Eleven Detective Olivia Newhouse #3
“Mr. and Mrs. Simone,” I ask, “have any of Chloe’s friends mentioned seeing her with an older man?”
Chloe’s friends and classmates, as well as the neighbors, will all be questioned endlessly about any strangers who might have been lurking in the neighborhood or around the school.
Only time will tell if anything will emerge in all the questioning.
Did Chloe have any enemies? Any trouble at school, or at home?
Is she happy? Has she adjusted well to living with her grandparents since her parents’ deaths?
All these questions will be asked and analyzed.
Detectives have already been at the house and combed through the place.
Her cell phone and laptop are now at Metro’s crime lab for processing.
Her room and this home have been searched.
A friend last saw her on Sunday evening just before dark in the parking lot of the apartment building at the end of the block.
Several of her classmates live in those apartments.
It’s all just beginning and there is no way to forecast how it will end.
Mrs. Simone shakes her head adamantly. “Chloe would never let herself be fooled by offers of gifts or money. We taught her to beware of strangers. If she got into a car with a stranger, then she did so unconscious or kicking and screaming. There is zero chance it happened any other way.”
Her voice wavers on the last word.
I nod, summon an encouraging smile that I in no way feel. “You taught her well.”
The Simones were shown a photo of Fanning by the other detectives. Walt requested that any situation related to the missing be treated as if Fanning might be involved. The grandparents stated they had never seen him before.
“The police still think it might be related to that man—this Fanning?” Mr. Simone asks.
“We’re following up on every possible avenue,” Walt explains.
“The fact that Fanning disappeared at approximately the same time gives us reason to believe there might be a connection, but that is the only related thread we have. No other evidence or statements suggest he was seen with your granddaughter.”
“There was that one girl,” Mr. Simone says to his wife. “You know the one who told you she thought an old man had been hanging around the apartments. She said he was watching her and Chloe.”
Mrs. Simone shakes her head. “You’re thinking about the janitor they used to have at the school. He’s retired now. They got a new one,” she reminded him. “The detectives who came by this morning promised to check him out.”
We go through the relevant questions, the same ones they have no doubt already answered, and we get nothing that actually helps. Sadly that’s the way this usually goes.
Walt places his business card on the table. “Please call the detectives you spoke with this morning or us if you think of anything else or if one of Chloe’s friends comes to you with any new information. We’re all working together to find her.”
The Simones promise to do so and we leave. I glance around the run-down neighborhood. The Simones are clinging to their optimism about their granddaughter, but I have a bad feeling this will not end well. So often it does not.
“You said Sanchez will be back on Sunday,” I comment as we climb into the Tahoe. “You going to call me when he calls you?”
Walt starts the engine and shifts into Drive. “You know it, partner.”
Frankly, it seems like a bit of a moot effort since Sanchez appears to have been out of town since before Fanning went missing. But Walt doesn’t want to mark him off the list until he’s interviewed him face-to-face.
That’s because Walt is a good cop.
A damned good cop.
Whether Sanchez is involved or not, I guess we’d find out on Sunday.
At the end of the day, I am spent.
Walt and I drove by Dana Reeves’s office, and it was closed.
Janie Hyatt owns a training facility for horseback riding and horsemanship in Franklin.
The receptionist at the facility informed us that Hyatt was on vacation this week.
Something is definitely up with those two.
I feel it all the way to my bones. That fire at their barn has to be related to Fanning.
We also interviewed the parents of the other missing teenager, Suzy Eldridge, and then caught up with one more name on our list of Fanning’s past victims, Patricia Shelby.
The latter was yet another harrowing account of the worst that one human can do to another.
Shelby had an airtight alibi. She went into labor on Saturday evening and had her baby—a girl, Lily—on Sunday.
Watching her take care of her newborn was unnerving.
I cannot even imagine handling such a fragile human. I am so in over my head.
Her Fanning story only reiterates how absurd it is that the bastard got off with a few months shy of fourteen years in prison.
Plea bargains save the courts money, ensure a conviction.
I understand this. Still, it’s a travesty.
One, I suspect, is being amended. I push away the images of torture that instantly come to mind.
As a cop, I’m disappointed at the prospect that someone has taken the law—justice—into his or her own hands.
Conversely, as a human, I’m thrilled that anyone had the balls not to let this go.
My father would say it’s the universal issue of civilized society.
Our basic instinct is survival and self-protection.
The rules of society push us to forgive, to turn the other cheek .
. . to give a slap on the wrist to the evil among us and carry on. All will be well.
But evil doesn’t live by society’s rules. Evil lives for one simple purpose: to fulfill its selfish desires, whatever the cost to others.
Carl Fanning is pure evil. Regardless, society’s rules dictate that Walt and I must find him and protect him if need be or arrest him if he’s committed some crime. We are no closer to accomplishing one or the other than we were seventy-odd hours ago when this case landed in our laps.
No matter that I’ve been late every night for days. No matter that David will be home soon, instead of going to his house, I go to the farm where I was raised. Half an hour commute from Nashville into the horse country of Franklin.
Am I avoiding the man I love? The man I’m supposed to marry?
Yes. If I avoid him, I don’t have to reveal my fears and uncertainty about us, about the baby.
I can pretend I’m too busy to go into such a profoundly life-changing discussion at the moment.
Life will be calmer when this case is solved and David and I can discuss and plan for this new reality.
He wants children. We haven’t discussed the when, but that’s irrelevant now.
I unlock the house, step inside, and disarm the security system, then close my eyes and inhale deeply the scent of home.
I’m not sure how many years it will take for me to see anyplace else as home.
I know it happens. People marry and leave home and start their own homes.
But some part of where you came from is always home, I think.
David is intent on me selling this place.
The house is so big, and there’s more than forty acres of woods and pastures.
Someone who has horses should have the place, he reminds me.
Someone who has the time to appreciate the property and all its natural majesty.
He’s right, I suppose, but I can’t imagine not having this place to escape to whenever I feel the need.
Like now.
Walt suggested I lease the land and keep the house for a getaway from the city.
Lots of Nashvillians have country houses or lake houses.
No reason I can’t keep it. It’s mine. It’s paid for.
I open my eyes and survey the massive great room that serves as the centerpiece of this house.
Any way I look at it, this is home. Large and airy but not the slightest bit ostentatious.
I lock the door behind me and wander through the room.
Those damn packing boxes are scattered everywhere.
I feel ashamed that I even started the process of packing up my parents’ things.
It’s too soon. I shouldn’t have listened to David.
Since I didn’t argue with him on the subject, I can’t blame him.
If I don’t want to sell the house or pack up their things, all I have to do is say so.
The past is the past, Liv. Living there can sometimes be a futile and harmful thing.