It is interesting that Jenna used his garage’s line. If he is involved with the drugs, surely he’s not stupid enough to give out that number to people buying from him. But if Jenna were just dabbling, maybe had only heard Fauver was in the game, she would have called him straight up.
“Does someone else work for you? Anyone else who would have answered the phone?”
“Nobody.” Fauver turns to go back inside.
She grinds her molars so hard it’s a wonder she doesn’t feel a toothcrack. She shouts to his back. “Wait. While I’m here I’d also like to ask you some questions about Sabrina Riley.”
He stops and turns. “I don’t know who that is either, lady.” But there’s the slightest shift in his bearing. His fingers tense. His shoulders rise.
“You were arrested after the two of you got into an altercation in front of Hines’s Bait and Tackle in January, 1991. So you met her at least that once.”
“I don’t recall the incident.”
“You have absolutely no memory of getting into an argument with a teenage girl that led to your arrest? I have some trouble believing that.”
“What you believe isn’t my problem.”
“You must fight with a lot of women, then, if that particular day is so unremarkable. I noticed a few domestic charges on your record.”
“If you’re here about Angela you can tell her to go fuck herself. I haven’t seen or heard from her in four years.”
“Women who give you a hard time tend to go missing, it seems.”
This gets to Fauver. She can practically feel it, heat coming off him now, the twitch of his muscles. She’s hit a sore spot.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Angela ran off. I didn’t do shit to her.”
“No one has seen Sabrina Riley since ’91. Not long after your argument with her. I have a theory that she might have been hiding a pregnancy, and there’s word that the two of you were romantically involved.” It’s a leap, but she’s leaning on the dumb talk from the guys at the station.
“No way. That skinny little bitch? Couldn’t hide anything on her. She was all bones.”
Callie has to surpass the urge to smirk. This is where she wants him. Scared, slipping up. “So you do remember her?”
The color rises in Fauver’s cheeks. “She came after me, okay? I was minding my own business, forgot she even worked at that store, and she’s there screaming at me, going absolutely apeshit, saying I ruined her life.”
Callie makes another tally mark in the column for Fauver as the father. It makes sense, Sabrina would level that at him if he got her pregnant, left her without any help. Still, she wants to hear it from Fauver himself. “Why would she say you ruined her life?”
“She was crazy. I have no idea why she would say that.” She’s so tired of that word.Crazy Sabrina. Crazy Jenna.Crazy is a blank check men write themselves to deal with women however they want.
“What had your relationship been before that day? She wanted more from you and you broke it off? Let me guess, you were just trying to have fun and then she needed something from you and that pissed you off? What could have made you so mad, Fauver? That you went in the bait shop and broke that window? What did she do to you?”
Fauver opens his mouth, but then something over Callie’s shoulder catches his attention. She turns in time to see a car in the parking lot of the garage. It cools him off, the presence of another person, and he comes back into himself, gathers his thoughts. A shrug of the shoulders, slight shake of his head. The heat goes out of the moment, which is both good and bad. He won’t fly off the handle, and he won’t let anything else loose. “I’ve got things to do. And I’ve got no obligation to talk to you. And for the record, she was the one who broke the window.”
Fauver stalks away, ducks to speak to the driver in the lot. He looks once, over his shoulder at her as she walks back to her car, angling his body to block her view of whoever he’s talking to. He’s a big man, but still, she catches him accept an envelope from the driver and slip it into his pocket, the snake tattoo along his arm undulating with a smooth, unexpected grace.
Fauver disappears around the back of the house as she pulls away. She thinks of what he said about Sabrina Riley having been thin. How he didn’t think she could hide a pregnancy. But some women, especially first-time mothers, don’t show for a while. Jane had complained about it, sending Callie pictures when she was five, six months pregnant. I thought I would look like a bountiful-mother-earth-goddess and I just look like I ate too many slices of pizza.
The timing, three months before the baby was found, makes it a little more of a stretch, but not impossible. Sabrina could have worn loose clothing. And there was definitely something there, something he didn’t want to tell her. How she had to back him into admitting any relationship with her. To even knowing her at all. Why deny it, unless all these years later there was something he was ashamed of, guilty about? Something he was eager to hide.
CALLIE
Her next stop is the tackle shop where Sabrina Riley worked. Inside Callie is greeted by dusty glass counters stocked with fishing reels and rod parts, and behind that, a burbling minnow tank and a yellowed fridge that looks older than she is. Tattered newspaper articles bragging about prize-winning pickerel catches taped along the freezer. Next to that, a sign written in black marker on a piece of posterboard.WORMS MAGGOTS MINNOWS FROGS.
An older man steps into the shop, tips the brim of his baseball cap with hands scarred from years of handling fishhooks and lures. “Help you? I’m Gary Hines, owner. I came in when I saw your patrol car out there.”
“Callie Hauser.”
“So, you’re the new chief, huh? Frank Caputo is a good friend of mine. Jimmy, too, of course…”
