“Still not woken up. Probably never will. But if he does, I’ll be asking him about her.” Paul moved towards the front door. Elijah stood and followed him.
“You’re heading down there?” Paul nodded and Elijah looked frustrated. “I hate this. I hate that I can’t do shit to help.”
“You know this woman. You cared about her?”
“Care,” Elijah snapped. “She’s alive, somewhere.”
“Sorry, force of habit.” Paul shrugged thinking back to all the other missing people’s cases the two men had worked over the years and how often it was bodies—not people—that were found at the end of the search. “Think about her—the woman, not the case. Try and think about what the hell she’s doing all the way over there. Where would she be going? Why would she just leave?”
“I’ve spent most of the day trying to turn off my feelings so I can think clearly,” Elijah replied.
“Consider this. You know something. Something no one else knows, not even her husband. You said she was leaving him for you, that you both had this new life mapped out. You said she was frightened of him, right?” Elijah nodded and Paul continued. “So think about it, why would she leave her kids behind if she was so frightened of him? Why would she leave you behind if you were her future?”
Elijah stared at his friend and partner, his brain whirling on the questions that Paul had just asked, questions that he’d been asking himself since this morning. Paul was right. Elijah did know Delores more than her husband, and something was incredibly wrong with the whole damned thing.
“I don’t know,” Elijah finally admitted. “None of this makes any sense.”
“So think about it, emotionallyandfactually. I need both the cop and the man on this one before either something serious happens to that woman or her husband calls off the search for her.” Paul opened the door, letting a slow trickle of warm air into the house. “If she’s not stable right now, which both you and Michael Stanton’s stories are disagreeing on, well, I wouldn’t like to think of the dangers she might be in.”
“What do you mean?”
“Michael Stanton said that his wife was perfectly fine the last time that he saw her, and that her mental wellbeing was the best it had been in years.” Something akin to pity flashed across Paul’s face as he watched Elijah become more bewildered than previous. “Like I said, I know you, and I’m inclined to believe you over him, but I need proof because your word won’t hold up in a court. Find me some evidence, buddy.”
Paul walked away, heading back to his patrol car and getting inside. He waved once before pulling away from the sidewalk. Elijah closed the door and looked back into his front room. Paul was right. He needed to think about not just the facts of this case, but about the feelings involved too.
The problem with that was that where Delores was concerned, there were an awful lot of feelings.
Chapter Eighteen
Elijah
Elijah climbed into his pickup and slipped on his seatbelt.
He’d been stewing on Paul’s words for several hours, with images of Delores plastered across the inside of his brain. He needed to get out of the house and clear his head.
He’d always been a cautious man, never one to believe in fate or in the truth in the stars. He believed in facts and figures. The here and now. The ever present truth that he could see and believe in.
His father had died from liver disease over ten years ago, leaving behind his long-suffering wife and Elijah. At first things had been great. Both Elijah and his mother were finally free of the burden that Harry Schiver had weighed them down with for most of their lives. It wasn’t that Harry wasn’t a good man. He was. He just couldn’t stay sober enough to be the good man he was. Alcohol was his nemesis.
It was his air.
It was his heart.
It was his soul.
It was his everything.
Until it was his end.
The lies his father had told to hide his problem warred on the real to the fantastical. But the beatings he inflicted upon his wife while drunk were unforgiveable. Harry Schiver had helped mould the man Elijah was today.
Mary Schiver on the other hand believed in dreams and flying free. She believed almost everything that came out of Harry’s mouth and at times Elijah had to wonder if she were the real one with the issues, and not Harry.
Mary had passed barely a year ago, after a brief battle with cancer. Elijah hated the term battle with cancer. It made him envision his mother dressed in armour, sword in hand, war paint on her once rosy cheeks. In actuality, the image couldn’t have been further from the truth. She’d discovered a lump in her breast on a Tuesday and two weeks later she had died in her sleep. Looking small and frail against a hospital bed. He’d always remember that picture, it was seared into his mind. The cancer had already sucked most of her life away by the time it had been found. She didn’t stand a chance.
And just like that, Elijah was alone for the first time in his life.
It wasn’t something with which he feared, the aloneness,; it was more the shock of the event itself that rocked him. For all of his adult life he had cared for either his mother or father in some respect. Now there was no one. He only had to shop for himself. Cook for himself. Clean for himself. He didn’t need to drive over to his mother’s after work to eat dinner with her anymore. He didn’t need to keep his phone on in case either parent phoned in the middle of the night, urgent for him.
