by Mira Gibson
“It's up a ways,” Cody told her, eyes locked on the terrain ahead. “The rain’s washed it all away, but I can walk you through it.”
“And break confidentiality.” It was supposed to be a question. She’d meant to endear him, but it'd sounded like the terms of a deal.
He shot her a lingering sideways glance that felt electric on her end.
Cody angled the Ford under a thick canopy of maples so the vehicle well cleared the path. It made her wonder if he expected oncoming traffic.
After they’d climbed out and he locked up, Cody said, “We’ll walk the rest on foot.”
“We’re not there yet?”
“Not by a long shot.”
If Cody McAlister made sense anywhere, it was trekking through the woods. She couldn’t picture him working a crime scene, canvasing a rural neighborhood to ask questions, or pouring over police reports, but in the forest, surrounded by trees, a gust of wind in his hair, maybe a rifle over his shoulder, he started to add up. In his manhood he’d grown into something burly, though it was only a hint like candlelight that touches every corner of a dark room. The way his eyes came alive in this setting, the way he inhaled deeply, chest swelling as though each breath was all the food he needed, told her he’d never leave this town, even if he only got to relish the forest when someone like her mother vanished in the dead of night.
As they kept on, Hannah started noticing crushed beer cans and other litter poking up through the matted weeds. Then voices billowed in the distance. Boys. Their rowdy masculine laughter made her stomach clench. Too many men with too much freedom was a dangerous thing. She’d learned the hard way. Suddenly, Hannah didn’t want to be here.
“It’s always been something of a teen hangout,” Cody ventured to beg her pardon. Back when they’d been friends in high school, he’d registered Hannah’s apprehension about drunken teenaged boys. “There as harmless as ours were in school,” he told her. But that was just it, the chasm between them. It boiled down to the clash of their memories. As far as Hannah could remember, none of them had been harmless. Quite the opposite.
But she decided to deny all that. “Smoking drugs and drinking,” she stated, feigning to reminisce. “You’re not nostalgic about our trashy upbringing, are you?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “I have a fondness in my heart for it. Why not?”
Hannah could think of at least a million reasons.
“We weren’t raised in a major city where there are gangs and hard crimes corrupting the streets. We got into trouble, sure, but look at this,” he eyed the glory of autumn all around them. “You can’t beat this. You just can’t.”
Hannah shrugged not so much convinced as bowing out of the debate.
“Come on, Hannah,” he pushed, wanting or needing her to admit it. “Sanbornton’s Goddamn gorgeous. And you turned out okay.”
“You’re the one who turned out okay. I’m still surviving.”
“You’re not just surviving. Don’t downplay your life.”
“Before I left,” she started up compelled to share a slice from her past to illustrate it wasn’t worthy of nostalgia. “Dale and my mom got into it one night. The argument was so stupid I don’t even remember it, but I remember my mom was cooking dinner and wouldn’t acknowledge him. So he started raging, getting furious at the fact she wasn’t paying him any mind more than the actual argument. So Dale pulled a gun on her. Pointed it right at her head. Cocked it. And you know what Kendra did? She looked him dead in the eye. Really let him know she could see him you know? Then she looked back at the food and said, stop wasting my time.”
Finding that either hilarious or seriously bad ass, Cody laughed. He threw his head right back and laughed and laughed, good, hardy chuckles that boomed through the woods and sounded a lot like music to Hannah’s ears. She was smiling too.
“That’s just it, Cody. That’s the problem,” she went on, growing serious. “I used to think it was a good story, funny, unparalleled. But it’s not. It’s sad. It’s downright dangerous how we lived. And now she’s gone. Violence took her.”
For as good a time as her story was, his smile faded when she hit in hard with the result.
When the group of teenaged boys, who’d been laughing it up behind the trees came into view, Hannah instinctively hung back, needing an excuse not to get stuck in their pack.
“I know it’s barely noon,” she said, a pre-emptive confession foreshadowing the flask she was fishing out of her purse.
