Chapter 31 #2
He’d catalogued the location of the hose attached to the house out back, and it did look like it could be stretched to lead into the basement through the sliding door to the kitchen, but there was nothing down there. Wherever Claire was, it wasn’t here.
The last thing he wanted to do was leave, but he had no choice. He stood beside Chief Wells on the front porch while Ron’s huge body occupied the door.
“Thanks for your time, Ron,” Wells said. “Sorry for the intrusion.”
“It’s all right, Roslyn. You know me; I’m an open book.”
Chief Wells dipped her chin in goodbye. Seth rigidly went to follow, but Ron stopped him.
“Hold on, Detective Winslow—a word?”
Seth exchanged a look with Wells. After a moment, she said, “I’ll wait in the car,” and left.
Alone on the porch, with the sunset turning the old wood into fire, Seth forced himself to meet Ron’s cold eyes as he leaned against the doorframe.
“Wanna tell me what this was really about?” Ron asked. “You’re as wound-up as a jack-in-the-box, son.”
“I’m just worried about your daughter.”
“Why?” He chuckled. “Today’s the best day of her life.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
“Why would you think you know anythin’ about her relationship, huh? Unless… oh, son, were you the sorry fella she shared a bed with last night?”
Seth said nothing, just held Ron’s gaze.
“Oh, man, that is tragic.” Ron took a step closer, dropping the facetious act.
“You know, you don’t gotta be a detective to use the power of deduction.
You’ve got some nerve, comin’ ’round here, stickin’ your dick in another man’s woman, then actin’ all high and mighty ’bout it.
All I gotta say is, be grateful you’re a law man. ”
“You don’t scare me, Ron. I’ve sat down with evil worse than you.”
“I ain’t tryin’ to scare ya, Detective. Fact is, I feel for ya.
You think you’re the only one my daughter’s ever played for a fool?
It’s what she does, brother. She makes up some story ’bout how she needs to be saved, gets a little thrill, then pisses right off.
How do you think she roped Dillon in? She hopped back and forth between him and Brad Bailey for years.
Years. She’s got too many emotional needs for one sorry sucker, that girl. ”
Bullshit.
Ron squinted, rubbing his white beard. “That’s who you’re remindin’ me of right now, actually. Poor Brad Bailey, always chasin’ Claire, when he wasn’t too high to walk, ’course. Worthless fuckin’ junkie.”
Junkie. The word burrowed under Seth’s skin. The type of word people threw at him when he was a teenage addict. The type of word people threw around to dismiss those on the streets as if they were trash, as if they didn’t matter.
Anger, thick like smoke, clouded his vision. He couldn’t see straight.
Walk away before you do something stupid.
He stormed down the driveway, ignoring Ron’s burning eyes until he went back into the house.
Once Seth was inside the passenger seat of Chief Wells’s cruiser, he slammed the door shut and smoothed his hands over his face, taking comfort in the darkness behind his eyelids.
Just breathe. He hated being angry. Especially the all-consuming, frenetic anger that threatened to blow him to pieces.
It was insidious. And it would destroy him.
“Fuck.”
“Winslow,” Wells said. Her presence grounded him.
He took a slow breath. “I’m sorry.”
Wells did not look impressed. “I am going to ask you this once. Did you sleep with Claire Dyer?”
Seth didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His cover, if he could even call it that, had been blown wide open.
“Good lord,” Wells said. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t tell your lieutenant about this. Your judgement is completely clouded, and it shows.”
He leaned his head back in the seat, his anger cooling into stone. “It doesn’t matter, Chief. It doesn’t change what she told me. I had to report it.”
“But you didn’t have to come with me. You’re too close, you know that. Please tell me you didn’t sleep with her before you took her interview.”
“I didn’t. Nothing happened until after Trevor died.”
“Thank God for that, but I don’t need to tell you the court would have a field day with this if we ever wanted to use anything Claire told you.”
He said nothing. He had no way to explain himself. All his good senses went out the window when he imagined Claire being held or hurt or worse.
“Listen,” Wells said, “I didn’t want to tell you this yet, because I figured I should go in with an open mind. Especially since there’s a baby living under that roof and I have been very wrong about someone before. But this whole… cage thing. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it.”
Seth blinked at her. “What do you mean?”
Wells pursed her lips and repositioned in her seat. Outside the car, the Dyer farm began to turn dark.
“When Claire was about eight years old, she told a teacher at school that her dad would punish her and her sister by putting them in a cage. Clementine was twelve at the time, so, you know, older. More coherent. Clementine denied it ever happened, but the teacher looked into it anyway. She knew the family, knew Ron, so she didn’t want to involve the authorities.
She went and investigated on her own, but saw nothing.
“It still didn’t sit right with her, so she came to me.
I looked into it myself, same way we just did, except with a whole crew.
And that basement is unchanged. There was never any cage down there, Winslow.
I talked to Clementine about it, I talked to some of the boys on the farm—I could’ve even talked to Trevor Sloane without knowing who he was.
Then I talked to Claire. I’ll never forget her sitting on a kitchen chair in that house, bopping her little knees together, and admitting to me she made it all up. ”
Seth’s eyes burned. When he imagined Claire going through all that, he didn’t imagine a liar. He imagined a terrified child. “She could’ve said that because she was scared. She told me people have not believed her before.”
“And when she gets back, I’ll be sure to talk to her about it again, but it’s only been a couple hours since you last got a text from her.”
When she gets back. “What if she doesn’t come back? What if Ron did kill his wife?”
“Winslow.” Wells’s dark brown gaze bore into him, this time, with sympathy. And maybe some pity. “You are better than this. It’s a hell of a story, but the evidence tells a different tale. You might have to get comfortable with the idea that she took off of her own free will.”
No.
He wasn’t wrong about Claire.
He wasn’t.