“What?” Preston said.
“I remember in the back window, this stuffed animal sitting there. I think about what that little girl must have gone through every day of my life.”
Preston let the story sink in. He couldn’t afford to get caught up in the emotion of the moment, so he pushed forward. “Then what?”
“I ran up the hill to her while the car was about under, and she screamed something about her daughter. Why hadn’t I gotten her daughter out of the back? And I said I didn’t know there was anybody there, and by that time there wasn’t nothing I could do. She was bawling her eyes out and hitting me and screaming about murder and if they caught me I’d go to jail for life or maybe get the death penalty. Looking back I see how she had the whole thing planned out like some dance at halftime. I bought it hook, line, and sinker, Sheriff.”
“So you got out of there.”
“I hightailed it to my car and turned around. I had to go down to the switchback, and when I came barreling back, she was in the middle of the road with her hands out, yelling at me that I was going to jail and that I better get out and stay out. I just drove away. I can see now the whole thing was an act, and when I saw later on the news that she had accused some stranger of carjacking, it came together. She wanted that little girl dead. I don’t know why, but that’s the truth.”
Preston took off his hat and rolled it in his hands, staring at the cage from the backseat.
“I wish I’d have had the guts to tell somebody, Sheriff. I truly do. Maybe none of this would have happened. Your deputy. All those people looking for her. But I figured me coming forward wasn’t going to do that little girl any good. Wouldn’t bring her back.”
“It would have helped the grandparents if they knew where she was.”
Walker nodded. “I’m not saying I’m proud of keeping quiet, but I swear to you, I never meant to hurt anybody.”
Preston was still processing the information. What he couldn’t figure out was where the body had gone. Water will do strange things, but there should have been something in there, even after seven years.
“What’s going to happen to me?” Walker said. “What are you going to do?”
“It’s over,” Preston said. “You don’t have to worry about it. You did the right thing turning yourself in, and I’ll make a note of it.”
Walker nodded and put his head back on the seat. “You don’t know what it’s like to carry something like that. You don’t know what it’s like feeling guilty every day. Living with what you did and knowing there was this innocent thing who’s never coming back.”
Walker’s shoulders shook and he leaned forward, his forehead on the back of the cage, mouth open, saliva dripping from the corners of his mouth.
When the camera flashed, Preston got out and climbed into the driver’s seat. Walker’s car needed to be impounded, but that could wait. He backed up and headed to the office.
27
Mae had managed to stay awake all day thinking about her conversation with Dana. The words and looks tripped around her mind at the strangest times. She’d regretted slapping her, but she wasn’t sure it was the wrong thing. She’d read about tough love, and though that probably wasn’t the best way to show it, what was done was done. You had to move on at some point.
Leason had left her alone most of the day. She guessed he thought she was just in one of her moods. He’d taken the tractor out on the ridge by the old logging road behind the house, and she could see him every few minutes through the trees, cutting the hay and doing whatever it was he did by the water tower all day. Work always seemed to give him comfort. On the day after Natalie disappeared, he had exhausted himself driving around looking for her, then came home and worked on an old car. It had seemed the strangest thing to her, that he could do anything like that when there was so much at stake, but now she understood it better. He was only trying to cope.
When he came in late in the afternoon, he took a Ball jar and held it under the tap until it was cold and then downed it in one gulp and got another. He stared out the back window as the few cattle he had left lumbered down from the upper field for a drink. He asked what was for dinner without even looking at her.
“Sub sandwiches.”
They ate in silence with the night both behind and ahead of them. She didn’t want to bring up anything about Dana, and of course he didn’t. She couldn’t help thinking they were growing apart in their old age instead of growing together and that something needed to happen or they were going to drift off like sticks in the creek, one getting caught in the weeds while the other one rolled on with the rising tide.
After supper, he turned on a game and sat in front of the TV with a bowl of buttered microwave popcorn. Normally she would sit with him and read or doze until he got tired. Tonight she just couldn’t sit there and watch another nine innings of life slip away. She went to the porch and gazed at the clouds and the slipping light, thinking about what her daughter had said, trying to decipher the meaning. Maybe there wasn’t anything to decipher. Maybe those were just the spiteful words of the crack or meth or whatever it was Dana had taken to numb her pain. Or maybe there was more.
“She coming back tonight?”
The voice startled her. Leason stood behind her, the echoes of the sparse crowd at the game still whistling and clapping in the other room.
