The Hiding Place

by David Bell

  Stynes looked around the place-kitchen, bathroom, small bedroom. He was on his way back to the living room when his cell phone rang. It was Dispatch.

  “Detective Stynes? We found that detective in Columbus, the one you were asking about.”

  “Great,” Stynes said. “Let me get a pen.”

  “He’s on the line right now, Detective. I can put the call through to your phone.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Stand by.”

  The wonders of modern technology.

  Stynes waited, listening to a couple of clicks. The dispatcher told him to go ahead. “You’re speaking with Detective Helton of Columbus PD.”

  “Detective Stynes?” a surprisingly young voice said.

  “That’s me. Thanks for taking the call.”

  “No problem. We’re always happy to help out our brothers in the rural provinces.”

  Shithead, Stynes thought.

  “You’re wanting to know about an assault case, one that involved a Justin Manning.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” Stynes said. “I know it might be a long shot you would remember anything, but I wanted to try.”

  “I’ve got the file and my notes here.” Helton hummed to himself while he apparently looked at the file. “I do remember this. Kind of.”

  “What happened?” Stynes asked.

  “Standard stuff. Manning got into it with some guy. There was pushing and shoving. I guess your boy Manning took a swing at the other dude and clocked him in the jaw. Guy wasn’t really hurt, but he wanted to press charges. Misdemeanor assault. Manning didn’t have a record, so he walked with a fine. Except he never bothered to pay the fine, so the warrant was issued. Happens every day in the big city. Why are you interested? What did Manning do?”

  “Let’s call it identity theft.”

  “Well, I can send you a copy of this report if you’d like.”

  “Thanks. That would be great.”

  There was a long pause. Stynes thought the connection had been lost. He was about to ask when Helton spoke again.

  “Shit,” Helton said.

  “What?”

  “This name. Manning. And Dove Point. I read about this.” Another pause. “Shit. This guy’s pretending to be…”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Trying? Isn’t it obvious he isn’t the kid? He stole a dead kid’s identity.”

  “That would be my guess, too. But we have to make sure.”

  “I’m going to look at that story again.” Helton made the humming noise again. “Yeah, I have in my notes that Manning seemed like an odd duck. He had that twenty-mile stare, you know? But that’s half the perps we deal with here.”

  Perps? Stynes thought. Did people really talk that way?

  “If you could just send it on over.”

  “You got it,” Helton said. “And I guess an identity theft case is a nice break from prosecuting cow tippers?”

  “Right,” Stynes said. He hung up, then added, “Asshole.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Ashleigh looked at the photos from the box under her bed. There weren’t that many, which surprised her. Did people take many pictures back then? Her mom once explained that taking photographs used to be expensive. You had to bring the film to a place that developed it and then wait for the pictures to come back. You bought them whether they were any good or not. Sometimes her mom talked like she grew up in the nineteenth century.

  But there were maybe only fifty photos total of her uncle. Some were posed portraits, the kind they took at the mall. Others were candid-birthday parties, Christmas. Ashleigh studied the portraits, trying to see a resemblance. But she’d seen the man on the porch for only a few minutes-and from a distance. What was she going to be able to see?

  Someone knocked on the door again. Ashleigh sighed and threw the pictures back in the box, then slid it under the bed.

  “Hold on,” Ashleigh said.

  She made sure the box was hidden and opened the door. Except it wasn’t her mom-it was her grandpa. He stood there in the hallway looking as uncomfortable as he always did when he came to her room. Ashleigh didn’t know why he acted so weird about coming near her personal space-he’d raised a daughter before. But the old guy always looked afraid when he stood in the doorway of her room, like he was expecting a training bra or a tampon to leap up and bite him on the neck.

  “Hi,” Ashleigh said. “Is something wrong?”

  “Your mom asked me to check in on you.”

  “I’m fine,” Ashleigh said.

  She thought that would be it. Ordinarily that would be it, but for some reason her grandpa lingered around the door as if he wanted to talk or something. Except he didn’t say anything. He stood there, hands in pockets. Ashleigh didn’t know what to do.

  “Are you watching the Reds game?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Seventh inning. They’re winning. Do you want to watch the end of the game?”

  “Um…”

  “It’s okay if you don’t. I know you’re not a big sports fan.”

  “I guess I was going to read something,” Ashleigh said, although, in truth, she didn’t have a new book to read and needed to go to the library. She just really didn’t want to watch baseball with the old man. She’d done it before, and even with the game on to provide a distraction, sitting there with him felt awkward.

  “That’s okay.” But he still didn’t turn away. “Hey,” he said, “I meant to ask you. When that man today tried to, you know, touch you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re telling the truth that nothing else happened, right?”

  “I am, Grandpa.”

  “Because that shouldn’t happen to a young girl like you, and I just wanted you to know that it’s okay.”

  “What’s okay?”

  “If you want to tell me anything else.”

