Somebody I Used to Know

by David Bell

  “There you go. You said you learned something, so what happened with the cops when you talked to them?” I asked. “I trust we’re getting to the part about Blake Whatshisface. Meanwhile, Kirby is going on with his life, and we’re just sitting here.”

  Laurel ignored my complaining. “The police couldn’t find any problems with Marissa or anyone in her family,” she said. “They all have clean records. No busts, no run-ins or arrests. Not even a parking ticket. They’re as clean as the Cleavers. They almost seemed too good to be true. You know how teenagers drive, and you mean to tell me she never got a ticket? Never? Nothing?”

  “It’s a small town. Her dad was prominent. Maybe she talked her way out of tickets.”

  “Do you think the Marissa we knew would do that?” Laurel asked.

  “Probably not,” I said. “She’d probably tell the cop off.”

  “Exactly.”

  Someone started a vacuum cleaner in the hallway, the sound of the small motor rising and receding as the cleaning person pushed the device up and down the carpet.

  “There was an officer at the station, a guy named Rich Cotton. His daughter went to high school with Marissa. Her name was Stacey or Macy, something like that. Anyway he told me about the ex-boyfriend and all the bullshit when they broke up. So we’re all sitting around, the cops and me, just talking and going over everything, and I told them all about Emily and how she looks like Marissa and how she had your address in her pocket.”

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  “They’re stumped. But Officer Cotton talked more about Blake and what a weirdo he was growing up. Apparently, he had his share of trouble when he was a kid. Busting windows, harassing animals. Then he kind of straightened out by the time he was a teenager. No real problems there, until he broke up with Marissa. Then he got a little weird again.”

  “Why did they tell you all of this?” I asked.

  “I told you. The chief down in Eastland is buddies with the chief up here. He called for me. Cops and former cops stick together.”

  “How did they remember all this stuff about Blake?” I asked.

  “They looked up his record,” she said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. “This Officer Cotton seemed to recall that Blake went off to college in Indiana or someplace like that. And he was wondering what ever became of him. Did he stay on the straight and narrow? Or did he get in trouble again? So just for kicks they looked him up in the system, the nationwide system.”

  Laurel wore a smug look, the one that said she knew something else, but she wasn’t just going to hand it over to me without getting asked first. It was like the encore of a great concert. She wasn’t going to go on unless I cheered.

  “I’m guessing you found something out about him,” I said.

  “He kept his nose clean in college,” she said, “but a couple of years after graduation, he found himself in a bit of trouble.”

  “A bit?” I asked. “What did he do, shoplift stuff?”

  “He tried to kill his ex-girlfriend,” she said.

  “You’re kidding.” That news itself was disturbing enough, but then I thought about Marissa existing in close proximity to someone capable of such violence. I still held the glass, and I wanted to throw it again. “So he’s in prison now?” I asked.

  “Down in Florida. He won’t be out for another five years or so.”

  “Good.” But Laurel still wore a knowing look on her face. “Do I want to know how he tried to kill her?” I asked.

  Laurel paused a moment before she said, “Arson. He tried to burn her house down, Nick. With her inside it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The glass in my hands had become warm and sticky from sweat, covered with a web of my fingerprints. I didn’t know what else to do, so I tapped the bottom of the glass against my open palm. My hands started to shake, and my legs felt like worn-out elastic bands.

  “That’s ghastly,” I said, using a word I don’t think I’d ever used before in my life.

  “The woman escaped, thank God. A neighbor saw the flames and pounded on the door. It was lucky. She had a little smoke inhalation, but she recovered. And the police caught him and put him away.”

  I sat and folded my hands together on the tabletop, hoping to steady them. Hoping to steady my entire being, inside and out. Many times I’d thought of the horror of that night. The smoke rising, the flames spreading. Did Marissa even wake up? A part of me hoped for mercy, that somehow she was overcome in her sleep and never knew what killed her. But I doubted it was true. They must have known. They must have scrambled for doors and windows, desperate and terrified, facing their own mortality. Nate’s description of the 911 call had made that fact clear.

  And it might have been an act of homicide, perpetrated by a jilted ex-boyfriend.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “that might explain the fire. But it doesn’t explain everything else. What was Marissa doing with Roger Kirby that night?”

  Laurel started to speak and then stopped. Then she went ahead, saying, “Marissa came home the weekend before she died, didn’t she? We all knew that. If Blake was in Hanfort, or if he knew about the relationship with Roger, then maybe that drove him to a final desperate act. Maybe he tried to get Marissa back that weekend or sometime before, knowing she was involved with Roger. You know how small towns are. Everybody knows everything. It wouldn’t be hard for a guy to know what his ex-girlfriend is doing.”

  “She never mentioned trouble with Blake to me,” I said, my voice lower, distant to my own ears. “I would have—” I stopped myself. Would I have known? Would I have known any of it?

  “She had secrets, Nick.”

  “Why didn’t the cops put this together sooner?” I asked.

