Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(28)

But mostly, the stories put me back to sleep. So I would doze, on and off. Growing more and more disoriented, until at last, the sound of footsteps pounding down the stairs. A door squeaking open across the way. The rattle of the padlock, so wonderfully close to my ear. Then, at long last, the wooden lid would be lifted. He would appear.

And I would live again, saved from my boredom by the very man who’d put me there.


*

“TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FATHER,” he demanded one day. He lounged on the sofa in dirty underwear, alternating smoking a cigarette with taking long pulls from his beer.

I sat naked on the floor, where I was allowed to remain longer and longer after our various sessions. Of course, the pine box remained in full view. I would sneak glances at it from time to time, as if contemplating a scary mask or coiled serpent. The object of my abject terror. And yet, from this vantage point, nothing more than a cheap wooden coffin.

I didn’t answer right away. I was too engrossed in combing my fingers through the dirt-brown carpet, which turned out to be not one shade of shit brown but many.

He kicked my shoulder with his foot, demanding my attention. “Tell me about your father.”

“Why?”

“What the fuck, why? I asked. You answer.” Another kick, this time to the side of my head. His thick yellow toenails were long and ragged; one sliced my cheek.

I didn’t move away. By now, I knew it was pointless. Instead, I kept my gaze on the carpet. So many individual threads woven into one color pattern. Who would’ve thought? I wondered if it was difficult to make carpet. I wondered if I could pull out enough strands that it would be possible to choke myself with them.

“I don’t remember him,” I said at last.

“When’d he die?”

“I was a baby.”

“What happened?”

“An accident. His truck rolled.”

“What was his name?”

I dug my torn fingernails deeper into the matted carpet. I could feel dust and dirt and small rocks. The fibers were so short, too short, really, to serve as much of a death weapon. Pity. And yet I still couldn’t stop touching it. As far as entertainment went, dirt-brown carpet was as good as the room got.

I still didn’t know where I was. A basement, I thought, because the only windows were set up high, and it always sounded as if someone was descending a staircase right before he barreled through the door.

I didn’t think Florida had basements. Or not many. Did that mean I wasn’t in Florida anymore? Maine had basements. Maybe he’d brought me all the way back to Maine. I was just down the street from my mother. If I could summon the strength, the energy, the good fortune to crawl up out one of those high windows, I could walk back to my mother’s farm. And just like that, I’d be home again.

He kicked me again.

“Do you have a father?” I asked.

“’Course.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“Nah. Too busy calling him Dickhead to learn the real thing. He was a trucker, though. Like me.”

“You’re a trucker?” I couldn’t help myself; I looked up in wonder, the discovery of personal information finally pulling my attention from the filthy floor.

He caught the look on my face and laughed. “Well, shit, what’d you think I did in my spare time? Gotta work. Love nests don’t come free.”

“Are we still in Florida?” I asked. “Is it still spring break?”

He just laughed again, took another pull of beer. “Gonna take off soon,” he offered conversationally. “Big job this time. Could be gone as long as a week.”

The look he gave me was calculating. But I didn’t consider that. I was too busy feeling the blood drain from my face. A week? Seven whole days? All alone in the box? My brain shut down. My bloody fingertips dug painfully into the carpet. A week?

“Molly,” he said. He wasn’t smoking anymore. Instead, the burning cigarette dangled from his fingers as he stared at me.

“What?”

“Your name is Molly. What’s your name?”

I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. I honestly didn’t get it. Every muscle and bone in my body hurt. I wanted to escape the pain by going to sleep. Except I couldn’t sleep. Because he was here, and I was out of the box, and the carpet contained half a dozen shades of shit brown, and this was as close to an experience as I was gonna get. Better than movies or video games or texting. The feel of grimy carpet beneath my fingertips. A real adventure park.

“What’s your name?” he commanded again.

“Um. Molly?”

“Not like that. It’s an answer, not a question. Come on now—what’s your damn name?”

“Molly,” I stated with more conviction, starting to catch on. So he wanted to call me Molly. Whatever. Molly, frankly, was hardly the worst thing that had happened to me.

“Now. Your father’s name?”

I paused. And for just one second . . .

It’s Sunday afternoon. I’m all dressed up. I’m standing at my father’s grave, holding my mother’s hand while she cries silently, my brother standing stoically on her other side.

“He loved you kids,” my mother is saying, fingers tight around mine. “He would be so proud . . .”

And just like that, I couldn’t say the name. I could picture it engraved on the black granite marker, but I couldn’t give it up. My daddy was nothing but a legend, a myth once told by my mother to me. But he was mine, and I had so little left.