by Kris Bock
I left them staring after me. All in all, I’d gotten off easier than I’d expected. I could only hope Mom didn’t keep up her litany of the evils of men to Ricky. He’d heard it all before, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be damaged further.
I collapsed on my bed, determined to speak to no one before the police called. Fifteen minutes later, a knock came at my door. “Audra, there’s a man here to see you.” Mom’s tone of voice would have been more appropriate for a man-eating lion. Unfortunately, in this case she was right. The door opened and Jay pushed past her. At least I had the satisfaction of seeing him close the door in Mom’s outraged face.
“You little bitch. You called the cops. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you.”
I sat up, swallowing hard. “I didn’t realize trust had anything to do with our relationship.” I swung my legs off the bed, but he leaned over me before I could get up.
“Do you realize the trouble you’ve caused?”
I forced myself to look into his face. “I didn’t tell them about you.”
He straightened and crossed his arms. “But you will. That’s the kind of idiotic goody-two-shoes you are.”
“I didn’t tell,” I snapped. “But Jay … it really would be better if you told them yourself. There may be … evidence. I think they’re suspicious. If we tell the truth—”
“Of course they’re suspicious! Because you couldn’t keep your damn mouth shut!” He leaned over me again, close enough that I flinched. At least his breath didn’t stink of marijuana. “But you’d better keep it shut now. You’d better keep me out of this.”
I pushed myself back to sit against the wall. “Look, Jay, we did something important today. We uncovered a murder. Now that they have her body, maybe they’ll be able to figure out who killed her. It’s … heroic! You could be a hero.”
“I don’t want to be a hero. I want to be left alone.”
Yeah, me too, but that didn’t look likely to happen.
“Getting involved is dangerous. There’s a killer out there, and once he finds out you exposed him….” He let the implication hang as he stepped back. I scrambled off the bed but he was still blocking the door, and anyway I didn’t want to bring the conversation out where Mom or Ricky might overhear.
Jay stared at me as if trying to read my thoughts. “Rodrigo said you were snooping around the office. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you’d better stay out of my business.”
“I don’t want anything to do with your business! I just want—” My throat closed up and I couldn’t go on, not even to explain I’d only been getting my phone.
“You just keep your mouth shut. Or else.” He stormed out of the room.
I flopped back on my bed with a shaky sigh. As threats go, his was pretty weak. At least that’s what I told myself as I lay trembling.
Chapter 7
The police came by to interview me at midnight. The two officers were different from the ones I’d already met. They were state police, I think, the ones who were already investigating Bethany Moore’s disappearance. One was tall, at least six and a half feet, and lanky, with dark blond hair. He wore a button-up shirt and tan pants, with a black gun holster strapped to his hip. He looked about thirty. The other was a few years older, average height, black hair and eyes, muscular in a black T-shirt and jeans. They were both good looking, like actors off a TV set. Maybe not leading-man handsome, but definitely sexy enough for a sidekick.
It didn’t make it any easier to describe what happened. It didn’t make it any easier to lie.
Mom and Ricky had gone to bed, and I met the officers at the door before they could ring the bell. But Mom came out anyway, of course. The tall officer took one look at her and said he’d interview me in his car. I don’t know if that was standard procedure or if he had extraordinary deductive reasoning skills, but I was glad I didn’t have to tell my story in front of Mom. The other officer stayed inside to photograph the shoes I’d been wearing. No doubt he got treated to Mom’s theories on the death.
I sat in the front passenger seat of the officer’s car, not a black-and-white but a nice midsize car. The scent of the leather seats mixed with the officer’s spicy aftershave, a foreign, masculine scent. I clenched my hands in my lap and tried to control my breathing.
We sat in the dark and he recorded our conversation as he took me through the experience again. He wanted to know exactly what I’d done. What I’d seen. What she had looked like, with her green skin and half-missing face.
I got through it somehow. My conscience nagged at me to tell the truth, the whole truth, but I’d promised Jay I’d keep him out of it. I thought I should tell anyway, but I couldn’t quite decide, and once I said the first thing about Jay there would be no going back. What would he do to me then?
I tried to skirt reality while avoiding outright lies. I took my time before answering and sometimes didn’t answer exactly the question he’d asked. I hoped the tremor in my voice would convince him I was confused because I was upset. I could honestly say I wasn’t sure about my every move, since the memory was blurred by shock. Still, if the officer had been able to hear the words in my head, he’d have gotten an entirely different story.
He finally walked me back to my door and said goodnight. I was trembling, but I’d managed not to cry. He shook my hand. For a moment I looked into his eyes, but I couldn’t read anything there.
Mom stood in the living room, arms folded across her terrycloth robe, and watched through the thin curtains as the headlights backed out of our driveway. “They seemed halfway competent. At least that Hispanic one listened to me.”
I winced. What had she told him about me? She didn’t know anything—I had to remember that—but I still imagined the officer could have learned a lot about me with a few pointed questions. Would Mom have portrayed me as honest and reliable, or incompetent and ungrateful? She hadn’t been pleased with me that day.