“I know she was here for money,” he said. “I heard you talking.”
Mae waved at a fly and wiped her head with the paper towel she’d been holding since she’d dried her hands doing the dishes. Still staring at the clouds, she said, “I think it’s the right thing to do. I think it might be our last chance.”
“Last chance to mess up her life for good, you mean. You give that girl any more money and you know exactly where it’s going.”
Mae straightened her apron. She’d forgotten to take it off after the dishes. Actually she’d worn it all day. “I’m not arguing with you. I know what she’ll do with it. But maybe this is the bottom. Maybe it’ll take this to turn her around.”
Leason stood there at the door, his face clouded gray by the screen. He picked at a popcorn husk in his teeth and then looked at it on his finger, finally flicking it away. “It’s throwing our money down the toilet. You know I love her, but I can’t stand to see the life just sucked right out of us because of this. We’ve paid enough—don’t you think?”
She looked at him. “How much is enough for a life? You stop praying for her?”
Leason’s face showed pain, as if the question were a knife. He shook his head. “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead.”
“I don’t want to do anything of the kind,” Mae said. “I’m trying to do the honorable thing. This may be our last chance with her.”
“You’ve said that about a hundred times. And every dime she gets she spends on the drugs and the booze.”
She folded her arms. “Well, this time it’s true. This might be our last chance at a breakthrough.”
He looked like he was going to say something else, but instead he went back to the game.
Mae stood up and went for a walk down the driveway. Gravel under her house shoes bit into her feet. She walked in the grass, then switched back to the gravel, not caring about the pain anymore. When she got to the end, she sat on the brick casing Leason had built for the mailbox so nobody could hit it with a baseball bat. It had only given the vandals a reason to become more creative. They’d stuck an explosive in there, a blasting cap, and then Leason had given up. It made a good place to sit down but a lousy place to get your mail.
She turned and faced the house, set up against the hill like it had grown there naturally. The way the land ebbed and flowed in and around it was like some picture, especially with the soft light above the trees showing the fading pinks and oranges. She saw movement above the house at the treeline and watched a deer edge out into the open. Soon another and then three more joined it, and they all looked up at the same time when a car came around the bend. It passed her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw someone wave and threw a hand up.
She watched the animals move farther down the hill as darkness descended. They were beautiful creatures, and she remembered as a girl wanting more than anything to be one of them. Just become a deer and run through the woods without a care.
Her legs and back ached, and as she stood, she heard the rattle of the old car. When it reached her, she turned and watched it pull into the gravel and stop. Mae stared at the deer again when her daughter got out and left the door open, a buzzer sounding.
“I was just thinking about the times we used to drive to Myrtle Beach when you were young,” Mae said. “You sure loved splashing in the water.”
“Did you get the money?”
Mae looked at Dana and a deep well of emotion stirred. She could see her daughter as a child, skipping and laughing in the surf, looking for seashells and digging in the sand. How had she come this far? And where had Mae gone wrong?
“Or did he tell you not to waste any more of it?” Dana said.
“I’m sorry I slapped you. I shouldn’t have done that and I apologize.”
“Assault and battery is what it was.” Dana smiled and there it was, that familiar gap-toothed grin, though it was only a hint of what the young girl had been. The sun had gone down on her life and it looked like the darkness had just taken over and there didn’t seem to be a chance at a sunrise.
“I was so hurt by what you told me,” Mae said.
“Now you’re going back on it—”
“No, I’m not.”
“Either you’re sorry you slapped me or you’re not. You can’t say you had a good reason.”
Mae bit her cheek. “You said Natalie disappearing was my fault.”
“Forget it. Do you have the money or don’t you?”
“Dana, please. Tell me what happened. What did I do that was so bad?”
“I’m not arguing with you anymore. Just give it here and I’ll go.”
“Was it that man? the one who came by looking for you? Surely you wouldn’t hurt your daughter over a man.”
Dana lifted her head and sighed. “Mama, forget it. It’s over. Done.”
“You mean with Natalie? You
know
she’s not alive?” Mae’s voice sounded more like a whimper now. Even to herself.
“I don’t know what happened. All I know is, she’s gone. You have to accept it and live with it. Stop looking for her. Stop putting flyers up and talking with the missing children people. It won’t do any good.”