“Hey,” he said easily. “I think we’ve established a no-judgment dynamic.”
“For the record, I’m not an alcoholic.” In her head, she added yet and it didn’t feel quite right so tried I hope on for size, which felt more honest so she said it under her breath.
He countered with, “For the record, I’m planning on flashing my badge and watching them scatter just for shits and giggles.”
Now that was funny. She nearly choked and snorted out her nip, but determined to feel the comforting burn she swallowed hard then stowed her flask. With Cody here maybe she wouldn’t need it after all.
He didn’t have to produce his badge. As soon as he swaggered through the trees and announced himself with a stare, the kids postured, eyeing him, then chucked their cans, climbed into their vehicles, three to be exact, and drove off, passing Hannah and pressing on through the forest to God only knew where.
Cody waited for her to catch up. As she quickened her pace, approaching, she felt the laser of his eyes on her. She couldn’t be certain he was drinking in the sight of her, but it definitely felt that way, causing her every step to feel bulky, odd, and as though she had not a shred of grace. Yet she felt sexual, if such a thing made sense. Two strange thoughts entered her mind as a result. The first was that Mary would never feel this way. And the second was that Cody had never made her feel this way in high school. Their kiss and all that had transpired between them under the bleachers and into the dreadful night that followed, which she’d worked so hard to forget, had never included this level of thrilling self-consciousness. Whether that was a good thing or bad, she'd yet to find out.
“This is where it happened,” he informed her, indicating a fifteen-foot circumference around him.
Hannah met him where he stood and scanned the terrain, turning three hundred and sixty degrees around. He waited, as she took in the surroundings - dirt and gravel beneath her feet, brush that a vehicle had leveled she presumed, the red and orange and pale yellow leaves crumpled dry thanks to the temperature as they rattled on the breeze that never ceased.
“We know Kendra had been out of the house and Mary sent Candice to fetch her around eight thirty or nine in the evening. Why Kendra had ventured off is unclear, but according to Mary she’d grown secretive, aloof, distant. She couldn’t have been on the dock or Mary would’ve seen her from the living room window. Candice probably checked the dock anyway then, we assume the girl had knowledge of Kendra’s evening routines, she checked the trail that hugs the lake and comes through here.”
Cody sounded clinical in his explanation, but it helped Hannah stay unemotional as she heard the facts by his account, curated by the many reports he’d read.
“We know a vehicle was here. We guess a van-”
“Wait a second,” Hannah interrupted to wrap her head around this tidbit. “Kendra was abducted?”
“We don’t know that. We only know that a vehicle was here. There were fresh tire tracks, blood droplets over them.”
“Slow down,” she demanded, frustrated that she didn’t already know everything. She forced herself to breathe and spread her mind wide open so that she could soak up every last detail.
“Okay,” he agreed. “Kendra was up here with the van. We don’t know if they’d agreed to meet or if it was a bad coincidence - wrong time, wrong place kind of thing, or if the driver knew about her evening walks and set up an abduction. All we know is that there was a vehicle, and an altercation occurred, which resulted in Kendra bleeding-”
<
br /> “How could her blood be over fresh tire tracks?” she asked, now grasping what he’d explained so far.
“We think Candice found Kendra in the throws of her being attacked. Kendra’s blood saturated Candice’s tee shirt and hands. It wasn’t until the van drove off that we suspect Kendra’s blood remnants on Candice fell to the dirt.”
Hannah took a moment. She couldn’t feel the crisp autumn air fill her lungs anymore. Her mind was racing and her heart was pounding out of her chest.
“Candice saw my mother get attacked,” she stated, demanding confirmation before she dared allowed him to feed her more details.
“Yes. And we think Candice fought with them.”
Hannah wanted to sob, let the feeling roiling up inside her burst out so she might gain a shred of relief. She nodded as if to permit him to go on.
