by David Bell
“You spent the night together, then?”
“We did.”
“I guess you became fast friends. Or did you already know each other?”
“What? No, we met yesterday. At the airport.”
“In Atlanta?”
“Yes.”
“You know, Mr. Fields, these phones are so impersonal. And you never know when the signal will go out in these little towns. What do you say we meet in person? We could use a room at the Wyckoff Police Department. Or if you feel more comfortable, somewhere else. A coffee shop? A park? See, I’m worried you’ve gotten in over your head here, and the longer you stay out there, the deeper you get. It could start to look suspicious.”
“Suspicious?”
“Or maybe dangerous. I know you had to run away from Simon Caldwell this morning. I don’t know where he is either.”
“He’s not with me.”
“When can we meet, Mr. Fields? I’m eager to hear your side of the story.”
I didn’t like the suspicion being cast on me. And I didn’t know who to believe—Simon or Morgan. Or neither.
“Detective, do you think Morgan Reynolds harmed her boss?” I asked.
“I’m trying to figure that out. Did she say anything to you?”
“No, she didn’t. But I don’t think she hurt anyone. I guess I can’t believe that.”
“Where can I meet you? I can come to you if you’d like.”
I watched people coming and going at the fast-food restaurant. Elderly couples. Mothers with children. A few college students. Their lives looked good. And safe. Perfectly safe and predictable.
Did I want to be one of them? Wasn’t I already?
“Give me some time, Detective. Morgan, she’s . . . skittish. I think if I can talk to her . . .”
“You’re not a police officer. You’re in no position to do that. Let us handle it, Mr. Fields.”
“Can I talk to you after I look for her? She might already be gone, out of town. She probably is. Long gone. But if she isn’t, if I can find her and talk to her . . . I’ll meet with you then.”
“That isn’t wise, Mr. Fields. The longer you avoid us, the worse it looks for you.”
“You’ve looked me up already, haven’t you? The cops in the Nashville airport did, so you must have too. And what did you find? Nothing. There’s nothing to find. Not on me.”
“Sir—”
“Give me a few hours,” I said. “Just a few hours to look. And then I promise I’ll call.”
I hung up, cutting off any reply she might make.
And my hands were shaking.
46
After I hung up with Detective Givens, I almost called her back immediately.
I’d never disrespected authority in that way in my life. And she clearly held some suspicions about me. How deep was I digging the hole for myself?
And I faced the prospect of looking for a human-size needle in a small-college-town haystack. A human-size needle who’d run out on me, leaving me to face her pursuer.
I checked my phone again. There were plenty of flights from Nashville back to Chicago, so I’d have no problem getting home and away from everything that had happened over the past day. My real life waited for me there. Predictable. Boring. Safe.
No cops. No Simon.
It sounded better than it had in months. Maybe years.
And then I remembered Renee.
I texted her.
Just wanted you to know I’m leaving Kentucky today. Coming home. We can talk when I get there. If you want.
My thumb hovered over the “Send” button. I waited. Then waited some more. Then I hit SEND. I looked out the window. Students passed by, men and women younger than me. They all looked happy. They all seemed to be smiling. I knew their lives weren’t as blissful as they appeared, but I let myself think they were. If I could go back, if someone invented a time machine, I’d spend less time with my nose to the grindstone, less time marching in lockstep, my eyes on the horizon ahead.
Renee wrote back instantly.
Sure, let’s talk. Are you safe?
I wrote back. Perfectly.
I didn’t like the word. Or the sentiment. Perfectly safe. Is that all I wanted out of life—to be perfectly safe? But it seemed to have summed up everything in my life.
Safe. I was playing it safe.
Why?
I put the phone down, watched the crowds for a few more minutes, thought about the gap between them and me. The five years that had passed so quickly and had turned into a lockstep march toward . . . what? A mortgage and kids and a minivan?
I couldn’t just go, not without looking around town a little bit.
I decided not to call Detective Givens back. She and I wanted the same thing—to find Morgan and convince her to turn herself in. I’d tried to get her to do that the night before. Admit she stole the ring, make an excuse, face the music. It wouldn’t be too bad, would it?
And who was going to have a better chance of convincing her to turn herself in? Me? Or a cop?
Well, I wasn’t really sure. She’d run from me that morning. She’d probably run from a cop. But I really wanted to try. And I meant what I told Detective Givens—I’d look for a little while and then give up. If I saw no sign of Morgan, I’d call Givens and then head to the airport when she was finished with me. So I started looking, hoping Simon kept off my trail.
A little bit of looking ended up taking hours. I drove systematically through town, starting on the south side, where I ate, and working my way north, past the edge of campus until I pretty much ran out of town to look through. As the day passed, I grew more and more frustrated and tired, feeling very much like a man on a pointless mission. It seemed highly unlikely I’d see Morgan again—in the town or anywhere else. And if I did find her and couldn’t convince her to go to the police . . . what then?
