Layover

by David Bell

  “And?”

  “You’re worried about him?” she asked.

  “I am. I hit him. And then . . . then she did too. I thought . . . he looked like he might be pretty bad. Can you just tell me?”

  She waited a long time. It felt like hours. “He’s alive, if that’s what you’re wondering. He got it worse than you. Last I heard, he hadn’t regained consciousness yet. That’s all I know.”

  A trickle of relief flowed through me. He wasn’t dead. Simon wasn’t dead, and Morgan hadn’t killed him.

  But it didn’t sound like he was doing well either. I guess I didn’t know what Morgan had done after I was incapacitated. Had she smacked him again?

  I flexed my hand, felt the ache in my knuckles.

  “Will you let me know when you get an update?” I asked.

  Givens nodded. “Do you know what else we found out there? In the amusement park?”

  Why did it always feel like a trick when a cop asked a question?

  I tried to think of the correct answer, but I came up empty.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What was Simon looking for?”

  “The ring? You found that ring?”

  Givens nodded. “We did. And do you know where we found it?”

  Again, I tried to think of the answer. Who had the ring last? Simon did. But he couldn’t have held on to it while we were fighting. His hands were free as he swung at me.

  Could he have slipped it into his pocket before he came after me? Before I hit him?

  “Did Simon have it?” I asked. “Look, Morgan wanted to give it back. She said she brought me out there to resolve everything, to put an end to it.”

  “And how did she intend to do that? What did she mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We started fighting before any of that happened.”

  “So you don’t know where we found the ring?”

  “I don’t.”

  Again, the blank look. The cool consideration of my words.

  I felt like a piece of art she wanted to buy.

  “You don’t seem to know much, do you, Mr. Fields? Either you’ve been kept in the dark, or you’re lying to me.”

  “I don’t know where you found the ring. You found me, and I was out cold. Right?”

  She showed nothing as she thought about that.

  Then she said, “We found it in the barn. It was sitting on top of a shallow grave. The one where Giles Caldwell’s body was buried.”

  58

  Kimberly watched Joshua Fields’s face as she delivered the news. The man was already green around the gills from the blow to the head and the concussion he was suffering from. But when she told him about the discovery of Giles Caldwell’s body, he looked even sicker.

  He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He lifted his hand and placed it against his forehead. He said nothing.

  “Mr. Fields?” Kimberly asked. “Did you know the body was there?”

  “No.”

  “How did you end up out there?”

  “Like I told you, she told me to meet her there. She said she could explain everything if I went.”

  “What did she explain?”

  He kept the hand on his forehead. “I feel sick.”

  “What did she explain?”

  “Can you call the nurse?”

  As if she’d been listening outside, the nurse appeared. She didn’t look at Kimberly, but she said, “I think he needs his rest.”

  The nurse picked up an emesis basin and placed it under Joshua Fields’s chin. Kimberly left the room. She’d heard enough for the time being.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later that morning, Kimberly found the woman at the Spring Street Elementary School. She worked as a teacher’s aide and agreed to meet Kimberly before the school day started.

  Kimberly checked in at the front desk, showing her badge to the receptionist. She hadn’t slept all night, and her eyes burned with exhaustion. She fought off a yawn. After she’d waited a few minutes—and caught a whiff of the familiar smell of simmering cafeteria food—Elaine Adams came into the lobby, a young, pretty, slender woman who wore her curly red hair pulled back. Kimberly supposed that gave the children less to grab on to.

  They shook hands and stepped through a set of double doors, then settled on a bench just outside the main entrance of the school. Elaine wore tall boots and an oversize sweater. She blinked a lot. Nerves? Who wouldn’t be unnerved by an out-of-town detective showing up at their place of work?

  “I saw the news about Morgan on Facebook,” Elaine said. Blink. Blink. “Is there any new information? Do you know what happened?”

  “Have you seen or heard from her?” Kimberly asked.

  “Not since high school, really. We were friends then, but I went away to college, and she went here to Henry Clay. We saw each other sometimes during the summer. Then I moved back here two years ago, but she was over in Laurel Falls then, so we didn’t see much of each other.”

  “So you haven’t seen or heard from Morgan recently?”

  “No. We’re friends on Facebook. I wish her happy birthday and all that. She seemed to have a good job. Better than being a teacher’s aide here.”

  “So you knew her in high school?”

  “And junior high.”

  “We’ve heard she had a rough childhood. Is that true?”

  Elaine nodded eagerly. She looked like she’d been waiting to tell someone about Morgan’s childhood for years. “Her mom had a lot of problems when we were growing up. Her parents got divorced when Morgan was young, before I knew her. And her mom . . . I got the feeling she never got her head on straight after the divorce. She was an irresponsible parent.”

  “How so?”

  “She drank. Then drugs. She wasn’t abusive so much. I wouldn’t say that.” Elaine lifted her hand to her mouth and drew her index finger over her lips as if considering what to say next.

