Chapter Nineteen #2
My pulse picks up.
Daddy opens the envelope and slides out an old laminated card.
White background. Gold border. Two wrought-iron gates across the top.
PEARLY GATES YOUTH & FAMILY RETREAT.
Same style as the card Whiskey and I found in his woods.
I look at Whiskey.
He’s already reaching inside his cut for his phone. He pulls up the photograph we took and turns the screen toward Daddy.
Daddy’s face drains. “Where did you get that?”
Whiskey looks at me.
My story.
I answer.
“Woods outside Whiskey’s.”
Daddy’s head snaps toward me. “Somebody was on his property?”
“Fresh boot prints.”
His posture changes immediately, father disappearing beneath sheriff for half a second. “Near the house?”
“Close enough.”
I slide the old card back toward him. “What happened to the girl?”
Daddy sits again. “That night, I took her to county.”
“Hospital?”
“Hospital first. They wanted to transfer her.”
“To where?”
“Lexington.”
“But?”
“Before transport happened, a woman showed up.”
“What woman?”
“Claimed she was the girl’s aunt.”
“Name?”
“Ruthanne Peck.”
Whiskey’s attention snaps toward Daddy.
I catch it.
Daddy does too.
“You know her?”
“Know the name,” Whiskey says.
“How?”
“Club business.”
Daddy’s mouth tightens.
I put up one hand. “Not now.”
He looks at me.
I nod toward him. “Finish.”
He doesn’t like it, but he does.
“Peck had paperwork.”
“What kind?”
“Guardianship. Medical release. Enough to make the hospital nervous.”
“Did you believe it?”
“No.”
“Then why let her go?”
“I didn’t.”
That matters.
I sit straighter. “What happened?”
“State social worker called. Said the paperwork checked out and there was no cause to hold the girl.”
“Who was the social worker?”
“Name in the file was Martha Lane.”
“You verify her?”
“Afterward.”
Daddy gives a bitter laugh. “No Martha Lane worked for the state.”
“Fuck.”
Whiskey leans forward. “So somebody spoofed the call.”
“Looks that way.”
“And Peck took the girl.”
“Yes.”
I start putting the timeline together automatically, the way I would any other case if the victim weren’t tied to a secret my father buried twelve years ago.
“How long between you finding her and Peck taking her?”
“Less than twenty-four hours.”
I stare at him. “What about your report?”
“Filed it.”
“You said it depended on which paper you believed.”
Daddy looks toward the envelope again. “When I came in two days later, half the report was gone.”
“Gone how?”
“Supplement missing. Photos missing. Hospital notes changed. Girl listed as voluntary runaway returned to guardian.”
My stomach drops.
“You pushed it.”
It ain’t a question.
Daddy looks at me. “Yes.”
“How hard?”
“Hard enough.”
“What happened?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. I know before he reaches into the envelope again.
Another photograph comes out. This one looks ordinary. That makes it worse.
Sixteen-year-old me is walking out of Paradise High School with a backpack over one shoulder, ponytail swinging behind me as I head toward Daddy’s old truck.
I stare at it.
The picture was taken from across the street with a long lens. I can tell from the compressed distance, from the angle, from how completely unaware I am that somebody is watching me.
My skin goes cold.
Whiskey’s chair scrapes once against the floor.
Daddy turns the photograph over and slides it toward me.
Written across the back in black ink:
A GOOD FATHER KNOWS WHEN TO STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.
For several seconds, the whole kitchen disappears.
I don’t hear the refrigerator humming or the old clock ticking above the stove. I don’t hear Whiskey breathe or Daddy shift in his chair.
I turn the photograph over again. Me at sixteen. Completely unaware.
“Who sent it?”
“No return address.”
“When?”
“Three days after I started asking questions about Pearly Gates.”
“You told nobody?”
“No.”
“Mama?”
Daddy’s face changes. “She was already gone.”
Of course.
Sixteen. Cancer. Funeral. Daddy standing in this same kitchen after everybody left because neither one of us knew what the hell to do without her.
Then this. A photograph of me.
I look up. “You let them scare you.”
Daddy closes his eyes. When he opens them again, there’s no Sheriff Dix left. Just my father. His eyes are wet. “Yes.”
One word. No excuse. No denial.
“You stopped looking.”
“Yes.”
“You knew there might be girls taken there.”
“I suspected.”
“And you stopped.”
His jaw works once before he answers. “Yes.”
Anger rushes through me so fast my eyes burn.
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many girls disappeared because you stopped asking questions?”
“Twila.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know!”
Daddy’s fist hits the table hard enough to make coffee jump in all three cups.
I flinch.
Whiskey doesn’t.
Daddy stares at me, horror replacing his anger almost immediately.
“I have asked myself that every goddamn day for twelve years.”
The room goes quiet.
His voice cracks. That shuts me up. “I went home that night with that picture in my hand, and you were asleep in your room.”
