Page 30 of Honest Neglect

Leroy and Frank were on their feet in an instant, their eyes pinned to the windows. We all exchanged a look. This could be Paul—or it could be someone sent to take us all down now that we were all in one place and willing to open the door to an unknown person.

There was only one way to find out.

Chapter Seventeen

Lily

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“PLEASE, TAKE A SEAT, Paul,” Diane insisted as soon as the slightly bedraggled-looking man stepped into the living room. My heart hurt for him, seeing the look on his face right now. It must have been like a walking nightmare to him, coming to this place and having to talk about his lost daughter. He was still processing the news of her death, and now, this...

But I couldn’t let my emotions get the better of me. I had to stay focused. This man was about the best lead we had right now, and anything we could get out of him, we had to do it tonight.

With a cup of coffee in his hand, Paul introduced himself to everyone in the room, and then Frank clasped his hands and leaned forward.

“Paul, I’m going to be honest with you—I’m a cop,” he explained. “And I know you’ve got a hell of a lot of reasons not to trust people like us right now. But I’m going to ask you some questions, and I need you to know that I am taking this as seriously as you are. Whatever happened to your daughter, and whoever did it, we’re going to find out, okay?”

Paul nodded, running a hand over his thinning hair. His eyes were painted with dark circles, and his face drooped like he was barely staying awake.

“So if you could, start at the beginning,” Frank offered. “What did you know about your daughter’s relationship with Tony?”

Paul paused for a moment before he replied, obviously gathering himself. It must have been so damn painful to go over this.

“I...I knew she was with him when she was about twenty,” he explained. “I didn’t know much about him. She kept most of it from me, and I don’t blame her. I would have gotten involved if I’d known anything about it. I just had to believe that she was happy, even if she was suddenly spending so much time away from me and her mom. I thought it was just young love...”

That all sounded so familiar. The way Tony had cut me off from the people around me and done everything he could to hide me away, make it so I didn’t have anyone else to turn to, even when things got desperate.

“But then she came to me one night, and she had a broken nose,” he explained. “Her face was bleeding. She had this cut above her eye, and she kept telling me it wasn’t as bad as it looked, but she was just covered in...”

He kept trailing off, catching his breath. He shook his head.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Mom cut in. “You take as much time as you need.”

It must have been hard for her to hear, too. Thinking about how close I had come to the same fate, how easy it would have been for me to fall into the same trap this poor girl had.

Once Paul had gathered himself, he went on.

“And she was telling me that she wanted to leave. She wouldn’t tell me what else he had done to her, but it was clear from the way she was talking that it wasn’t the first time. I don’t think she had really made any plans; she had just run and ended up at my place. If I could have just kept her there...”

His eyes filled with tears, and I handed him a tissue. He gripped it tightly, trying to pull himself together.

“But when she was there, she got a call from him. Tony, I mean,” he continued. “And I could hear him telling her how sorry he was. She was trying to hang up on him, but he just kept calling and calling her...I was listening in on them, he was begging her to come back to him, telling her it would never happen again. I should have gone in there and taken the phone from her, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like it would have been cruel.”

He sighed heavily. “She left after that,” he went on. “We kept getting texts from her for another few months, maybe three, but then it was radio silence. We tried to look for her, but there was just nothing to go on. No leads, no nothing, and Tony had skipped town. I couldn’t find him, and I didn’t even think for a second his own father was involved. That was years ago, and then, I got the call about the body.”

The body. He talked about it as though it wasn’t even hers. Maybe because he was too horrified to face the truth, or maybe there was more to it...

“Look, I’m going to cut to the chase,” Paul explained, his tone suddenly shifting to something more focused and forceful. “I don’t think the body they found belongs to my daughter.”

My eyes widened. “What are you talking about?” I demanded. I didn’t know how to feel about this. Had she somehow gotten away?

“I got the call from the cops, and they wouldn’t let me come in to identify her,” he continued. “I knew something was up. I asked them if there were any other identifying features on the body, and they told me there weren’t, which isn’t true—my daughter had a metal plate in her chin. It’s not the kind of thing they would be able to miss if it was really her. I think they found some other poor girl and passed her off as my daughter to try and tie all of Tony’s crimes back to this man.” He pointed at Warren.

“You know about me? They told you?” Warren asked, his voice full of fear.

“They told me that she had been the victim of some serial killer, but it just didn’t sit right with me,” he replied. “I watched the trial news as it came in, and when you were let off because you had an alibi, I knew my instincts were right, so I sent an investigator over there to get a better idea of what was going on. I didn’t want to set foot in Oakville myself, but it seemed like that doesn’t make much of a difference either way for Tony and his father.”