“Yes.”
“Marlina had dropped off an envelope. A single grainy screen shot from the casino security tape. Diane with the two guys who walked her out of the casino. They’re all in profile.”
“How does she look?”
“Fine.”
“Any idea who they are?”
“No.”
“It’s something, right?”
“It’s something.”
“Raoul, I have some news that I originally thought was good news, but may now be bad news.”
“What?”
“The Boulder police are involved. They’re asking the Las Vegas police to take Diane’s disappearance seriously.”
In my ear, I heard one of the familiar Catalonian profanities. Then he said, “I’ll have to call Norm, so he can tell Canada.”
45
What if this is why she died?… What if somebody killed Hannah because she met with Mallory that one time?
As my head hit the pillow and I tried to find the sanctuary of sleep, Diane’s original conspiracy theory about Hannah Grant’s death-a hypothesis I recalled I’d dismissed out of hand at the time-bounced back and forth inside my skull like the digitized ball in a game of Pong.
What if this is why she died?… What if somebody killed Hannah because she met with Mallory that one time?
It didn’t take long for my sleep-depriving musing to move on to cover fresh ground: If Diane had been right, and Hannah had been murdered because of something she’d learned from Mallory, could Diane and Bob somehow have suffered the same fate, too?
I shuddered at the thought.
The links were there. Diane had consulted with Hannah about Mallory; Bob had talked to Mallory across the backyard fence.
It was a far-fetched stretch, but could everything-Hannah’s death, Mallory’s disappearance, Diane’s disappearance, and Bob’s disappearance-really be related? Could some immense ball have started rolling the December afternoon that Mallory decided she just had to see Hannah Grant?
But why?
And how?
I gave up on sleeping and stumbled back out to the living room in search of a common denominator.
If Diane’s theory was true, there had to be a secret in the Miller household. Something that Mallory had revealed during her single session with Hannah. Or at least something that someone thought she’d revealed.
What was it?
During that week after Christmas, the week after Mallory disappeared, Diane had said, “She said her father was ‘up to something,’ remember?”
So what had Bill Miller been up to?
Had he been up to something at home? At work? Planning a career change? Planning a major change in his parenting?
And why, I wondered, was Bill Miller so curious as to why I had been at Doyle’s house?
Yeah, why?
During the psychotherapy session I’d had with Bill Miller earlier that day, I’d been so busy feeling guilty about being caught snooping around at Doyle’s house that I’d missed the obvious: Why had Bill Miller been so damn curious about the fact that I’d been looking at the house that was for sale next door?
46
I woke Sam. He wasn’t happy that I woke him. Once we managed to blunder past his unhappiness I began to explain to him why I’d interrupted his sleep. I tried to ease into it but his impatience forced me to admit earlier in the conversation than I wanted to that I had been inside Doyle’s house. “I pretended I was interested in buying the house; I got the agent to show it to me last night after work.”
“You woke me up to talk real estate?”
For a long moment he’d fooled me; I’d thought he’d sounded genuinely befuddled. “Sam, please. That house is at the center of something. It is.”
He wasn’t done poking at me. “You liked it? I found it overpriced, personally. Kitchen’s hardly bigger than mine. I don’t think Lauren would go for it, anyway. She’d be fretting about Grace and all that water in the backyard. And that bridge? With a toddler? Alan, you’d never have a moment’s peace.”
“Come on, Sam.”
“Okay, okay. Just remember that you’re the one who woke me up. So why did you feel this compelling need to sneak into the house next door to the Millers? It’s an empty friggin’ house. We’ve been in there.”
“Given all that’s happened, it seemed important to see it. I have this feeling that the Millers’ neighbor is key to all this.”
“All what?”
“Everything. Mallory, Diane, the guy Bob with the Camaro. The BOLO? Why are all these people missing, Sam? Three people are missing. Don’t you wonder about that? I mean, even-” I almost said, “Even Hannah Grant,” but I caught myself. The only link I could make to Hannah in all this was through Diane, and that wasn’t my privilege to abrogate.
“Three people are missing? Could be two. Could be one. Could be zero. But assuming I buy your premise that three people are missing, what does the neighbor’s house have to do with Diane?” Sam asked.
Sam wasn’t easily tricked. My obfuscation-by-shotgun-blast hadn’t fooled him for long. I stammered, “I don’t know. That part is once removed. But there’s a connection, there is. I can feel it.”
“Once removed? What the hell does that mean?”
“I can’t say.”
He sighed. “You were about to say something else. You said, ‘even’ and you stopped. Even what?”
“Everything.” Lame, but it was the best that I could do. “I was talking about everything.”
Sam yawned. “You know something else, right? Don’t you? Something you can’t tell me?”
I didn’t hesitate. I said, “I do.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “What’s the point in talking to you about stuff like this? It’s all riddles. It’s like trying to get a politician to tell you what he really thinks.” I took some solace that Sam’s profanity had been mumbled and dull, and not sharply carved and poison-tipped. “I can’t start an investigation because you have some confidentiality bee in your butt, Alan. You know that. You do. We’ve been here before.”
“What about the snow thing?”
“Dear Lord, not the snow thing again.”
“Have you guys thought about those lines that you can string between trees and stuff? What are they called? What if they strung those between Mallory’s house and Doyle’s? What if they did that? What if that’s how she got out of her house without leaving any footprints?”
“A patient feed you this? She slid down one of those lines? That’s your latest theory? Are you nuts?”
Hearing it out loud, it sounded silly. All I was able to say was, “No. Maybe.” Sam had no way to know I’d answered his questions in order, skipping the second one and the final one.
“Why?” Sam asked.
“Why what?”
“If she’s running away, why would she care if she got out of the house without leaving any footprints? Why go to all that trouble? She didn’t know when the snow was going to start and stop; she didn’t know Fox was going to have a helicopter overhead. She’s a kid. If she runs, she runs. Everything else is crap and you know it.”
I hadn’t thought of questioning what motivation Mallory might have for trying to leave no trail behind-it was definitely an oversight in my thinking-but I found myself relieved that Sam was using the present tense to describe Mallory.
Sam wasn’t done. “Before, you said, ‘They’? Who’s ‘they’?”
“The neighbor and…”
“Mallory? Come on? They were in this together? Now you’re talking some conspiracy, right? Alan, I’ll forgive you for calling. It’s late. I know you’re upset about your friend.”
“Sam-”
“We searched the house. We talked to the neighbor. Nothing came of it. Let it go.”
“Remember when we were in the yard and someone was watching us from the upstairs window?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, why? Why was he watching us?”