Another night in the hotel? Another Houdini-like exit, leaving me with the key card and a trip through the breakfast buffet?
I remembered the flight times I’d looked at earlier. It was getting close to five o’clock, and if I started driving toward Nashville and the airport I could make the one at seven thirty or eight. I was ready to throw in the towel and call Givens when my phone rang.
I expected it to be the police calling me.
Or maybe Renee. Or my dad.
But the number on the car’s display was unknown to me. From an area code I didn’t recognize.
My hand shook a little as I reached out and pushed the button on the console that answered the call, placing it on speakerphone.
“Don’t hang up,” Morgan said. Her voice sounded tinged with emotion, with a nervous edge. But was it because she was talking to me—the guy she slept with and ran out on—or because she was on the run from the police and a crazy man?
“Oh, I won’t,” I said, shaking my head even though she couldn’t see me. My frustration came out more than I intended. I’d stuffed a lot of emotion away as I drove around that day, and it was ready to emerge. “I have a ninety-minute drive to the airport, and I forgot to bring an audiobook. You should provide plenty of entertainment as I go. I like mysteries and thrillers, the crazier the better. I’m sure you’ve come up with something good.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” she said. “You know I had to leave. You know I have to keep moving.”
“Yeah, I guess so. You’re Lucy, and I’m Charlie Brown. And I keep missing that football.”
“I’m guessing you managed to get away from Simon,” she said. “You sound unblemished.”
“Did you know he was in the hotel?” I asked.
“I saw him this morning. When I left.” She made a low, whistling noise. “I’m lucky he didn’t see me. You won’t believe it, but I was already having regrets. I thought about coming back and saying good-bye to you
the right way. But when I saw him, then I knew I had to go. And go fast.”
“You could have called. Clearly you had my number. And how did you get that, by the way?”
“I got it off your phone while you were asleep. And, yes, I thought about calling you and warning you. But, to be honest, I knew if Simon was occupied with you, then I’d be able to get away. I’ve had other things to do in town while I was here. They took longer than I thought. I don’t know how long I can be here . . . or if I’ll ever get to come back.”
On either side of the road, corn grew taller than the car. In the distance, a farmer rode a combine, knocking the stalks down. The leaves would change soon. The bleak Chicago winter would close in on me.
“You’re still in Wyckoff?” I asked.
“Kind of,” she said. “You said you have a ninety-minute drive to the airport. Does that mean . . . ? Are you still in Wyckoff?”
“I’m just leaving. But I’m going to call the police first. They’re interested in talking to me. Very interested. They want to talk to you too.”
She didn’t say anything else. I worried the call had dropped, since I was moving out into the middle of nowhere.
“Hello?”
“I’m here,” she said. “Are you going to the police?”
“Soon.”
“Well, I want you to do something for me. I know I don’t have a leg to stand on.”
“That’s true. Especially since you left me to the whims of a crazy man with the temperament of a teething pit bull.”
I heard faint breathing sounds, but that was it. “This is all very complicated.”
“What is it?”
“Since you haven’t left and you haven’t turned me in to the police yet, I want you to meet me somewhere. I want to do something, to show you something. Then . . . then you’ll see why I’m here and maybe you can help me end all of this.”
“And this is why you came to Wyckoff in the first place?” I asked.
“Mostly. It will explain everything anyway. It’s the only thing that can, I guess.”
I gritted my teeth. I looked ahead, saw the horizon. The sun was going down, the sky transforming to reds and oranges. I flipped on the headlights. Nothing lay ahead but a long stretch of road and yet another airport.
“What do you think?” she asked. “I need your help. And, for better or worse, you’re the only person I can trust right now. And after that, if you want to call the police, you can. I might call them. See, I think it will all make sense if you come and meet me.”
“Where are you?”
“I think I left something in the hotel room. Did you find it?”
I tapped the breast pocket of my shirt. The photo.
“Why did you leave that there? Did you want me to find it and guess where you are?”
“Not really. I had the picture out . . . just to think about things. When I drove away, I realized I’d left it. Maybe, on some level, I wanted you to find it. I don’t know. Things got crazy last night, didn’t they?”
“They did.”
“So . . . do you have it?”
“I do,” I said. “You want it? Why do you want a photo of a place where you have horrible memories?”
“They’re not all horrible.”
I thought about my perfectly safe life again.
A long, perfectly safe Chicago winter with Renee. Deiced planes and dirty snow in the gutters. Making money with Dad.
“Is that where you are?” I asked. “Fantasy Farm? Why?”
Before she answered, I was already turning the car around.
47
Kimberly spent the afternoon in Wyckoff, using a desk at the police station. She called and spoke to Willard about what she’d learned at the Best Western. Then she took a nearly hour-long phone call from the mayor, who expressed her disappointment at what she called Kimberly’s “inability to find these people.” Kimberly hung up, shaking her head. Hughes came by and offered a sympathetic look, then said, “Bureaucrats.”