  Ashleigh’s cheeks flushed with warmth. She understood. The old guy was looking out for her. He was being protective. “It’s okay, Grandpa,” she said again. “I told everything there is to tell. He didn’t hurt me.”

  He nodded, and Ashleigh thought she saw his shoulders lift a little with relief. “Good,” he said.

  “Grandpa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know how I got away?”

  “How?” he asked.

  “Remember you taught me once how to get away if someone grabbed me from behind?”

  “I do,” he said. “You used that?”

  “I swung my arm back and hit him in the gut. And then, when he doubled over, I kicked him in the face.”

  Her grandpa smiled bigger than she had ever seen him smile. “I didn’t even teach you that.”

  “I know. I just did it.”

  “Great.”

  Then they didn’t know what to say to each other again.

  “Well,” he said.

  He went back down the stairs. Ashleigh went into her room but didn’t shut the door. She didn’t return to the bed or look for a book to read. Without thinking of it too much, she left and went downstairs, following in her grandpa’s wake. He was sitting in his chair, the baseball game playing at high volume. He looked up when she came into the living room, his face showing surprise. He appeared even more surprised when she sat down on the couch and looked at the TV, but he didn’t say anything.

  Ashleigh tried to decipher the action of the game. She read the score in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. The Reds appeared to be playing and beating a team from New York, one that wore orange-and-blue uniforms. The Yankees? Or was it the Mets? They were from New York, right? Otherwise, she couldn’t follow beyond the basics-balls and strikes, outs and hits. When the players ran around the bases and things happened, she lost track of what it all meant.

  During a commercial, her grandpa said, “Your mom never liked baseball.”

  “I don’t really like it either,” Ashleigh said.

  Ashleigh knew what he was thinking: Then why
are you sitting here? But he didn’t say it. During the next round of commercials, Ashleigh said, “Grandpa, what do you think happened to Uncle Justin?”

  He didn’t look away from the TV. “He’s dead, Ashleigh.”

  She didn’t know how to respond. She’d expected some debate, some hedging of bets based on the events of recent days. But there was none of that-just a flat statement of fact.

  “How can you be sure?” Ashleigh asked.

  He still didn’t look away from the TV. “It’s been so long,” he said. “I just know it.”

  The game started again, and one of the batters for the Reds did something impressive because all the fans were cheering. When it quieted down, Ashleigh said, “Do you mean that because Uncle Justin is your son, you can feel if he’s alive or not?”

  “I’ll say something about all of this.” He used the remote control to turn the volume down a little but didn’t look at her. “I have a feeling we’re going to learn something in the coming days, all of us. Too many people are nosing around and getting worked up.”

  “We’re going to learn something about who really killed him?”

  “Just something,” he said. “Your mom told me tonight before she left the house that we were in the middle of all of this and we couldn’t avoid it.” He turned the volume back up on the TV. The crowd cheered more. Someone had hit a home run. “I think she’s right.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Michael led Janet to the opening to the path into the woods. She stopped there, peering ahead into the darkness.

  “Why are we here?” she asked. “Is this what you want to show me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why here?”

  “It’s just…” Michael searched for the right words. “It will help to do it in there.”

  Janet tried to remember the last time she had gone into the woods. She had been there only once since the day Justin died. When Ashleigh was small and asking questions about Justin’s death, Janet had relented and took her into the clearing and showed her the spot. The place fascinated Ashleigh. She wanted to sit and pepper Janet with questions about the day Justin disappeared and died, but Janet made them leave before Ashleigh could say anything. It didn’t feel right to Janet to be there. If she didn’t want to be defined by the events that happened in that place, then there was no point in returning to it time after time. Likewise, she spent little time in the cemetery where her mother and brother were buried. She hoped they would rest together someday, if only for the symbolic nature of having them side by side-not because she wanted to spend every Sunday bringing flowers and tending to their graves.

  So what did Michael want?

  The night was dark. Her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, which meant she could see about twenty-five feet in front of her.

  “Michael,” she said, “I don’t like this place.”

  He looked down at her in the darkness. He reached out a comforting hand, placed it on her upper arm again. “I know,” he said.

  “Then why are we here?”

  “We’re here because I learned something in therapy about confronting things from our past. Janet, did you ever talk about this with a therapist?”

  “They made me talk to a school counselor when Justin died,” she said. She remembered the hours spent in the small office, the counselor a well-meaning but past-his-prime man with white hair and a polyester tie that Janet knew even at that young age was too far out of date. She told him what she thought he wanted to hear because she thought it would release her from the sessions sooner. No, I’m not having nightmares. No, I don’t obsessively think about my brother’s death. No, I’m not scared in the dark. And it worked. The sessions stopped, and Janet began the project-mostly on her own-of trying to be a normal kid again.

