Chapter Seventy-Two

THE MOTEL HAD been revamped since back when Clay had started as a lieutenant in Gloucester. As a rookie, he’d attended domestic disputes here, a couple of suicides, reports of suspicious activity. Now as he knocked and entered April Leeler’s room, he found the crisp whiteness of everything almost unsettling. Laboratory-like. Joe was curled up on the small twin bed, playing with his iPad, his feet wiggling off the edge of the mattress. April was waiting for Clay, sitting on the edge of the bed, her eyes full of concern.

Clay went and sat beside her, and just like the supportive and caring wife that he’d envisioned in his fantasies, she took his head against her shoulder and played with the curls behind his ears.

“Urgh,” he said, a single encore note to the miserable phone call he’d finished with her only ten minutes earlier.

“How long can you stay?” she asked.

“Not long,” he said. “I just swung by to tell Angelica that Vinny’s dead. I don’t want her to hear it somewhere else. She’s down in room seven.”

He closed his eyes and counted off seconds in April’s delicious embrace before he had to get back out there. In truth, he didn’t even know exactly where he should go after he left the little motel at the edge of town.

Most of his officers were manning the inn, waiting for a forensics unit to come up from Boston to deal with the crime scene there. Three dead bodies in the house, one on the road leading in. And then there was the explosion and secondary crime scene in the woods. Nick had called Clay from the edge of the water deep in the forest to alert him to the explosion scene and to get him to send an ambulance out for a devastating gunshot wound to the knee. There was another body there, Karli Breecher. Nick had assured a stunned Sheriff Clay that the hand grenade he’d taken from Effie’s room and rigged to the inside of the buried bag was the only explosive in the woods. But Clay had protocol to follow. More vans from Boston.

Neddy, Susan, and Nick were all in surgery. Clay had stopped by the hospital to find Bill tearing his hair out, with only Effie there to comfort him. Shauna Bulger was still out there somewhere, running around with a rifle that could take out an airplane.

Clay pulled away from April and held his throbbing forehead. Joe looked over.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Clay asked the child.

“I’ve been saying that for the last four hours,” April said. Clay frowned at the boy, who paid them no mind.

Clay sighed again.

“What can I do?” April asked, one hand still lifting and twirling those curls behind his ear. “Is there some way I can help? I don’t know Angelica well, but maybe I could go with you to her room. I’ll comfort her after you have to move on.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do that,” Clay said. He had to laugh despite it all. “Man. You wait so long for a wonderful person to turn up in your life, and when she does, it’s in the middle of a catastrophe.”

She held him again.

“Dooooon’t start kissing!” Joe warned from the other bed. Clay looked up. The kid hadn’t lifted his eyes from the iPad yet. “It’s gross-gross-gross!”

“That reminds me. Clay, I think I left a pair of sunglasses in the cruiser yesterday,” April said, rising from the bed. “Can I just—”

“Sure, sure.” Clay waved her away. He went and sat beside Joe as April left the motel room. There were pillow mints on the nightstand. Clay unwrapped one and popped it in his mouth, thinking he probably wouldn’t get a minute to eat again before daybreak. Joe’s index finger was dancing over the screen, helping a cartoon kangaroo hop over obstacles on an outback landscape.

“Isn’t it a little past your bedtime, buddy?” Clay asked.

“Maybe,” Joe said and smiled. “But don’t tell my mom. I think she forgot. She’s been waiting for you to get here. I’ve got a whole bunch of new games I haven’t even played yet and I want to stay up as long as I can.”

Clay sat and watched as the kid closed the kangaroo game and opened another. After the game designer logos appeared and dissolved, a scroll flopped down. On its surface were cartoon body parts. Joe started building an avatar, fitting a little girl’s head onto a petite body. Clay watched him add a blond wig, a dress, Mary Jane shoes. When the game demanded “Name your character!” Joe tapped three letters.

ZOE.

Clay felt tingles roll over the surface of his scalp.

“They weren’t there,” April said as she reappeared at the door. Clay watched her cross to the bed, looking defeated, and curl up there again, taking the paperback novel she’d been reading from the nightstand.

With almost mechanical movements, Clay went to her, kissed her, and issued his goodbyes. He walked stiffly to his cruiser and sat in the driver’s seat, tapping his fingers on the bottom of the steering wheel.

It was with a dread so heavy and so aching in his chest that he turned his head and looked at the Mobile Digital Terminal mounted to the center console of the squad car. The monitor was turned toward the front passenger seat, the way it had been the last time April was in the car. He hadn’t left it like that. Clay turned it back. He awakened the machine, tapped through to the search history, and squinted at the top of the list where the most recent search was positioned. He put a finger on the screen and found the time of the last search.

11:47 p.m.

He looked at his watch.

It was 11:52 p.m.

Clay hit the search record and opened it up. The file related to a man named Thomas Oscar Savage. One conviction, four years earlier, for speeding. That was it. But there was a red alert on the name and a license plate linked to it. Clay clicked the alert.

WANTED—SUSPECTED HOMICIDE—POSSIBLE ARMED/HOSTILE

Clay took out his phone and googled the name Thomas Oscar Savage.

His phone screen filled with headlines.

OMAHA POLICE APPEAL FOR INFORMATION IN MISSING CHILD CASE

SEARCH FOR MISSING OMAHA GIRL SUSPENDED

MISSING ZOE SAVAGE PRESUMED MURDERED

SAVAGE PARENTS INTERROGATED OVER MISSING DAUGHTER

REGINA SAVAGE ARRESTED, HUSBAND THOMAS STILL AT LARGE

Clay opened up one of the articles. He scrolled down to a shot of a terrified-looking couple sitting at a press conference table, surrounded by police. Thomas and Regina Savage. Thomas was crying, wiping his exhausted eyes. Regina was holding up a picture of a small child.

Clay recognized that child.