The moon edged up over the treetops and cast a ghostly glow on the cornfield behind them. Mae felt her legs giving way, and she sat back on the bricks and put out her hand to steady herself. She wanted to ask more, probe deeper, but she couldn’t. She’d believed all her life in the words of Jesus, that the truth would set you free. But she was beginning to believe that there was some truth that didn’t. It just wrapped itself around you like a wisteria vine and choked the life out of you. Took your breath away until there wasn’t any left.
She reached into the apron pocket and pulled out a thick envelope. She’d spent the morning thinking of what she wanted to say and wrote it in a note she’d tried three times to write before she came up with a good line or two. As she handed it over, she wondered if Dana would even read it or if she’d toss it out the window.
Her daughter took it, but Mae held on, locking eyes with her. “This is the last. There won’t be any more.”
Dana pulled, but Mae still held on.
“Okay, I get it,” she snapped, and Mae let go.
When Dana got in the car, Mae followed. “I love you, honey. I hope you know that.”
The woman in the car was not her daughter. She was someone else, looking slack-jawed and spent. “Yeah, I know you loved me the only way you knew how, which wasn’t much.”
“Call me?” Mae said. “Let me know where you’re going. Where you wind up. You think you’ll—?”
Before she could finish, the door slammed and the engine fired, and without buckling, Dana backed onto the road and was gone.
Mae watched the taillights wink at the corner, and then she set her face toward the house, willing herself forward, across the sharp gravel like it was the Via Dolorosa. She thought she was all out of tears until she made it to the front porch and the sobs began.
28
I pleaded with my dad to let me go back to the house with the old man, and he finally let me. He told me to watch myself, which I guess meant stay out of the man’s way if he got mean again, and I told him I’d be fine.
We drove back to get the mattock, which I found out was this rusty old thing with a point on it that looked like it could do some damage. I always thought my dad was strong enough to do just about anything, but all those layers of blacktop are pretty hard to get through without the right tool.
The old man didn’t talk much on the way to his house, and when we got there, it was almost dark. He went straight out to the shed and rooted around until he found what he was looking for. I hung around the front porch watching the lightning bugs rise and catching a few. He returned and threw the mattock in the back of the truck, and I thought the thing would have punched a hole in the bed.
He looked at me. “You want you a jar?”
“Excuse me?”
“When Johnny was little, he’d get him a jar and poke holes in the top and fill it full of them bugs. Put it on the windowsill in his room and let them light up all night.”
I thought it was interesting that he’d be telling me something about his son because from what I could tell he didn’t take much thought to him when he was a kid. “Sure,” I said.
He went inside and brought back a mason jar that looked like it had had some beans or something in it before, and I wondered how those lightning bugs would like it in there. Then he pulled a pocketknife out and poked holes in the cap.
“Do you know where the Edwards live?” I said.
He kept working on the jar, his head down. “Just up the road a piece.”
“What road?”
He pointed behind him. “Next street over and past the interstate, then left. They got this big house by the water tower. Why do you want to know?”
“Just wondering.”
“Leave those people alone. They’ve had enough trouble the past few years.”
“I don’t want to cause them trouble,” I said.
“Here,” he said, handing me the jar. “You hang on to this and we’ll see how many you can catch when we come back from the reservoir.”
I’d been wondering how I was going to say what I was about to say, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. “I don’t want to go back there. That place is spooky at night. Let me stay here and I’ll have this jar filled by the time you get home with my dad.”
“You think
that
place is spooky and you want to stay here?” he said, his forehead wrinkling. “That house behind you has more ghosts in it than all the others combined.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said. “My dad would let me stay. He really wouldn’t mind, as long as he knew I wanted to stay.”
“Is that so?”
I started collecting the bugs and giggling and putting on a good show.
He took off his hat and scratched his head with the bill. “I guess if you want to stay, it’s okay with me. Just don’t bother the neighbors and don’t wander off.”
When he drove away, I was still catching the bugs but when he went around the corner I stopped. I went inside the house and rummaged around in the drawers in the kitchen and the pantry, but it wasn’t until I looked in the hall closet that I found a flashlight. Lightning bugs are okay, but you just can’t see with that little bitty light.
The flashlight weighed a ton. When I turned it on nothing happened, so I opened it up, which wasn’t very easy, and these big batteries fell onto the floor with all this gunky stuff on them. It took a long time to realize he didn’t have a stash of batteries like we did in the RV and that I was basically out of luck, though I don’t think luck has anything to do with life. I think the things that happen are for a purpose, though at the moment I didn’t know what the purpose of not being able to find a flashlight was.