  “Was she neglectful?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the word for it. Just . . . neglectful. That might be worse in a way. Who knows?”

  “What form did the neglect take?” Kimberly asked.

  “Just . . . she’d be out with a bad crowd of people, and Morgan would be home alone. She’d have to wake up and get herself off to school because her mom was sleeping it off. My parents used to have Morgan over for dinner when they could, and then my mom would send her home with leftovers. That kind of thing.”

  “She must have been grateful for that.”

  Elaine shook her head, but she smiled as she did. “You don’t know Morgan very well. You don’t know how prideful she is. See, all that time, while we were really good friends and all of this was going on, she never talked about it. I almost never went inside her house either. I almost never saw her mom. Morgan always said everything was fine. I could tell it wasn’t, but I respected that she didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “But you knew?”

  “My aunt worked at the school we went to. South High. I heard things.” Elaine raised her arms, gesturing to everything around them. “You know what a town like Wyckoff is like. It’s small. It’s tough to hide things here. When Morgan went into foster care, we all heard about it.”

  The wind kicked up, scattering some fallen leaves across their feet and under the bench. A muffled announcement came over the PA, the words lost to the two of them outside. “She went into foster care? When was that?”

  “You didn’t know that?” Elaine asked. “You’re the police.”

  Kimberly wanted to explain how tough it is to know everything about everyone, but she held her tongue. “We’re just starting to learn about Morgan. We’ve been looking for her and looking for her boss. You know about that, right?”

  “Right. I heard.” She looked sad as she thought abou
t all of it. “Well, this was in high school. When we were about fifteen. And then . . . maybe another time, when we were seventeen. It wasn’t long. Morgan was gone for three months or so the first time. And then the second time . . . maybe it was more like six or seven months. The second time she came back and seemed pretty happy about her experience. She raved about her foster mother, about how caring and protective she was. She told me it had been a long time since someone paid so much attention to her, and she was sad that she couldn’t stay with her permanently. I guess compared to her own mother, the foster care families must have looked amazing. Living in a house where you’re practically neglected makes the grass greener everywhere else.”

  “It’s all relative, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So you knew her mother then?” Kimberly asked.

  “Better when we were younger. Like I said, once the big problems started, she became withdrawn. I mean, she’d be holed up in the house. Drunk. Or who knows what else.” Elaine rubbed her hands together. Her nails were short and unpainted. “It’s a shame. She was nice to me when we were younger. I liked talking to her. You know how you can kind of enjoy talking to someone who isn’t your parent more than your own mom?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “Morgan’s mom was like that for me. She just . . . Well, my parents were so boring, and she seemed so full of life. At least back then. Ava. Ava Reynolds.”

  “What about other friends from growing up? Are many of them in touch with Morgan?”

  “Probably a few. But our friends . . . they didn’t go to college. They married young, had kids. It wasn’t my scene. Or Morgan’s. She overcame whatever went on with her mom and went to college. I was so happy to see her succeeding,” Elaine said. “I moved back, but I’ve made some different friends. And I’m not sure I’m going to stay here. I don’t want to be a teacher’s aide in Wyckoff all my life.”

  Kimberly turned to the parking lot. A few cars pulled in, parents eager to drop off their charges and get to work. Elaine checked her watch.

  “Back to the grind?” Kimberly asked.

  Elaine sighed, her shoulders rising and falling inside the sweater. “I do like the kids. Most days. Most of the time. And I want to have my own someday.”

  “It’s the best roller coaster you’ll ever ride,” Kimberly said as they both stood up. “For what it’s worth, Morgan and her mother seem to have patched things up recently.”

  Elaine remained still, staring back at Kimberly like she’d started speaking in tongues. A cloud drifted in front of the sun, casting a faint shadow over the front of the school.

  “What did I say?” Kimberly asked, noticing the confusion on Elaine’s face.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “What’s not?” Kimberly asked.

  “It’s not possible. About Ava. About Morgan’s mother.”

  “Why not? Morgan moved to Nashville to live near her.”

  Elaine shook her head. “That’s just not possible. Not Morgan’s mom. Not Ava. That just can’t be.”

  59

  They kept me a whole day for observation. They said I had a concussion, and something on the X-ray concerned the neurologist, a middle-aged man with an untrimmed goatee. He ordered a CAT scan, which made me nervous but not as nervous as if I’d had to go inside a closed-in MRI machine. The results were normal—no bleeding in my brain—but he wanted to observe me more closely, so I spent the day lounging around my room, watching bad daytime TV and passing in and out of sleep.

  As darkness fell, I realized I’d never spent the night in a hospital before. Not since my birth. I had stitches once when I was in the third grade. That was about it.

  I had no idea what a lonely place a hospital could be.

  And on the few occasions when I dozed off, I slept fitfully.

  Nurses came in and out, checking my vital signs. My roommate, a man who had suffered a neck injury in a construction accident, moaned and groaned throughout the day but never woke up or spoke. No one came to visit him.

