“How about Elton?” Serena said.
The dog didn’t react.
“I knew another dog named Elton once. We’re probably not going to be together for very long, so you’re going to have to put up with it for a while. You good with that, Elton? I’m Serena, by the way.”
With a little snort, Elton draped himself across the red-and-black leather of the Mustang’s seats and positioned his nose across Serena’s leg. Even dry, he still had a wet-dog smell, so she turned on the vents a little higher. The fan ruffled Elton’s fur.
The rain had finally stopped, but the sun was still missing in action. Bubbly clouds hung low in the sky. The north — south Wisconsin highway wasn’t crowded, so she put the Mustang on cruise control. A few minutes later, she passed the town of Solon Springs, which meant she still had an hour to go before reaching Rice Lake. It was almost noon, but she didn’t bother stopping to eat. She’d filled up at a gas station before crossing the high bridge out of Duluth, and she’d bought a few microwave hot dogs for Elton, which he happily devoured.
Her fingers stroked the dog’s head in her lap. Elton closed his eyes and enjoyed the massage.
“So tell me something,” she said, not caring that this was a one-sided conversation. “Do you miss being with the Sackses? I mean, dogs are funny that way. They even love people who kick the shit out of them.”
The dog exhaled with a noise that was part whistle, part snore.
Serena’s mouth curled into a frown. “Then again, it’s not like I can talk. I stuck around for a long time with someone who kicked the shit out of me, too.”
She wasn’t aware of driving faster, but her foot pushed heavily on the accelerator, overriding the cruise control, and the Mustang responded like a thoroughbred unleashed.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she murmured, although she knew it was still a secret. When she looked down, she saw that Elton was sound asleep. Plus, he was a dog, and dogs were good secret-keepers.
“When my dad left us, I didn’t even miss him,” Serena continued. “That’s pretty pathetic, huh? I was fifteen years old. Samantha had already started doing drugs. She shared them with me sometimes, when I wasn’t sneaking drinks from her vodka bottles. She was so much cooler than the other moms. They didn’t want anything to do with her. Or me. They started keeping my friends away from me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need them. I had Samantha.”
The Wisconsin landscape whipped past them, lightning fast.
“My dad didn’t even try to take me with him. He just left. I went out with Samantha to a club one night — she had a fake ID for me, and I looked a lot older than I really was — and when we got back, he was gone. Packed up, no note, no idea where he went. For years, I told people that he abandoned me, but that’s not really true. I wouldn’t have gone with him even if he’d asked me. I was a momma’s girl. I wanted to stay with Samantha. Being with her, living the way she lived — totally free — that was magic.”
She touched her face, wondering if she’d find tears on her cheeks this time. There were still none.
“I remember when we got home to the empty house at four in the morning and found the note. Samantha just shrugged when she read it and said, ‘Fuck him.’ Like it was no big deal that her husband had walked out.”
In her lap, the dog stirred and gave a low woof, as if offended by the profanity.
“Sorry, but that’s what she said. I said the same thing, just parroted it right back. Fuck him. I was glad my father was gone. He was a downer. Without him, we could do whatever we wanted. Stay out all night. Sleep all day. Samantha bought me all sorts of shit. Music. Video games. I had no idea that she’d lost her job, that she was maxing out one credit card after another, that she hadn’t paid the mortgage in a year. I didn’t think about the fact that she wasn’t working. When you’re drunk at a party, you never think about the party ending.”
There was no emotion in Serena’s voice, because she felt no emotion at all. Everything that had happened may as well have been scenes from a movie on a screen, something unreal that an actor had gone through, not herself.
“Eventually, the bank foreclosed on the house, and we got kicked out. We were homeless. We lived in the parks, under bridges, in shelters when we could find a bed. Samantha just dug the hole deeper. She and I sort of switched places at that point. I began taking care of her. I didn’t mind. I would have done anything in the world for her. That was when I met my friend Deidre. She was homeless, too. She taught me the ropes: how to scam things, who would help you, who would rape you if you gave them half a chance. I burned through jobs, mostly because I stole all the time, and as soon they figured that out, I was gone. But Samantha would always tell me what a good girl I was, how proud she was of me. Then she’d take the money I gave her and buy more drugs. It was never enough, though. Not for her habit. She needed a more permanent arrangement to keep the coke flowing.”
Serena finally glanced at the dashboard and saw that she was driving one hundred and ten miles an hour. Her foot eased off the gas.
“His name was Blue Dog,” she said.
The parents of Gavin Webster lived in an old section of Rice Lake, only a couple of blocks from Main Street. Their tiny house faced a neighborhood playground across the street. The lawn was mostly made of weeds, and it was brown where a couple of huge oak trees blocked out the sun. Serena suspected that Gavin had used some of his inheritance to help his parents, because she noted that the paint on the house was fresh, the roof looked recently replaced, and there was a brand-new Subaru Outback parked outside the detached garage.
She’d called ahead, so Mary and Tim Webster were waiting for her. They invited her inside the house when she knocked. Elton stayed in the Mustang. The three of them sat in the living room that faced the street, and Mary switched off the local radio station, which was playing a Travis Tritt song. Serena took a seat in a leather armchair, and the Websters sat holding hands on the sofa by the window. Mary was short, and Tim was very tall, with skinny legs that seemed to jut out into the middle of the room. The air had the syrupy, floral smell of hot oil plugged into an outlet.
When Mary fixed her stare on Serena, she saw that Gavin had gotten his distinctive eyes from his mother. They were the same intense blue.
“Who could have done this?” she asked with a frantic tone of disbelief. “Do you have any idea who kidnapped Chelsey?”
“We don’t know that yet, but we have a large team investigating the case and we’re doing everything we can to find her.”
The father, Tim, shook his head. He was mostly bald, with a neat triangular gray mustache and black glasses. “You won’t find her.”
Serena looked at him in surprise. “Why do you say that, Mr. Webster?”
“My cousin’s a cop in Des Moines. He says if the kidnappers don’t get back to you once they get the ransom, that’s it. She’s dead.”
“Timothy,” his wife interrupted. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Yes, I know you’re both concerned,” Serena said, trying to reassure them, “but it’s way too early to assume the worst. In order to find Chelsey, we need to gather all the information we can. That’s why I’m here.”
The father snorted. “Don’t play games, Detective. You’re here to check up on Gavin. Right? My cousin said as far as the cops are concerned, nine times out of ten, it’s the spouse that did it. Well, you’re wrong about Gavin.”
“Gavin loved Chelsey,” Mary added. “He’s devastated. A wreck.”
“I’m sure he is,” Serena said mildly. “I really just want to confirm what happened and get the facts straight. When did Gavin arrive at your house?”