“I gave that girl a ride last night,” I said. “But I’m guessing you already know that.”
Haines nodded. “You picked her up at Patchett’s.”
No sense denying it. “Yeah. I get picked up on closed-circuit?”
Haines hesitated, then said, “Yup.”
“That something you do a lot, Mr. Weaver?” Brindle asked. “Pick up teenage girls?”
“She tapped on my window when I was stopped at the sign. Asked for a lift home.”
“And you gave her one.”
“Yes.”
“So you already know Claire Sanders?” the older cop asked.
“No,” I said.
“Hmm,” Brindle said. “If it was me, and some young girl asked me for a lift — assuming I was in my own car and not the cruiser — I’d feel a bit odd about that. Like maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do.”
“She recognized me. She said she’d known my son, Scott.” I looked at Officer Haines at that point.
Hank Brindle cocked his head like a dog hearing a whistle. “That’s the one that died, right?”
I felt warm under my collar. “Yes.”
“Got stoned and went flying off the roof of Ravelson Furniture a couple months back,” Brindle said, like we were just reminiscing. “I got that right?”
“Yeah.”
“You got that call, didn’t you, Ricky?” he asked Haines.
“Yeah.” His face flushed. “I had to deliver the news to Mr. and Mrs. Weaver.” I sensed discomfort.
“I remember that,” Brindle continued. “That was the week I didn’t get any of the overtime I was due in my pay slip. ’Cause your wife had taken some time off and didn’t put it through.”
Now my neck was feeling hot. I made fists, not because I was planning on taking a swing at anyone, but to channel the tension. I kept my hands down so Brindle wouldn’t think I was about to hit him in the nose, much as I wanted to. “On her behalf, allow me to apologize for the inconvenience,” I said.
Brindle waved a hand. “No biggie.” He cleared his throat. “So you gave this girl a ride because she knew your son?”
“It seemed wrong, at that point, to leave her standing in the rain. I told her to get in. She asked for a ride home.”
“Did she tell you her name?” Brindle asked.
“Just Claire.”
“So you dropped her off at her home?” Haines asked.
They were both looking at me intently. I had a bad feeling about the way this was going, because the story I felt it was inevitable I’d have to tell stretched the limits of credibility.
“No, I didn’t drop her at home. We stopped at Iggy’s, out on Danbury. Claire said she felt like she was going to be sick.”
“You could have pulled over to the side of the road for that,” Brindle said.
“She asked to go to the restaurant, so I pulled in and waited in the car. She was in there for quite a while, so I went in looking for her, couldn’t find her, but when I got back outside there was a girl sitting in my car.”
“What do you mean, ‘a girl’?” Haines asked. “You mean Claire.”
I shook my head. “I thought it was her, at first. This girl wanted me to think she was Claire — she was wearing a wig to make her look like Claire, and her clothes were similar — but there were differences you could spot up close. For one, Claire had a cut on the back of her left hand, but this girl didn’t.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Brindle said. “You’re saying Claire Sanders went into Iggy’s, but it was a different girl that came out.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“What the hell happened to Claire?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was the second girl?” Haines asked.
“No idea. A friend of Claire’s, obviously, but she wouldn’t tell me her name. Once we were down the road a short stretch, and I realized she wasn’t Claire and called her on it, she told me to keep acting like I thought it was her. In case anyone was watching.”
Brindle made another snorting noise. “This is the craziest story I ever heard.”
“No, wait,” Haines said. “If Claire was being, you know, stalked or something, and wanted to lose that person, that’d be a way to do it.”
“That was what I was thinking,” I offered.
Brindle was shaking his head. “This is horseshit.”
“She demanded to get out of the car around Castleton and Berkeley,” I said. “I let her out.”
The cops exchanged looks. Then Haines said, “Did Claire say anything, before she went into Iggy’s? That suggested she was about to switch places with someone else?”
“No. If I’d known what they were planning, I wouldn’t have gone along with it.”
“She say anything about where she might be going?”
“Just home,” I said.
“That’s probably what it was,” Haines said.
“Huh?” said Brindle.
“Some stalker — and not the creepy killer kind, but an ex-boyfriend or something — was bugging her and she needed to get away. Maybe to see a different boy. So she set her friend up as a decoy.” He smiled and shook his head in admiration. “Pretty damn clever when you think about it.”
Brindle looked unconvinced.
I said, “Except where’s Claire now?”
“My bet,” Haines said, “is she’s with the boy she really wants to be with. Gettin’ it on somewhere. That’s probably what happened.”
I said, to both of them, “How did you know to check Patchett’s?”
Brindle pointed his thumb at Haines, who said, “She was known to go there, so it was kind of a starting point.”
“Let me ask you again,” I said. “Are you looking for Claire because she’s done something, or is she missing? Have you some reason to be concerned for her?”
Haines rubbed his chin, an awkward gesture designed to fill time. “I guess there’s always reason to be concerned about somebody when you can’t find them.” He clapped his hands together, rubbed them. “I guess we’re done here, Mr. Weaver. We’ll get out of your hair now.”
“I hope you find her soon,” I said as the two of them started getting back into their car.
Brindle locked eyes on me. “With a fishy story like the one you just told us, about some look-alike girl getting in your car, you better hope we do.”
Seven
I watched as the cruiser did a three-point turn in the street and rolled back up to the corner, turned left, and disappeared. When I got into the house, Donna was standing there.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I didn’t ask if everything was okay. I asked what’s going on.”
“I gave one of Scott’s friends a ride last night. They’re trying to find her.”
“Her?”
“Yeah. Girl named Claire.”
“You picked up a girl hitchhiking?”
“Not... hitchhiking. She was out front of Patchett’s, asked for a lift. She recognized me, said she knew Scott.”
“How would she recognize you?”
“She said something about seeing me drop him off at school. It was raining. Look, if you’d been there, you’d have given her a ride, too.”
“I might,” she said. “You don’t see the difference between my doing it and you doing it?”
“Of course I do.”
“I could do it without exposing myself to as much risk,” she said. “But you, picking up a young girl, late at night? That seemed like a good idea?”
“I told you why I did it.”
Her mouth opened slightly as something dawned on her. “I know why you did it. You thought she might know something. You think everyone may know something. You keep interrogating everyone under twenty in this town, you’re going to put your foot in it sooner or later. You’ll push someone too far, get yourself in trouble.”