Centerville

Chapter 14

147 Chapter 14 As the minister pulled into his driveway, he saw lights inside his house, pouring out the windows. He walked quickly to the front door, which stood open with Nancy just inside. “Are you all right?” she asked. He closed the door behind him. “Is Sandi upstairs?” “I don’t know. I just called her but she didn’t answer.” “Why not? Where could she have gone?” Nancy shook her head. “She was here when I left. Maybe she fell asleep.” “Sandi!” the minister called. “Sandi, are you here?” If George had watched the minister driving away in his car, George wouldn’t have reached the minister’s house before Nancy returned. The minister told himself this, but the logic didn’t penetrate . “What’s going on?” his wife asked as he pushed past her and took the stairs two at time. Upstairs, he opened the door to Sandi’s bedroom. Quickly, he surveyed the empty room, then turned and went back down the stairs too fast, stumbling. “Wasn’t she up there?” Nancy asked. 148 “No.” Without stopping, he walked past her to the kitchen, scanned the room, then did it again. He couldn’t trust what he saw—an ordinary kitchen, neatly cleaned, the table freshly wiped. While driving home, he’d hardly felt the steering wheel under his hands, as if the car were carrying him of its own volition through the dark streets of Centerville. Pulling into his driveway, he’d had no clear memory of how he’d gotten there. Nancy came up beside him, and when she touched his shoulder , he turned so abruptly he knocked into her. “William, you’re frightening me. Tell me what’s going on. What was happening at the church?” He stared past her at the kitchen table where Sandi often left a note if she went somewhere. “George Fowler came to see me at my office,” he said. “I need to telephone the police.” “Do you think he could have taken Sandi? Do you think he came here?” The minister shook his head. “I don’t know.” Their telephone sat on the kitchen counter, and he reached for it, dialing the operator. When she connected him, he told the officer that George Fowler had come again to his church office. He described his wife’s arrival and how he had followed her back to his house where they found their daughter missing. “They’re sending someone out to the church and here as well,” he told Nancy when he hung up. “They said to wait at the house. A police car should arrive in a few minutes.” “What about Sandi? Do they think he took her?” Turning away, Reverend Edwards gave no answer. He walked through the downstairs rooms, searching them again, then went back upstairs. Once there, he walked through the bedrooms, opening closets and checking the bathroom. He stood in the middle of Sandi’s room, taking apart her desk with his eyes and staring at 149 the American history book on her bed, open to an illustration of a Revolutionary War soldier. Her slippers sat on the floor as if she’d just taken them off. He could still make out the impression of her body on the bedspread. “Did you find her?” Nancy called up. Her voice was shrill and faraway sounding as she came into the front hallway. “No,” he called back. “Why did that man come to the church? What did he want from you?” The minister came back down the stairs where she stood by the front door, but as he brushed past her and stepped outside, he hardly saw her. The light over the door gave him a clear view of the front yard. Sandi’s bike leaned up against the house. “Put it inside the garage when you’re done with it,” he was always saying to her, but she never listened. He stepped toward the garage where the sudden glare of headlights from a vehicle turning onto his driveway startled him. “Reverend?” someone called as he stepped out of the garage’s shadow. “Is that you?” “Yes,” he called back, registering that the vehicle was the police car. “Just making sure.” Officer Beckley moved from behind the door of the patrol car, as Jack Turnbow opened the door next to him and pushed himself slowly to standing. Beckley had just picked Jack up, and...