Chapter 4
FOUR
Claire was certain her head might pop off like a dandelion. She’d already embarrassed herself enough by letting Detective Winslow see her home like this—and here was Dillon, her boyfriend, balling his fists like a twenty-six-year-old man child.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?” Dillon’s eyes blazed on Detective Winslow, a pathetic attempt to be menacing. “You know you need a warrant to barge into someone’s goddamn house, right?”
“Jesus, Dillon, I invited him in.” Claire crammed her palms into her eye sockets. She might pass out right there, on the armchair. “Can you please come inside and act decent?”
Goddamn, it was the least he could do after she was covering his ass. But Dillon, in his typical ungrateful fashion, ignored her request.
“Dillon,” Detective Winslow said, unfazed, “it’s good to finally meet you.” He stood up and extended a hand. “I’m Detective—”
“I know who you are,” Dillon spat, and the detective lowered his hand. “This is my house, man, and you’ve got no right being in it. I’m an American citizen, I know my rights.”
“I get it, man, but I’m just here to talk. Can we do that?”
Dillon’s nostrils flared. Then, with dread, he noticed the print-offs on the coffee table. Those damn images that proved Dillon and Eliza had once been friends. But Claire hadn’t known a thing about that, and she was still wrapping her head around it.
“Dillon, please,” she said. “Let’s answer his questions.”
After an agonizing moment, he huffed. “Fine. What?”
Detective Winslow eased back onto the couch. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“Nope, I’m good.” Dillon crossed his arms. Claire wanted to curl up like a ball of dirt and get swept under the couch, find better company with the dust mites.
She hated when Dillon acted like this, anti-authority to the point of toxicity.
The one person he seemed to respect was her father, but the cops? Forget it.
“All right then.” Detective Winslow cleared his throat. “Claire, would you give Dillon and I a couple minutes to talk alone?”
“You don’t have to do that, Claire,” Dillon said.
Claire hesitated, gaze flickering between the two men. Dillon narrowed his eyes, expecting her to behave like him. Then there was the detective—polite, patient, but firm.
She stood up and pushed past Dillon, bursting into the warm evening like she’d just come up for air.
She needed a damn breather anyway.
Five minutes felt like an hour.
Claire leaned against the hood of Dillon’s car, a gold sedan parked beside the detective’s unmarked vehicle.
The metal had soaked up the sun’s rays, making it feel like a hot pan against her ass, but she didn’t care.
She fidgeted with her hairband, snapping it between her fingers, chewing on it, growing more anxious.
Those trailer walls were thin. If Claire got close enough, she might be able to hear something. The curtains were closed, so the detective might not notice her.
After another minute of impatience, she tested her luck. She crept up to the trailer and pressed her ear to the paneling, right by the windowsill of the living room.
Sure enough, voices. Muffled, but clear enough to make out some words.
“Lying’s not gonna help you here,” Winslow was saying.
“I’m not a goddamn liar,” Dillon shot back. “You don’t get to come into my house and call me a goddamn liar.”
“But you are lying to me. You keep saying you didn’t know Eliza Johnson, but I have proof right here that you did.”
“I told you I don’t remember any of this. It’s my goddamn childhood. I can’t remember shit about it.”
“You were sixteen ten years ago.”
“That was before the concussion, asshole. Ask Claire, ask her dad—I hit my head at the farm, lost a bunch of memories.”
“Dillon. Come on.”
Claire chewed on the inside of her cheek.
She couldn’t blame Winslow for thinking Dillon was full of it—that story sounded like horse dung, even to her.
Wasn’t a total lie, though; Dillon did get a concussion after hitting his head off the tractor one time, but she doubted it resulted in him deleting entire people from his memory.
No, Dillon never told Claire about Eliza because he didn’t want her to know.
Why?
“Look man, I answered your questions,” Dillon said. “I don’t know about the goddamn dime bag. I don’t know about Eliza Johnson. I was home the night she got killed. Ask Claire.”
“I did ask Claire. The problem is, she wasn’t actually in the room with you all night.”
“Bullshit. She knows I was home.”
“But you go out at night sometimes, don’t you? Maybe to meet up with Eliza. Or maybe that other girl.”
Claire froze.
“What other girl?”
“The one who came here, banging on your door. Other people in the park saw her. Said she looked like Claire…”
“That wasn’t Eliza, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Then who was she?”
“Nobody. Now unless you’re gonna arrest me, I’m done with this. Get out of my house.”