I grabbed the jar and walked out the back and went through a couple yards with that jar held out. The moon was up and peeking around the few clouds in the sky, so it didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust. The houses looked old, and there were a few junk cars sitting around like forgotten children.
I found a spot between two houses that were close together and saw the road down the hill on the other side. There were people talking and laughing in one house, like they were having a party, and in the other house it was just a man and a woman yelling at each other, something about how much she was spending and how he couldn’t keep up with her.
When I got to the front I heard a noise that made my skin crawl. It was something growling, and if you have ever been walking in the dark and heard that sound you would know why I stopped and nearly peed my pants. A dog was on the porch, but he came at me, lunging at the screen and barking his head off. The people inside were the ones who were fighting and I guess didn’t pay much attention. I took off down that driveway and didn’t judge the incline too well because I tripped on a rock and went flying headfirst and the jar crashed into a million pieces and that just got the dog going crazy. I didn’t have time to check myself because a light came on, so I got up and ran to the street and headed toward the interstate, the way the old man had said.
There was something pulling and tugging at my heart. I suppose other people have this same feeling and never do anything with it and just stay where they are. But I’d thought about this a long time. I believe you have to let things be the way they are and accept them sometimes. Like the whole thing with me and a dog. I still have the dream of having a puppy and training it and going to sleep with it at night, but there are some things that aren’t going to be, at least anywhere in the near future.
But there are things I can change. And I’d decided that now was the time. And the biggest thing hanging in the back of the closet of my life, though I have never had a closet living in the RV but you know what I mean, is the question about my mama.
So on that moonlit road, without a flashlight and with my jar broken on some driveway behind me, I started walking toward the interstate underpass. I felt something sticky on my arm, and when I reached around, there was a bunch of blood coming from a gash. I hadn’t even felt it, probably because that dog was barking so loud.
I imagined some big magnet pulling at me and drawing me down that road, and that was the only thing that could do it because it was so spooky walking under that bridge holding up the interstate. There was a bunch of stuff spray-painted all over it, and some of it was about a guy named Will. Most of it I couldn’t see because it was too dark, but I could imagine the types of words there.
When I got to a little ridge, there was a street going left, and I figured this was the way because the old man said there was a water tower near the Edwards house. I didn’t know what a water tower was, but as soon as I saw it I knew what it was because it rose over everything like a metal monster with big legs. On the side of it was the word
Dogwood
all lit up by the moonlight. Down below were trees and a hillside and a house that sat back from all the other houses.
A car was coming, so I got off the road as far as I could, but even with all of that, I thought whoever was driving was going to run me down. They didn’t even slow when they saw me, if they ever saw me, and then the car just kept going around the bend without stopping. I got back on the road and kept walking until I came to a driveway with a mailbox that said
Edwards
and a little pile of bricks that looked like a monument to something but I don’t know what.
My heart was going about a hundred miles an hour, and I looked up the long driveway to the house that sat there in the dark. There was a flicker of a TV in one of the windows but not much else, and I wondered if the people inside were my family. It’s scary to think you know where you come from and then find out you don’t really know the truth. But sometimes the truth can be scarier than not knowing.
Since I saw my face on the wall at Walmart, I’ve had this thought that someday I’d find a whole passel of people related to me. Instead of just me and my dad, there would be sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts and cousins. We’d have picnics and reunions and parties, and everybody there would have a dog. I know some people will say that’s just a little girl dream, but it’s what I thought about as I walked up that driveway with the gravel crunching and the lightning bugs rising. I swear, I thought I could run right out there in that field with the creek snaking through it and lie down in the grass and watch the stars come out and put on a show. And I got this warm feeling deep down inside, but at the same time I got this terrible feeling that things were about to change.
When I got to the concrete walk that led to the house, I stopped and looked around. There was a tractor parked beside the house, and it had this long thing attached to it. There didn’t seem to be any playgrounds or bikes, so I figured kids didn’t live here.
There was a noise, like some animal had been wounded, and it seemed to be coming from the house. And then it stopped and the light came on, not a light in my head telling me something, but an actual light at the end of the walk. Somebody said, “Hello?”