“We found Kendra’s hair in some branches over here. We found her shoe, as well as both of Candice’s, one here and the other near the lake,” he explained, pointing out each location except for the shoe at the lake. “We also found...” he trailed off, hesitated, considered, held his breath.
“What?”
“An eight-ball of meth.”
Hannah stared at him in utter disbelief then offered her own ideas.
“Kids party out here all the time.”
“We know that.”
“It could’ve been anyone’s.”
“We know that.”
“My mother went to fucking church on Sunday’s and read the bible.”
“When you knew her, yes, I’m sure she did that.”
“When I knew her?”
“Where I’m going with this,” he cut in, because Hannah needed to breathe and get the full picture before she imploded, “is that we believe if she was abducted, whoever took her was on drugs.”
“But you told me earlier you didn't know if she was abducted. So what are you saying?”
“I’m telling you what Missing Person’s reported on, not what I think,” he corrected her, but it sounded like he was trying to deflect blame or responsibility or ownership of any of this horseshit.
“Let’s cut the crap for a minute. She disappeared a month ago. Is my mother alive or dead? Yes or no?”
“When a missing person isn’t found within the first seventy-two hours then there’s little chance.”
Hannah stared at him and felt her heart split down its center and she hated herself for it. She was the one who'd left, the one who didn’t look back, didn’t return her mother’s phone calls, lost touch. She hated Cody for throwing in her face that the woman she’d known might not have been who was taken that day. Time changed a person, she knew that, but it was all her fault. The only person she trusted in this world was herself and the second she'd turned her back on her mother she lost any hope of foreseeing and preventing this tragedy. And understanding it now, making sense of it, finding out who did this, well, she wasn't sure she knew any of these people anymore so what prayer did she have?
Cody found a way to get close to her. Hannah hadn’t even realized he’d drawn near until he pulled her in, cradling her lower back and the nape of her neck. She merged into his embrace, needing him and resenting him at the same time. She released into a silent, breathy sob without making a sound. The only hint she’d let go and surrendered to the heartbreak welling up inside her was the subtle quake in her shoulders, but Cody held her tight, helped her to steady. When she calmed enough to trust her voice would stay neutral, she asked, “If it’s just a bunch of meth heads who did this and it’s random, then how am I supposed to find her?”
“Candice is the key,” he said softly.
Hannah pulled away and urged him back so she could search his eyes.
“She needs to see a child psychologist,” he went on. “She hasn’t talked to anyone, and sometimes a complete stranger can get a kid to open up in a way their family can’t.”
She had an impulse to call him ridiculous, but she opted for a rhetorical question. “Why wouldn’t she talk to Mary about what happened? Or Dale?”
“I don’t want to speculate. I just know a psychologist could really help.”
Hannah considered it.
“If there’s anything you can do.”
She snorted a laugh. “Get Dale to sign off on that?"
“Hannah, I’m telling you. It could crack this thing wide open. Any detail. She could’ve seen their faces. You don’t know. Even a few digits of a license plate could help tremendously.”
“I’m not even sure if it’s possible.”
“It’s important.”
Hannah found herself shaking her head.
“Hannah, it’s the only way.”
She cocked her head at that and took a step back, alert to the probability he knew something she didn’t.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Cody reached for her, but she backed away, glaring at him. He thought he could bring her here and tell her half-truths? Influence her into bringing Candice to see a psychologist when he was holding a few cards tight against his chest like this was a game he needed to win?
“I didn’t want to have to tell you...” he trailed off as though doing so was becoming his mode of communication, and it was Hannah’s job to read into his pauses. “When Kendra was on the ground she dug something into the dirt.”
“What?”
“With her finger,” he went on, unable to come out with it all at once. “We think it’s a message like she knew she’d be killed and she wanted to leave us with a place to start.”
“Just fucking tell me, Cody!”
“The message said, Ask Mary.”
Chapter Three
Mary had no shame nursing a Coors Light, dewy beads of perspiration rolling down the sides of the can, as she fried something Hannah knew she’d never eat. Mary had tasked her to cut a cucumber. She’d even set out a cutting board and selected the proper knife when Hannah had turned stunned as a deer in headlights in the face of her duty to assist.
