Page 39 of What Happened to Lucy Vale

Four

Rachel

D anny Wilkes, twenty-two-year veteran of the Willard County Sheriff’s Department, agreed to meet Rachel for lunch at the Old Mill, a hundred-and-fifty-year-old landmark outside the township of Jalliscoe.

Rachel remembered it from the occasional dinner with her aunt and uncle.

She was almost positive they’d celebrated her cousin’s graduation at the Old Mill.

Or was it Kelly’s eighteenth birthday? Either way, stepping into the wood-paneled room and across the wide plank floorboards buckled with age and creaky with the pressure of every step, she experienced a sudden, almost vertiginous nostalgia for the teenager she’d once been.

She’d had plans to backpack through Europe, fall in love with a man named Claude or Sergio.

She’d dreamed of breaking stories, of wartime, corruption, and injustice.

She’d dreamed of Pulitzers, cargo planes, and the dusty back roads of distant countries.

That was before college. Before the parties, and the pills, and the pregnancy. Before Lucy arrived, dense and grasping, with a gravitational force that reoriented her entire world.

Danny looked older in person than in his profile picture. No surprise there. Still, he had a nice smile.

“I should have known when you first pinged me you weren’t looking for a date,” he said, a little ruefully.

She’d introduced herself as a journalist on their first phone call and asked him explicitly whether he might instead be willing to meet and talk about the Faradays, even though Willard County hadn’t been explicitly involved in the investigation.

Still, cops talked. “You’re way out of my league. ”

They chatted a bit—about the weather (glorious), Danny’s divorce (amicable), their respective children (teenagers all). At some points, Rachel thought, it really might have been a date.

But after they ordered, Danny leaned forward and squinted at her. “So you’re writing a book about the Faraday case, huh?”

Instinctively Rachel looked around as if someone might be listening.

But the restaurant was full—boisterous with families, truckers, and wizened couples who looked as if they’d been there since the restaurant’s heyday—and loud.

Besides, she reminded herself, she was in “enemy territory,” as Lucy put it: a place free of fanatical devotion to Woodward’s club team or the Sharks.

The contrast between how the adjoining counties had reported on Nina’s disappearance and her mother’s suspicious death was amazing.

In Rockland County, all the coverage had pointed to some unknown stranger—a drifter, a drug runner, a mystery boyfriend from parts unknown—or back to the Faradays themselves.

Nina had run away with one of her many admirers or because her mother was too controlling.

Lydia Faraday had waged a vindictive campaign against Tommy Swift because she was obsessed with Coach Steeler, whom she had briefly dated in high school.

In Willard County, the headlines—and subtexts—were very different. Tommy Swift, or one of his swim team buddies, had killed Nina Faraday. Coach Steeler, and possibly the entire Administration, had helped cover up his involvement.

And Lydia Faraday’s death was no suicide, and no accident.

Rachel said, “I’m thinking about it. For now I’m just doing some research.”

“And how’s that going?” Danny’s eyes carried a glint of amusement. “Rockland County Sheriff’s Department being helpful?”

“I haven’t asked,” Rachel said, which was true.

“Wouldn’t be much use if you had,” he said frankly. Then he added, “You might have more luck when Sheriff Cox steps aside. It won’t be long now. He just doesn’t have the support he used to.”

“Sheriff Cox,” Rachel repeated. “Any chance he’s related to the Steeler-Coxes?”

“Sure. He’s one of the clan,” Danny said. Seeing Rachel’s face, he added, “You see why some people had doubts about the way the disappearance was investigated.”

“What about you?” Rachel asked. “You remember. What do you think?”

“I think it was three days before they’d even opened an investigation. Even then, they treated Nina like a runaway.”

“I take it you don’t think she ran away,” Rachel said.

Danny shrugged. “Most runaways come back,” he said simply.

“Look, the truth is, it’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback on this stuff.

I don’t know what they had to go on. I wasn’t on the case.

That was, what, sixteen years ago? I was still writing speeding tickets.

We didn’t even know who Nina was until Cox asked for our help bringing in Joaquin Turner.

” Rachel wrote down the name. “He was a senior at Jalliscoe then. Another swimmer. Apparently he’d been hanging around with Nina. ”

“I bet that didn’t make Tommy Swift very happy,” Rachel said.