  “This attempted murder, the arson, happened years after Marissa died. And Blake did this in another state, Florida. There was no real reason to make the connection. I’m sure the Florida authorities checked Blake out, but the fire that killed Marissa was ruled an accident. They wouldn’t have connected the dots.”

  “But they are now?” I asked.

  “They can ask Blake about it,” Laurel said. “If he wants to confess, you have a closed case. But all the physical evidence from the fire that killed Marissa is gone. They bulldozed that site and put a new house up.”

  “And Blake has to know that,” I said. “Why would he confess to a crime all these years later if they don’t have anything on him?”

  “People surprise us,” Laurel said. “A lot of guys find Jesus in prison. He may have done some soul-searching and wants to get it all off his chest.”

  “What are the odds of that?” I asked.

  “Slim. Not none, but pretty damn slim.”

  My mind moved forward, past Blake Brown and on to the other things that had been consuming me for the past couple of weeks. “None of this explains Emily Russell, does it? Why did she show up looking for me? Why does she look so much like Marissa?”

  Laurel gave me a sympathetic look. “I agree—we don’t know anything about that girl and your address. We may never know.”

  “But the woman at the funeral, the charity that helps with adoptions, the locked room at the Minors’ house. The flowers on the grave . . .”

  I couldn’t sustain the energy to keep listing the details. I knew what Laurel was thinking, and I mostly agreed with her.

  So what about those things? They weren’t proof of anything. I remembered my high school science classes. Occam’s razor. The most likely explanation was that Marissa was having a relationship with an older married man, leading her to break up with me. Her ex-boyfriend, who had a history of erratic and violent behavior, killed her, just as he tried to kill another woman later in his life.

  Case closed.

  Who was Emily Russell and what did she want? Laurel was right. We might not ever know,
at least not until her murder was solved. If it was ever solved.

  “I would like to have my own chat with Roger Kirby,” Laurel said. “He’s probably not going to talk to you again, but I thought maybe I could swing by his office and see if I can catch him. Maybe I can pick up on something.”

  “That he was fucking my ex-girlfriend? That he took advantage of a young girl, a family friend?”

  “I get the feeling you might want to be alone for a little while and process this.” Laurel looked at her watch. “It’s getting late. We’re here for the night. We can hang out in wild and crazy Hanfort for the evening.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

  I gave Laurel Roger Kirby’s office address and phone number. Before she left the room, she patted me on the shoulder. “The truth hurts—I know.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I said. “It’s excruciating.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Left alone, I picked up the pages Laurel had printed at the library. I remembered well the news coverage from the campus paper in the wake of the fire, the maudlin and sentimental images and words. Lots of shots of students crying and hugging other students. The obligatory photo of the makeshift shrine at the site of the fire. Cards, candles, teddy bears. I wondered then how many of those people knew Marissa or any of the other dead students and how many of them just wanted to be in the middle of something, some drama or overheated display of emotion.

  The Hanfort Times wasn’t much more restrained. The headline read, FIRE TRAGEDY KILLS BELOVED LOCAL GIRL. Beloved. Marissa would have rolled her eyes at that. I scanned the article and found I knew most of the facts by heart. Near the end, the fire inspector was quoted as saying that he suspected the cause of the fire was accidental: “Probably a careless smoker or faulty wiring.” Several days after Marissa’s death, the inspector announced that the fire had been caused by an unattended candle left burning. He added that several students were at the house earlier that night, and some of them were drinking, with candles burning throughout the place. “A deadly combination,” he concluded.

  The authorities never seemed to seriously consider arson as an option. Why would they? Who would want to kill four college kids?

  The final printed page contained Marissa’s obituary. It used her high school graduation portrait, the same photo I carried in my wallet for years, all the way up until I married Gina. She looked beautiful, of course, slightly younger than when we dated and very much like Emily Russell. But in light of the recent revelations about Blake Brown and Roger Kirby, I looked at the photo through a different lens. I took out my phone and called up a news story about Emily Russell, one that featured a portrait of the dead girl. Then I looked at them side by side, Marissa and Emily. The forehead and hairline were different, as was the sharp point of the chin. Emily’s ears protruded a little more, and her smile was wider and seemed more natural. Given Marissa’s natural resistance to anything as silly as a senior portrait, I could see why her smile was forced.

  Sure, they looked alike, but maybe not as much as I had imagined. What were the odds there were two pretty redheads in the world who liked to pinch their lips while they thought? Pretty high, I guessed.

  I read the obituary, and I nearly choked when I saw a quote from Roger Kirby, who was identified as a close friend of the family.

  “Marissa was a special girl, a very special girl. I’ve watched her grow up, and I’m very sorry that we’ve lost her so young. We all loved her.”

  I crumpled the paper in my hands and threw it across the room.

  * * *

  When Laurel came back and knocked on the door, I was stretched out watching Gilligan’s Island, regressing to my childhood in the face of bad news. I let her in and muted the sound, noting the disapproving look she gave my choice of programming.

