I lay on the side of the road for a long while, staring at the stars, waiting for the pain in my side to go away. The stars and winking satellites offered no comfort or conclusions, nothing I could orient myself by or make sense of.
When the pain eased, I pushed myself up. The landscape whirled and tilted before me, the lights on the nearby highway blurring together and swimming. I thought for a moment I was seriously hurt, concussed or wounded in such a way I’d need to call for help. But after a couple of minutes on my feet, as I gathered my senses and balance, the world steadied. My equilibrium returned, and only the pain in my side remained.
I didn’t have anyone to call. To wake up Abby would invite questions and examinations about how and why I’d ended up in that neighborhood in the middle of the night. To call anyone would invite such questions. And the only other person I could call had just left me here on the side of the road.
The walking did me good. Five miles to home, moving at a snail’s pace. I worked the painful muscles loose, the ones that were clenched and stretched while not just one but two different men assaulted me. I tried to understand how I’d come to be in the place I was. The wheel of fortune had spun, and the arrow had landed on me: I’d been the guy whose daughter was taken. And then the wheel spun again, an even more unusual and perhaps crueler fate: I’d also been the guy to get his daughter back. Was it a mark of my confusion that I still couldn’t decide which was the worse fate to suffer?
By the time I reached the house, the sky was turning gray with first light. My feet hurt, and all I wanted to do was fall asleep in my own bed. But the wheel of fortune would turn one more time.
I saw Ryan’s car out front. It was just six-thirty, way too early for him to be there unless something was going on.
I thought I knew. Buster. He’d called them and told all. The girl in the cemetery, the trip to Colter’s, my interest in dealing with the man who’d taken my daughter.
Having nowhere else to go and no energy with which to do it, I went up the steps to face the music.
Ryan and Abby were in the living room. Abby was dressed, but I could tell by her hair that she wasn’t showered. When I entered the room, their heads turned in unison, as though they were part of a well-rehearsed stage act.
“Where have you been, Tom?” Abby asked.
“I was out taking a walk.”
“You’ve been gone for hours.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Are you hurt, Tom?” Ryan asked, sizing me up.
“I fell.”
Abby looked away, fixing her eyes on the coffee mug she lifted to her mouth and sipped from.
“Did you land on somebody’s fist?” Ryan asked.
I stood near the door, let my weight rest against its frame. I ignored him.
“I’m here about your brother,” Ryan said.
“Okay.”
Abby put the mug down and started to cry. Her eyes were full of tears, and she brought both her hands up to wipe them away.
“Did something happen to him?” I asked.
“Oh, Tom,” Abby said. “If only it were that easy.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Tom.”
I did, gingerly lowering myself onto the opposite end of the couch from Abby. She looked over at me and shook her head, disbelieving and angry.
“Have you heard from your brother lately?” Ryan asked.
“Will someone just tell me what’s going on?” I asked. I shifted so my side didn’t hurt. “It’s been a long night.”
Ryan took a long moment, still studying my face. Then he relented. “We’ve been continuing our investigation of John Colter and his relationship to Caitlin. We’ve been examining every angle, trying to understand how he ended up with your daughter. Work relationships, church relationships. . these are the things we examine in a case like this-”
“I don’t understand where you’re going with this. And what does it have to do with my brother?”
“We’ve identified some points of commonality between your family and associates of John Colter. There’s a connection there, a link.”
“Our family knew John Colter?” I asked.
“It was Buster, Tom,” Abby said. “Buster. All along. It was Buster who gave Caitlin over to this beast.”
I still didn’t move. While Abby wept, I stayed rooted in my seat, staring at Ryan.
Not Buster. No way.
Finally, Ryan jerked his head a little toward Abby. His motion broke the spell.
I slid down the couch and placed my hand on Abby’s back. She jerked away.
“Don’t touch me.” She looked up, her face tear streaked, her eyes on fire. “Did you know about this? All along, did you suspect this and keep it from me?”