  In the darkness, Janet studied Michael’s eyes. Despite his touch and his smile, his eyes looked nervous and afraid. After all the years she’d known him, Janet couldn’t reconcile the two images-the smiling golden boy she’d known both in fact and in memory and the man standing before her, a man in his early thirties who’d been a little battered by life. That one had become and fed into the other Janet understood on an intellectual level, just as she understood that the defensive seven-year-old determined to soldier on through her brother’s death had become the woman at the head of the path. A little fearful and nervous and uncertain about how the events of the last few days were going to turn out-and what it all was going to mean to her.

  “I need to do this, Janet,” Michael said. “A therapist I saw in California encouraged me to come back to this spot. To be in it again. You know, I haven’t been here since that day?”

  “Is that why you’re back in Dove Point? To do this?”

  “I’ve been circling the issue for years,” he said. “After California, I moved to Chicago, then Columbus. I kept getting closer.”

  “Why do we have to do it in the dark? Justin didn’t die in the dark.”

  If he died at all.

  “I need to share it with you,” he said. “And this is our chance to do it without interruption.”

  Janet looked down the path again, then up at Michael.

  She nodded her head, and they started into the woods.

  They moved down the narrow path single file, with Michael going first and Janet following, holding on to his hand. Janet knew that kids came to the park to have sex or drink or escape from the adult world that held them back, and it wasn’t lost on her, as they walked through the woods, that if this scene were playing out sixteen years earlier-the two of them holding hands in the darkened park, heading to an isolated place-her entire body would have been thrumming with the electric pulses of desire. Even under the current circumstances, Janet felt some of that. She and Michael were together. They were touching. They were sharing something, just the two of them.

  But Janet knew enough-had lived enough-not to give in to that feeling. Bigger things were happening. Much bigger.

  Branches and twigs brushed against her arms and pant legs as they progressed down the path. Despite the heat and recent lack of rain, the foliage in the woods remained thick and lush. In the darkness, the leaves shifted and moved in the light breeze, their shadowy outlines tricking Janet’s eyes with their movement, giving the impression of the presence of animals or people where there were none. She smelled the rich earth, felt the buzzing of flying insects that nipped at her face and exposed arms.

  She couldn’t turn back. Michael needed her. And maybe he was right. Maybe she needed to face this place again.

  Michael turned back to her. “It’s right up there,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “How do you even know where to go?” Janet asked.

  “There’s only one path through the woods over here,” he said. “Besides, I can just feel that this is the place. I know. Don’t you?”

  Janet didn’t say it out loud, but she agreed. It did feel like the place. It really did.

  Michael’s pace slowed a few moments later. He came to an almost complete stop and shifted to the right, his hand still holding Janet’s. She saw the dark outline of the little pond to the left, smelled the stagnant, boggy water. And then she saw the opening ahead of them, felt herself guided by Michael to the edge of the clearing where he stood by her side.

  It looked the same as the last time, which had been how long? She tried to remember how old Ashleigh had been that day they walked down to the place her brother died. Ashleigh must have been about nine, which meant it had been six years since Janet had been to the spot.

  “It’s weird to think about, isn’t it?” Michael said.

  “What?”

  “Someone died here. A life ended on this spot, and there’s nothing to indicate that it ever happened. Anyone could walk through here. People probably do, and they just don’t know the ground they’re walking over.”

  “There’s no need for any marker,” Janet said. “Everywhere you go someone’s died there. Or had a relationship end or received bad news. If we
marked all those places, the world would be full of nothing but awful reminders.”

  Michael looked over at her, his face puzzled. Janet recognized that her statement revealed a calmness and rationality that she didn’t completely feel. But she did believe the sentiment she expressed. Why should the rest of the world have to be reminded of what happened to her family? Why shouldn’t the high school kids be able to roll around on the ground and make out without having to think about a death that happened years earlier?

  “Well,” Michael said. He took a step forward, expecting Janet to move with him.

  Janet resisted. “No.”

  “What?”

  “I’m okay right here,” she said. “On the edge of the clearing.” She saw a flat rock to her left and sat down on it, letting go of Michael’s hand. “I’m okay here.”

  “But-”

  “Michael, I guess I’m starting to wonder if this is a good idea. Being here. What are you trying to achieve?”

  He studied her for a moment in the dark, his facial features obscured by the shadows. “I’ll show you,” he said.

  He moved out into the center of the clearing. Janet thought he was going to stop in the middle, as close as he possibly could get to the spot where Justin’s body was found. But Michael didn’t pause. He walked past that point and over to the far side of the clearing. There, he turned back to Janet and faced her through the murky darkness, his body practically just another shadow among the shadows.

  “This is where I was,” he said.

  Janet waited for an explanation, and when he didn’t offer one, she asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I think this is where I stood that day. The day Justin died.”

  Michael closed his eyes, squeezed them tight, and he crouched down in the darkness, bending at the knees until he was in a squatting position. He covered his face with both of his hands.