Chapter 75
quinn
Quinn wasn’t born yesterday.
She doesn’t know why Iris is lying to her about where Rose is, but she’s sure as shit going to find out.
She and Phil park in a concealed driveway a few metres down the road from Iris and Jesse’s fancy-as-fuck filigree electric gates.
‘There’s no way she’s going to wait at home while her daughter goes all Bonnie and Clyde on her ass,’ Quinn says, lighting another cigarette. ‘Give it five minutes, and we’ll follow her to where those kids really are.’
‘You think she was lying about them being at Raylan’s cabin?’ Phil says.
Quinn cracks the window and exhales. ‘Nicky may be a disturbed kid, but he’s not an idiot. He’s not going to go back up to the cabin. The police will be keeping an eye out now. They know someone was living rough near the body.’
Exactly five minutes later, the fancy gates open again. They watch Iris’s Audi turn right, towards the school and Stowebury’s downtown – the opposite direction from the road up to the mountains.
‘Come on,’ Quinn says, stubbing out her cigarette in her little silver box. ‘I don’t want to lose her.’
Phil puts the car into gear, only for it to stall. He tries to start the engine again, but it turns over a couple of times, and then slumps into silence.
‘You’ve got to be fucking shitting me,’ Quinn exclaims.
‘Give me a minute,’ Phil says.
‘We don’t have a minute. Fuck knows where Iris is going! If she gets on the interstate, we’ll never find her!’
Phil coaxes the car like he’s wooing a spooked pony, and the engine finally coughs into life.
‘If we’re lucky, she’ll have got caught in traffic downtown and we can pick her up again,’ Quinn says.
Their luck sucks.
They pass through Stowebury without seeing Iris’s car, and find themselves at the roundabout near Al’s Burgers. Four roads branch off in different directions; Iris could have taken any one of them.
‘Got a Plan B?’ Phil says.
‘Fuck! Goddamn it, she could be anywhere!’
He pulls into the parking lot in front of the burger bar. ‘Figure out what you want to do. I need to take a leak.’
‘Jesus, again? You’re like a fucking old woman, always needing a piss.’
Phil flips her the bird as he gets out of the car.
Quinn taps out another cigarette from the packet against the back of her hand, but doesn’t light it.
There’s a story evolving right under her nose, and she can’t catch a fucking break.
But more important than getting the story – and she never thought she’d say that – is her concern for Rose.
Quinn will never be a mother, but if it’d ever happened, Rose Gray is the kind of kid she could have imagined having.
The girl’s got a rebellious, feral streak a mile wide.
It could get her into a whole heap of trouble.
The door to Al’s Burgers opens. Quinn removes her feet from the dashboard, expecting it to be Phil, and then does a double take.
MacGill Smith, as she lives and breathes.
Quinn’s met him several times, both in the immediate aftermath of the accident and eight months later, at the trial. He and Amy separated shortly afterwards, and he moved out West; as far as Quinn’s aware, he hasn’t been back to Stowebury since then. It can’t be a coincidence he’s shown up now.
She approaches him as he’s walking to his car.
‘Quinn Wilde,’ she says, holding out her hand. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘I know who you are,’ Mac says, folding his arms.
‘Didn’t expect to see you around here.’
‘I’m not in the mood for journalists.’
Phil comes outside, clutching a burger.
‘Mate,’ he says, when he sees Mac. ‘I thought it was you. Heard you’d left town. What’re you doing back here?’
‘Just passing through.’
Phil takes a huge bite of his burger. ‘Looking for Amy?’
For a moment, Quinn thinks Mac’s going to walk away, but then he seems to reconsider.
‘I heard she was working at Al’s,’ he says. ‘They said she was supposed to be on shift today, but she didn’t come in.’
‘She’s missing,’ Phil says.
Quinn shoots him a look. They’re in the business of eliciting information, not providing it.
‘What d’you mean, missing?’
‘Isn’t she why you’re here?’ Quinn says.
Mac looks uncomfortable. ‘I saw your interview with Ashley,’ he says.
‘She obviously knows more about what happened that night than she was letting on. I don’t know what, but I figured—’ He pauses, and then shrugs.
‘Fuck. I don’t know what I figured. I just knew I needed to be here.
I got into town last night. I wanted to talk to Amy first, let her know I was back, but I can’t seem to track her down. ’
‘So nobody called you? Asked you to come?’
He seems confused. ‘Like who?’
Quinn exchanges another look with Phil. She doesn’t want to piss Mac off any more than she has to, but time is of the essence here.
‘There’s something I need to ask you,’ she says, ‘and I’m not trying to fuck with you. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t seriously think—’
‘Spit it out,’ Mac says.
‘Do you think it’s possible,’ Quinn says, treading very carefully, ‘that Nicky might be alive?’
She expects him to react with anger or denial, as he did at the inquiry when the rumour mill was in full swing; but instead he just looks defeated.
‘Amy always thought so,’ he says. ‘But it never made sense to me. Why wouldn’t he come home? My wife convinced herself our son was injured or had amnesia, but if that’d been the case, someone would’ve found him and brought him back to us. God knows the search was public enough.’
‘You don’t think he ran away?’
‘Look. Do you know something I don’t?’
‘Your father and your ex-wife are both missing,’ Quinn says. ‘Not officially, but I think something’s happened to them.’
‘Are you accusing me—’
‘No, of course not. But there’s a possibility – and please, I don’t want to raise your hopes – but we think there’s a chance Nicky is alive. And we also think he has something to do with why Colt and Amy have disappeared.’
Mac takes a moment to process the information.
Quinn wishes Phil would stop munching quite so loudly on his burger.
‘You think Colt and Amy are helping my son?’ Mac asks finally.
‘Not exactly. They may not be with him . . . willingly.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Mac, I’m trying to help. We’re on the same side here.’
‘You really think my son might be alive?’
‘It’s just a possibility—’
‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ Mac says angrily.
‘If he’s alive, he’s been living rough on his own for more than a year,’ Quinn says. ‘He can’t go back to the Adams place, where we think he was hiding. Do you have any idea where else he might go? Somewhere he might feel safe?’
Mac hesitates. ‘There was a cabin way up behind our house, near the ridge,’ he says, after a moment. ‘More of a hut, really. Nicky and his cousins used to camp out up there sometimes in the summer when they were kids. But it hasn’t been used in years. I don’t even know if it’s still there.’
‘It’d be familiar to him,’ Quinn says. ‘The kind of place he’d hide if he was scared. It’s possible he’d take them there—’
‘My son wouldn’t kidnap anyone,’ Mac snaps.
‘Can you show us the place?’ Quinn asks. ‘If we’re wrong, no harm done.’
‘This is insane,’ Mac mutters, but he doesn’t say no.
Quinn and Phil get in their car. It starts first time, and they watch and wait as Mac sits motionless in his own truck, an old Toyota with West Virginia plates.
‘Think he’ll do it?’ Phil asks.
‘What else is he going to do?’ Quinn says. ‘He’s here for his family. We’re the only shot he has at finding them right now.’
Mac abruptly reverses his truck out of its parking spot.
Phil follows, crunching gears. He curses as Mac suddenly swerves to avoid a pedestrian.
‘Stop!’ Quinn shouts.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Phil mutters. ‘I fucking missed him, didn’t I?’
‘Turn round!’
‘What for?’
Quinn thumps the dashboard with her fist. ‘Jesus Christ!’ she says. ‘Didn’t you see who that was?’