Since She Went Away(61)

There were doors on either side of the hallway. One of them was open, and Jared peered inside. A bathroom. The sink was streaked with rust stains, the shower curtain torn and hanging loose. A pang of regret stabbed his heart, an aching sorrow he felt to his core. He hated to think Tabitha lived in these conditions in a dirty run-down house. She showered there in the crude little room. Went to the bathroom and combed her hair.

Then he saw the door on the left, one that must have led to a bedroom. It hung open, but there was a hasp attached to the wood on the outside. No padlock was in sight, but it meant that someone had been kept locked inside there. The hasp was new, the metal clean and shiny in the dingy gloom.

Tabitha.

Had she been a prisoner in her own house? Held by her father?

Jared rushed into the room. He saw a mattress on the floor and some cardboard boxes against the wall. The closet hung open but was empty.

Jared saw scattered papers and a textbook he recognized from school. He also saw a notebook, one with scribbles on the front. He recognized Tabitha’s handwriting and bent down to pick it up. It was full of drawings. Flowers and horses and a unicorn. The kind of things lots of kids, especially girls, drew. Page after page of them.

He flipped back and looked at the inside front cover. Someone had signed their name there in a large flowing script.

Natalie Lynn Rose.

And under the name, a photograph. Taped to the notebook. A beautiful woman who looked a lot like the girl he knew as Tabitha. But older, probably in her thirties.

Her mother. Had to be.

Jared gently peeled the photo off the notebook and slid it into his back pocket.

He tucked the notebook under his arm and left the bedroom.

He brought the sweatshirt back up to his face. As he moved down the hallway toward the front of the house, the smell grew stronger. Even through the thick material of the sweatshirt, the odor reached him. His eyes watered from the stinging stench.

Faint light leaked into the front room through a small opening in the blinds. Jared saw two overstuffed and dirty chairs, a small out-of-date TV with an antenna sitting on a plastic milk crate. An inert lump, fat and bloated, lay sprawled on the floor.

It was a man. Jared could see that. But not Tabitha’s dad. This man wore a business suit, the tie knotted against the thick folds of skin at his neck. A giant pool of blood spread around his head like a halo. The blood was thick and black, and Jared could tell no one could survive losing that much from his body. A few feet away from the body sat a small ceramic statue of Santa Claus, the weapon that was probably used to smack the fat man over the head.

Jared stared a moment longer, making sure, really sure, the man was dead and beyond help. He clearly was. His mouth hung open, the jaw slack. His eyes behind half-closed lids were sunken. At the moment of his death, the man’s bowels had emptied, the main source of the nasty odor in the house.

Jared backed away. He went down the hallway and through the kitchen. He saw the back door, the one he’d tried earlier. He turned the lock and pulled it open, stepping out onto the small back porch and letting the cool air wash over his face. He took the sweatshirt away, gulping in the mercifully clean and cold air of the late-winter night.

He huffed in the air for a few moments. Then he called the police.





CHAPTER FORTY-ONE


The first two police officers to arrive on the scene asked Jared a lot of questions. He couldn’t answer many of them. He told them who had lived in the house as of a few days ago, and he related the story online identifying Tabitha’s dad as a fugitive and a murderer. The officers—one of them young and stocky, the other middle-aged and wiry—made him go over that a few times before it was all clear, and once it was, they decided to go into the house.

One of the officers, the stocky one who wore a name tag that said “Jones,” asked Jared if he knew the dead man inside. Jared shook his head. The image of the bloated, bloody body came back to him, and even though he stood outside, the rotten smell lingered in his nostrils. He wished for something pleasant to sniff—a bunch of flowers or a peppermint patty or a wet dog. Anything.

“You broke into the house because you thought your girlfriend was in danger?” the older cop asked him. His name tag said “Bradford,” and he sounded a little suspicious. Jared understood what the whole thing looked like. He’d already confessed to the crime of breaking into the house. But considering what he’d found and how shitty the house was to begin with, he hoped they’d cut him some slack.

“I thought she was dead,” Jared said, trying not to sound pathetic. “She still might be.”

Another car approached, and the three of them watched it pull over to the curb. Jared knew who it was. He’d called his mom as soon as he contacted the police and she said she would be right over. She popped out of the car, her face worried. Jared knew she’d be freaked, but then again, what parent wouldn’t be? Her son had called her up and said he’d just found a dead body in a house in a bad neighborhood a few months after her best friend disappeared. Yeah, she could be freaked out if she wanted.

“Are you okay?” she asked when she came up to them. She placed her hand on his shoulder, and then she pulled him close into a hug.

Even though the two cops watched, Jared didn’t mind. The hug felt good, warm, and safe. It made him feel like a little kid again.

“You’re his mom,” Jones said.