David Bell - The Hiding Place

Stynes looked back to her father. “When we interviewed you right after Justin disappeared, you told us that you went to work as usual that morning. You worked for Strand, right?”

“Right.”

“And that night, when we talked to you again, you said the same thing. You said you got up at the usual time and got ready and went to work as usual. I guess your wife called when she realized Justin was missing, and you came home from work. Right?”

“I don’t see the problem,” he said.

“Well, we spoke to your wife that morning, of course, and then again that night.”

Stynes stopped speaking. He let his words hang in the air between the three of them. Again he seemed to be waiting for something. When no one said anything, Stynes went on.

“That night, she told us that you had gone to work that morning like any normal day. But that morning, when we came and spoke to her, she told us that you hadn’t gone in to work at your usual time. That you’d stayed home, and you were here when Justin disappeared and not at work.”

Janet almost gasped. She sucked a large gulp of air into her lungs and felt it catch there like an obstruction. It took a long moment for her to be able to breathe again, but the men didn’t seem to notice. They were staring each other down, their eyes locked.

“She made a mistake,” her dad said.

“You know that?”

“She was upset when Justin disappeared. She made a mistake. I don’t see why that’s such a big deal. You talked to her about it that night. Here she was racked with grief over her missing child, and you just wanted to pick her words apart like she was a criminal.” He paused. “She was very upset that day.”

Stynes nodded. “Right. Of course. People do make mistakes in stressful situations. And if we checked the records out at Strand to see what time you arrived at work, they’d confirm that you were there?”

“I don’t know what they would confirm after twenty-five years,” her dad said. His voice sounded less steely, less certain.

Stynes held her father’s gaze for a long moment, then tapped the little notebook with his index finger. “Well, I guess I’ll have to see.”

“What do you mean?” Janet asked.

“I mean I might go out to Strand tomorrow morning to take a look at their records.”

“And,” Janet said, “what if the records say my dad didn’t go to work that morning, if such records even exist after all this time? What if they say he wasn’t there? What happens?”

Stynes smiled, his eyes still on her dad. “One old cop will have his curiosity satisfied, I guess. I’ll just file it away in the drawer of oddities I keep in my mind.” Stynes stood up and tucked the notebook back into its pocket. “I told you it wouldn’t take very long.”

And that was it? Janet thought. But what did it mean? She tried to wrap her head around Detective Stynes’s visit, but she could reach only one conclusion: Stynes had suspicions about her father, and he was following up on them.

It was as though Stynes had tapped into the dark thoughts growing inside Janet…

“Let me ask you something, Detective,” her father said.

Stynes stood still, looking down on her dad, who remained in his seat.

“Yes?”

“Have you investigated a lot of murders over the years?”

“A few.”

“And other crimes? Robberies? Rapes?”

“Of course.”

“Do you pay these kinds of visits to the parents of those victims, or am I just special?”

Stynes considered this and said, “Some things stay with us longer than others, I guess.”

Stynes expected to hear the door slam at his back, but it didn’t. Instead, Janet Manning came through the door behind him and out onto the front porch. Stynes stopped at the edge of the steps and looked back, surprised to see the woman standing there, arms folded, lips pressed tight.

Stynes thought he might have overplayed his hand. What did he really have to go on anyway? In the confusion of events in the aftermath of a kidnapping, two children jumbled their stories and a distraught mother misspoke about her husband’s whereabouts. Was it worth chasing and waking ghosts over things like that?

He wondered if Janet was going to chew him out for the indelicacy of his visit, coming as it did just days after the twenty-fifth anniversary of her brother’s murder. She would have a point, Stynes admitted to himself. But then again, Bill Manning did act a little off balance about the question of his whereabouts that morning. Did it mean anything? Or did the guy just feel ambushed by a twenty-five-year-old question?

Janet didn’t say anything. She stood on the porch looking into the distance, toward where a neighbor washed his car, the hose creating a fanning spray of water in the sunlight.

“Did you want to ask me something, Janet?” Stynes said.

It took her a moment, but she spoke without facing him. “What was that about, Detective?”

“I was following up on something related to your brother’s case,” he said.

“After all this time?”

“I think we both know time doesn’t matter so much with this case.”

“Why didn’t the police follow up on this back then?” she asked. “If someone gave conflicting stories twenty-five years ago, why didn’t you explore it?”

Stynes saw Reynolds’s face in his mind’s eye, heard his claim that Mrs. Manning’s story didn’t matter because we all knew who committed most of the crimes in Dove Point.

“It was determined at the time that your mother was simply confused about the course of events,” he said. “Your parents were distraught, obviously, and those of us investigating the case decided we didn’t want to push them. We felt we had more evidence pointing in the direction of Dante Rogers. We have to make those judgments during an investigation.”

She turned to face him. She studied him.

“You don’t think Dante did it, Detective, do you?”

Stynes wanted to tell her. He wanted to admit his doubts about his performance on the case all those years ago, that he should have worried less about his stature as a young detective and more about finding the truth, whatever it was. He recognized that of all the people he knew-Reynolds, his fellow officers, his few friends and acquaintances-Janet Manning might be the person he was most likely to tell what he really thought about Dante and what Stynes had come to think of as his alleged role in the crime. But Stynes knew he had already tipped his hand too much. Janet Manning wasn’t a dummy. She only needed to listen to the questions Stynes directed at her father to know that there was suspicion in that direction, that a follow-up on the man’s whereabouts meant Stynes harbored some doubts about her father and the events of that morning.

“What do you remember about that day, Janet? Do you remember talking to me in the park?”

Her mouth twisted a little as she thought. She shook her head. “Not really. It’s fuzzy. I know the police were there. I remember seeing the police cars at the park, more than one of them.”

“But you don’t remember what you said?”

She shook her head. “I’ve read about it in the paper so many times that I know what I said, but I don’t remember saying it.”

“Do you remember talking to us that night? Here at the house?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. I just remember a lot of people coming and going. I remember feeling empty all the time. Justin was gone, and something wasn’t right. But I can’t look back there and tell you what I was thinking.”

“It was confusing.”

“Yes. I know Michael came over one night and we played together. The adults were in another room, I guess.” Janet smiled, almost laughed.