“I don’t even know about it now.”
“Your brother gave our little girl away,” she said. “He’s a druggie and a failure, and he brought his own mess down on our lives.”
I looked to Ryan.
“Our investigation has revealed that John Colter was friends with a man named Loren Brooks. Do you know him?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
“Are you sure you don’t know him, Tom?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know the name. Should I?”
Ryan continued. “Loren Brooks was a small-time drug dealer around here. Cocaine and marijuana mostly. Also some petty crimes. Burglaries, car thefts. He was an all-around malcontent and noncontributing member of our society.”
“Did you arrest him?”
“Many times, but not for anything relating to this case. He died two years ago. Drug overdose. I can’t say the world is worse off without him. We did manage to locate his former girlfriend, a woman who’d lived with Brooks for several years. We asked her what she knew about John Colter. She told us that everybody knew one thing about John Colter.”
“What’s that?”
“That he liked little girls. And, sometimes, he liked to keep them in his basement.”
I felt the air go out of me, like I’d been hit between the shoulder blades.
Abby spoke up. “You can arrest him now. Rearrest him. You have a witness.”
“Buster. .” I said.
I couldn’t bring myself to say it all.
How does Buster fit into all this? What did Buster do?
“Your brother owed Loren Brooks money, the result of some drug transaction about five years back. This girlfriend of Brooks, she believes that your brother offered Caitlin to Brooks as some form of payment for the debt he owed.”
“But Buster never had Caitlin,” Abby said. “She was never his to give. She was never with him.”
“But he knew where she lived,” Ryan said. “He knew her routines. She trusted him and would have followed him if he asked her to. Right?”
The money Buster had borrowed from me. . his phone call and apology. . his appearance at the cemetery. .
“Are you saying Buster led Caitlin to Colter and this other guy? That he tricked her into going and sold her to them like-” The only word that came to my mind sounded ridiculous, but I said it anyway. “Like a concubine.”
“This girlfriend of Brooks picked Caitlin’s photo out of a group of photos. She says she’ll testify that she saw Caitlin in Colter’s house. She’s actually the kind of witness we’ve been waiting for. She’s going to help the case a great deal.”
“Is she reliable?” Abby asked.
“More reliable than the men she’ll be testifying against, despite whatever problems she’s had,” Ryan said. He turned his attention to me. “Tom,” he said, “I need to ask you something very important. Do you know where your brother is?”
“Did you check his house?” I asked.
Ryan nodded. “Of course. I need you to tell me other places we might find him.”
“I don’t know-”
“And I need to know if you’ve heard from him lately. Anything at all.”
Ryan held his gaze on mine, his eyes boring into me like an X-ray.
“Buster is. .” My voice trailed off. I tried again. “Look. .” I replayed the scene in the car early that morning. His words. He’d been right, I had to admit. He had always stood by me when we were children, and I couldn’t underestimate that. Even if he had been involved-which I doubted, I really doubted-I wanted to find that out for myself. I couldn’t bear the thought of handing him over to the police, to strangers. I drew the line there. “I don’t know where he is. We had a falling out. We often have them. I haven’t spoken to him in a few weeks. In fact, the last time I saw him was right here at this house. And you were here, too. Listen, Ryan, are you really telling me Buster was directly involved? Just because this woman said something about him?”
“Like I said, we’re moving forward on the case with the goal of placing Colter in custody again,” Ryan said. “We need to talk to William as well. If he comes in voluntarily, it can be easier on him. If not. .”
“Tom?” Abby asked. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I said I haven’t seen him.”
Ryan let out a little sigh. He placed his hands on his knees and pushed himself up out of the chair. He straightened his jacket by tugging on the lapels.
“You’ll let us know if anything else happens,” Abby said.
“I will.” Ryan pointed at my face. “And if I were you, I’d put some ice on that eye. Whoever you fell on was probably trying to hurt you.”