South Of Hell

Chapter Seventeen

They had driven less than a mile when Louis asked Joe to pull over. He needed a quiet, empty space for this conversation. When he saw the Law Quad, with its open courtyard, he decided it was as close to a park as he would get.

Joe didn’t ask why they were stopping. She didn’t question him when he led Amy to another bench about fifteen feet away and asked her to sit there and read her book. And Joe didn’t say a word as he sat down next to her and let almost a full minute pass before he pulled his eyes from the stained-glass windows of the Law Library and met hers.

“I have a daughter,” Louis said. “Her name is Lily.”

Joe stared at him, not in shock at the news but in a tenuous kind of control.

“Channing seemed to feel that no matter what Kyla thought, it would be better for Lily if she knew about me.”

“Kyla doesn’t know he told you?” Joe asked.

“No.”

“Don’t you think that’s rather unfair of you two?”

Louis hadn’t thought about that, and Joe was probably right. But whatever had compelled Channing to tell Louis, it did not change what needed to happen now.

“How do you feel about this, Louis?” Joe asked.

“I’m…”

He paused.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I only know that when I looked at her picture, I wanted to know her. And I was glad she exists.”

“Why? Does it ease your guilt?”

He heard something in Joe’s voice that gave an edge to the question.

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t ease anything. Like I said, I just want…”

“Her forgiveness?”

He didn’t like that question, either. “Joe, I’m trying to share something with you here,” he said. “I don’t need you to heap more shit on me over this.”

Joe turned away, her shoulders stiff, her sharp profile even sharper with the tight set of her lips. He looked beyond her to Amy. She was examining the locket, opening it and closing it.

“Why do I have to know exactly how I feel about this right now?” he asked.

“Because you’re about to turn a little girl’s life — and her mother’s — upside down,” Joe said. “You can’t walk into that not knowing if you have what it takes to see it through.”

“I understand that once I walk in, I can’t walk back out. I know that.”

Joe met his eyes. “You walked out once.”

“I was twenty and scared to death.”

“And you’re not scared now?” Joe asked.

He pushed off the bench and stepped away from her. Then he stopped, knowing he was doing the one thing he just said he wouldn’t do, walking away when it got tough. And this was only a conversation with the woman he loved. If he couldn’t answer her questions, how was he going to answer Lily’s?

He turned to face Joe. “Of course I’m scared.”

Joe’s expression softened.

“But now that Channing has opened the door, for me not even to acknowledge her existence would be worse for her than if she met me and hated me.”

Joe nodded.

He had never told her much about his own father, Jordan Kincaid, just the fact that the man had left long before Louis had a notion of what a father was. Maybe this would somehow help her understood why he had never talked about him. But still, as Louis watched Joe now, she seemed to be struggling to summon the emotional support she knew was expected.

“I wasn’t trying to give you a hard time,” she said softly. “I only wanted to offer an objective perspective. There are a lot of emotions at stake here, and sometimes we can’t see through our own.”

“I know.”

She looked over to Amy. “We’d better get going,” she said. “We’re going to be late to meet Shockey.”

Louis nodded and walked to Amy. She had the locket in her lap, pushing something into the heart-shaped space. He thought for a moment that maybe she had found a small picture somewhere or ripped one from a magazine. But it wasn’t a photo she was placing in the locket; it was strands of what looked like her own hair.

She closed the locket quickly as he neared. “Is it time to go see Detective Shockey?” she asked.

“Yes. Are you ready?”

Amy stood up, hid the locket in her back pocket, and followed him and Joe back to the Bronco.

They met Shockey in a downtown cafe. All of the tables inside were full, and they were forced to sit outside under an umbrella that did little to protect them from the cool breeze and the cloudy skies.

Louis turned up the collar of his jacket and watched Amy. She wore a hooded UM sweatshirt. The hood was down, and her cheeks were pink, but she didn’t seem cold. She seemed to like being outside, interested in the bustle of students and traffic around her, and he found himself again wondering how isolated her life must have been in Hudson with only a sick aunt for company.

Joe ordered Cokes for herself and Amy. Shockey ordered a beer, and Louis asked for a club soda.

“This is the deal,” Shockey said, leaning over the table. “My boss says we can’t get any judge to sign a search warrant for the barn based on Amy’s dream.”

“We knew that,” Joe said.

“So I called the Livingston County tax assessor this morning,” Shockey said. “Brandt’s farm is in tax foreclosure. It’ll go up for auction in less than two months.”

“So?” Joe asked. “Until it does, it still belongs to him.”

