Don't Look for Me(12)

“Are you staying at the inn?”

“I guess so.”

“All right. Meet Reyes at the diner next door—nine thirty? If she seems legit, we can run the registrations for dark-colored trucks.”

“Thanks,” Nic said. She stood to leave. Watkins stood as well, something clearly weighing on his mind.

“Hey,” he said, stopping her at the door. “Is this because of the handwriting analysis? Because, you know, an inconclusive report is not the same as a negative report.”

Nic had no idea what he was saying, and her face gave her away.

Watkins turned suddenly, finding a box in the back corner of his office. He sifted through it. Pulled out a thin bundle of papers stapled together.

“This,” he said, handing the papers to Nic. “It’s the handwriting analysis.”

Nic stared at the report, scanning each page quickly, reading things about slants of letters and spacing of words, turning them until she got to the end—and the word “inconclusive.”

“I thought it was confirmed—the note? That it was my mother’s handwriting?”

Watkins was at a loss.

“And my father knew about this?” she asked.

“Jeez, listen. I had no idea,” Watkins said now. “I assumed he told you. It came in a few days after you left.”

Nic sat back down, stunned by these new facts, but also her father’s lie. She knew why he’d done it—he wanted her to move on the way he had. The way he’d forced Evan to do by sending him back to school. He’d said as much on the phone when he’d gotten her text earlier that morning, saying she was coming back to Hastings to follow a lead. This is absurd … I’m having my PI look into this woman, what’s her name? Why would you do this? Do you need me to come? He was in Chicago for a sales conference. I’ll be on the next flight. And then, after he’d relented, When you get back we are going to have a long talk about your life.

They’d been having this part of the conversation for days. With her mother gone, he’d suddenly taken up parenting as a new hobby, insisting she get on with her life. Stop her bad behavior. His favorite new expression—you’re not your mother.

She tried to explain this to Watkins. “My father thinks what you think—that this new lead is a scam. And that even if it’s not, my mother doesn’t want to be found. He wants me to come home.”

“I see,” Watkins said. “Well, I can’t argue with him. Everything supports that conclusion.”

“Is that why the case wasn’t reopened—after this report came in?”

Watkins shrugged. “The facts haven’t changed, that’s why. Look—the report is inconclusive. It’s not negative. The note was found in the hotel room she paid for. It was on paper from the notepad in the room. She was upset, nervous. Maybe her hands were shaky.” Then he said it again—“It wasn’t negative.”

Nic felt irritated now, and skeptical of everything she’d been told, or had assumed.

“What else should I know?” Nic asked. “Any more charges to her credit cards? Any communications on her cell phone account? And what about the casino? Are you still looking at the security cameras? It can’t be that hard to find someone there.”

The Laguna casino and resort was nothing more than a small cluster of businesses built on tribal land—exempt from the state’s gambling prohibitions. It wasn’t exactly a hotbed of tourism—more like an escape for locals looking to exercise their right to throw their money away in slot machines. Connecticut already had Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Laguna was their ugly stepsibling. A hotel. A gas station. A Jiffy bus stop with a ticket machine and a covered bench.

Molly Clarke had made one charge paying for two nights. No one recalled seeing her, but the place had been a zoo—people without power seeking refuge. The security cameras were set up high, looking down at heads, facilitating the identification of petty theft more than faces. They’d been through all of it, going back to the night of the storm—looking for her, her beige coat and jeans. Blond hair. A woman alone.

Watkins shook his head eagerly. “No, no. There’s nothing. And we have everyone on alert at Laguna. But, again, the absence of new evidence suggests she covered her tracks. That she doesn’t want us to find her. And, hard as this is to hear, that she doesn’t want you to find her.”

Nic let his words settle in place. She had no reason to doubt him. Or at least to doubt that he believed what he was saying. There was no point arguing until she met Edith Moore.

“Okay,” she said, finally. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. So—Officer Reyes? At the diner? I’ll be there by nine thirty.”

Watkins stood up. Nic did the same.

“I take it this means you’re not going home?”

Nic looked at him now, with surprise. She knew how all of this seemed. To her father. To Chief Watkins. To everyone. She didn’t care. It had never seemed right to her, even when she’d tried to force it down, and now this—the inconclusive handwriting report.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going home.”

She left the station with a pounding head and churning stomach. As she got in her mother’s car, still smelling of her perfume, she could hear the voices screaming out from the hollow spaces—begging for some kind of relief. For a drink. For her “friends” at the bar back home. For some loser who might stumble in.