He looks toward the hallway. My old bedroom is still back there. “I stood outside your door and watched you breathe.”
My throat closes.
“I had already watched your mama die.” His voice gets rougher. “Watched cancer take her piece by piece while I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Watched you sit beside her bed pretending you weren’t scared because you thought being strong meant I didn’t need to worry about you.”
I look down at the photograph.
“I wasn’t gambling my daughter too.”
“Daddy.”
“No.”
His eyes shine. I’ve seen Amos Dix bleed. Seen him break up bar fights, pull bodies out of wrecks, tell families their kid wasn’t coming home.
I have almost never seen him cry.
Tonight he comes close. “I was a coward.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You were scared.”
“Same damn thing when you got a badge.”
I shake my head. “You were grieving.”
“And those girls were somebody’s daughters.”
That lands between us.
Whiskey looks away, giving us privacy without leaving.
I hate him a little for understanding exactly when to disappear while sitting three feet away.
“Why didn’t you tell me when I joined the department?”
Daddy laughs bitterly. “Because I spent years convincing myself it was over.”
“You knew it wasn’t.”
“I hoped.”
“You cleared reports.”
His eyes snap to mine. “No.”
“Somebody did.”
“Yes.”
“You know who?”
“No.”
“Daddy.”
“I swear to you.”
“Who had access?”
“Half the damn department over twelve years. Sheriff before me. Records clerks. Deputies. Dispatch. County IT. State people. Anybody with credentials high enough.”
“Did you investigate?”
“Quietly.”
“And?”
“Every time I found something, it disappeared.”
“Why didn’t you go outside the county?”
“I did.”
That surprises me. “To who?”
“State police.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“FBI?”
“Twice.”
Whiskey looks at him now.
Daddy nods. “Got told there wasn’t enough to establish a pattern.”
I look at the old envelope again, thinking about everything Sophie already uncovered and how far back the same network might stretch.
“Back then, did Montgomery’s name ever come up?”
Daddy’s attention shifts to me. Another thing he didn’t expect me to ask. “What about Montgomery?”
“Sophie already found money connecting her father to Pearly Gates. I’m asking if he was showing up in this mess twelve years ago too.”
Daddy takes too long to answer. “Yes.”
Whiskey says nothing but breathes out hard.
“How?”
“Money. Donations, community grants, property transfers. Pearly Gates had friends with clean names and deep pockets.”
That part isn’t new.
I lean closer. “Did you ever find anything proving Montgomery knew what was actually happening there?”
“No.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Once.”
“What’d he say?”
“That his lawyers handled charitable giving and he didn’t personally oversee every contribution.”
Convenient.
“Did you believe him?”
Daddy looks into his coffee. “I believed he knew more than he wanted me to know.”
That is not the same thing as knowing he funded girls being hurt.
Important distinction.
“What about Reverend Crowley?”
Daddy shakes his head. “I didn’t connect him to the girl then.”
“When did you?”
“Few years later.”
“How?”
“Old program paperwork. Church bulletin. His name kept showing up around the same properties.”
“So Crowley was already there.”
“Yeah. I just didn’t know he belonged in my case yet.”
“And now?”
“Crowley’s the face.”
“Meaning?”
“He keeps his hands clean.”
“You ever question him?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“He smiled.”
Whiskey mutters, “That bad?”
Daddy looks at him. “You ever met a man who smiles because he knows something you don’t?”
Whatever humor was left in Whiskey disappears. “Yeah.”
“Then you know.”
“What did Crowley say?”
“That troubled young people often invented stories about religious communities because they resented structure and discipline.”
Nausea rolls through me.
“About the girl?”
“Wouldn’t acknowledge her.”
“Ruthanne Peck?”
“Claimed not to know the name though she’s on the roster.”
I sit back and try to fit twelve years of rot into something my brain can process.
A drugged girl wandering barefoot in a man’s coat.
A blue room where girls cried. Somebody called the Reverend who has to be Crowley.
Ruthanne Peck. A fake state worker named Martha Lane.
Reports altered from inside the system. Montgomery money already moving through Pearly Gates interests.
A photograph of me at sixteen used to scare Daddy into silence.
Too much. Still not enough.
Whiskey finally moves. Not toward me. Toward the coffee pot. He gets up, fills Daddy’s cup, then mine. He doesn’t ask or make some joke about it. He just sets the mug in front of me and takes his chair again.
Daddy watches him. Something changes in his expression. Not approval. Heaven forbid.
“You knew about some of this?” Daddy asks him.
“Pieces.”
“Which pieces?”
Whiskey glances at me.
I shake my head once.
Not his conversation.
He looks back at Daddy. “She asked you.”
Daddy studies him. “You got anything to say at all?”
Whiskey leans back. “Nope.”
“Bullshit.”
“Got plenty.”
“Then say it.”
Whiskey’s eyes come to me first, then go back to Daddy. “She asked you.”