I thought about running away. I thought about heading for the field. But in a voice that didn’t seem like it was mine, I said, “Hi?”
Someone moved off the porch and came down the step and stood there looking at me. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Is this the Edwards house?”
She walked a couple steps closer, staring at my face, but I was standing in front of the light and when that happens you just see the light as some kind of halo. It was an older woman who was coming toward me slow, like she was walking on a patch of ice. And then I recognized her from the TV news. It was the grandmother. She didn’t answer my question.
“What are you doing out at this time of night all alone?”
I took a step back into the light, and when I did she put a hand over her mouth. I thought she was going to faint or that she was having a spell.
“Leason!” she shouted. “Leason, get out here!”
I felt like running now because her face was all twisted in pain. I watched her as she came toward me and grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around full in the light.
The screen door creaked and an older man came out. “What’s wrong? What is it?”
The old woman whispered, “Natalie?”
I stared at her face. “Are you my grandmother?”
That’s when she pulled me into her arms and started crying like I have never ever heard anyone cry before. It was just the deepest soul-wrenching sob you can imagine, as if something terrible has happened and there’s no way to describe the pain except for letting your body do it.
Dad told me once that you can only be as happy as you’ve been sad, and I didn’t understand it until that moment. It seemed to me like the sobs reached down inside that woman and scooped out a part of her, like people inside an ice-cream parlor getting a double scoop out of the big container. But when her sobs were done—or at least when they were halfway over—there was something else there to replace them. It was laughter, a deep belly laugh that shook the woman, and it was something to hear.
The old man came down the walk and into the light, and when he saw my face, it was like he’d seen Elvis himself at Graceland. Dad took me there once and told me all about Elvis and how some people thought he was still alive and that his death was a hoax. I almost wanted it to be true just so all those people who were still crying about him wouldn’t have to anymore.
“It’s her,” the woman said in a half sob, half laugh. “Just look at the birthmark on her cheek, Leason. It’s her.”
She finally let go of me and noticed some blood on her hands. “Leason, she’s hurt. Get her inside. And you call Sheriff Preston right now. This second.”
29
Sheriff Preston was headed home. Walker would have a lawyer in the morning who was assuredly going to try to undo the damage his client had inflicted upon himself. After writing up the report and having what must have been his tenth cup of coffee, he headed for home and then remembered Macel wasn’t there. He turned around, passing a couple of news vans coming the other way. Bentley had been interviewed on the Channel 3 News about his experience, as much or more a part of the story than Walker was. The whole thing would be written out in the
Herald-Dispatch
the next day.
He was only a few minutes into his drive when the radio squawked. A concerned citizen had reported someone vandalizing the reservoir parking lot. He was near the road but didn’t have the energy to pick up the microphone, let alone deal with some hoodlums overturning trash cans or smashing beer bottles. Still, that old feeling in his gut leaped and made him grab the mic.
“This is Sheriff Preston. I’m coming up on the reservoir. Which parking lot are we talking about?”
The dispatcher gave him the location, and he turned onto the road that snaked back toward the water. How or why a person would vandalize a parking lot was beyond him, but kids these days would carve up their arms and legs like pumpkins at Halloween, so how could you tell anything?
It took him a few minutes to get to the right lot, and when he did, his lights shone on a single figure with some kind of tool striking at the surface of the blacktop. The man looked up when his headlights hit him and went back to his work, as if he were in a factory and the boss had just walked in.
Preston shook his head and drove over near him and parked. He stepped out of the cruiser as the man took another swing and sank the tool deep into the asphalt and let it stay there. A lean guy with shaggy hair. A tight build, and from first glance, he appeared he could be former military. He had the look of someone you would want on your side in a fight. Square jaw. Arms as strong as steel. Straight back. Preston checked his holster to make sure he was ready if the guy tried anything.
“Nice evening,” Preston called.
“Sure is, Sheriff.”
“You know, there’re probably better places to dig for night crawlers.”
He smiled. “I wish I was digging for night crawlers. I truly do.”
Preston walked closer. There were three types of men in the world. Those you approached cautiously. Those you approached with your gun drawn. And those you didn’t approach. This one looked like the first type, though he’d been wrong about people before. “Mind telling me what you
are
digging for? And why you’re out here after closing?”
The man looked down and took a step away from the mattock. “I didn’t know it was a federal offense.”
It was Preston’s turn to smile. “It’s not, but we don’t have a lot to do around here these days.”