“How’s that salad coming along?” she asked, flipping the fish in the pan. At least it'd looked like fish when she pulled it from the freezer. At this stage of the game it was anyone’s guess. Hannah’s money was on breaded fish fillet.
“Great, I’d say.” Hannah was saving face, of course. A fifteen year old was one-upping her at every turn. Thank God the dinner Mary had planned didn’t include the oven. She made frying look easy, but the fact of the matter was that Hannah’s meals came hot and wrapped and shoved at her, while she sat in her idling Taurus.
Mary raised a brow, gaze lingering on the mess of badly chopped vegetables Hannah had thrown into a bowl.
“Alright then,” her half-sister said easily enough. “Throw a few grape-tomatoes in there then toss it with dressing. You made the dressing right?”
Made it? Paul Newman made dressing. All Hannah did was twist the top and feel satisfied if the paper wrapper broke easily.
“Well I can,” Hannah said, confidence wavering, anxiety bleeding through. Then she reassured herself that Mary was three beers deep and wouldn’t know one way or the other if her portion of tonight’s dinner were an eyesore or worse, a culinary disaster.
“Olive oil and balsamic,” she listed between long hauls on her beer. “Seasonings are on the spice rack.”
“Throw me a bone?”
“Try salt and pepper and basil,” she suggested, sinking into her already wide-enough hip so that she could bend her long leg out, as the fish sizzled hard in the pan. Mary eyed her as she fumbled through the cabinets in search of a mixing bowl. “I see you’ve done your hair a little better.”
“I washed it,” Hannah said dryly, which was a partial truth. She’d driven to her dismal room in the Super-8, praying to holy hell there’d be some hot water left, then blow dried her wavy, brown hair straight. She’d also lined her eyes black with liner she’d bought at the local drugstore, Almay sounded like a good enough brand, and she’d brushed on a dash of apricot rouge for good meas
ure. It wasn't until now she realized it'd been Mary who'd inspired her.
“You look pretty,” she stated as though she was the authority on the matter.
Hannah, honest to God felt flattered by the compliment.
“Your clothes don’t quite capture what your figure has to offer,” she added, twisting the compliment into the backhanded variety.
Hannah wasn’t sure she wanted to highlight what her figure had to offer, because she wasn’t offering it, but Cody crossed her mind.
“It’s probably just styling,” Mary went on. “Sometimes a girl has all the right garments, but doesn’t know how to pair them.”
An IQ of 140 tested when the girl was six and this was how she used it?
Hannah took a break from stirring oil into vinegar and glanced down at her choice of dress - worn out jeans that hugged her well enough and lay skinny at the ankles, black boots that gave her a noticeable margin of height over Mary, the girl was a clear three inches shorter than her anyhow, but the boots divided their ages without any misunderstandings; and a purple sweater, admittedly moth-eaten, but tight enough to feel fashionable, at least by Hannah’s estimation. Was her stepsister fucking with her to shatter her confidence? Or was this a sincere effort to impart some fashion wisdom?
“What do you suggest?” Hannah met her gaze then poured the dressing over the salad, all the while dreading the task of tossing it, which she feared would be required. Salad made her skin crawl.
“You really ought to wear a belt,” she assessed. “It’d pull the outfit together, but if I’m being straight with you, you’re head to toe tight. That's no good. If you’re pants are tight, you want your top to be loose and flowing.”
Something about the advice endeared her to Hannah. Maybe it was the thrift store threads Mary wore, just knowing she didn’t have the means to live up to her own advice turned Hannah’s heart to mush, the kind of mush that hurt a bit and lingered, warmth and pain knotted up good.
She shot Mary a smile and thanked her, said she’d keep that in mind.
Mary acknowledged her with a curt nod then tended to her frying, which demanded more of her attention than Hannah would be able to steal back. So she watched her sister on the sly.