Hughes also told her that she’d asked the county to send an officer to Fantasy Farm to see if anyone had shown up there.
“And?” Kimberly asked.
“He didn’t see anything. It seems unlikely someone would go there. It’s out of the way and abandoned. Private property technically, even though it isn’t being used.”
“No one ever goes there?”
Hughes thought about it. “I guess high school kids might go there to drink. But we haven’t had any problems. It’s kind of a dump.”
“It wasn’t anything fancy when it was open. My daughter liked the animals. My ex-husband liked that they served beer to the adults. I thought the place was a little run-down.”
“Its heyday was when my parents were growing up. Before Six Flags and Kings Island and all those places.”
“Makes sense.”
Kimberly turned back to her laptop and started checking Morgan Reynolds’s Facebook page again, looking for friends or acquaintances of hers who might still live in Wyckoff. She used people-finder software to find their phone numbers. A few people didn’t answer, but then she reached one of Morgan’s friends from college. Jamie Cassel had no idea Morgan had disappeared and hadn’t spoken to her since the day they graduated.
“I kept meaning to call her, but I never did.”
“Was she close to anyone else in college? Who were her best friends?”
Jamie provided four names and even a couple of up-to-date phone numbers, but the two women Kimberly reached told a similar story. They’d moved away from little Wyckoff years ago and had maintained only sporadic contact with their college friends, including Morgan.
Kimberly felt hungry again, and the carpal tunnel syndrome in her wrist hurt from using a chair that sat too low. The whole afternoon had slipped away with little to show for it. She had stood up to stretch, contemplating heading back to Laurel Falls and writing the trip off as a bust, when Hughes knocked gently and then opened the door.
“What’s up?” Kimberly asked.
“I asked the county cops to keep an eye on Fantasy Farm, maybe cruise by again if they had the chance.”
“And?”
“There’s a car at a side entrance. It wasn’t there before. A rental car. They’re reaching out to the company to see who rented it, but we might want to check it out if you’re game.”
“How far away is it?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“Let’s go.”
On their way out of Wyckoff, Kimberly’s phone rang with Maria’s ringtone. She asked Hughes if she minded, and Hughes said no. So Kimberly took the call, bracing herself for a short conversation with a disappointed child.
“Hey, baby.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“So? How was it? I would have called, but I’m in the middle of everything here.”
Maria’s voice brightened. “We won. Two to nothing.”
“Oh, that’s great. Really, I’m happy for you.” Apparently being on the right side of the scoreboard tempered her disappointment over Kimberly’s absence.
Kimberly breathed easier, listening while Maria gave a brief blow-by-blow of the game, including the spectacular save she made in the match’s final minutes.
“And we’re on our way to get pizza now,” she said. A slight pause, then she whispered, “And Jennifer can’t go. Bonus.”
“I’m glad you’re having a good time,” Kimberly said, wishing she wasn’t as happy as she was that Peter’s new girlfriend was missing out on pizza and time with Maria.
“How long will you be away?” Maria asked. Her voice sounded small, childlike. During moments like that, she slipped back out of being a preteen and became a kid again. It sounded like she actually missed her mother.
“I’m not sure,” Kimberly said. “But we’re on our way to something we
hope is important.”
Please, Kimberly thought, be important.
There was a long pause. Kimberly listened for clues. She thought she heard music playing in the background. Then Maria said, “Well . . . you can go to my next match, right? Or the one after that?”
“I fully intend to.”
“And then we can go out for pizza?”
“Do you like soccer or pizza more? Which is it?”
Maria laughed. “Do I have to pick?”
“I guess not.”
Kimberly’s phone beeped. Another call coming in. She checked the screen. Brandon.
“Shoot,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’ll call them back.”
“If you have to go, Mom, it’s fine. We’re almost at the restaurant. And I know you have a job. And it’s important.”
“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Good night. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Kimberly’s phone beeped again. Kimberly pushed a button, hoping for an undefeated soccer season, anything to bring peace in her time.
“Kimberly? Sorry to bother you,” Brandon said.
“That’s okay. What is it?”
“I found out that . . .”
But the call dropped. It sounded like Brandon fell down a well without benefit of a splash.
“Brandon? Hello?”
She tried calling back, but the call dropped again.
“No service out here,” Hughes said. “Country life.”
“One of my colleagues,” Kimberly said. “He said he found something out.” She hit the “Call” button several times, and each time a “No Service” message mocked her from the screen. “Damn it.”
“Do you want me to turn around?” Hughes asked. “If we head back to town, service will pick up.”
“Yeah . . . but what about this amusement park?”
“Up to you,” Hughes said. “It could be nothing.”
Kimberly thought about it, her mind processing the choices. She trusted her gut, played the hunch. Whatever Brandon knew could wait.