“Not what I heard.”
“So what’s under there?” Preston said.
The man glanced at Preston’s eyes, as if he were gauging whether or not he could share the story. He scratched at his cheek and looked at the crumble of asphalt. “I was here a few years ago, before all of this was put in. I buried something and I was hoping I’d find it.”
“Buried what? A body?”
The man laughed. “No. A metal strongbox. To keep valuables in.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“How do you know it’s still here?”
“I buried it deep. I don’t think it would have been dug up.”
“Must be important to make you dig through six inches of asphalt.”
The man nodded.
Preston stepped forward and reached out a hand. “Hadley Preston. I’m sheriff here in Dogwood County.”
“Johnson,” the man said. “John Johnson.”
The name sounded familiar. Where had he heard it?
“I’ll pay for the repair of the parking lot after I’m done.”
Preston kept thinking. He’d taken a dozen calls, but the one from the lady in Colorado stuck out. “Any relation to the Johnsons in Dogwood?”
“My dad still lives there. Henry.”
Then it clicked with Preston. “You won all those medals. Purple Heart in Afghanistan.”
“That’s part of what’s in the box.”
“Is that right,” Preston said. And like fireworks going off in his head, the pieces fit. He hadn’t connected Johnson’s military service to the call from the woman. “About how long ago did you bury this here metal box?”
“Seven years.”
Preston looked at the lake. Seven years earlier there were trees here and a little clearing where people camped. Back then it was deserted and you could still see the stars and the dogs ran free without leash laws and if you caught a fish and wanted to eat it, you scaled it and put it over a campfire. “I got a call about you today, believe it or not.”
Johnson didn’t respond.
“Lady from Colorado saw the news story about that missing girl. Said she knew you. And that you and a little girl were traveling together. Stayed at her house. That ring a bell?”
Johnson nodded.
“Where’s the RV?”
“We ran into some trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Some no-goods tried to hijack us. They showed up at a gas station with a gun.”
“What happened to them?”
“Let’s just say they didn’t understand the importance of buckling their seat belts.”
Preston smiled. He liked this man. The questions were partly to test his ability to tell the truth and partly because he was curious. “What about the girl?”
Johnson sighed and crossed his arms. He looked off, like there was something painful going on, and Preston had a bad feeling. Had he done something with her? done something
to
her?
“Honestly, Sheriff, if I could just dig this up and get out of here, I think it would be better for you and me both.”
“No. I don’t think you’re in a position to tell me what’s best, to be honest, John. Now I’ve got this old boy in jail tonight who says he—”
“He didn’t do it,” Johnson interrupted.
“Didn’t do what?”
“Take the girl. If you’re holding him because of her, you’ve got the wrong man. That’s part of why I wanted to come back.”
“And how would you know he’s not my man?”
“Because I was here that night. I saw everything.”
Preston stared at him. There wasn’t an ounce of flinch or hesitation to him. He looked away and noticed a picnic table, then pointed toward it and they both walked over. Preston let out a big sigh as he settled. “What you say to me can be used against you. You understand that.”
Johnson nodded. “What I say to you or what I say to anybody is the truth. So I guess it doesn’t matter if it can be used against me.”
“Fair enough. What were you doing here that night?”
“Planning my funeral.”
“What do you mean?”
Johnson put his hands out in front of him. Strong hands. Battle scarred and nails bit to the quick. “I’d come to a place where I didn’t want to live. I’d let my best friend down. He was dead. I didn’t have a family to speak of. And the stuff I remembered of the war kept coming back every time I closed my eyes. Maybe it was post-traumatic stress; I don’t know. But I was pretty sure I didn’t want to go on, and I didn’t want anybody related to me getting what was in that box.”
“What’s in there?”
“My medals. An old letter my uncle wrote me. A Bible my buddy gave me. And an envelope of stuff from my friend’s mother. Supposed to be worth something now.”
“So if you were going to kill yourself, why didn’t you just burn it?”
“I can’t answer that one. I guess my mental state at the time wasn’t too clear, but digging the deep hole kept me busy and helped me clear my head.”
“Thought about how you were going to do it?”
“Just drive to the ocean and jump in. Start swimming and not stop until I was tired. I can swim a long way, Sheriff.”
“SEAL?”
Johnson nodded.
“How did you and the girl get acquainted?”
