“No.” But it was almost time. You were almost here, Shelby. I could feel it. Was it a sign that on that day of all days, Tom Ginn would become a part of my life again?
“Are you sure?” Darrell asked.
“I’m fine,” I said again.
“Okay.”
Darrell dialed our office and asked for the name and phone number for the sheriff of Mittel County. He announced the number out loud as he wrote it down, but I knew it by heart, because I’d dialed that number dozens of times from my home this year before putting the phone done without even letting it ring.
When Darrell made his next call, I sat right beside him, listening.
“Sheriff Ginn, please,” Darrell said to the woman who answered.
Seconds later, in the dead silence of the motel room, I heard that voice. Two words on the phone, barely louder than static on the line, but they were like a broadcast from a loudspeaker in my mind. “Tom Ginn.”
Could Darrell see my reaction? Could he see my whole body tremble and my heart stop beating?
“Sheriff, this is Deputy Darrell Curtis over in Black Wolf County. I’ve got a question about an old Mittel County case. I was wondering if someone there might be able to pull the file and answer some questions for me.”
No!
I didn’t want Tom handing off the call to another deputy. I wanted to hear him talking. I wanted to remember. I wanted to lose myself all over again in the mellow calm of his voice.
“What’s the case?” Tom asked.
Yes — the voice, the voice, the voice. It couldn’t have affected me more if it were Frank Sinatra serenading me over the phone. Tom, I’m here. It’s me. Rebecca. From that night in the snow? I just wanted to say — there are so many things to say—
But I said nothing at all.
“You probably wouldn’t remember it,” Darrell went on. “It was a liquor store heist. Garden-variety smash and grab. This was back in July, seven years ago. The suspects were two Black Wolf County thugs in a stolen car. Kip Wells. Racer Moritz.”
I heard Tom chuckle. I remembered that sweet laugh. The laugh of a good man. “In fact, I remember that robbery very well, Deputy. Mostly because it was my case. I answered the call.”
“Is the file still in your archives? Would someone be able to pull it?”
“Well, I pride myself on remembering details, Deputy. If I need the file, I can always grab it, but what is it you wanted to know?”
Tom. It’s me. I’m here.
Tom, let me tell you about everything. Let me tell you about Shelby.
“We had a manhunt going for Kip and Racer after the heist,” Darrell said. “Later, we found out they’d been holed up in a trailer outside Random.”
“Yes, I remember they were dead when you found them,” Tom said. “These were the Ursulina murders, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Has there been a break in the case?”
“Maybe. We have reason to believe that someone found Kip and Racer while they were hiding out. It may have been one of our own people. I’m sure you were in close contact with the department here in Black Wolf during the investigation, so I was wondering if there was anything you remember that could help us.”
There was a long pause.
Tom, are you there? Tom, talk to me, keep talking, I just need to hear you.
“Actually, you’re right, I did get a tip about their location,” Tom said. “I passed it along myself.”
“You did?”
“Yes, one of my colleagues was testifying at a trial in Stanton that week. He was on a break and heard the defense attorney in the case talking on a pay phone in the courthouse. He was sure he heard the attorney mention the names Kip and Racer and something about a trailer. He mentioned it to me when he got back to Mittel County, because he thought maybe the perps in the liquor store robbery were trying to round up a lawyer. I called your office to pass along the tip. I thought it might give your team some clue of where the two of them could be hiding out.”
“Do you remember who you talked to?”
“Well, my main contact on the case was a deputy named Arthur Jackson. I remember him because we were both young cops about the same age. I’m sure I would have talked to him about it.”
“Ajax,” Darrell said, shaking his head.
“That’s him.”
“Do you happen to have any documentation of the call?”
“I’m sure I do in the file. I’m a stickler for that sort of thing. I’ll track it down and send you a copy.”
“I really appreciate your help, Sheriff.”
“Not at all. You’ll have to fill me in about this case when you wrap it up.”
“I will. Goodbye, Sheriff.”
I saw Darrell begin to put down the phone, but then — oh my God! — Tom said something more.
“Actually, Deputy, as long as we’re talking, can you answer a question for me?”
“Of course.”
“Is there still a woman named Rebecca Colder working for the sheriff’s department?”
Darrell stared at me with surprise and curiosity, and I couldn’t hide my own shock. He was about to say what any normal person would say in that situation — yes, actually, she’s sitting right beside me — when I frantically waved my arms and mouthed a single word at him.
No!
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t make small talk in front of Darrell. If I was going to talk to Tom, it had to be private and profound. I couldn’t pretend my relationship with him was nothing when it was everything.
“Y-yes, there is,” Darrell replied, with a faint stutter in his voice. “I know Rebecca very well. In fact, she—”
He stopped again, watching my face, trying to decide what to say.
“She was my partner for a while,” he went on.
“But not now?”
“No.”
I heard Tom’s hesitation. Would he ask about me? Would he ask why I wasn’t still Darrell’s partner? Would he ask where I was and what I was doing and how I was and when it was that my whole life had changed?
But Tom spoke again, more slowly, as if somehow he could see me in the room. As if he could read my mind through the phone. “Well, when you see her next, please tell her that Tom Ginn says hello. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Goodbye, Deputy.”
“Goodbye, Sheriff.”
Darrell hung up the phone and looked at me. He wanted answers, and I had none to give him. “Rebecca?”
I was still without words. Without breath. I had to stop myself from crying. My emotions crested like a wave. Your emotions, Shelby. I could feel you kicking. You knew him, too.
Did that mean what I wanted it to mean?
Was Tom your father?
“I met him,” I replied blandly. “I met Tom once.”
Darrell looked as if he wanted to ask me more questions, but he had the grace to let it be.
I simply sat on the bed and thought: He remembers me.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Darrell and I found Ruby sitting in her kitchen, with her youngest asleep in a little swing beside her. She stared blankly into a mug of tea. Ruby was a woman whose emotions often ran hot — I’d seen it for myself when I was on the receiving end, and I’d seen it at the 126 when she attacked Penny Ramsey — but that morning, she couldn’t summon any fire to her face. A kind of nothingness had overtaken her. As we sat down across from her at the kitchen table, she barely looked up from her tea. Her cheeks were red, her eyes were red, both set against her dirty red hair.