She turned from the window, shaking her head. “Though I don’t know why they haven’t arrested the ex-boyfriend already.”
If she’d been focused on the sins of men, maybe my reputation had come through unscathed. “They have to have proof.”
She snorted and headed for her bedroom. For Mom, the fact that a man was involved was proof enough.
I stood in the living room, staring at nothing. I couldn’t predict what would happen next. But one thought steadied me. I’d done something important that day. I’d exposed a murder. Now that they had her body, maybe they’d be able to figure out who killed her.
I considered making a cup of tea, something to soothe my queasy stomach and delay the moment of sleep—and possible nightmares. But suddenly I could barely stand up. I stumbled toward my room.
As I pushed through the door, something moved on my bed.
I gasped and jerked back, banging into the doorframe.
“Audra! It’s me.”
A sound like a whimper came from my throat. I clung to the doorframe as my legs threatened to collapse. My brain recognized the voice, but it couldn’t control my body’s reaction.
My bedside lamp flicked on. Ricky, sitting cross-legged near my pillow, grinned at me. “I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t want Mom to know I was in here.”
I closed the door and staggered the three steps to the narrow bed. “Ricky. What are you doing here? Everything’s all right. Go to bed.”
“But I want to help!”
I rubbed my hands over my face. Half my brain was already asleep and the other half wanted to join it. “Help with what?”
“Help investigate! Help you find out what happened to that woman.”
“What?” I shook my head and sat on the end of the bed. “No. That’s the police’s job. I told them what I know. I’m done.”
“But they have a lot of cases, hundreds, probably. Those guys aren’t even local. They could use our help. They don’t know what’s really going on here, in our town.”
His words created an odd echo of somethin
g Jay had said. “What do you mean? What’s going on here?”
“I hear stuff in school, you know, who’s selling drugs or who got knocked around by her dad or whatever. Stuff the police don’t know.”
I remembered hearing rumors like that in school as well. I hadn’t always understood all the slang and innuendo, but Ricky, curious boy, would have figured it out. “But that stuff doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Maybe it does! You have to keep an open mind when you’re investigating. You have to look and listen. I can do that at school and around town. You can do that at the resort. Then we can put together what we learn and figure it out.”
It was too much. Too much pressure, too much risk, simply asking too much. “That’s crazy! I don’t know anything! I don’t know what I’m doing or—” I broke off, trying to hold back the tears.
Ricky got up. He stood beside the bed and smiled gently down at me. “You’re tired. We can talk about it tomorrow. You’ll see what a chance this is.”
I shouldn’t have given him the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories for his tenth birthday. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, since he’d read every Encyclopedia Brown, The Three Investigators, and Hardy Boys. It looked as if I’d pay for it now.
He left, closing the door quietly behind him. I dragged myself across the bed, crawled under the covers, and flipped off the light. Let the nightmares come. They couldn’t be worse than real life.
Chapter 8
I did not want to go to work the next morning.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t built up any sick days yet, and I was in enough trouble without lying to my boss again. I was awake and restless at six, so even after spending extra time on my makeup to hide the dark circles under my eyes, I got out of the house early. I couldn’t face breakfast, I didn’t want to talk to Ricky about “the case” in front of Mom, and I didn’t really want to talk to Mom at all.
I was half an hour early as I neared the driveway to the resort. I slowed, prepared to turn—then hit the gas and kept on driving. I imagined heading out of town, just driving forever.
The thought was too tempting. When I got to the next turnoff, I jerked the wheel right. Otherwise I might have kept going until I ran out of gas.
I realized I’d turned onto a dirt road that circled around the plateau through the forest—the same woods where we’d found the body, but about a mile away. I didn’t want to go anywhere near there! Was everything in my life leading me that way?
I bumped over a rock that threw me against the door. My wheel hit a rut and the car skidded toward the trees. I hit the brakes, jerked forward against my seatbelt, and slowed to a crawl, jolted out of my stupor.
The path was narrow, used more by ATVs than by cars. I’d have a hard time turning around. I debated backing up the hundred feet or so I’d already come, but somehow I just kept driving. My mind and body wouldn’t sync up.
A minute later the path widened. I told myself to hit the brakes and finally did so, my movements jerky like a doll controlled by a child. I put the car in park, fumbled with the door handle, and got out. I leaned against the car with the door open to the beep-beep-beep warning me about my keys in the ignition, and breathed in the morning air, the scent of trees and earth and wildflowers. But no death. This place was clean.
I tipped my head back, closed my eyes, and said a prayer for Bethany Moore. I hoped she’d found some peace.
Something rustled in the bushes, and I flinched. But the sound had been small, a bird or lizard. I drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. How long would it take before standing in the woods no longer filled me with fear? A month? A year?
Had this changed me forever?
