The Other Side by Mark Leichliter

Author:Mark Leichliter [Mark Leichliter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Level Best Books
Published: 2021-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

When Wendell finished briefing Sheila, he met the evidence technician in the driveway. There he briefly glimpsed the doll parts left on the Rodgers’s porch. He phoned Knudson, who was still en route, and told her to pick him up at the Centerplace building. He used the walk to think. Wood smoke rose from the chimneys of nearby houses. The rain had returned. Wendell didn’t mind. In the rain, sound softened, and objects grew muted, which encouraged focus. That was what he needed now—closer awareness. If they were to build a case against Evans, they would need every shred of evidence possible and could make no mistakes.

He passed now along streets that were paved and wound among a pretty wood where the pines were well-spaced and native grasses grew in the open spaces. Housing lots had been surveyed but no homes built; the wooden survey markers sported faded ribbons. The pavement shined black in the rain and led nowhere. At the bottom of a hill, a sign advertising the development lay half-hidden in weeds, weathered and encrusted with bird droppings. Two splintered posts rose above it. Wendell wondered if this is the route that Britany would have taken home had she not gotten in Jacob Bianconi’s car. “And then where, Britany?” Wendell asked the indifferent rain. “Where did you go?”

Wendell stopped. The rain dripped out of his hair and off his nose. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine Britany walking the opposite direction up this empty street, but all he could see was her father, the quiver of his shoulders that revealed his silent sobs, and Wendell thought of the children he had always wanted and never had, the family he had so often longed for. In the late fall, when the rains came and mist clung in the low places like spider webs and he knew a long winter awaited, he felt the absence the keenest. Yet he knew the thought of the ones lost because they had never been present was a much gentler pain than the loss that wracked Tom Rodgers. Wendell opened his eyes and walked on.

At the Centerplace, Wendell stood before the warmth of the gas fireplace. He stared at the chair where the security tapes revealed Britany sat on the night she disappeared. She inhabited the leather chair as if at home in her living room—one leg draped over a chair arm, her long hair swept over her left shoulder. There was a moment in the security footage, just as the screen on her phone lit up, and she looked at it before placing the phone to her ear, when she smiled. Something about the smile had plagued Wendell. Not because it was out of place. He had registered the smile originally simply because it told him that the caller had brought her pleasure rather than fear or annoyance. But now, he recognized what he had seen in the smile: a charming young woman aware she had the power to make others do what she asked.

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