Cold Springs(97)

Chadwick reached over to the ignition, removed the keys.

“Stay here,” he told Mallory.

“But—”

He got out, not waiting for her to finish.

The wind from the train was like asthmatic breathing; Jones was throwing rocks in the spaces between the cars.

“The girl told you what she needs,” she said. “Why don't you listen?”

“She's hiding. She knows something that scares her.”

“Yeah? So do I. In the last week, you've spent more time digging up your past than you have helping kids. You caught two people the cops want to see—that Race kid. Now Pérez. And you let them both go. It's almost like you don't want a solution. Like you get off on the pain. That scares me, Chad. It really does.”

In the back seat of the car, Mallory sat still, watching them apprehensively through the glass.

Chadwick knew he could get to her. He could convince her to talk, but he needed more time. He needed Ann. Once Mallory was face-to-face with her mother, the problems in San Francisco would become real to her. She would remember what was important.

Ann was the most talented interviewer of children he'd ever known. Even if it was her own daughter, Ann would know what to say. She would get Mallory to open up.

And she would temper Chadwick's desperation—his feeling that every time he looked at Mallory, he was back at the house on Mission, about to leave for the auction, Katherine telling him, “Don't worry, Dad. We'll be fine.”

He should have stayed. He shouldn't have allowed himself to be pressured into leaving. If he had talked to his daughter in private for just a little longer, he could've gotten the truth out. They could have reconciled. And Katherine would still be alive.

Now here was his second chance, and again he was being told to leave.

“I can't trust Mallory to someone else,” he told Kindra. “I can't let her go yet.”

She threw another rock, which pinged against a coal car. “Then you were wrong trying to help her.”

“I had to.”

“You're not getting me. You were wrong because you wanted to bury your grief about your daughter. That's why you decided to help Mallory. For a while, those two things went together. Now the girl wants to go on with the program. You want her to solve some goddamn mystery, but there is no mystery. There's just your past.”

“It's her past, too.”

“Maybe. But kids can put that aside. They can lock the most horrible memories into a box, pretend they happened to someone else, and go on with the present. Trust me on this, Chadwick—they have to. Now the girl's finally moving forward, and you don't want her to. It seems to me you've got a choice to make.”

The last boxcar rattled through the crossing, sucking the wind behind it, tugging at Chadwick's coat.

“Her mother is coming to town,” he said. “What am I supposed to tell her?”

“She ain't coming just for her daughter, is she?”

Chadwick didn't answer.

Jones threw the rest of her gravel at the train tracks. “That's what I thought. That's another choice you got to make, without the girl. I'll drop you at the car pool. Get yourself a set of wheels before Hunter sees you. Go into S.A.—take the night to work it out. Then get your ass back to Cold Springs in the morning before the cops arrive.”

“I wasn't talking about—”

“You're blushing, Chad. Do what Kindra tells you. And while you're at it, ask yourself why you keep setting yourself up for hurt. Okay?”

He didn't object as Kindra lifted the car keys from his hand.

28

Norma sat on her patio, drinking hazelnut coffee and staring at her pile of disconnected phones. Three Touch-Tones, the office line, the fax, two powered-down cellulars. After coming home from Laurel Heights—wishing she had never gone, never picked up David Kraft's call—she had found twelve new messages from reporters and worried Laurel Heights parents and clients, even one from a heckler, telling her simply, “Go home, wetback.” Norma had torn through the house, meticulously unplugging everything.

She couldn't afford the quiet. She should have been in her office, making calls, working to reassure the clients she still had left, but she couldn't make herself do it. Twenty-seven million, gone. Who would trust her with their money now?

Her lawyer had told her it could be worse. She'd gotten praise from the school board for blowing the whistle on the missing funds. The media, so far, had painted her as a good guy. None of the law enforcement agencies were seriously talking about pressing charges against her.

But John was still missing. The school's money had vanished—the bank in the Seychelles saying only that the funds had been transferred again, with proper authorization, to a numbered account at a different institution. Thirty families—one-fifth of the school population—had already announced they would be leaving Laurel Heights. The school was disintegrating. For the first time this morning, the Chronicle had run a front-page article speculating on a connection between the embezzlement and John Zedman's disappearance, and the story had been lurid and juicy enough to pop up in the national wire services. And Ann, goddamn her, had run off to Texas. Despite being crushed and humiliated, despite Norma's warning, Ann had flown to Chadwick with a hopeful light in her eyes. She was doomed, as permanently gone as John.