Somebody I Used to Know

by David Bell

  “Okay. Thanks for calling.”

  “Nick? Good luck with all of it. Really. I hope you find what you want.”

  And then she was off the phone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I did fall asleep and slept well. The alarm woke me forty-five minutes before Laurel was due to pick me up. I showered and shaved, then rushed around the apartment, throwing a few more last-minute items in an overnight bag. Laurel had thought it best if we planned to stay the night. If we ran out of leads early, we could always cancel the room and drive back.

  I picked up the watch from Marissa and thought about wearing it, but that didn’t seem right. I hadn’t worn it since her death, so I put it back in the box in my closet.

  I was just about ready to go when the phone rang. It was Mick Brosius calling. Did anyone really like to get a call from an attorney?

  “Nick?”

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” he said. His voice sounded deeper, more adult than ever before. “I’m calling about the Emily Russell case.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “I just got off the phone with Detective Reece. The DNA results are back.”

  I knew I hadn’t been in that room. I knew I hadn’t touched the girl.

  But still . . . police made mistakes. Innocent people were accused and convicted.

  “It’s all clear for you,” he said, his voice casual. “No trace of your DNA in that room or on that girl.”

  I didn’t know what I expected to feel. Not relief. Relief implied that something was in doubt, and it really wasn’t in my mind. I knew what I had—or had not—done. And I didn’t feel like there was anything to celebrate. A young girl was dead. Murdered. Just because I wasn’t involved didn’t mean the police were any closer to understanding what had really happened.

  I felt . . . disappointed in the whole thing.

  “Nick? Are you there?”

  “I am. Thanks.”

  “You understand this doesn’t mean you’re entirely out of the woods,” he said. “After all, you had contact with the girl right before she died. And no one, including you, can explain the address in her pocket. But it’s going to be a lot harder for them to pin anything on you if they can’t even place you at the scene. No eyewitnesses saw you there, and now there’s no forensic evidence.”

  “Do they know what happened yet? Are there suspects? Anything else?”

  Brosius said, “They’re not going to tell me anything like that, of course, but from what I’ve seen I don’t think they’re any closer to figuring this out than they were the day Ms. Russell died. To be honest, they were probably hoping they would find your DNA there. It would have helped them say they were closer to solving the case. No one wants the murder of a young girl on their books. No one.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint them,” I said.

  “No, you’re not—oh, I see. You’re being sarcastic. Well, I’ll let you get on with your day. Just wanted to share the good news.”

  He sounded almost giddy.

  “Right,” I said. “Good news.”

  * * *

  I hadn’t been to Hanfort since a year after Marissa’s funeral. Just before the one-year anniversary of her death, I skipped my afternoon classes at Eastland and made the hour-long drive. At that point, I knew Marissa’s family was gone, so there had been no one for me to see there. But I had still headed to the cemetery and paid a visit to Marissa’s grave.

  I don’t know what I expected to get out of the visit. Marissa’s essence had burned up in the fire. But it felt like something I had to do, something that, I hoped, would complete a circle or close a door. I’d attended Emily’s funeral for the same reason, to seek the elusive sense of closure that Laurel said was overrated.

  Visiting Marissa’s grave back then did nothing for me.

  So I had found myself sitting in an empty cemetery, the falling leaves drifting to the dying grass while I stared at a slab of granite with Marissa’s name, birth date, and death date etched on it. The sight of the grave hadn’t summoned any new emotions within me. Whatever emotions I’d felt the previous year were already as raw as could be and didn’t need any prompting. And once I was there I felt even lonelier, more useless. I realized after I’d arrived that I’d even forgotten to bring flowers.

  Laurel’s voice snapped me out of my memories.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I was staring out the passenger-side window, watching the empty fields and miles stream by. Since Laurel was a good friend who didn’t mind giving me space, we hadn’t spoken for twenty minutes.

  “Are you worried about Riley?” she asked. “My kids and Tony will look after him.”

  “I’m not worried about Riley. He’s indestructible. He’s a wonder dog.”

  “I was kidding, Nick. I know you’re not worried about Riley. I really just want to know if you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I told you the good news. I’m not a murderer. Yay.”

  “You must have a lot of memories from Hanfort,” Laurel said. “Memories of her.”

  “Of course. I used to like going there and staying at her parents’ house. It felt so comfortable, so easy. They weren’t my parents, so there weren’t high expectations. We were just kids dating in college. It was a breeze.” I paused for a moment, listening to the hum of the tires against the road, the occasional soft thump of a bump or pothole. “And it was really easy to sneak from the guest room down the hall to Marissa’s bedroom. We did it every night I stayed there. Never got caught.”

  “How careful were the two of you?” Laurel asked.

  “About getting caught?”

  “About getting pregnant. You told me that you wondered if this girl might be Marissa’s child. That would explain the resemblance and maybe her strange behavior before she died. Now, I’m not saying I believe any of that. I think she died in that fire, but is there any chance she could have been pregnant?”