Danny tipped his head in acknowledgment. “All those kids—all those boys on the club team, Steeler’s boys—they like to win.”

It seemed almost like a non sequitur. But Rachel heard the implication in his words.

“Do you think the school protected them after Nina went missing?” she asked.

“I think the school still protects them.” Danny suddenly grew more agitated. “Look at what happened a few weeks ago. Some of our kids get jumped, beaten up outside a bowling alley. One of them winds up in the ICU. And what happens to the kid that put him there? Nothing.”

“You’re talking about Aiden Teller?” Rachel asked, and Danny nodded. “He got suspended from competition,” she pointed out. “My daughter tells me that his scholarship could be in jeopardy.”

“It’s a slap on the wrist. He should be in prison. He’s a menace; they all are.”

Rachel reflected. There might not be a single person in southern Indiana who could be objective when it came to Granger’s steady stream of swim stars. But she didn’t say so.

“So why does everyone protect them? Is it the money?” Rachel knew that the Woodward High School Athletics Booster Fund was one of the largest in the state. The vast majority of it went to their Aquatics department.

“Oh, sure. It’s partly that.” Danny shrugged again.

“I grew up outside of Gainsberg. For us it was the football team. Our quarterback could have driven an 18-wheeler into the church, and he’d be welcomed back on Sunday morning for Communion.

And you know, that whole area—what they call the Four Corners—had nothing going before Steeler came back to build the swim program.

The whole county was depressed. Main Street was bleeding businesses.

No one wanted to move there. Now ...” He shook his head.

“Well, let’s put it this way. I’m surprised you found a house so quick. ”

“I found a house that no one wanted to move to,” Rachel said. Danny raised his eyebrows but didn’t prod any further. Rachel leaned forward. “What do you think happened to Nina Faraday?”

Danny’s eyes slid away from hers. Like any good cop, he didn’t answer directly.

“Like I said, I don’t have all the information.

I don’t know what was investigated, what wasn’t.

I don’t know who they spoke to. But I think those boys knew something, for sure.

Whether Tommy put hands on her, I can’t say.

But my bet is he knew just exactly where she was.

It usually is the boyfriend, you know. The boyfriend or the ex.

Tommy was both, from what I understand, depending on the week. ”

He was right, of course. Rachel knew from her brief time covering the crime desk for KWMC out of Detroit.

People craved real mysteries—juicy suspects, major twists—but they were surprisingly hard to come by.

Most crime scenes traced back to the same sad story.

An angry husband. A jealous wife. Someone who needed money.

Most mysteries weren’t very mysterious in the end. They didn’t make for good stories. They were just sad.

Still, Rachel found herself strangely resistant to the idea that Tommy Swift was, after all, to blame.

There was the issue of his alibi. Even if all his teammates had lied for him, she didn’t see how a random pizza delivery guy could be persuaded to get in on the cover-up unless he’d been bribed—or possibly threatened.

Still, it seemed implausible; that kind of loose end tended to unravel with time.

Then there was the fact that Tommy had seemed devastated by Nina’s disappearance.

He’d dropped twenty places in the national rank within six months; a year after that, he was kicked off the University of Arizona team, moved home, and got arrested for drunk driving.

Meanwhile, his old teammates were flourishing.

Coach Steeler had moved on to a lucrative position at Indiana State University.

Tommy’s old friend Jack Vernon placed third at nationals.

Guilt, some people said. To Rachel, it didn’t quite fit. If Tommy had done something to Nina, if he’d murdered her and staged her disappearance, he wasn’t likely to be the kind of person who felt bad about it later.

But maybe Rachel didn’t want to admit that after sixteen long years, the Faraday mystery might simply die out with a whimper, relegated to the compost heap of obvious stories.

In a weird way, she wanted more for Nina.

Maybe they all did—the clamor of internet sleuths, the podcasters who’d come digging for remains, even the locals who insisted that Nina must have run off with a stranger.

Maybe they were all just looking for a better story.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Danny said.

“Sure,” Rachel said. “But I may not answer.”

“Teenagers go missing every day in this country. Girls turn up dead. There are hundreds, thousands of unsolved cases, and a lot of them aren’t sixteen years cold. So why this one?”

