Hiding Place (9781101606759)

by Bell, David

  What if she ended up in one of those stories? The girl killed by a creep who claimed to know something about her uncle’s murder.

  She took a few deep breaths, told herself she couldn’t let those thoughts take over her mind. She didn’t need pills. She wouldn’t let her mind twist her into knots.

  She decided to eat while waiting for Kevin. At eleven fifteen, the restaurant remained relatively calm. A few of the old men who gathered for their morning coffee and biscuit still remained. Ashleigh took some sort of comfort from their presence. They seemed like part of the order of the town, like the monument to President Grant on the courthouse lawn or the Fall Festival in October. Their number never decreased. Even when one of them died, another old guy showed up, keeping the number of the group about the same. A part of her wished that her grandpa would come and join them, that he would leave the house a little more and talk to somebody. But he didn’t seem to be the type of man who could even stand to talk to other men. Ashleigh just didn’t know if he’d always been so closed down, or if her uncle’s death sealed her grandpa off from the rest of the world.

  Kevin worked in the back, so Ashleigh didn’t see him. She ordered Chicken McNuggets, fries, and a Coke and took her tray to a table in the corner. The lunchtime crowd would arrive soon, goofy-looking businessmen in their starched white shirts, mothers pulling a train of kids behind them. She wanted to stay out of everyone’s way and eat in peace. She wanted to think about and prepare for seeing Steven Kollman.

  What would she say to him?

  She decided to be direct, to just ask him what he knew. Just say it straight out.

  Listen, dude, I don’t mean to freak you out or anything, but I’ve got to know what you know. And if you don’t know anything, leave my mom alone…

  She had a mouthful of McNugget and her eyes on the parking lot when Kevin slid into the booth across from her. Ashleigh jumped a little, lost in imagining the scenario at the apartment complex.

  “Easy, Ash. It’s just me.”

  He smiled wide. Ashleigh had to admit she was happy to see him, even if he did make her jump.

  “Are you the fry guy today?” she asked. “These McNuggets are a little dry.”

  “I’ll tell the chef.”

  “I was just thinking about Kollman, and what I’m going to say to him.”

  “About that…”

  Ashleigh understood what his words meant.

  “About that?” she said. “What are you doing?”

  Kevin held his hands out. Placating. Ashleigh hated being placated.

  “It’s just a delay,” Kevin said.

  “A delay?”

  “Two people called off,” he said. “They need me to stay through lunch.”

  “We made these plans.” She didn’t want to sound whiny, but she was pissed, and her voice rose beyond her control. “You know how important this is.”

  “I know, I know. But the other day when we went to see this guy, I showed up late and got written up.”

  “So?”

  “So my dad knows the manager. They’re friends from the Optimists Club or something, and my dad gave me this big bullshit talk about not being late again.”

  “You won’t be late,” Ashleigh said. “You’re already here.”

  “I feel like I can’t say no,” Kevin said. “And my dad said I need to save money for a car in the fall. It’s just until three. Then we can go.”

  “Three?”

  “Hell, the guy probably isn’t even home. We went in the morning last time and he wasn’t there. He probably works somewhere, so if we go later we’ll catch him. Makes sense, right?”

  Ashleigh looked back out the window. A minivan and an SUV pulled in. Any minute and they’d start spilling kids out their sides, the parents irritable, the kids little eating machines. What Kevin said made sense, but she didn’t want to wait.

  We made plans.

  “Fine,” she said. “Work until three.”

  Kevin didn’t say anything. He looked around the restaurant.

  “What?” Ashleigh asked.

  “You know, other people have things going on in their lives. I’m offering to go with you. It will just be later.”

  “Fine.” She took a long drink.

  “I know what that means,” he said. “You’re pissed. I get it. I get how much this means to you. But we have to compromise sometimes, you know? Like you going to football or basketball games when I know you don’t want to. Now I’m asking you to wait for me. Jesus, just once could you give somebody a break? Could you? Like Kelcey in the park. Why lash out at people who mean well?”

