Crash & Burn

“Where’d she get the scotch?” Kevin drawled.

Thomas Frank flushed. He picked his coffee cup back up, took a sip. “I don’t know.”

“Car keys?” Wyatt piled on.

“In the basket by the front door. It’s not like she’d been ba

“Probably don’t recommend her drinking either.” Kevin again.

Thin lips. “No. They don’t.”

“But she does.” Wyatt, jerking the man’s attention back to him. Because now was the time; he could feel it. Thomas Frank was agitated and angry. Fractured and unfocused.

And he’d just given him most of his and his wife’s life story, without ever mentioning a little girl name Vero.

Wyatt leaned forward. He stared deep into Thomas’s eyes, as if searching for the truth, or maybe just trying to figure out if the man really was as big an asshole as they suspected. From the other side, Kevin did the same.

Closing in. Dropping the hammer.

“Tell us about your daughter,” Wyatt said. “Where was she last night?”

Thomas Frank didn’t recoil. He didn’t shudder reflexively or even jerk away. Instead, he regarded them blankly. “What?”

“Your daughter, Vero. The little girl who’s missing.”

Of all the reactions Wyatt had been expecting, this wasn’t it. Thomas closed his eyes. He sighed heavily. “I don’t have a daughter.”

“Nicky’s daughter, then—”

“Sergeant . . . We don’t have kids. Any kids. Not mine, not hers, not ours. And I would know. We’ve been together twenty-two years.”

*   *   *

“LOOK, EVER SINCE the first concussion, Nicky has had trouble sleeping. She has horrible nightmares, except the dreams, episodes, whatever, don’t always happen at night. It’s like her brain has been turned inside out and upside down. She can’t remember people she knows—say, my name, but on the other hand she rants about people who don’t exist. Best I can tell, the real has become imaginary, the imaginary, real. We’ve consulted with doctors, played with some meds. But the best advice the docs have for us is to practice our patience. Traumatic brain injuries take time to heal.”

“Vero doesn’t exist.” Wyatt had to test out the statement. Because of all the information he’d expected to learn from this conversation, that wasn’t it.

“There is no Vero.”

“But you know the name,” Kevin pointed out, looking as perplexed as Wyatt felt.

“She’s called it out before, mostly in her sleep. Plus there’ve been some . . . episodes. Look, in the begi

“When Officer Reynes was at the scene,” Wyatt pressed, “he claimed your wife was pretty adamant. She’d lost Vero. She was just a little girl. She had to be found. Your wife sounded pretty convincing.”

“Welcome to my world.” Thomas Frank sighed again. He didn’t sound sarcastic; more like a man who was very tired. “I can give you the name of our neurologist, Dr. Sare Celik,” he offered. “Maybe she can help you understand.”

“Could the name come from a family member? A sister, past friend?”

“Nicky doesn’t have any family. When I met her she was just a teenager and already on her own, had been for a couple of years. She doesn’t like to talk about it. In the begi

“Walk us through last night. What happened?”

“Nicky cooked chicken,” Thomas replied immediately, “meaning it was a good night for her. Focus is tricky with TBIs. Sometimes she starts a project, say, cooking, and then . . . blanks out. Walks away or something. But yesterday, she started and finished baked chicken, with no fires in between.”

“What were you doing while she cooked?”

“Returning some calls. In the house, in case I needed to jump up and turn off a burner, but trying to squeeze in some work.”

“You ate di

“Alcohol isn’t recommended for people recovering from brain injuries,” Thomas recited.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“No wine, no beer, no alcohol. We ate chicken, a garden salad, and garlic bread.”

“And then?”

“We watched some TV. Home and garden cha

Wyatt got the time, name of show, and wrote it down.

“So it’s now eight P.M. . . .”

“More like seven thirty. Nicky dozed off on the couch. I glanced at the clock, figured it was too early to call it a night, so again, I should get some work done. I placed a blanket on my wife, then crept out the back to the work shed.”

“When did you return?”

“I don’t know. Eleven P.M.”

“And you discovered Nicky missing?”

“I noticed she wasn’t on the sofa. But my first thought was that she must have gone upstairs to bed. I watched the evening news, then headed up myself. That’s when I realized my mistake.”

“What’d you do?”

“Went around the house, calling her name. Then wised up and checked the driveway for her car. Noticed that was gone, too, not a good idea in my opinion, so I called her cell.”

Wyatt nodded, encouraging the man to continue.

But Thomas Frank simply shrugged. “She never picked up. I honestly didn’t know what my wife was doing till the hospital called and said my wife was in the emergency room. That’s the first I knew of the accident.”

“What do you think your wife was doing from eight P.M. to five A.M.?” Wyatt asked.

“I don’t know. Driving,” Thomas stuttered, “drinking” being the other obvious answer.

“Any person she might have met? Friend, confidante?” Lover?

“We’re new to the area. Had barely unpacked when Nicky suffered her first fall. We’ve only met medical perso

Wyatt thought Mr. Frank sounded a tad resentful.

“Any reason she’d be on that stretch of road? Restaurant, shop, favorite haunt around there?”

“We haven’t gotten out much.”

“Your wife partial to a particular brand of scotch?”

Thomas thi

Wyatt changed tack. “And Vero? Any reason to get the police involved on a wild-goose chase to find an imaginary child?”

“She doesn’t mean it like that. You and I know Vero doesn’t exist. But for Nicky . . . Vero, something about her, is very real.”

“So what set her off before?” Wyatt asked. “When we first arrived.”

“I have no idea. I often don’t. Routine and redundancy; that’s my wife’s life for the next year.”

“In between bottles of scotch?”

“Look.” Thomas Frank leaned forward, rested his hands on his knees. “I don’t know what happened last night, but you can check my wife’s record. This is her first offense. Can’t you just issue a ticket or something?”

“Issue a ticket? Mr. Frank, your wife is facing at least one count of aggravated DWI. It’s a felony offense.”

“But she didn’t hurt anyone!”

“She hurt herself. According to the statutes, that’s good enough.”