  “We tried to be careful,” I said. “Most of the time. But we had a couple of scares. We gave in to our lust without protection on more than one occasion. Maybe we got more careless as time went on. There was a part of me that thought if she got pregnant, well, we loved each other. It was something we could handle together. It was risky and stupid, I guess. But we were crazy about each other. You know?” Then something awful twisted in my chest, a tangled knot of jealousy. “You saw her with that man. Maybe the baby wasn’t mine.”

  “Young love,” she said, her voice growing a little distant. The nostalgia trap could grab anyone. Even Laurel.

  “Yes. What could be simpler?” I asked.

  “And yet . . .”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Simple. And infinitely complex. Who knows what we’re going to find?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Laurel and I went in separate directions once we reached Hanfort. She left me with the car because the things she intended to do were downtown and within easy walking distance. Hanfort was even smaller than Eastland. It was a clean, orderly, sleepy little town, best known for a watermelon festival in the summer that brought in tourists from Indiana and Michigan. Other than that, not much. Three high schools, some small businesses, a Wal-Mart. Lots of churches.

  “Keep in touch,” Laurel said as I dropped her off near the police station.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Seriously,” she said, returning to her role as the taskmaster. “Do you have the address?”

  I held up my phone. “If they still live there. If they’re still alive.”

  “That’s bleak.”

  “It’s life,” I said.

  Laurel walked into the building without hesitating, and I drove off on my appointed rounds. I envied the specificity of her work. She was going to talk to the police and do research at the library. Th
ose were clear tasks, defined and concrete. My job was harder. I didn’t even know if it was possible.

  * * *

  After all that time, twenty years, I remembered their names. Bill and Loretta Stieger. They lived two blocks away from Marissa’s family. A few years older than Marissa’s parents, Bill met Marissa’s father through some community organization, the Optimist Club or the Lions or the Kiwanis. The families quickly became friends, and Bill and Loretta served as a kind of surrogate aunt and uncle to Marissa and her sister, Jade. The first time I came to Hanfort with Marissa, she made a point of taking me to the Stiegers’ house and introducing me, as though it was important to have their approval of the boy she was dating. I saw them every time I visited and came to feel quite comfortable with them. At Marissa’s funeral, I watched Bill break down and cry in front of her casket. I watched Loretta pull Jade close and kiss the younger girl on the top of the head. I figured if anyone knew anything about the Minors’ lives before they moved away, it would be the Stiegers.

  Except only one of them was left.

  Laurel did a little digging before we left Eastland. Bill Stieger had died six years earlier. Loretta had sold the house and lived in a condominium on the edge of Hanfort, so I drove out there to find her. I’d called the day before and told her I was coming. After some initial confusion, she managed to remember me—or at least said she did—and she encouraged me to stop by and “have a visit.” I felt bad about interrupting her life with a blast of questions about events that had happened twenty years earlier, but I managed to set my qualms aside. I hadn’t asked for Emily Russell to come looking for me—which she appeared to have been doing. So Loretta Stieger would have to be tolerant of my intrusion.

  She opened the door to me with a smile. And then she hugged me.

  She looked older, that was for sure, but not so much older that I didn’t know immediately who she was. Her skin was more deeply lined, her hair grayer. She supported herself with a cane, and her eyes looked bloodshot, the skin beneath them sagging with age, but it was her. I welcomed the hug. I’d spoken to Laurel about my fantasy of staying in touch with Marissa’s family over the years, something I knew seemed more and more unrealistic as time went by. And maybe that was why the contact with Loretta felt like a welcome home to me, a bridge stretching across twenty years and offering a connection with Marissa.

  Loretta stepped back and looked me over. She had a broad, flat face and wide hips, and her body moved through space like a block of granite. “So,” she said, “you’re a grown man now. An adult.”

  “In some ways,” I said.

  She waved me into her living room. I smelled coffee brewing and a sweet odor wafting from the kitchen, and I began rooting internally for cookies or cake. Even though she seemed steady on her feet, she eased her body down into a chair as though it required a great deal of effort to land. Before I sat, Loretta asked me to bring the coffee and cookies, and I did, finding everything already spread out on a tray. Loretta declined coffee before I poured it, claiming that it was already too late in the day for her to have caffeine, but I took some.

  “I’d love to hear all about your life,” she said. “But I suspect you’re not here to tell an old lady your biography.”

  “I don’t mind sharing what I’ve been up to,” I said. The cookies were delicious, and I told her so. I ate two of them so fast it was like I made them disappear using magic. We talked a little about my job, as well as my unsuccessful marriage. Loretta frowned appropriately when she heard about that.

  “Any little ones?” she asked.

  “None of my own,” I said. “My ex-wife has a son, and I grew pretty close to him.”

  That news brought a smile to her face, revealing yellowed teeth that must have still been her own. I spared her the complicated details about my lack of access to Andrew as well as my run-ins with the law. Best to let one person think most of my life was swimming along merrily.

  Loretta kept her thickly knuckled hand resting on the top of her cane. She wiggled it around like it was a gearshift and she was getting ready to blast off from the starting line.

