?”
The man asked her which night, exactly, and she told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “That was my first or second night, I think. How would you know that?”
Joyce pointed to one of the buildings. “Security camera up there.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Anyway, that night, around that time, do you remember seeing a car parked right where mine is now?”
The jogger shrugged. “Not that I… I don’t really recall.”
“It was there for about an hour. A man got out, went in that direction, then returned to the vehicle, and then backed up that way. Turned around, I guess, and drove off.”
“So you’re looking for that car?”
Joyce nodded.
“And that guy?”
She nodded again.
“What are you looking for him for?”
Joyce said, “It’s just important that I find him.”
The man appeared to be thinking. “Actually, yeah, I do kind of remember seeing somebody around then.”
“Really?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay,” Joyce said, starting to feel excited. “Listen, I didn’t even ask. What’s your name?”
“Rooney,” the jogger said. “Victor Rooney.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
DAVID Harwood had felt a little stupid when Cal Weaver had asked him whether he’d spoken to Samantha Worthington’s neighbors about where she and Carl might have gone. David was no licensed private detective, but he had been a reporter, and he’d done some investigative journalism over the years-particularly back before the Promise FallsStandard started slashing staff and could still afford to do that sort of thing-so not to have considered something as basic as asking the folks who lived on either side of Sam if they’d seen her packing up was pretty embarrassing.
David decided to chalk it up to having too much on his mind.
Now he was going to do what he should have done the first time.
He was back at Sam’s place. He’d hoped that maybe when he got here, she’d be back. That he would find her car in the driveway, that she and Carl would be fine.
But the car was still gone when he parked on the street in front of her house.
He rang the bell on the house to the right first. It took a second ring to draw out a woman in her eighties, who, it turned out, lived alone, and had not seen Sam or Carl, and did not, in fact, even know who lived on either side of her.
Then he tried the house on the left.
It didn’t take long before a woman came to the door, opened it wide, and said to him, “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
“Excuse me?” David said.
“You’re here looking for Samantha and her boy?”
“Uh, yes, I am.”
A man appeared, standing behind the woman. “What’s going on?” he asked.
The woman looked over her shoulder and said, “This is the real one.”
“Oh,” the man said. “You figured he’d get here sooner or later.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” David said.
“I’m Theresa and that’s my husband, Ron,” she said. “Jones.”
“Okay.”
“And you’re David Harwood, right?”
David nodded. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen you dropping by to see Sam and I recognized you. From the TV, and the paper, back when you were having all that trouble with your wife.”
“That was years ago,” David said.
“Well, I remember,” she said.
“What did you mean,” David asked Theresa, “when you said ‘the real one’?”
“You’re not the first one named David Harwood to come to our door today,” she said.
David felt his stomach drop. “Who was here?”
Theresa told him about the man who’d come around earlier in the day looking for Sam and Carl. How he’d identified himself as David.
“That had to be her ex-husband,” David said. “He just got out of jail. I mean, he fled. They didn’t let him out on purpose.”
“Good Lord,” Theresa said. “We had no idea.”
Brandon Worthington probably knew all about him, David thought. His parents would have filled him in. That David had been seeing Sam, that he was the one in the picture having sex with her in her kitchen, that he was the one who’d fucked up Ed’s attempt to grab Carl at the school that day. Sam might have spoken about David, in a favorable light, to her neighbors. Or maybe Sam had told the Joneses that if someone named David came around, it would be safe to tell him where she’d gone.
Except, because Theresa Jones knew Brandon wasn’t who he claimed to be, it didn’t work. And besides, Sam hadn’t told her where she was going, anyway.
But it had looked, Theresa Jones told David now, like they were off on a camping trip.