Simon nodded. He put his hands together on the table and looked at the wall again. He knew that his wife had opinions on the way he sat sometimes, that she seemed to feel she could read things into it. Things that reflected badly on him, naturally. In actuality he was sitting in this way, and holding his hands together, to make sure he didn’t get up and hit the woman he’d been married to for twelve years. This had never happened in the past. He’d never come even remotely close—not even after he started to think…Whatever, that wasn’t the issue now. But if she was responsible for his baby being lost, then…Of course it would still never happen. It did not help. It was not his way. He was not that kind of man.
He grasped his hands together more tightly.
This was the first time they’d been alone together since he arrived. She’d called him after the police. He had absolutely no problem with that. He wished she’d called them before running helter-skelter all over the place yesterday afternoon, that she’d called them the instant she’d discovered that Madison was neither in her room nor visible on the beach, but nothing could be done about that now. He’d gotten into the car immediately, broken every speed limit on the journey along 26 from Portland, and arrived to find four cops from the local sheriff’s department already present. They’d asked Alison a lot of questions. They asked Simon some, too, even though it was the middle of the night and he’d obviously just arrived. They wanted to know if “everything was all right at home”—as if Maddy could possibly have just run away by herself. Then most of them had gone to join the others who were out searching. There are words that you don’t want to have any bearing on your life. “Searching” is one of them. Especially in conjunction with your only child.
Since then, as night finally crawled toward dawn, the cops had been in and out and back and forth. In the yard. On the beach. They came and asked more questions, usually a couple at a time. There was generally at least one around. But for the moment it was just the two of them. Simon and his ever-loving wife.
A wife who had turned away again now, to the window that looked out across the yard to the road. Maybe she thought that keeping watch was going to make everything better, that she’d suddenly glimpse Maddy strolling up the highway carrying groceries (Simon had already noticed that food and drink were notable by their absence). That this would instantly make everything okay. That she—
“Someone’s coming,” she said.
There were footsteps up the front stairs, then a knock at the door. Simon answered it. A man was standing outside. He was tall and wore a dark coat. His face was serious, the planes of it flat, the skin sallow.
“Yes?” Simon said. His heart was thudding badly.
“May I come in?”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Shepherd,” the man said.
Alison had come to stand behind Simon. “Are you with the police?”
“No, ma’am. I’m Federal Agent Shepherd, from the Portland office.”
He flashed his card, and they stepped aside. The man walked into the center of the kitchen, looked around. “Your daughter is missing,” he said flatly.
Alison started to say yes but suddenly began crying. None of the cops had put it this bluntly. She kept trying to speak but couldn’t get anything out beyond whispers. Simon took her hand, which only made her feel worse. Meanwhile the man waited. He made no attempt to make her feel better, or at ease. If anything, he gave the impression he found her tiresome.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Early afternoon yesterday,” Simon said.
The man looked at him. “You were here?”
“No, but—”
“Then please let Mrs. O’Donnell answer.”
This was enough to stop the tears. “My husband knows what I know,” Alison said.
The man nodded. “Which is not a great deal. She just walked out of here? Disappeared?”
“I was asleep….”
“You have no idea where she might have gone? No friends in the area, no relatives nearby, no particular place she liked to go to be alone?”
“We always spent all our time here together. As a family.”
She glanced at Simon and was glad to see he looked taken aback, too. It wasn’t just her imagination. The agent’s tone seemed odd, angry for nonobvious reasons.
“She’s right,” Simon said. “We don’t really know anyone else here. We just come and—”
“Has Madison ever met Nick Golson?”
Alison froze.
Simon frowned. The name meant nothing. “Who?”
“The man your wife nearly had an affair with.”
Simon’s face drained of color. He turned and walked out of the cottage. Alison heard his steps thudding down the stairs to the yard.
Finally, unbelievably, things had gotten even worse.
“I never…How do you know about that?” she managed to ask. “How long have you…why have you…?”
The man kept looking at her until she stopped. “Has he? Ever met him?”
Alison shook her head vehemently.
“Does Golson know you have a daughter? Did he ever show any interest in her?”
“Of course not. I mean, he knew she exists, but…What does this have to do with anything?”
“Hopefully nothing, and I have no interest in your life except as it pertains to Madison’s safety,” the man said. He pulled out a business card. It was pure white and had nothing on it except the name Richard Shepherd. A phone number had been written on the back. “If she returns, call me from your cell phone. If you think of anywhere she might have gone, call me—on your cell phone. Do it immediately. Understand?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He just left.
Alison stood adrift in the middle of a room in which she had cooked, laughed, even made love, back in the day. It needed redecorating. Funny what it took to make you realize that. She watched as the tall man walked quickly down the path and got into an anonymous sedan parked on the road. He drove off fast.
Then she pulled her gaze back to look at her husband, sitting on the grass to one side of the yard, his head in his hands. And she wondered, idly, whether it might not be simpler just to kill herself.
Twenty minutes later two of the local cops came into the house. It was obvious before they spoke that they had found nothing. Alison told them about the FBI agent. The policemen seemed confused. The Bureau had been alerted, of course, but no one was expected until eight or nine at the earliest. They questioned her closely on the man who had come into her kitchen, finally establishing that he had shown no formal identification. The cops said this was very unusual. Alison showed them the card the man had left. They tried calling the number. There was no reply.
The cops started moving quickly then, getting a description of the car she’d seen, and of the man himself, and began jabbering to people on their radios.
Alison left them to it and walked down the stairs to talk to her husband. When she got out to the yard, she found he was no longer there. She hurried over to the road and saw a figure about a hundred yards along it, walking toward Cannon Beach. She started to walk more quickly.
And then she started to run.
chapter
FOURTEEN
The first thing I saw was a big man looming over me. I was freezing, and my head felt like it was broken, but even so I could tell that there was something extremely wrong with this person. His proportions were badly odd. His features were too strong and skewed, and the texture of his skin was ragged and worn, even in this early, low light. He was also, I finally realized, really, really huge.
And made of wood.