I grab hold of this and don’t let go. It feels like something, finally, and not the empty space we’ve been sweeping our arms through.
“So someone connected to Clay Lucas has been missing since the day of the shooting?” I ask.
Rowan nods. “Yeah. Could be nothing. Could be she decided to get out of this place after what happened. Maybe she felt guilty, having taken care of Clay, not seeing what he was capable of doing. Could be she’s somewhere just trying to get her head around it. Everyone at that center—Clear Horizons is the name—was pretty shaken up.”
“Or maybe she’s scared,” I say. “What if she knows how he got the gun? Or helped him get it?”
Aaron mulls this over. “Either way it’s a solid lead. Okay. Good. Good,” he says. “What’s next with that?”
Rowan tells him there’s a unit investigating the case as a missing person. They’ve already gone through her apartment and called friends and coworkers. The parents are flying in tomorrow, and there’s an alert out on her car, which wasn’t in the lot at her building.
I look at Rowan. “We should help with that.”
Neither man speaks. And I get it. They’re worried about me.
“I need to work,” I tell them. “And it will send a message to Wade—the 404—that he’s not impacting my life. That I’m not going to stop work and run away with him, or whatever the hell he thinks he’s going accomplish.”
Aaron bobs his head, mulls it over. None of us has any idea what his endgame is. But that’s true with every stalker. It’s a powerful compulsion. It feeds a sickness inside them. They fantasize about things that will never come to be. And contrary to my argument, they rarely give up until they’re made to. Until someone stops them.
“Okay,” Aaron says when he’s done thinking. “But first the composite. That’s the priority. Let’s find out who our 404 really is.”
Vera Pratt waits in a conference room. She’s past her due date and expecting her baby with excited anticipation. I remember that feeling. I’d had it with Amy. It changes after the first one, when you know what’s coming. You remember the joy, of course, but also the sleepless nights and long, hard days. And then there is acclimating the firstborn who’s been ousted from her throne as the only child. The social worker who made rounds at the maternity wing told us to expect some emotional upheaval after Fran joined our family. Amy would feel like a wife whose husband had suddenly brought home a younger version. A second wife.“That’s what it will feel like to her. Like a betrayal.”I remembered that description fiercely when I discovered Mitch’s affair.
We enter the room and make brief introductions. Me, Rowan, and the guy from tech who’s going to create the image of the 404 from our descriptions.
Vera is a tiny woman with a big belly. She’s young. Long dark hair, big round eyes.
“You must be excited,” I tell her. “I have two of my own.”
She smiles, though there’s something sad about it. “I’m tired, mostly,” she says, and I imagine the Nichols shooting has stolen much of the joy from her and her husband. “He wanted to be here,” she explains. “He’s already missed so many days at work. I told him to go. It’s not like he can help with this.”
Vera Pratt had been in the men’s department to buy a sweater for him. His birthday was that weekend. I’ve read her statement, though it felt light to me—like something was missing. She told the investigator that she’d run into the dressing room and gone to the very last stall. She’d left the door open and stepped up on the bench where people place their belongings and the clothing they removed to try things on. She did this to make the shooter think no one was in there.
Wade, the 404, came in soon after. He joined her in the room and insisted they lock the door. She didn’t argue with him. When he heard Rowan call out that it was all clear, he opened the door and left. She had started to have cramps and was hyperventilating so Rowan came to her aide, laying her on the ground and having her breathe into his cupped hands. The paramedics came soon after and took her to the hospital. That was it. That was all she remembered. She never set her eyes on the shooter.
I think about this and what Wade told me. How he saw Clay fall to the ground and then went into the dressing room to see about the pregnant woman. To help her. The stories don’t match. But that’s not why we’re here, so I leave it alone. For now.
We work for an hour. I have the most to offer because of the time I spent with him on that back road. The composite is close, but there’s something about it that doesn’t capture him. I think about his expressions, how they changed so drastically. In an instant. And how an expression can make the difference between Wade’s picture being noticed or passed by. I tell the technician that we have to include his height. Anyone over six foot four is distinct. That’s something he can’t hide with a smile.
When the tech leaves, Rowan and Vera push back from their chairs. I know I should do the same. Get up and say goodbye. This woman has been through enough. But I can’t. I don’t. There’s something she’s not telling us.
I reach out and touch the back of her hand.
“Can I ask you one more thing?”
Chapter Eleven
It’s 4:22 in the morning. I stare at the clock on the cable box in the study. I came here thinking I might find more sleep on the sofa, as discouraging as that was, after waking in a cold sweat, heart racing, head on fire. I must have been dreaming the dream for a while.
Clay Lucas, his back to me. Wade, hands in the air, pleading for his life. Vera Pratt flashing by, disappearing into the dressing room. Then Clay turns. He sees me and I see him and Wade starts to move. Clay turns back when he catches a glimpse of this movement. I fire my weapon, but the bullet moves in slow motion. Clay turns one last time, he sees the bullet, his face is so young, and he’s so scared. He opens his mouth and calls to me. Just one word:Stop!
I shake off the dream and watch the numbers turn, minute after minute. I go over Vera Pratt’s statement, the new one, the appendix. The one that’s changed everything. The one that’s caused this nightmare. I hear her voice, apprehensive at first when I told her about my conversation with Wade. The 404.
“He said he came into the dressing room after I killed Clay Lucas. He said he wanted to help you, but then why would he insist on locking the door if he knew the danger had passed?”
She looked at Rowan as though he might save her from having to tell the last part of her story. The part she left out when she was interviewed the day after the shooting.
“My husband was at the hospital the whole time. I didn’t want him to know.”
