Page 15 of Everyone Here Is Lying
“What?”
“Look,” Al says, pushing the laptop toward her. The sight of the yellow tape across the Woolers’ front porch—and what it signifies—distresses her. There are no further details. But it must mean they no longer believe that William’s daughter was snatched on the way home from school. Nora’s thoughts riot in her head. Did someone come into the house and take her? It defies belief. Nothing like this has ever happened in their town.
“I don’t understand,” she says stupidly.
“It’s pretty clear,” Al says. “They think something happened to her in the house. They probably think the dad did it.”
She looks up at him in disbelief. “That’s ridiculous,” she says.
“Is it?” The look he gives her is hard to interpret.
Ryan quickly glances up at the two of them. Nora rises from the table and puts some bread in the toaster. But she does it for something to do; she doesn’t know how she’ll be able to force it down.
Al and Ryan leave the table and get ready to join the search—they’re somber, tired, not as eager as the night before. Nora can’t wait for them to leave. Once they’re out the door, she searches for any other news on Al’s laptop, but there’s nothing else. She thinks of what Al said. She wonders if the police consider William a suspect. They always suspect the parents, don’t they? She feels a chill of fear. He’s a doctor, and highly respected in Stanhope. Well liked. It seems impossible that they might think him capable of doing his daughter harm.
She can’t shake her feelings of guilt, that she and William are being punished for what they’ve done. She’s terrified that the police will find William’s secret phone. Of course they will, now, if they’re treating the house as a crime scene. Collateral damage, that’s what she will be. She and her family, destroyed. And then she’s ashamed, because a little girl might be dead and she’s thinking about how it will affect her.
She gets ready, with shaking hands, for her volunteer shift at the hospital, while Faith gets ready for school, which is sure to be dreadful. There will be lots of tears at school today, perhaps additional support for Avery’s young classmates, to help them deal with it all.
Usually, Faith walks to school by herself. But today, Nora walks with her. She wants to hold her daughter’s hand, the way she used to, but refrains. They walk past the Wooler house at the top of the street, with its heavy police presence, the crime-scene tape, the curtains drawn—and she thinks of him in there, with his wife, their world collapsing around them. She wonders if he thinks of her at all.
•••
It’s not quitenine o’clock Wednesday morning when Gully and Bledsoe finish with the Woolers. The family is being taken back to the hotel by a uniformed officer to retrieve their things; the technicians will soon have finished with the house, and they can return. They still have fingerprints to process, but they’ve found nothing of interest, no sign that the little girl was harmed inside the house, no evidence of blood hastily cleaned up. William’s car has been transported to the crime lab, but they have left Erin’s car there. They know Erin was at work until after Avery went missing. They have to hope they will find her somewhere, soon, Gully thinks, and still alive, but with each passing hour, that outcome becomes less likely. It’s disappointing that the search has turned up nothing; even the sniffer dogs have come up empty.
Bledsoe says, “We have to consider the possibility that she may have been killed inside the house—strangled or smothered—and the best way to remove her body without the risk of being seen in broad daylight would be through the garage—in the trunk of the car, with the garage door closed. They’ve got a lock on the garage and an automatic garage-door opener—so the only ones who could have done that are the parents. And we know where the mother was.”
Gully nods slowly. It’s certainly a possibility that the father killed her and removed her from the house that way. She says, “If someone took her out the back and through the woods, our team would have found something.”
But none of the officers doing the door-to-door have found anyone who saw Wooler’s car entering or leaving the garage. No one seems to have seen anything the previous afternoon. No one saw Avery come home from school, or outside the house at all, alone or with someone else. There are no cameras in the area. No cameras in the intersections of the streets that lead to the Woolers’ house. No one has seen anybody unusual hanging around the house or neighborhood, or a strange vehicle in the area. The tip line set up last night has resulted in nothing useful so far. If Avery got into a car, she could be anywhere by now. They have her description out across the state and the entire country. Everyone has their eyes out for Avery Wooler.
They’ve arranged with the parents to do an appeal, with them appearing on TV. They will bring them back to the police station for that at noon today. Maybe that will yield something, Gully thinks. She hopes so. Because so far they have nothing. Except for doubts about the missing girl’s father.
•••
William can feelthe heightened tension between him and his wife and son. It fairly crackles in the silent police car as they are driven back to the hotel. When they arrive, he tells Michael to gather his things in his room. He wants to talk to Erin, and he doesn’t want Michael there.
Once inside their room he turns to her, his voice lowered so thatMichael can’t overhear from the adjoining room, and says, “What did you tell them?”
She looks at him, frightened, angry, and fires back a question of her own. “Where were you yesterday afternoon? Why weren’t you at work?”
He doesn’t know what to tell her. How long can he keep spinning the lies? Surely they’re going to find the phone any minute now, if they haven’t already. Someone from the motel might come forward. But he’s a coward—or maybe he’s a ridiculous optimist, he doesn’t know which. “I was burned out. I didn’t feel like being at work—I went for a drive.”
“Forthree hours?” she exclaims. “My God! They think you did something to Avery!”
“I didn’t!” he says, remembering how his blow knocked Avery off her feet, and then deliberately blocking it all out.
She looks at him, her demeanor cold, almost detached. “They know that you lose your temper, that you slap Avery sometimes.”
“You told them that?” Now he’s angry at her, feels betrayed. He does lose his temper, he’s not proud of it. He’s ashamed of it. He’s slapped his daughter on several occasions, but it was nothing like what his own father did to him. And unlike his own father, he was immediately swamped with remorse and guilt. And unlike his own mother, who did nothing to intervene, Erin instantly turned on him every time, more furious withhimthan with their rebellious, uncontrollable child.
And then somehow the problem always shifts; it’s no longer a problem between the two of them and Avery, because of something she’s done, or not done, it’s a problem between him and Erin and it becomes not about Avery’s behavior, but his. In the end, his wifealways makes excuses for Avery, but never for him. She always points out with an annoying air of superiority thatheis the adult. Avery is what has come between them; they both know it. The constant strain of dealing with her has set them at odds, pulled them apart. It has entrenched resentments, caused untold damage to their marriage. It’s ruined them. Erin is more progressive, more patient; he’s old-school and flies off the handle. They seldom agree at all anymore on how to handle Avery. They argue about it all the time, nurse resentments and grudges. They both worry about someone finding out, about Avery telling someone at school that her dad hits her, about the impact of it all on Michael. And now the police know their ugly little secret.
Now she’s angry too. “Of course I didn’t tell them! I’m not stupid. I know how it would look.” She takes a deep breath and says miserably, “They put Michael on the spot. He had to tell them the truth. I couldn’t call him a liar.”
William feels like he’s had a blow to the stomach. “Fuck,” he says.
“Don’t blame our son for this,” his wife hisses. “This is on you.”