I wanted to dive back in the car and lock the doors. Instead, I stepped away. The trees thinned near the cliff edge, and I focused on the patches of blue sky beyond. In a few steps, I could see down a couple hundred feet to the farmlands and scrub desert below the mountains that made it possible to have skiing and other winter sports in central New Mexico.
At the edge of my field of view, cars moved along the main road into town. People were going about their business as if this were a normal day. For most of them, it was.
Nothing had changed, really, in the larger scheme. People died every day, some violently. It only made a difference when it touched you.
If this experience did change me forever, maybe that was good. Maybe I’d care more about strangers. Maybe I’d value life more. Maybe I’d choose to live differently, though I couldn’t yet say how.
A dark blue truck with a cap on the bed turned off the road and drove through the fields. A tremor ran up my spine. Was that the truck I’d seen in the parking lot yesterday, with the one-handed man?
The truck passed between farm fields and on into the undeveloped public land where ranchers grazed their cattle. It pulled off to the side of the road and someone got out. He went to the back of the truck and opened the window and tailgate.
I took a step closer to the drop-off and peered down. Why would somebody stop there, alongside the road, a mile or more from any building?
He did something at the back of the truck; I couldn’t see what. And then he walked away from the road, into empty land, carrying an object like a suitcase.
He walked a few hundred feet and put down the suitcase. At that distance, I couldn’t tell if he was doing anything besides standing there. I wished I had binoculars.
He made some kind of gesture with his arm, and then he was still. Had he signaled to someone? I scanned the land all around but couldn’t see another person or vehicle in range.
I got the impression he was looking up. Had he signaled to someone in a plane? I scanned the sky. Nothing. And then—a tiny dark speck.
I squinted, trying to keep it in view. It came closer in a lazy arc. A hawk or falcon, catching the morning thermals.
I frowned down at the man far below. His behavior was odd and struck me as somehow suspicious, but I couldn’t see what standing in a field had to do with a month-old murder in the woods above. Could he be dumping evidence from the suitcase? Why there, why now? And even if he was, what could I do about it? I’d feel stupid trying to explain this to the police when I didn’t really know anything, not even who the man was. If I wanted to talk to the police again, I had more relevant things to tell them.
I shook my head and turned back to my car. If I didn’t get moving, I’d be late to work. But I carried with me that image, of a lone man standing in the desert, looking up at the sky.
I still got to the resort a few minutes before eight. The lobby was busy with checkouts. A bellhop pushing a cart loaded with luggage gave me a long sideways glance. One of the receptionists leaned over to whisper something to the other, her eyes on me. The customer she was helping turned to scan the room. I ducked my head and hurried past.
When I reached the hall to the offices, I slowed. Maybe I was just imagining the looks. My name hadn’t been mentioned on the news. People might have seen me with the police, though, and the small-town grapevine worked quickly.
I couldn’t do anything except pretend everything was normal and focus on work. I needed to check with Eslinda on the tasks for the day, but her door was closed. Should I knock, or check back later? Then I heard a murmur of voices behind the door. She wasn’t alone.
“Audra!” someone hissed from across the hall. Nascha waved me closer from her doorway. “The police are in there with Eslinda. They’re asking her questions about yesterday, about the body. Rumors are flying.”
She looked past me at the door, and I was glad for the chance to control my expression.
But what was the point in trying to keep my involvement a secret? Nascha would hear the truth—at least the part I’d already admitted—soon enough. If I denied it now, or even avoided the subject, I’d break the fragile thread of our possible friendship.
“I found her.”
Her eyes flicked to my face and then away. “Finding death is a terrible thing.
I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
She glanced at Eslinda’s door. “We’d better not talk about this now.” She backed into her office. “Today won’t be easy. Don’t try to handle everything alone.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure how much choice I had.
I left the door to my office open to show I had nothing to hide. Another lie. I stared at the paperwork on my desk, ignored from the previous day. If I could bury myself in wedding planning, maybe I could forget the family that was planning a funeral.
Eslinda came into my office an hour later. She closed the door behind her and sat across from my desk. For a moment we just looked at each other.
“I’ve been talking to the police,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
My heart jolted. What had she told them?
“They say you found that body in the woods. That must’ve been terrible.”
Oh. “Yes, it was.”
“And after you were already feeling so bad yesterday afternoon!” She shook her head. “You poor girl.”
Was she testing me? Hinting at suspicions?
She sighed. “I don’t know what to say. I went to school with her mother. I didn’t know her well—Bethany, that is, I knew her mother fairly well back in those days. Anyway, it’s such a tragedy. And after what happened to her brother, too.”
I stared at her, my own thoughts churning. In a town of 8,000 people, it wasn’t surprising that she would know the victim’s family. I wanted to ask about them, but I wasn’t sure of the questions. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know anything that would make them more real, or more tragic.
She sighed again. “Do you want to take the day off? Or would you rather work? When I’m upset, sometimes that’s better. Working, I mean.”
“Um, work. I need to keep busy.” Otherwise I might run through the hotel screaming. I might blurt out Jay’s secret. I might destroy my reputation and my career.