glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Clara’s SUV directly behind him. He wondered if she remembered that they had a dinner date that evening at his house. He hoped so. Brooke had been planning it for days. She’d gotten up early that morning to set the table with her mother’s good china. Clara had agreed; certainly, she’d come.
Still, Max recognized this wasn’t something Clara felt comfortable with. Her reaction wasn’t unusual. In fact, each time they made plans, Clara agreed and then he suspected she had to fight her instincts, which told her to call it off. She struggled, he sensed, with trusting anyone, even him.
Despite his mounting impatience with her, Max couldn’t give up.
Somewhere hidden inside Clara, he felt certain, waited the girl she’d once been. He remembered those early years, when they became schoolfriends. He thought of how she’d looked back then; a strong girl, a bookworm who was also a bit of a tomboy, who ran faster than most of the boys. When did he first realize that she was becoming special to him? He couldn’t remember. “Maybe she was always special,” he whispered, thinking of the sparkle in her eyes when he whispered in her ear, how she wrinkled up her nose when she laughed, how serious she became poring over a math assignment.
It was her courage that turned the friendship to love.
In junior high, the school bully shoved another girl on the playground and broke her glasses. The girl cried, and Clara jumped the boy, pushed him to the ground and held him down, plastering his face against the asphalt until he apologized. Max stood among a throng of kids watching, impressed by her bravery. Afterward the rowdy kids kept a watch for Clara, not wanting to start trouble while she was around.
We found each other while so young, Max thought. But our road hasn’t been a smooth one.
The world hadn’t treated her well. She’d been hurt. He didn’t know what, but something terrible had happened to her, and she was wary. He understood. He’d been hurt, too. But if he just didn’t give up, eventually…
Anything seemed possible.
On the final stretch, Max took a rickety wooden bridge over a bone-dry ditch. In heavy rains and during the spring thaw, water off the mountainside turned the gully into a stream. Beside it a crooked sign dangling from a frame read: Old Sawyer Creek. Up ahead, Max saw a beat-up pickup and an Alber PD squad parked crossways near a travel trailer that looked worse for wear. Max sped up. Behind him, Clara did the same.
Eight
Off a bumpy asphalt road onto a dirt driveway, we drove until I saw a clearing ahead strewn with piles of broken bricks. Stacks of unused roofing shingles that had been discarded for so long that weeds grew up high between them and much of their cardboard casings had weathered away. A decomposing brown leather recliner sat at one end of the travel trailer with an open, stained beige patio umbrella over it, apparently Carl Shipley’s only outdoor furniture.
I parked directly behind Mullins’ squad, and Max pulled up just a short distance away. We kept low and had our guns drawn as we slunk over to join Mullins, who had taken shelter behind his car. He had an AR-15 pointed at the trailer, and his attention was focused on the door and windows.
“What’s going on here, Detective Mullins?” The long scar on his cheek had turned purple, a sign, I’d come to recognize during my brief months back in Alber, that the detective’s blood pressure was at its upper limits. Squat with faded blue eyes, his salt-and-pepper hair receding at the crown, Mullins looked like the neighbor nobody approached on the street because he always wore a sour expression.
“Chief, I’ve got that POS where I want him. I’m gonna show him what happens when he kills someone. Anyone.” Mullins looked over at me. His eyes were red and watery, and I could tell he’d been crying. “That waste of oxygen murdered my daughter. My Laurel.”
“Okay, slow down here, Mullins,” I said. “Fill in the blanks for us.”
Mullins pinched his mouth shut, as if debating whether or not he’d talk to me. The two of us had a rather strained relationship. It hadn’t started out well during our first case together. I’d sometimes wondered if he was working with me or against me. Things only got worse when I took the chief’s job, one he’d assumed his seniority at Alber PD meant