  Ashleigh didn’t meet his eye. He’d never spoken to her like this, and it brought an unnatural burning to her eyes, something that made her feel like a little kid.

  But she wasn’t going to cry.

  She wasn’t going to show it.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Just work.”

  But Kevin didn’t leave. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Come on, Ash. I’m sorry—”

  She pulled her hand away. “It’s fine. Go.”

  He leaned back. “We can do it at three. You can hang out at the library or back home, and we can leave right at three.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Really.”

  She offered nothing else, so Kevin went back to work. She finished eating alone.

  The bus dropped Ashleigh at the same stop as the other day—Hamilton Avenue, a few blocks’ walk from Steven Kollman’s apartment complex. She stepped out into the heat, the crappy food from McDonald’s heavy in her stomach. She’d left the restaurant without talking to Kevin. She’d handed the woman at the cash register a note, written on a thin paper napkin.

  Going to library. See you at 3.

  By three, Ashleigh expected—hoped—to have everything with Steven Kollman wrapped up. She could go back and meet Kevin and tell him what had happened. She could do it on her own.

  But as she walked down the sidewalk toward the street where the apartment complex sat, she started to doubt the wisdom of what she was doing. What was she going to do—a skinny fifteen-year-old girl armed with scraps of information? What would she do if the guy was a rapist or a killer?

  But she wouldn’t turn back. Couldn’t and wouldn’t.

  It meant too much and she’d waited too long.

  Ashleigh remembered the building. The cooking smells in the hallway were worse than what she ate at McDonald’s. Everyone seemed to have their TVs blaring. She didn’t want to think about what went on behind all those doors, the empty, boring lives led by people with nothing better to do than watch TV all day.

  But was her grandpa any different? And what right did she have to come down on these people so hard? Maybe they were like her grandpa and had lost their jobs or had someone close to them die, leaving them to fend for themselves.

  Ashleigh stopped on the first landing. She knew she judged others harshly, even went so far as to look down on anyone she considered stupid or ignorant—and as far as Ashleigh was concerned, that meant a lot of people.

  But what if Kevin was right? What if she never gave anybody a break? Her mom, her grandpa, Kevin, Kelcey, the kids at school. People she didn’t even know as she walked through her life. Maybe this guy, Steven Kollman, was one of those people. Someone who had been dealt a bad hand, never given a chance by the world, and so he ended up living in a dumpy apartment building in Dove Point, Ohio.

  Ashleigh hoped to find out soon enough, so she resumed her climb up the stairs.

  She had taken just a few steps when she heard the whooshing sound. It repeated itself rhythmically—whoosh whoosh whoosh. Ashleigh couldn’t place it, but it sounded like it was coming from the top floor, where Steven Kollman lived. She moved past the second landing, and the noise increased. When the third floor came into sight, Ashleigh had a pretty good guess as to what the noise was.

  Steven Kollman’s apartment door was wide-open. Three large dark garbage bags sat just outside of it. They looked
to be filled to bursting. Every time the whoosh sound came again, a puff of dust and dirt came out the door of the apartment like a little cloud. Someone was cleaning Steven’s apartment. Really cleaning it.

  Was it Steven?

  Or…

  The sweeping stopped, and the familiar head of the building manager popped out of the apartment door. For a short moment, it looked like he didn’t know who Ashleigh was and wanted to ask her what she needed. But then recognition spread across his face. His eyes brightened and his eyebrows raised behind the loose-fitting glasses.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Steven’s…what? Are you his cousin or something? I forget.”

  “Something like that,” Ashleigh said.

  “Where’s your friend?” he asked.

  “Oh, he’s at work.”

  She regretted telling the truth as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She should have thought on her feet and told a lie. She could have said he was in the car or waiting outside or on his way to meet her. But the man now knew she was alone. She was halfway up the staircase, between the third and second floor, so the manager and his blandly happy face loomed above her. He came all the way out and set the broom down, leaning it against the wall. He wore a red T-shirt and great blotches of sweat encircled the area of his armpits.

