“Make it quick, alright?” Derek said, frowning at us. “I don’t wanna miss-”
Before I could say anything, Gina grabbed his left arm and swung him hard into the building. His back thudded against the brick facade, the book flew from his hand and he grunted.
“Don’t be an asshole, Derek,” Gina said, right in his face, a hand pressing against his chest. “I know it’s a challenge for you. But do your best.”
He tried to put the sneer back on his face, but he was missing the arrogance he needed to make it work.
“You know where Meredith Jordan is?” I asked. “And before you answer, think about this. If you lie to me, I’ll find out.” I stepped in right behind Gina. “Then I will break both of your arms. That isn’t an idle threat just meant to scare you, to make me seem tough. If you lie to me, I will find you and I will fracture your forearms.” I took his left arm in my hand and pressed my thumb into his ulna. “Right there is where I’ll do it. I’ve done it to guys a lot bigger than you. It will hurt like hell and you’ll cry and you’ll have trouble jerking off for six to eight weeks.” I stared at him. “So think before you answer.”
He yanked his arm out of my grasp and pushed Gina’s hand off his chest. He looked back and forth between us several times. Indecision and fear lined his face.
“I don’t know where she is,” he finally said.
Neither Gina nor I spoke, waiting to see if he had anything else to add.
He kept his mouth shut.
“Who would know where she is?” I asked him.
He licked his lips, trying to regain some composure. “Megan’s her best friend. If anyone would know, it’d be here.”
“She doesn’t know.”
He shrugged. “Then I don’t know, dude.”
“Tell me about the time you saw her father hit her.”
He couldn’t hide his surprise. “How’d you know about that?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
He blinked several times. “Fuckin Matt, right?” He waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Yeah, I saw it.”
“What happened?”
“Matt and I had gone over to pick her up,” he said, shifting his weight from his left foot to his right. “We were going camping for the weekend, out near Julian. Nobody answered the front door, so we went in. We went out back and her dad was yelling at her in their pool house. We didn’t know what to do, so we just waited. Couple of minutes later her dad comes storming out, doesn’t say shit and goes right by us into the house.” He looked at Gina, then back to me. “I went into the pool house to get her.” He pointed to the left side of his face. “He nailed her. Entire cheek looked like a tomato.”
I took a deep breath. “What were they fighting about?”
“She wouldn’t tell me right then,” he said. “Just wanted to grab her stuff and get out of there for the weekend. So we got her stuff and the three of us bailed.” He shook his head. “She told me later that he was pissed off about a grade on a test or some shit like that.”
I thought about what Megan had told me, about the bruises she’d attributed to basketball. “Had he done it before?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I think so. She’s never said anything, but…I’ve seen other stuff.”
I glanced at Gina. Her face was blank, fixed on Derek.
“If you don’t know where she is, who would?” I asked.
He started to say something, then stopped. “I’m done.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re not a cop,” he said. He looked at Gina. “And neither are you. I don’t have to say shit to you.”
“You don’t care that your girlfriend is missing?” Gina asked.
“My dad’s an attorney,” he said, the surliness I’d seen before returning in full effect. He produced a cell phone and held it up like a trophy. “You wanna talk to me anymore, you run it by him.”
He stared at me for a long moment, then looked at Gina. Satisfied that he’d stymied us, he chuckled and slipped the phone back into the pocket of his shorts. “That’s what I thought.” He picked up his book and gave each of us one last look. “Later.”
He walked back through the door and into the high school.
FORTY-TWO
We stopped back in the main office so I could ask Lana McCauley to print me out one more thing. She did so without uttering a word.
Gina and I walked outside into the courtyard at the front of the school. There was a large stone fountain in the middle of it and water trickled quietly.
“Off the record,” I said to her. “Jordan seem like the type of guy who’d hit his daughter?”
“I’m not sure what that type is.”
“What have you seen, Gina?”
She took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the bench that encircled the fountain. “If I hadn’t seen anything, I’d tell you that, no, he’s not capable of it. He’s a good father. He’s got a brutal temper, but he’s a good father.”
I sat down next to her. “But you have seen something.”
She bit down on her bottom lip for a moment. Fine wrinkles rippled across her forehead. She brushed her hair back away from her face.
“That thing he was talking about back there?” she finally said. “The camping trip? I remember when she came back. It was a Sunday night. Jon and Olivia left that morning, went to Chicago to meet with some investors. I drove him to the airport.” Her mouth twisted aimlessly for a moment. “Olivia went into the airport first. Jon hung back. He gave me an envelope to give to Meredith when she got home. He told me they’d fought before she left and he felt bad about it. He wanted me to make sure I gave it to Meredith the moment she came home.”
The sun was hot on my neck. The breeze from the other side of the school where we’d spoken to Derek was nonexistent. I kept listening.
“She came home late,” she continued. “About nine or so. I went up to her room and gave her the envelope. She was unpacking her bag. She opened it right in front of me, started crying as she read it.”
“Any idea what it said?”
“None,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “Not my place to ask and Meredith didn’t say.” She looked at me. “But her face was still swollen and I could see a faint bruise on her cheek. It was almost gone, but I could see it. Didn’t seem like anything at the time and I hadn’t thought about it again until that asshole mentioned it.”
I twisted around and watched the water in the fountain. Pennies and dimes lined the bottom. A big piece of pink chewing gum rolled into a perfect ball rested next to a quarter.
I turned back around. “Ever see anything else?”
She shook her head. “Not once. Nothing even close. That’s why I never thought about that night as anything out of the ordinary.”
I’d struck Elizabeth once, when she was four. She’d been testing my patience all day, challenging everything I asked her to do, trying to assert her independence. We’d owned a dog then, a thirteen-year-old yellow Lab named Bob and she’d kicked him hard enough in the face that he’d yelped.
I spun her around and spanked her. She’d burst into tears, grabbing at her rear end as she ran to her room.
I was immediately sorry for doing it. Lauren and I were against any sort of physical punishment and though we’d been tempted previously, we’d managed to get through four and a half years without a spanking until I’d broken that afternoon.
I went to her room, lay down on the bed with her and hugged her for an hour as she kept telling me she was sorry, that she loved both Bob and me.
I never touched her in anger again and though I knew better, I couldn’t imagine anyone hitting their child in anger on a regular basis.
I felt Gina’s hand on my shoulder, heard her say something that I couldn’t make out.
Tears began to sting the corners of my eyes. I never knew exactly when they’d appear and rarely could I stop them when they did. My heart started beating faster and my gut ached. I was breathing loudly through my mouth.
Gina’s hand pressed harder against my arm. “Joe? Are you alright?”
I stood, wiped at the tears that continued to fall. “Let’s go get some lunch.”