“What? No. No, that isn’t the man I know.”
Hugh didn’t have time for this man’s existential crisis. “Did he exhibit any violent tendencies when you employed him?”
“George? Never.”
“Was he pro-life?”
“Well,” the pastor said, “our congregation believes in protecting the rights of the unborn—”
“Enough to kill people to get your message heard?”
The pastor drew in his breath. “I don’t appreciate being tried for my faith, Officer—”
“Lieutenant. Lieutenant McElroy. And I don’t appreciate people who waltz into a clinic and start killing innocent bystanders.”
“Killing?My God.”
“You can have Him,” Hugh said under his breath. “Listen, Pastor, I don’t mean to attack you. But there are people in that clinic who might die. Anything you can tell me about George Goddard that could help me understand him and his motivations would be greatly appreciated.”
“I met him a little over fifteen years ago,” Pastor Mike said. “He showed up one night in the church, carrying his baby. She was sick, feverish. His wife was gone.”
“Dead?”
“No. She left him, but he never would say why.”
Hugh’s mind began to turn, mixing possibilities. Had she run because her husband was violent? Had he stolen the baby and left her? Was she still alive somewhere?
“Do you know her name?” Hugh said, pulling the cap of a pen off with his teeth.
“No,” the pastor said. “He wouldn’t even speak of her. It was always just George and Lil.”
“Lil?”
“His daughter. Good girl. Used to sing in the church choir.”
All Hugh had known about George’s daughter was that she had come here for an abortion. But now, he also knew her name. Hugh held his hand over the speaker of the phone. “Lil Goddard,” he barked at the young detective. “Find her.”
—
HUGH KNEW ALL THE WAYSto find someone who didn’t want to be found. You looked at bank records and credit card receipts and phone records. You followed aliases and money trails. The primary advantage a detective had was that he was pursuing a truth, while the person hiding was living a lie. Truth tends to gleam, like the glint of a penny. Lies, on the other hand, are a series of loops—eventually they will trip you up.
It had been the car radio that tipped him off. He had taken Annabelle’s minivan to get the registration renewed and on the way punched at the five preprogrammed radio buttons to find NPR. There was an oldies station, an acoustic station that always made him feel like he’d nod off at the wheel, a classical music channel, and one that played nonstop Disney tunes for Wren. The NPR station, however, had been reprogrammed to a country station.
Hugh had punched through the buttons again. True, he was rarely in this car, but Annabelle hated country music.
He could still remember her lying with her head in his lap when they were dating, telling him that what she hated most about the Deep South was the constant barrage of songs about men with trucks, men with cheating wives, men with cheating wives in trucks.
Hugh had reset the radio channel to NPR, got his wife’s car registration, had the oil changed, and even went through the car wash. He didn’t think about it again for a week, until he came home early from work. He knew Wren would still be at school, and when he heard the shower running, he grinned and stripped off his clothes, planning to join Annabelle. It wasn’t until he reached the bedroom that he heard her belting out “Before He Cheats.”
He was still standing at the threshold of the bathroom when the water turned off and Annabelle opened the door, wearing a towel. “Hugh!” she shrieked. “You scared me to death! What are you doing here?”
“Playing hooky,” he said.
Annabelle laughed. “Naked?”
“That was a happy accident,” he replied.
He put his arms around her and started to kiss her. He tried not to wonder about her sudden interest in country music or whether it was his imagination that she had stiffened at his touch.
