Gone(19)

Still feeling anxious, he selected the second file, marked Bday Misc.

The clip played. Rondeau could tell right away he was looking at the Kemps’ house. The shot was shaky — “handheld,” he thought they called it — but the image was clean, high resolution, as good as the documentary footage he’d just watched. The scene was Kemp’s office. He heard the man’s voice, off screen. “Be right up!”

The video cut to the upstairs kitchen. Same handheld style, likely Kemp playing cameraman. Rondeau recognized the woman in the room: Lily. Wearing an apron, putting frosting on a cake.

At her feet, leaping up and down, repeating something Rondeau couldn’t quite understand, was a little girl.

Rondeau leaned closer.

Lily turned to the camera, offered a wan smile. “In a minute, honey,” she told the girl. Rondeau realized the girl was requesting to lick the frosting off the fork. This was a home movie. He glanced at the time bar below the moving image; about three minutes in length.

Lily dipped the cake towards the lens. Happy Birthday, Daddy was written in gooey white script. The rest of the frosting was blue, made to look like waves. A dinghy floated on the water.

The girl was still leaping at the mother’s feet.

“I’m just going to give it to her,” Lily demurred.

She set the cake on the counter and picked up the wooden fork, tines slicked with frosting.

“Sure, yeah. Go ahead,” Hutch said from behind the camera.

Rondeau’s ears pricked up. He had never been married, but he’d been in a couple of long-term relationships. He recognized a note of frustration. Maybe the parents argued over the little girl’s sugar intake, or something. She looked healthy enough, Rondeau thought. A spry little four year-old.

Had Addie meant to show him this? What was she trying to tell him? See what a happy family my brother has? Or, see that they have problems?

He watched on, through a couple more cuts, until Hutch was following around the second child with the camera. The baby boy was a crawler — a creeper, Jessy used to say about kids that age. He was really moving along, the shot trailing in a way reminding Rondeau of The Shining.

Then a time jump, because now it was dark outside. The camera aimed at the family’s dining-room table. Streamers hung from the chandelier above the table. Balloons bobbed softly against the ceiling, strings gently blowing in a breeze wafting from an open window.

Rondeau waited for the usual off-key rendering of the “happy birthday” song. He lowered his eyes to the timeline. Less than twenty seconds to go. Wasn’t going to be much of a birthday video.

Just the hovering decorations, everything quiet, and it ended.

He sat back on the couch, staring at the black screen.

He started to scratch, then stopped himself.

“Huh,” he said to the empty room. He sat like that for a moment longer, thinking. He leaned back to the laptop and used the mouse to grab the timeline scrubber and drag it back. Then he watched the whole birthday video over again, as he had done the movie clip. Only he stopped, this time, when Lily turned to Hutch in the kitchen. Wearing her apron, standing over the cake. Turning her head as he came closer, giving him that smile, that look; something in her eyes.

Rondeau paused it there. He looked at Lily Kemp, and she looked back at him. He pressed the key to advance the film until he came to the shot of the dining room table, balloons floating. The windows beyond were dark, indeed, but not entirely. There was a streetlight giving off just a bit of illumination in the distance. Out on the road, near to the trees, it looked like someone was standing there.

Rondeau leaned towards the screen, his pulse racing. It could’ve been a shadow, something else, but he didn’t think so. It was a human silhouette. Like someone was there, watching the house.





SUNDAY





CHAPTER TWELVE / Plans


Peter was eating a hasty breakfast at home when his phone buzzed on the table. He took the call from Rondeau.

“Morning. What’s up?”

“Morning. So this is the story for the next couple hours,” said Rondeau. “New guy is talking to Lily Kemp’s co-workers at the hospital and following up with the doctor’s office and bank accounts.”

“Sounds good.”

“And I’m with Britney Silas. We’re doing the Direct Sample Evidence from toothbrushes. That goes to the NMPP and will get uploaded to the DNA database program. But that can take time, so I’m sticking with the sister, Addison Kemp, as she gets poked and prodded. She’s volunteered to take a polygraph for us, just to clear up a couple things.”

Peter scraped up the last of his eggs and continued listening.

“Search teams have been deployed to the man-made pond behind the Kemp’s home, dragging it, scouring the woods around the area. So far, nothing.”

“That’s too bad. Or I mean, good. Both?”

Rondeau hesitated. “Yeah.”

“You want me and Deputy Bruin in on that search?” It was really the sergeant’s call.

“No,” he answered. “I got something else for you. First of all, how you doing?”

“I’m good to go.”

“Face is okay?”

Peter raised a hand and touched the tender spots beneath his eye and along his nose. Swollen there, turning shades of purple. He knew Rondeau’s concern was genuine, but couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. And angry. I had a frigging showdown with some cowboy who basically drove me out of the bar. I backed down like some scared kid. Not like an officer of the law. “I’ll heal,” he said.