  When I did manage to sleep, I dreamed about the events in the amusement park. I dreamed about my hands on Simon’s body, swinging at him, bashing him. Or I dreamed about being chased through the dark, prey to some unknown predator.

  When I woke, I stared at the ceiling, listening to the ambient noises of the hospital. Beeping machines, wheeling carts. The low voices of nurses and orderlies in the hallway. My roommate’s agonized grunts.

  Morgan.

  Why was that body in the park? Why did she lead me there?

  Around eight thirty that evening, Friday, Detective Givens came back and grilled me about Morgan all over again. She asked the same questions several times. Where did she go? Did she say anything about where she might be heading?

  Over and over, I said I didn’t know.

  Givens nodded a few times. She became quiet, but I knew she had more to say. So I waited.

  Finally, she said, “You said Morgan told you her mother was sick, right?”

  “She did.”

  “And that’s why she moved to Nashville?”

  “Yes, to take care of her. After she quit her job.”

  “Did she say what was wrong with her mom?” Givens asked.

  I tried to remember. “I think so. Cancer? She gave the impression it was terminal.”

  Givens reached into her jacket pocket and brought out a folded sheet of paper. She unfolded it, looked it over, and then passed it to me.

  I read it once and then again. It was an obituary, printed from a newspaper Web site. My brain must have still been moving slowly, because it took a moment for the name to register. Then it clicked.

  “Ava Reynolds,” I said.

  “Do you know who that is?” Givens asked.

  I scanned the paper again. I saw one relative mentioned as a survivor. Morgan Reynolds, loving daughter.

  “This is from when?” I asked.

  “See the date?”

  I found it. Three years earlier. Morgan’s mother had been dead three years.

  My head immediately started to throb again. Even worse than earlier.

  Had Morgan told me a single thing that was true?

  “Is this supposed to make me feel better?” I asked.

  “I thought if you knew the truth, you might remember more details,” she said.

  I handed the paper to her. “It’s not like that. I’m not holding anything back.”

  “Fair enough. Maybe you should rest.”

  But I finally asked a few questions of my own.

  “Do you think Morgan killed Giles Caldwell?”

  Givens stared down at me in my hospital bed. She looked sympathetic, kind even. She spoke in a calm way and seemed willing to wait for information to come to her in its own time. But her apparent lack of judgment concerning my actions had another effect. It made me feel like a sap, a sucker who had stumbled into something bigger and more complicated than he could handle. And now I had to sit back and let the grown-ups straighten it all out.

  “We’re not jumping to any conclusions,” she said. “We’re going to examine the crime scene. We’re going to do an autopsy. We hope there will be more information when we do those things.”

  “I know, Detective. I know. But . . . did she kill him?”

  She studied me again. “You don’t want the public relations answer, do you?”

  “No.”

  She cleared her throat, checked her watch. “You tell me, Joshua. She knew where the body was. She brought you to the body, saying it would explain everything. She took off before the police arrived. She placed the ring on the body. It was a place she knew of from growing up here. She loved it so much she told you about it.”

  The detective lifted her hands and held them out in front of her body as if to say What more do you need to know?

 
I shrank down into the pillows. I felt small. Like that eight-year-old getting stitches under the emergency room lights.

  “How did he die?” I asked.

  “We can’t tell yet.”

  “Can you tell anything?” I asked.

  She nodded. “We suspect foul play.”

  I wished I could sink further, but there was nowhere else to go.

  Givens leaned closer to the bed. Her phone beeped twice, but she ignored it.

  “If you want some free advice, I’ll offer you some,” she said. “You’re not out of the woods on this yourself, Mr. Fields. You were with her. You were at the scene where the body was found. You say you just met in the Atlanta airport, but we intend to make sure of that.”

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “I think everybody is lying until I know they aren’t. And I have an unsolved death on my hands and a woman who keeps running away.”

  I felt sick again. Not like yesterday morning when I vomited into the emesis basin and then onto the floor, an effect of the concussion. I felt real fear. Had Morgan left me holding the bag? Would I face an investigation, an arrest, maybe more, over the death of this man I didn’t know?

  “Do I need a lawyer?” I asked. Then I thought, If you have to ask that question of a cop, you probably do.

  “You can head on home when they clear you to travel,” Givens said. “But stay in touch. We’ve notified Chicago PD about you. They’ll be keeping an eye. And don’t leave Chicago without letting us know.”

  “I have a job.”

  “We know. We’ll be keeping an eye on the places you travel if you do. And we’ve got the word out about Morgan, and she’ll probably be brought in soon. If not, she’s going to spend the rest of her life on the run. You want to stay away from that, or it’s going to get even deeper even faster.”

  I knew she was right. I just hated giving her the satisfaction of saying so.

  I nodded the tiniest bit, accepting the truth in my silent way.

  “But what about . . . Simon?”

  “You mean are you going to be charged with anything?”