Finding Claire Fletcher by Lisa Regan Page B

Connor assured her. “You can’t blame yourself. You did exactly what anyone would have done. You called the police and reported it immediately.”
    She twisted her hands in her lap. “I felt so bad,” she repeated.
    “Now, could you just take me through what happened? What you saw?”
    Strakowski looked upward, as if the contents of her memory were visible on the ceiling. “Well, I had just got the kids off to school maybe twenty minutes before. I was in here in my bathrobe just straightening up. The phone rang so I went into the kitchen to get it. It was a cordless so I came back in here and was talking to my sister—she had one bastard of a husband back then. She was always crying to me over that one. Almost every morning she called like clockwork. ‘What’d he do now?’ I’d say as soon as I picked up.”
    Connor caught her eye, and she smiled sheepishly. “Well anyway, I was on the phone, just puttering around in here. It was a real nice day so I went to the window and pulled the curtains. I was listening to my sister go on and on and standing at the window just looking out at the day. There was a man parked in his car right out front. Just sitting there in the driver’s seat. Looked like he was reading something. He had brown hair, but I couldn’t see him too good from here. I didn’t pay him no mind cause this is a busy street. Lots of people park out front. Sometimes they block the driveway though.”
    “Did you leave the window?” Connor prompted, so as not to lose her again.
    “Well, yes, I went back into the kitchen for something, my coffee cup I think. I wasn’t in there for more than a minute or two. My sister was just jabbering away, and I went back to the window because I was thinking I’d like to get out there and work on my garden seeing as it was so sunny.
    “By that time, the man had got out of the car, but his back was to me. He was kind of squatting down next to the car, and the back door was hanging open. I still didn’t pay him any mind. I thought maybe he was just fixing something. Maybe he had been sitting in there reading a repair manual or something and had just got out to fix something, even though it was a strange place to be working on your car in front of someone else’s house.”
    “Did he turn around at all? Did you ever see his face?” Connor asked.
    Dinah shook her head. “No. He never did turn around. I only ever saw the side of his face, even after, when he got back into the car. But I did notice he didn’t have any facial hair.”
    “That’s good,” Connor said, jotting on his notepad. “Can you describe what he was wearing?”
    “Mmm-hmmm. He had on khaki pants with a belt and a navy blue collar shirt—short sleeves,” she said.
    “Good. Was he tall, short, fat, skinny?”
    “He was tall but not as tall as you. And he was real skinny. I mean he didn’t look like a weakling, but he was kind of wiry, you know?”
    Connor nodded. “Okay, you saw him squatting next to the car and then what did you see?”
    “I saw this girl coming down the street toward him. She wasn’t really looking at him. I didn’t even realize that they were talking until she stopped because he didn’t turn around or anything. He didn’t stand up or approach her. She stood there looking at him for a minute, and then she got down next to him on her hands and knees and was looking under the car.
    “I thought maybe he dropped something but couldn’t get under there far enough to get it and that’s why he asked a young girl cause she was kind of small. But then the next thing I know, he puts a hand on the back of her head and just bam! Smashes her head right off the car, you know where the door was opened, right where you’d go to step into the car. I couldn’t hardly believe what I was seeing.
    “I froze for a minute cause it was just so unexpected to see. Then he smashed her head again and again, and he kind of scooped her up from behind and rolled her into the backseat.