Footsteps shifted on the floor inside. Claire scurried back to the hood of the car, just as Detective Winslow appeared in the doorway of the trailer with a rumple-faced Dillon hot on his tail.
They faced each other. Dillon snarled up at the detective, who must’ve been at least six-foot-two to Dillon’s five-foot-eleven.
Claire couldn’t help but think he resembled a rabid bulldog.
“Thanks again for your cooperation, Dillon,” Winslow said.
“Yeah, whatever, man.”
The detective took another glance into the trailer. “Your girlfriend does a nice job decorating, by the way.”
Claire’s cheeks went up in flames. Dillon looked like he wanted to punch the detective as he left through the screen door. Claire exchanged a look with Winslow as he passed.
“Have a good evening, Claire.”
As he breezed toward his vehicle, she watched Dillon disappear into the trailer. She had a few seconds alone with the detective—a few seconds to get answers.
Detective Winslow was opening the driver’s side door when Claire hurried over to him. “Wait—wait, please. Is Dillon cleared? What’d he say to you?” Who the hell is that girl you mentioned?
He turned back. When his eyes found hers, they were nothing but honest. She stopped close to him, close enough to smell something smoky and masculine on his shirt, and she tried to ignore the strangeness of learning this stranger’s scent.
“Listen,” he said, “I know you want to protect him, but you don’t have to. If you’re worried about his reaction, we can help. Abuse can often start psychological, but—”
“Abuse?” Offense bloomed through her, an automatic response fueled by ego. Even if this was screwed-up as hell, at least she could pretend she was strong, control the narrative.
It wasn't like she could control anything else.
“I know you’re trying to do a good thing, but it’s my relationship, Detective. It’s not your place to judge it. I already told you he’s not violent with me. That’s not gonna change, no matter how many ways you try to make me say it.”
“You’re right.” His calm demeanor cracked, revealing a frustrated edge to his tone. “It’s not my place, but I’ve seen situations like this before. It doesn’t always end well.”
“Why are you saying this? Did Dillon say something about me?”
“It’s not that, it’s just—” He took a breath. “You deserve better. That’s all I wanted to say.”
She hugged herself, her heartbeat a wild bird. His words made her too emotional, too conflicted. Another childish response slipped off her tongue: “With all due respect, you don’t know me.”
“No, but I know you’re a good person. It’s the way you talked about Brad, because you remembered he was somebody who mattered. I bet you feel that same empathy for Eliza.”
She knew what he was doing; sweet talking her, preying on her good nature. With that angel face of his, Detective Winslow probably had an easy time getting women to open up to him, trust him. It wouldn’t work on her.
But that didn’t mean his words had zero effect.
When she thought about Brad, dead like that, it took everything in her not to cry.
She didn’t believe Dillon could’ve killed Eliza, but if he was some kind of drug dealer, didn’t that make him partially responsible?
For not only Eliza’s death, but Brad’s too?
When Winslow realized she wasn’t going to take the bait, he pulled something from his pocket, then flashed it to her, pinched like a cigarette between his index and middle fingers. A card with his name and number on it, along with the crest of the Kansas City police.
“If your memory changes—or if you want to tell me anything else—give me a call.”
Claire searched his face, terrified to take it. She glanced at the trailer—no sign of Dillon peeping through the windows.
She snatched the card and tucked it into her back pocket.
Claire yanked the husk off a cob of corn, then parted the silk strands from the kernels.
They got caught on her fingers, sticky bits of yarn, and she shook her hand off to drop them into the bucket below.
Within twenty minutes of Detective Winslow leaving her home, she was shucking corn in the backyard of her family’s farm, because of course Dillon wanted to talk to her dad about what happened, not her.
The evening sun beat down on her bare arms, pouring over the cornfield that stretched behind them.
The Dyer farm kept a small crop, nothing like the miles and miles some of the farmers had.
Claire had grown up here, playing in the stalks, dreaming of a pony suddenly appearing in the empty stable out back.
She peered back at the farmhouse. Its clapboard siding had faded to a soft, sun-bleached gray, with patches of paint chipping off to reveal the bare wood beneath.
Inside the kitchen window, through the curtains with strawberries on them—relics from her mother—Claire caught sight of her dad’s back at the table.
His posture was lax as he talked with Dillon and Marty about God knows what.
When Sully let out a squeaky laugh, Claire turned her attention to her sister, Clementine, who sat cross-legged in the grass with the baby in her lap.