Rachel hesitated. She wondered whether to tell him the truth. She wondered whether she even knew the truth herself. Finally she said, “I met her once.”

Danny looked surprised, but only for a second. Just as quickly, his expression shuttered into a kind of attentive neutrality. “Nina?”

Rachel nodded. “It was only in passing. I didn’t know who she was at the time.

My cousin put it together later.” It was at that same Halloween party, the one that Kelly had dragged her to off campus.

She remembered the way the news had shuddered around the party when several high school boys arrived with their girlfriends.

Swimmers, someone had mentioned. Sharks.

One of them had some family connection to the host. Still, their presence leaned the crowd into unease.

Everyone was afraid that the sheriff would arrive.

“She must have made quite an impression,” Danny said.

“She didn’t,” Rachel said. “But the Sharks did.” She was sure that Tommy Swift must have been among the handful of boys clustered on the front lawn trying to wrestle a drunk friend to his feet.

She could still see it: the shouting, the urgency, the knot of teenage girls standing birdlike several feet away, agitating with nerves.

She remembered the way those girls had eddied across the lawn when the boys’ coach arrived, the soft pitch of their voices explaining, excusing, asking for help.

Rachel watched the whole scene play out from the hood of one of the cars logjamming the driveway.

At one point after the crisis had passed, the boy on the lawn revived and the teenagers dispatched into respective cars, Jay Steeler had spotted her struggling to light a cigarette.

She had never forgotten the cool way he slid his gaze over her bare legs.

You’re too pretty to smoke, he’d told her.

Rachel was drunk enough to be flattered.

After lunch, Danny and Rachel returned to the parking lot together.

After the dim cloister of the Old Mill, Rachel was shocked by the sudden brightness, surprised to find the afternoon still intact, still puttering on busily without her.

Danny offered to put Rachel in touch with a friend who’d covered the case once Nina’s disappearance had become state news.

“And Rachel,” Danny added after they’d already fumbled through an awkward hug. “You be careful, okay?”

Rachel reassured him that she would. Minutes later, back in her car, she wondered what had compelled him to say that.

What possible danger could there be in investigating a sixteen-year-old cold case?

She shrugged it off. No doubt Danny had made the comment out of a misguided attempt at chivalry. He seemed the type.

She drove home feeling grateful, and also guilty. She hoped Danny Wilkes would find a nice woman someday.

Lucy was home early, stringing cobwebs between a display of plaster headstones.

They’d spent an obscene amount on Halloween decorations for the house.

Lucy had sworn that she would start babysitting as soon as possible so she could contribute— if anyone trusted her with a child after learning where she lived.

Rachel had pointed out that the forty-five-dollar severed heads that Lucy had insisted on for the gates wouldn’t do her any favors on care.com.

“Guess what?” she announced as soon as Rachel got out of the car. “The podcast episode dropped today. I got eighteen new follow requests.”

“And you’ll say no to all of them,” Rachel said, hefting a bag of birdseed from the trunk. “I don’t want any strangers looking at your pictures.”

“Why does it matter? You barely let me post anything,” Lucy said. Rachel gave her a look. “Okay, okay. Fine. There go my dreams of a brand deal. Also, you got a letter. I think it’s from your publisher. For some reason they left it on the porch.”

Rachel set the birdseed on the back porch and picked up the letter addressed to R.C. Barnes from the mat. She barely registered that there was no return address.

Inside was a folded piece of paper with a simple typed message: We don’t want you here.

“What is it?” Lucy asked, studying her mother’s face.

“Nothing,” Rachel said quickly. “Work stuff.” She found herself scanning the yard as if someone might be hiding behind the trees.

Her gaze landed on the Sandhu house across the street.

She thought she could see movement in Akash’s window.

How often did he watch them? She thought of all those cars making slow U-turns on Lily Lane.

The strangers who showed up to snap pictures of the house.

Just the other day, a neighbor had walked her toddlers down from two streets over to admire the decorations.

“B-o-o-o-ring,” Lucy said with an exaggerated sigh. She was on her knees now, carefully nudging a plastic spider into place on a pillowy nest of cotton.

Rachel balled the note in her hand and glared across the empty space.

Too bad, she thought. We’re staying.