Johnson looked at him squarely again, piercing eyes. No flicker or twitch. “I didn’t find her, sir. She found me. God brought her to me as sure as we’re sitting here.”
Preston let the information sink in, urging Johnson forward with his silence.
“For a long time I thought I was the one giving to her,” Johnson said. “That I was the one who’d brought her back. Saved her. But it wasn’t that way. It wasn’t that way at all.”
Preston hated asking the question, but it was the obvious one. “You ever hurt her?”
“Yeah. Every time I said no to getting a dog. Every time she got sick and I tried to treat her myself without taking her to a doctor, afraid that somebody might ask questions. Every time she’d make a little friend at some campground and people would get too close. I’d get scared and we’d leave.”
Preston just watched him.
“Not in the way you mean,” Johnson said. “I could never hurt that girl. That would be like killing your guardian angel.”
The words came out true, but Preston still didn’t understand. “If what my prisoner said is true, that girl should be dead. Is he lying about what happened with the car? the woman involved?”
Johnson shook his head. “I brought her out of the water unconscious. It was probably about three minutes before she came around. Longest three minutes of my life.”
“Wait. Back up.”
Johnson tensed. “I’ve never told anybody this. Especially her.” His shoulders slumped and he took a breath like a pitcher ready to deliver his best fastball. “I’d dug this deep hole, put the box in, and covered it up. I cursed at God for not being with my friend and me in Afghanistan. I was mad at him for not showing up. But my friend’s mother had been kind to me, and I didn’t feel worthy of the gift she’d given me.
“I was about to head out when I heard a car on the road. I walked out of the trees into the moonlight and saw it sitting by the water’s edge. There was a second car above it on the switchback, had its lights on. This little guy gets out, and as soon as I saw him, I knew something was wrong. He leaves the door open, then puts the thing in gear and it rolls toward the water. The door closes and it tumbles over the embankment and floats there, like it’s being held up. Then it tips and goes under. Just sinks to the bottom.
“And then I hear this woman yelling from the other car. She’d stepped out to watch, I guess, and she was saying something about her baby. That there was a baby in the car. She’s yelling other stuff, but as soon as I hear that, I lit out, kicking my shoes off and taking off my shirt. Those two were arguing and yelling and then the car pulled out. I was still sore from the surgery I’d had, and I didn’t get there as fast as I would have. When I did, I dived in where that car was bubbling up and pulled myself down.
“I have this thing about penlights. I always keep one in my pants pocket, and I took it out and turned it on and held it in my mouth as I swam. When I made it down to the bottom, I could see all the windows were still up. And then . . .” Johnson’s voice broke.
Preston was surprised to see water in the man’s eyes. “What?”
“I saw her. The water had seeped in through the undercarriage and was filling it from the bottom. It was about up to her feet when I got there, but it was rising fast. I grabbed hold of the door but it wouldn’t budge. Front door too. There was just no way it was going to open, and I was losing the air in my lungs. I tapped on the window to let her know I’d be back, but the look on her face. I can still see it.” Johnson wrung his hands together like some old woman sick to death about a wayward child.
Preston took a breath. He had to remind himself to breathe.
“I rose back to the surface and got some air,” Johnson continued. “At a time like that you just want your training to kick in, but I’d never been in a situation like that. I’ve seen the fear of men who are about to die, but I swear, I’ve never seen such a look on a child’s face and it just about did me in. And the hardest thing was, I knew I was going to have to let her go. I had to let that water rise before I could break through the glass.”
He took a moment to compose himself, and Preston looked off at the moon shining on the surface of the water. He tried to imagine the child in the water, the fear, and there being only one chance for her survival.
“By the time I got back, she was struggling, trying to raise her head enough to get a breath. I knew the pressure inside would be about right, so I kicked on the window with my bare heel, but again I couldn’t get it to break. So I got out my knife, the one I’d carried with me in Afghanistan, the one my uncle gave me before I left. I pushed the point right into the center of that window until it cracked, and then I was in. She was buckled into her car seat, and her arms were floating beside her. Her little mouth open.”
He jammed his palms against his eyes and muttered something Preston couldn’t hear. “I couldn’t get the thing unbuckled. I tried and tried. So I took the knife and sliced the straps over her shoulders, and then I was back to the surface as fast as I could kick. As soon as I came out, I was yelling for anybody to help. That other car was gone. There was nobody around.