Page 30 of The Gallagher Place
Marlowe hung her head, staring at the chipped linoleum. She felt like bolting out the front door at that very moment but found the resolve to try again. “The detective who spoke to me, Ariel Mintz, she seemed competent. And she believes this Gallagher situation could lead to answers about Nora.”
“I only want justice,” Damen said. “Is that too much to ask?” He gazed out the window. When the glass was that dirty, it made the whole countryside appear stained. “And, anyway, I mostly talked with the other one. Vance.”
Marlowe waited for him to continue, but he just kept staring. As awkward as the conversation was, she needed to know what he thought about Harmon—and any theories he was harboring that he might have shared with Ben Vance.
“Well, what do you think happened to Harmon Gallagher?”
“Those dogs ran straight toward that barn,” Damen said. “I always remembered that.”
“The bloodhounds,” Marlowe said.
“They were brought in the day after, right before the larger search party started. The police claimed it was best to give the dogs a go, before a load of people stomped all over the land and confused the scent. You remember that?”
“I remember.” She had the specific memory of Damen holding out Nora’s pillowcase to the dog handlers. It was the greatest moment of hope she’d felt since Nora vanished. Here was something finite and scientific. These dogs had been trained. They would track her. They could detect things humans could not. After sniffing thepillowcase, they ran toward the trash bins and circled the area, and then one of the hounds lifted his snout to the air and howled. As a unit, they tore across the street, looped around to the open barn doors, and dashed up and down the aisle, pausing to sniff, occasionally running outside and then back in again.
“But it amounted to nothing,” Damen said. “There wasn’t a damn thing in that barn.”
He continued staring out the window, eyes glassy, like an old sage waiting for a revelation. And then his lolling head snapped to attention.
“Tell me, Marlowe,” he said. “How much time did you two spend in that loft?”
“I’ve already told you this,” she said.
“Tell me again.” He smiled placidly. “I’m getting old.”
“A lot.” Marlowe twisted her hands together. “We started when we were twelve. We used to go up there every weekend.”
“What did you do?”
“We just talked.” Marlowe chewed her bottom lip. “Sometimes spied on the Gallagher brothers when they were still around.”
It had been embarrassing to confess to their childish tricks in front of Detective Brierley all those years ago, and it wasn’t any easier now.
“Did your brothers know about this? Did they ever hang out with her up there?”
“It wasourplace.”
“Of course it was.”
All the hours they spent up there, running down the aisle, scraping their knees on the rough rungs of the ladder. Skin, hair, blood, secrets. They had sprinkled pieces of themselves all over that barn.
“You and your family,” Damen said, his voice turned low. “Messing around on land that wasn’t yours.” Marlowe tensed at thethrob of fury in his words. “Stirring up trouble with those Gallaghers, getting Nora caught up in it. And if that boy knew something, now he’s dead too.”
Marlowe had her answer now. Damen had told a deluded, jumbled version of this story to Ariel and Ben. Her chest tightened, but she pushed back: “The Gallaghers wouldn’t have done anything to Nora. They were never angry with us.”
Damen scoffed. “You were just a kid.”
“Mr. Miller.” Marlowe was treading on dangerous ground, confronting him like this. “What exactly do you think happened?”
He grunted and turned his body away from the question, shaking his head. Marlowe’s pulse hammered against her throat.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But someone does.”
He kept her sneakers waiting for her in the hall, but he was beyond hoping that his daughter would return. That loss had hardened in his mind. What still haunted him was that he didn’t know why.
“I wonder what Nora would look like,” Damen said. “Sometimes I see you, Marlowe, and it’s as if you’ve barely aged. It’s only when I look at the old pictures that I see all the changes.”
He believed she had changed for the worse. He didn’t have to spell it out for her. In the beginning, when they grieved together, Damen would tell Marlowe lots of things. His favorite stories about Nora, and she would share hers. Jennifer would join in with anecdotes.
