Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(88)

“Any sign of a burglary?”

“No, everything was in its place. Nothing was broken. No one had forced a way inside—but that’s not where she was taken. She went to Cowan’s down in Five Points, the drugstore where she used to get soda pop and sweets. She told me about it one night. I remember . . . ,” he said faintly. And then, as if also remembering that we were there, he added, “She didn’t often talk about good things, good times. So I thought . . . maybe I thought I’d go down there and see. It’s been a hard month, and a hard week for her especially. Maybe she wanted to take a walk, treat herself a tiny bit. That’s where she always went.”

I removed my own napkin and stood. “Mr. Gussman, my name is Lizbeth Andrew. I’m a friend of your wife’s.”

He nodded vigorously, and then apologetically. “Yes, yes. She told me . . . I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but she’s gone, you understand?”

“Gone where?”

“To Chapelwood,” he said, like the word was sick in his mouth. “He was there—her father. He took her right off the street. She had some kind of fit, that’s what the shopgirl said. She fainted outside by the icebox, and when people saw her, they tried to help. Then her father came. He put her in a car, and drove away with her!”

Simon adjusted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “Oh God . . .”

“We have to go to Chapelwood. We have to get her back!”

“But you don’t know for certain that’s where she’s gone,” he protested. “Let’s take a moment and be calm about this.”

I hated to do it, but I had to point it out. “But, Simon, her parents went to live there, after he was acquitted. It’s the only logical destination.”

Pedro held out one hand, gesturing toward me. “She’s right—Ruth would not go anywhere with her father, not willingly . . . and she’d never go to Chapelwood again, not if her life or soul depended on it. I came here because I did not want to go there alone, because I think they’d shoot me, too, just like Father Coyle. I do not have a gun, but I thought you might. And you’re a big man, with a badge from a big city. They’ll listen to you . . . or . . . at least they’ll listen to you before they’ll listen to me.”

He wasn’t wrong, but I shook my head anyway, and I told him, “You can’t go there. Stephenson would take any flimsy excuse to murder you on sight, and if he does it out there, no one will ever find your body.” He began to protest, but I cut him off. “It’s true, and you know it as well as we do.”

“But she is my wife, whether they like it or not! I can’t stand here and let them have her.”

“And you won’t,” I promised him. “But if you insist upon visiting that enclave, then let the inspector and me go first. We’ll drive out to Chapelwood immediately, and you will go to Chief Eagan’s home and tell him what’s happened. He’s a good man, and though he’s no longer the chief in a proper sense, there are other good men who will answer his call. If you must storm the place, storm it with them. Please? Will you promise me that? Don’t leave us at the reverend’s mercy, but follow us with reinforcements.”

He was warming to the idea, but not committed to it yet. He wanted to rush in where angels fear to tread—but that was our job. Even if it was his job, too, from a certain angle, we were better equipped to handle whatever we might find there . . . or that’s what I told myself. I’d faced worse before. Simon had faced worse before.

We’d surely faced its equal, at any rate.

Pedro had never met anything of the kind—not directly, I supposed, and though he was stout of heart and pure of spirit, those fine traits and a sense of fair play might only hinder him in the battle to come.

? ? ?

I was already thinking about it that way, Emma. Can you imagine? What ought, under any sane circumstances, amount to a knock on a church door and a request to speak with a young woman . . . already I knew, and believed, and feared, that we were in for something terrible.

I’d certainly had enough warning. So far, everyone we’d met who was worth a damn in Alabama had told us to stay away from Chapelwood. Bad as things had become in town, somehow it was so much worse out there at the reverend’s compound, worse than anyone could know. Worse than bigots, and worse than robes or maybe even axe murders—of which the congregation played some terrible part. Oh yes, I knew that now. So did Simon. I saw it in his eyes, when he made his promises to Pedro, and gave his instructions, and jotted down a message for Chief Eagan on a piece of the hotel’s stationery.

The chief would come. That’s one more thing I was sure of.

But was that a good thing or a bad thing? Good for us, I believed. Bad for him, I feared.

There’s always the chance that it won’t matter anyway. We’re miles and miles from the ocean here, my sister, but I can hear it calling all the same—ringing in my ears, calling like it once did, all those years and years ago. Years and years, miles and miles. A different way of saying the same thing: that I am so far away from you, farther than I’ve ever been in my whole life. I’m now a whole generation away from our nights reading in your room, and from my nights not-reading-at-all in my own room, with Nance.

I know, I know. You don’t want to hear about that. You don’t want to hear about her. Well, too bad. You were the two people I loved most in all the world, and in that way, you are stuck with each other. Like it or not. Even if you’re only dead, and she’s only lost.