Chapter 9: Twenty-Three Hours
The call came from Rourke at seven-nineteen the following evening.
I was in the kitchen.
Tyler was at the table with his laptop, doing something that looked like coursework but probably wasn't.
The pot roast dish was finally washed and put away.
I answered on the second ring.
"We have him," Rourke said.
I sat down.
"He was at a motel forty minutes north of here.
Checked in under a fifth name — we found it through a credit card he apparently didn't know we'd flagged." A pause.
"He didn't resist.
He came out and sat down on the curb and waited.
Didn't say a word until his attorney arrived."
"Is he being charged?"
"Formally, yes.
The Ohio case gave us the strongest foundation.
The recordings from last night — yours and Tyler's — have been added to the file.
The prosecutor's office has been waiting for something like this." Another pause.
"There will be a process.
It won't be fast.
But it's started."
"The woman in Ohio," I said.
"Does she know?"
"She's been notified," Rourke said.
"Her son called us this afternoon, actually.
He wanted to know if there was anything he could do." A brief silence.
"I told him the same thing I'm telling you.
The process takes time.
But it's started."
Tyler was watching me from across the table.
I gave him a small nod.
His shoulders came down about an inch.
"Detective Rourke," I said.
"Thank you."
"Thank you, Mrs.
Diane," he said.
"Get some sleep tonight."
I set the phone down on the table.
"They got him," Tyler said.
"They got him."
He sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling for a long moment.
Then he looked at me.
"What do we do now?"
I thought about that.
I thought about the pot roast I'd made for a Sunday that had turned into something else entirely.
The good dishes I'd put out.
The grin on Tyler's face when he'd run to answer the door.
"Now," I said, "I think we eat something that isn't pot roast."
Tyler laughed.
It was short and surprised and entirely real, and it was the best sound I had heard in two days.
We ordered pizza.
We sat at the kitchen table and ate it straight from the box, and Tyler told me about his actual friends at college — the ones I hadn't heard enough about — and I told him about the neighbor's dog that had been digging under my fence all spring, and neither of us said Marcus's name again that night.
At some point Tyler said, "I'm going to call Lily tomorrow."
"She'd like that," I said.
"I want to apologize to her.
Even though I didn't know.
I still want to say it."
"That's a good instinct," I said.
"She'll appreciate it."
He nodded.
Folded his pizza crust.
Set it in the box.
"Mom," he said.
"That photo the detective showed you.
You found his face in four seconds."
"Yes."
"How?"
I thought about Karen's kitchen.
The fluorescent light.
The coffee stain.
The eight or nine faces spread across the table.
"I looked at every face like it mattered," I said.
"Because it did.
Because Lily was missing and Karen was sitting right next to me and I wanted to be useful." I paused.
"Some things stay with you when you look at them that way."
Tyler was quiet for a moment.
"I'm glad you looked," he said.
"So am I."
The back porch light was on.
The deadbolt was turned.
The chain was on.
And for the first time in two days, I didn't check the front window before I went to bed.
---
Some people walk into our lives wearing a face we're supposed to trust.
Sometimes the only thing standing between them and the people we love is one moment of paying attention.
Have you ever had a feeling about someone that turned out to be right — a feeling you almost talked yourself out of?
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