“Yeah, but it helps,” Shockey said. “My boss thinks between that and the fact that Brandt hasn’t lived there for nine years, we can make a good case to search the farm on the premise that Brandt abandoned it and forfeited his rights to consent.”

“Abandonment takes ten years in this state,” Joe said.

“But we’ve also got the fact that Amy was living there, and that makes her a legal resident. She can give us permission.”

They all looked at Amy. She was listening intently.

“Amy’s consent might hold up to cover the day we found her there,” Joe said. “She was the only occupant at the time, and we had no reason to believe Brandt was even in the state. But now that he threw us off the property, her consent for a new search means nothing.”

“Brandt’s the one who said it’s her home, too, Joe,” Louis said.

“Even if they had been living there together for the last ten years, she’s a minor,” Joe said. “She can’t give consent over the adult owner’s objection.”

“Yeah, but all that would be fought out months from now by the lawyers,” Shockey said. “Right now, Brandt wouldn’t know what his rights were or what the abandonment laws say.”

“Do they have pizza here?” Amy asked.

“No,” Joe said. “Here, look at the menu. Pick something else.”

Amy took the oversized laminated menu and stared at it. Louis watched her. He knew she could read, and there were plenty of pictures, but still she seemed upset.

“So,” Joe said, “you’re going to lie to Brandt and do an illegal search and hope his lawyer isn’t smart enough to figure it out six months down the road?”

“The place won’t even belong to him six months down the road,” Shockey said.

“Then why not wait until it goes up for auction and then ask the new owners for permission to search it?” Joe asked.

“And what if Brandt somehow pays the taxes?” Shockey asked. “And even if he doesn’t, what happens to Amy? If we don’t find something to put Brandt back in jail, he’ll get custody of her.”

“Miss Joe…” Amy said.

“No judge is going to give this girl back to an abusive ex-con who can’t even support her,” Joe said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Louis said.

“Miss Joe…” Amy said.

“Besides,” Joe said to Shockey, “what makes you think she’s even strong enough to take you back out there and show you where she thinks…” Joe glanced at Amy and lowered her voice. “Do you have any idea what that could do to her?”

“She doesn’t actually have to go with us,” Shockey said. “She can tell us where to look.”

“She’ll have to go through another session with Dr. Sher for that,” Joe said. “That’s not easy for her, and she might never remember any more than she already has. Then what are you going to do? Dig up the whole barn floor?”

“Yeah, maybe we will.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” Joe said. “You and Judge Fells just appointed me Amy’s guardian for ten days. Whether she is allowed to undergo more hypnosis or visit that farm is totally up to me. And I won’t give my permission.”

Louis and Shockey stared at Joe.

“Miss Joe…”

Joe finally heard Amy and looked to her. “What is it, Amy?”

“I don’t see any of the things on my list on here,” she said.

“This is a new list,” she said. “The whole menu is a list. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Joe sat back and crossed her arms. She was staring at something across the street. Amy lowered her menu. The soft brown eyes moved from Joe to Louis to Shockey and back to Joe. Louis watched her. Like all kids, she didn’t need to understand the argument to feel the tension.

And he knew Joe was right. At this moment, Amy was a happy young girl, nothing like she had appeared in the cupboard at the farm. He couldn’t ask her to go back there, not in person and not in her dreams.

Amy caught his eye. “I know you’re fighting over my mother,” she said. “You think she’s dead, and you think that’s what my dream was about.”

“Amy, we’re sorry-” Joe started.

“Don’t be sorry,” Amy said. “I know in my heart my mother’s dead, or she would have come back for me. But I’m not afraid to go look for her.”

“Amy, remembering what happened could be very painful for you,” Joe said.

“But it’s more painful for her,” Amy said. “I think she’s been waiting a long time for me to come.”

Amy looked to Shockey. “And for you, too.”

Shockey blinked rapidly. His ruddy face had gone gray. He held Amy’s eyes for a moment longer, then rose quickly and disappeared into the restaurant.

Amy watched him, then looked down at her menu. “Tell him I’m sorry,” she said. “I do that sometimes.”

“Do what?” Joe asked.

“Get inside other people’s heads,” she said. “I shouldn’t do that. It’s not polite.”

Joe looked at Louis. He wasn’t sure what to say or if he even wanted to acknowledge what he knew Joe was thinking.

“So, if Dr. Sher says it’s okay,” Amy asked, “can we go back to the farm and see if I can remember more?”

Joe closed her eyes.

“I can do this, Miss Joe.”

Joe blew out a slow breath, opened her eyes, and gave Amy a nod. “I’ll ask Dr. Sher. If she says it’s okay, we’ll go back.”