  “Is Steven home?” Ashleigh asked.

  The man wiped his hands together, trying to clean the dust or dirt off. “You’re too late,” he said. “Or he’s too late really. He never paid me the back rent he owed, so I left him an eviction notice. Late last night, I see him carrying some stuff out to his car. You know, a suitcase, a couple of boxes. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was moving out, but he had the back rent for me. Next thing I know, he’s driving off.” The guy shrugged. “He never came back, the bum.”

  “You don’t know where he went?”

  “Sweetie, if I knew that, I’d find him and send the marshals after him. I see this all the time. There are a lot of crummy people in the world.”

  Ashleigh didn’t know what to think. She felt relief, yes. All the fears and anxieties she carried with her, all the worries about what might have gone wrong if she did end up talking to Steven Kollman eased and allowed her to breathe more freely than she had all day. On the other hand, a crushing disappointment lurked beneath everything. What was she going to do if Steven was gone? Everything—everything—she’d hoped for about finding this man and helping her family was gone. She had fallen back to zero.

  “Didn’t he tell you he was leaving?” the man asked.

  “No,” Ashleigh said.

  “He didn’t tell anyone in the family?”

  Ashleigh shook her head.

  “See, that’s crummy.” He pushed his glasses up.

  Ashleigh agreed. It was.

  “That guy came back looking for him.”

  “What guy?” Ashleigh asked.

  “Remember?” he said. He sounded frustrated, like Ashleigh should know exactly what he was talking about. “Last time you were here I told you that another guy came to see him and they had an argument. Remember?”

  Ashleigh did, once he mentioned it. “Sure. Okay.”

  “That guy came back, too, looking for Steven.”

  “And you don’t know who this guy is?” Ashleigh asked.

  “I’m not a secretary.”

  “I thought maybe he left a note or something.”

  “He didn’t. He just left. And that’s all I know.”

  But she couldn’t turn away. She remained on the stairs with one hand holding the banister.

  “What’s going to happen to all his stuff?” she asked.

  The man turned and looked into the apartment door, appraising the contents of the room. “The apartments come furnished, so none of that is his. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t try to swipe it. The rest of the stuff is just junk. Papers and bills and stuff. It all gets thrown out.”

  “Thrown out?”

  “What am I supposed to do with it? Make a scrapbook for him? Store it?”

  “Let me come in and see it,” Ashleigh said.

  The man looked surprised, like someone who finds a forgotten twenty-dollar bill in his pants pocket.

  “You want to come in? Here?”

  “If you’re just going to throw the stuff away—”

  “Of course. Come in.”

  He stepped back and into the door of the apartment, and while he moved he reached up with both hands, attempting to smooth the ragged strands of his hair down against the skin of his scalp. Ashleigh knew she was taking a risk. Her mom had already given her more than one talk about men—the kinds of situations to avoid, the times to turn and run. Mom wouldn’t approve of this one, Ashleigh knew. Being in an apartment with a strange older man. Alone.

  But Ashleigh put it all aside. The guy looked so pathetic, so nerdy. And how would she live with herself if she came this close and didn’t take the opportunity? She may never have the chance again to learn something—anything—about Steven Kollman.

  Ashleigh went the rest of the way up the steps to the third floor. The manager held out his hand.

  “I’m Nick,” he said, his body filling the doorway. “Nick Reeves.”

  “Ashleigh.”

  She took his dirty hand reluctantly, but tried to conceal her disgust. His skin was wet and clammy. Ashleigh wanted to wash the feeling off right away but didn’t see any graceful way to do it.

