“Alyssa,” I say, “it’s Deputy Harper.” I point the flashlight at myself. Here I am. Deputy Noah Harper, all lit up in the basement of a dead couple’s house on the final night of his career.
She tries to back away some more but there’s nowhere to go. She stops moving. She stares at me and doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell if she recognizes me or not from the day her mother died.
“You’re going to be okay.” I sit the flashlight upright on the floor so the beam hits the ceiling. I keep my voice light. Nice and friendly. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her again, because it is going to be okay. “He’s not coming back.”
She keeps staring at me. Her fingertips are bleeding from where she’s tried to loosen the bolts from the wall.
“I’m going to find something to take this chain off you, okay? I bet I can find something among all these tools that’ll get it off you right quick.”
She says nothing.
“I’m taking you out of here, Alyssa, and back home to your uncle.”
Three
I find a pair of bolt cutters on the wall, but the blades look like they were used to cut bricks before being left out in the rain for a winter. I focus on the other end of the chain. It’s bolted to the wall next to the mattress Alyssa has been sleeping on. I find a socket set and get the right-size piece lined up with the first of the bolts holding the chain. My fingers are so sore from torturing Conrad Haggerty that I have to kick at the handle to get the first one to turn, but it does, and then I’m able to spin it free. I get no less resistance from the remaining three bolts.
I’m expecting her to run once the chain is loose from the wall, but she stays where she is. “Uncle Frank misses you, and he’s worried about you. Everybody is worried about you. The man that did this to you, we arrested him. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
She has her arms folded and her knees pulled against her chest.
“It’s time to go home, Alyssa. Now, you have a very important decision to make. I can either carry you, or you can walk with me. Which would you like to do?”
Slowly she puts out her hand. It’s shaking. I reach out and take it and we stand up together. She doesn’t go anywhere for a few moments, then she lets me lead her to the stairs. I carry the chain so she doesn’t have to. It’s heavy, and it feels grimy. We get to the top and the dust and the mold smell pretty good compared to the basement where Alyssa’s toilet was a bucket. Outside we stand on the porch and Alyssa looks up at the sky and I look out over the fields and we both suck in some fresh air.
We reach the car. The dirt floating in the air earlier has settled. There’s a warm breeze rippling across the paddocks, bending the blades of grass toward us. The thing about small towns is they give you large skies. Right now, the view is spectacular, not a single star lost to light pollution. The big sky makes me feel small, and makes Alyssa seem even smaller. By becoming a monster I’ve given her a chance at a big life. I don’t know what’s next for each of us — whether she’ll bounce back like she did after her mom died or if she’ll want to hide from the world. Whether I’ll end up in a jail cell next to Conrad Haggerty or if I’ll be put in the ground by his father. Big skies, big questions.
I get Alyssa seated and put the chain on the floor and ask her if that’s okay, or if it’s pulling at her ankle, and she stares at me and says nothing. I strap the seatbelt across her. There are no sirens or lights in the distance. Maybe Drew didn’t call. Maybe he couldn’t get a signal. Maybe he did call but Conrad hasn’t told them about the Kelly farm. Maybe Conrad bled out.
I pop the trunk and toss my bloody shirt in there. It leaves me with my uniform pants and a white t-shirt that looks clean enough. I get into the car and I flick the lever that sprays water over the windscreen. The wipers cut arcs through the dirt, streaky at first, then finally clearing. We drive into town. Alyssa stares out the window. I dial back the air conditioning and crack open the window. I think about calling Alyssa’s uncle. I think about calling Sheriff Haggerty. I think about calling my wife. In the end I call Dan Peterson, and ask him to meet me out front of the hospital in fifteen. I tell him to bring his work van. He says sure thing, but before he can ask why the signal cuts out. Out here where the lights don’t reach the sky, cellphone reception comes and goes like the tide.
The farmhouses are closer to the road now and soon they’re closer to each other too. Cellphone reception comes back. The paddocks fall away and make room for family houses on family-sized plots as we hit the edge of town. We drive over a bridge, giant metal trusses freshly painted red bolted together over a river forty feet wide and endlessly long, sweeping into town from the forest before sweeping back out. We hit Main Street. We pass stores and park benches and bars with plenty of neon and mercury. A quarter-mile up and a right will take us to the police station, and into the heart of Acacia Pines, population twenty thousand, but we go left instead, passing a cinema and a school and a park before hitting Acacia Hospital.
The hospital is three stories of white brick with a flat roof lined with satellite dishes. Square windows without any light behind them look out over the parking lot where there are a dozen cars, most of them belonging to staff. The hospital has three ambulances parked by the main door, but right now one is missing. It’s a small-town hospital with sixty beds. The surgeons and doctors can mend bones and insert stents and pacemakers and put you on dialysis, but they’re not going to give you an organ transplant. I know that, because Drew got sick a few years ago and needed a new kidney and had to travel for it.
I park out front next to Dan Peterson’s van. The back of it is dark with exhaust fumes. Somebody has written I wish your wife was this dirty with their finger through the dirt. He’s leaning against the side with his hands in his pockets and his stomach overhanging his belt and a cigarette overhanging his lip. Peterson is the local jack-of-all-trades and five years past retirement age. The sawmill and the quarry beyond and all the farms may provide heartbeats to the town, but when Dan finally retires, the rest of us are going to have to figure out how to build birdfeeders and shingle roofs and dig graves at the cemetery.
I open the passenger door of my car. I help Alyssa turn to the side so her legs dangle outside. Dan stares at her, recognizing her from the news.
“You can pick the lock?” I ask him.
“In under a minute.”
It takes him three.
“You want to tell me who had her?” he asks.
“It’ll be in the news tomorrow,” I tell him.
“Well, I’m glad she’s back safe,” he says, and he glances at my raw and puffy hands and gives me a casual salute before driving away.
I pile the chain onto the passenger seat and wipe my hands on my trousers, then I lead Alyssa into the hospital the same way I led her out of the Kelly house, with her little hand in mine. Doctors and nurses are waiting near the door. My guess is the missing ambulance is out getting Conrad. Alyssa has been in the news and they all recognize her, but they don’t make a big deal out of it, not wanting to scare her.
A nurse in her forties, slim and pale with gray streaks in her hair, comes over. Alyssa tightens her grip on my hand. The nurse gives me a slight nod, then smiles at Alyssa and crouches to get to her eye level. “How are you feeling, honey?” she asks. Alyssa hides behind my leg. “My name is Nurse Rosie, but you can call me Rose, if you like. How about we get you all cleaned up, huh?”
I look down at Alyssa. “You can go with her,” I tell her. “I’ll be out here to make sure everything goes okay.”
She waves her fingers to indicate she wants to tell me something. She lets go of my leg and I take a knee and she leans forward and cups her hand over my ear so she can whisper. “Is Uncle Frank mad at me?”
“Mad?”
“Mad