  “It may seem strange,” she said, “but I have thought about you from time to time over the years. I’ve wondered how you were doing, how your life was going after school. After everything that happened.”

  “I’m sorry about Bill,” I said. “I heard he passed away.”

  “Yes,” she said. “He got bad at the end. Cancer. But he had a long life. I’ll be eighty-five this summer.”

  “Good for you.”

  She shrugged. “I guess so. Being my age is like being a child. People make a big deal out of me steadily getting older. Little do they know I’m just running like a clock. I haven’t wound down yet, but I will.” She nodded at her own words of wisdom. “It’s not a tragedy like a young woman dying in a fire, getting cut down before her life could even begin. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry anyone did.”

  I resisted having another cookie. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. Marissa”—I shifted on my seat, adjusting my shirt collar and clearing my throat—“and her family.”

  “I figured as much. I assumed you weren’t just making a social call out of the goodness of your heart.” She held up her hand to stave off any half-baked excuse I might make, some claim that I really was hoping to see her and catch up. She knew the trip was about business. “Don’t get me wrong. I like the company. Some days I don’t hear another voice except my own. Or the TV.” She nodded toward the ancient and bulky set in the corner of the room. “I don’t mind being alone, but the golden years aren’t always so golden. More like tarnished silver. Now, what are you here for?”

  Given a wide-open invitation to ask about whatever I wanted to know, I found myself locking up. What exactly did I want to know from this woman? Where could I begin? “Was there anything unusual about the way Marissa’s family left town? Anything odd about the way they behaved after Marissa died?” I asked.

  Loretta shifted her weight backward, as though contemplating the question required her to lean back and adjust her orientation to the world. She tugged on her left earlobe. “Well . . . that’s a lot to think about. They’d lost their daughter.”

  “I wouldn’t bring all this up if it wasn’t important,” I said.

  “And why exactly is it important after all these years?” she asked. “Did something happen?”

  How did I explain all of that? I kept my answer vague and simple. I told her I had been thinking about the past a lot, especially Marissa, and I was trying to make sense of everything that had happened. Not exactly a lie.

  “I know, honey. I’ve spent some time trying to process all of this myself.” She scratched her head absently, and then bounced the cane against the floor a couple of times, the tip making a soft thump on the carpet. “I don’t think there’s a right way or a wrong way to react to a situation like that. A child dying. When Bill passed, I went back and forth between laughing and crying. None of it made any sense to me, and I was the one it was happening to.”

  “Of course.”

  “You have to understand something,” she said, her tone serious. “We weren’t as good of friends with the Minors as we might have seemed to be. We knew each other well. We spent a lot of time together. But we weren’t close. Both of them, Joan and Brent, had something of a wall up. There was an insularity to them. That’s the only way I can think to describe it.”

  Her explanation made sense. Marissa’s father had always held me at arm’s length, as though there was no reason for him to get to know me in a meaningful way. He worked a lot, and I figured it had never been his dream to have his daughter bring home a philosophy major for a boyfriend. Her mother was warmer, certainly, but I knew what Loretta meant about her as well. I’d chalked Joan’s behavior up to typical middle-class reserve, some reluctance on the part of a happy family to examine itself too deepl
y. Sure, Joan and her family welcomed me into their home, but I wasn’t allowed all the way inside.

  “But you were about as close to them as anyone else, right?” I asked.

  Again a shrug from Loretta. “Maybe. Like I said, it could be tough to tell. Very tough.” She shifted her weight again. “I’ll give you an example. A week after Marissa died, I called Joan. My real goal was to check in on her, but I pretended to be reminding her of our monthly bridge game. I didn’t know if she’d come or not, but I wanted to invite her. I wanted her to feel normal again, if that was at all possible. She told me she couldn’t make it to bridge because she was packing. ‘Packing?’ I asked. I thought she was going on a trip, a getaway to clear her head. But then she said they weren’t going on a trip. She said they were moving, putting the house on the market, leaving the whole thing behind. She apologized and said circumstances with their lives were changing so fast, she had no idea what to make of it all. And then she just hung up on me. She practically slammed the phone down.”

  “Was that the last time you talked to her?” I asked.

  “I saw her. I called a day or so later to see how she was doing, and she didn’t answer. No one answered. Bill went by Brent’s office to see him and find out what was happening, but the office was closed up and shut down. They really were pulling up stakes and getting out. So I went over to the house after all the missed calls.”

  “And they were gone?” I asked.

  “Joan was there,” Loretta said. “She met me at the front door and acted like she didn’t want to let me inside. It was as though I was a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness or something. I didn’t like it, not at all. And there was a real distance there, a real wall. Something stronger and deeper than I’d ever seen in the past. I felt she wanted to turn me away, but at the same time, there was a sadness in her demeanor. She seemed to need something from me. I knew her well enough to see that. I thought, and maybe this is just the way women think, she was embarrassed about something inside. Maybe the house was messy, maybe she’d let it go to pot and hadn’t cleaned since Marissa’s death. See, I thought she needed my help. That’s what friends do for each other. Though I admit some people think I’m kind of pushy and even nosy.”