  Ashleigh followed Nick inside and looked around. A few boxes sat on the floor, their tops open. Junk filled them. Papers, magazines, plastic cups and dishes. A few pieces of clothing. Ashleigh noted that Nick didn’t shut the door behind them, and that brought her a small measure of relief. She thought again of what Kevin said about giving people a break. Shouldn’t she give Nick a break as well? Maybe he was just a harmless nerd, a middle-aged guy who didn’t know how to act around women of any age.

  “Is this all there is?” Ashleigh asked, pointing to the boxes.

  “There’s the trash in the hall,” he said. “But that’s basically it. I already cleaned out the bedroom. Are you looking for something in particular? There wasn’t any jewelry or pictures, if that’s what you’re looking for. I wouldn’t throw someone’s pictures away, and I’d sell the jewelry for the back rent. I’m allowed to do that.”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” Ashleigh said, bending down near the first box. “I don’t know. And it probably isn’t here anyway, whatever it might be.”

  “That doesn’t really make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she said.

  She took handfuls of the paper and paged through them, letting each piece drop away to the bottom of the box when she saw it wasn’t important. And none of it was important. Junk mail, mostly. The same crap that filled their mailbox at home, the stuff everyone on earth must throw away but companies still felt compelled to mail.

  “Where do you go to school?” Nick asked.

  “What?” Ashleigh turned her head.

  Nick still stood there, just a few steps away. She had assumed he would go back to his cleaning and leave her alone, but he hadn’t. He seemed to be waiting on her, like he thought she might need something that only he could deliver.

  “Your school?”

  “Dove Point High,” she said. “I’m going to be a sophomore.”

  “DPH? I went to Dove Point West—you know, out in the country.”

  Ashleigh waited to see if he wanted to say anything else, but he didn’t. In fact, Nick turned away a little bit and looked around the kitchen of the apartment. Ashleigh could see dishes piled in the sink and some garbage in the corner. He still needed to clean there.

  She turned back to the papers and picked up her pace. She didn’t know how long she could stay in this little crowded room with Nick. She shuffled the papers quickly, almost not paying attention to what passed her eyes.

  “Are you going to drive next year?” Nick asked.

  “Sure. I guess so.”

>   She kept looking at the papers.

  “You’ll turn sixteen, right?”

  “In April.”

  “You can drive then.”

  “Sure.”

  Wait!

  She picked up the paper she had just discarded.

  Across the top it said: “Clerk of Courts, Franklin County, Ohio.”

  Franklin County. Columbus.

  Ashleigh scanned the paper. A few words jumped out.

  Assault…second degree…warrant…

  And then she saw it—the name on the court summons:

  Justin Manning.

  Her hands shook.

  “Holy fuck!”

  Ashleigh didn’t know if she said the words out loud or in her head. It didn’t matter. They sounded like a scream in her own mind.

  For what felt like forever she just sat there, the paper raised to her eye level. She stared at the paper, made sure she really saw what she thought she saw.

  It was there. Her uncle’s name in this man’s things.

  Then the hands were on her. From behind, Nick’s sweaty, greasy hands. They fumbled across her breasts, brushed against her face. She felt his hot breath on her neck as he wrapped her up, tightening his grip around her so it was difficult to move at all.

  Ashleigh made a sound. Somewhere between a scream and a gag. She didn’t think it was very loud, so she made it again even louder.

  But who would hear her in the shitty building with everyone staring at their TVs?

  She dropped the paper and remembered something her grandpa had taught her: if someone grabs you from behind—

  Ashleigh brought her right arm up as far as it would go, then swung it back, her elbow aimed for Nick’s gut like a missile. She connected, felt the rush of air that came out as Nick said, “Ooof!”

  Ashleigh slipped away as he loosened his grip. She turned. Nick still stood between her and the door, but he was doubled over, his eyes closed tight. She swung her foot high and caught him in the chin. Her shoe against his face made a satisfying smack. She didn’t wait to see the damage done or how he reacted.

  She didn’t care.

  She ran. Her shoes pounded down the stairs. Pounded and pounded.

  She ran and ran until she looked back over her shoulder and couldn’t see the building anymore.