The Hiding Place by David Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

house—cooking meals on one burner, washing one dish and one cup in the sink…
    Maybe he could land a private security job or do some consulting once the hip was fixed…
    “So,” he said, “you’re back in the old homestead.”
    “The house you grow up in always seems like home, doesn’t it?” Janet said. She looked trim and fit in her work clothes, and despite the grim news they discussed, her voice and movements possessed a lively energy. “And with me working so much, and Ashleigh in her teenage years, I thought it would be good to have another parental influence around.”
    Stynes nodded, but he could tell Janet wasn’t fully convinced by what she was saying. He’d always liked Janet Manning. Even as a kid, in the swirl of her brother’s disappearance, she seemed pretty tough. As a seven-year-old, she didn’t cry or act scared when they interviewed her in the wake of the disappearance. Over the years, she always put on her best face and marched to the parole hearings without hesitation. Stynes knew her mother had died about seven years after her brother, and somewhere along the way Janet ended up pregnant and raising a kid by herself. He never knew—and never asked—who the father was. But she worked and supported herself, and Stynes sensed a measure of ambivalence about moving back into her childhood home. No independent person wanted to move back in with Dad. They did it, but they didn’t like it. Stynes concluded that if he’d had a daughter, he’d want her to be like Janet Manning.
    Janet pointed to an overstuffed couch, so he sat. The TV played a political show with the sound down, the screen dominated by a wildly gesticulating host in a tricornered colonial-style hat. “Dadwatches that junk,” she said, turning the TV off. She sat in a love seat perpendicular to the couch.
    “You’ve done all this before,” Stynes said, “so I don’t see that I have to give you any pointers.”
    “About that,” Janet said. She scooted to the edge of her seat. She rubbed her hands over the tops of her knees as though trying to generate heat. “Do you think—I mean, why am I doing this? Rogers is out now, and everything is over. Do I really have to do more interviews?”
    “You don’t have to do it,” he said. “No one can make you.” She nodded a little, so Stynes went on. “People in Dove Point remember the story. We haven’t had many murders here since I was on the force. Certainly none involving children. I encouraged you to do this when the reporter called because I think it’s important we remind people of what has happened and what can happen, even here. To be honest, this is twenty-five years. It’s probably the last time you’ll have to do this.”
    Janet still looked distracted. She nodded, as though she understood everything Stynes said and as though it made sense to her, but something told him it wasn’t all getting through. He watched her and realized how young she really was despite all she’d lived through. She was only in her early thirties, a young woman from where Stynes sat, staring down the barrel of retirement.
    “If you want,” Stynes said, “you can beg off. I’ll deal with the reporter.”
    “I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
    “Is something wrong?” Stynes asked. “You really seem to be struggling with this.”
    “Do you think—?” She stopped. She stared at a fixed point somewhere in the space between her and Stynes. “I guess that article about Dante Rogers got me thinking.”
    “About what?” Stynes waited. Janet didn’t answer. “Are you afraid? Do you think he’s going to hurt you or your family?”
    “No, not that,” she said. “He looks so pathetic in the picture.”
    “That’s what twenty-two years of being in prison for killing a child will do to you.”
    Stynes hoped that he could turn the conversation in a different direction, move the focus to the punishment of Rogers rather than Janet’s doubts or anxieties about the past or