  “You told me to watch TV,” I said.

  “That junk?”

  “Forget that,” I said. “Did you talk to that asshole?”

  “Briefly. He was on his way to another meeting.”

  “What did he have to say?” I asked.

  “He says he wasn’t in Eastland the night Marissa died or any other night around that time. He told me I was wrong to think he was in that bar with her, and he resented the implication that something ‘untoward’ might have been going on between the two of them. He told me he’s a family man and was a close friend of the Minors who only wished them the best. About what I expected.”

  “Fuck him,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  “Laurel?”

  “What?”

  “Are you sure it was him?” I asked. “That was twenty years ago. Maybe you were wrong. Maybe it was some other older guy. Maybe they were just talking about . . . who knows?”

  “It was him,” Laurel said. “I know it. You remember what I was like back then. I wanted to be a cop. I observed everything; I remembered everything. Names, faces. Everything.”

  “I know.”

  “But it’s my word against his, twenty years later,” she said. “And I’m not sure that’s the most important thing right now.”

  I knew she was right. But I didn’t want to admit it.

  “What have you been doing since I left?” she asked.

  I bent down and picked up the crumpled copy of Marissa’s obituary.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry, Nick.”

  I kept it tucked in my fist, the paper pressing against the soft skin of my palm. “What do you think happens when we die?” I asked.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Seriously. What happens?”

  “I have no idea, but I’d like to think . . . I’d like to think I’d see my kids again after I died. I’d hate to think we do all this, form these intense attachments to people, and then we just let them go when we die. But what do I know?”

  “What do any of us know?”

  “Exactly.”

  I held up the crumpled obituary again, waving the little ball in the air. “They didn’t even mention me in here. They list all her family members and deceased grandparents and all of that, but there was no mention of me. I was pissed when I saw that, but then I thought maybe I’m a fool for expecting it. Why would I think they’d mention me?”

  “It’s tough when you date someone in college,” Laurel said. “You’re an adult, but you’re not married or engaged. It’s difficult to negotiate. But I understand why you’d feel excluded.”

  “Am I fooling myself?” I asked. “Maybe my feelings for Marissa weren’t as real as I thought they were.”

  “Only you could know that, Nick.”

  “I don’t think I can trust myself to know anything now,” I said. “And you guys keep telling me that I’m imagining things, seeing resemblances and connections where they don’t really exist. So, tell me. Am I a fool? Did I just manufacture these feelings for Marissa? Did I do it because I’m a divorced middle-aged guy?”

  “All I can tell you is what I observed when we were in school and you guys were together. I’d say the two of you were very much in love. To be honest, I was a little jealous whenever I saw you together. I didn’t meet Tony until after graduation.” Laurel smiled a little. “It was kind of sick how happy you were.”

  “Do you remember she and I always said we’d run off to New Zealand together after graduation?” I asked.

  Laurel thought about it for a moment. “That does sound familiar. It sounds very much like the kind of thing Marissa would want to do.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “We had plans. We felt like we had a future. It was going to be so full.”

  “I know you did,” she said. “I could see it.”

  “Then why did she dump me like that, Laurel? Why was she with somebody else?”

  “Do you really want to spend the rest of your life trying to understand the thought processes of a twenty-year-old woman who was acting irration
ally? You could drive yourself crazy doing that.”

  I studied the crumpled ball of paper in my hand. “I feel like I’m on my way to crazy already. New Zealand? Maybe I was crazy back then too.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Riley seemed to have had a good time with Laurel’s kids. When I went by their house to pick him up, he looked at me like he didn’t want to leave. I started to put him on his leash in the foyer of Laurel’s house, but then she said, “Why don’t you stay?”

  I looked up at her.

  “Come on, Nick,” she said. “Tony will want to see you. We haven’t hung out besides doing this investigation stuff.”

  “Are you saying that isn’t helping us bond?” I asked.

  “Come on,” she said. “There’s beer.”

  “I do need a drink,” I said. “Maybe two.”

  I set Riley’s leash aside and followed Laurel. Tony stood in the kitchen, holding an open beer. He was taller than me and fitter, and he laughed at nearly everything I said, which made me like him even more. He shook my hand and opened a beer for me, and then invited me to sit at the table. The beer tasted good. It felt even better to be among friends.

  “Tony,” I said, “I’m sorry I’ve kept your wife away so much.”

  “He doesn’t mind,” Laurel said. “He can do whatever he wants while I’m gone.”

  “Seriously, though,” I said. “She’s been a big help. I appreciate it.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” Tony said. “Besides, you’ve helped us plenty.”

  “I have? Not like this.”

  “Remember when Fiona had to do that school report on the city council,” Tony asked, “and you helped her get a tour of the chamber?”

  “Sure.”

  “And remember the time you and Gina watched the kids when my dad was sick?” Laurel asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “That’s what—”

  “That’s what friends do,” Tony said, finishing my sentence. He raised his beer, clinking it against mine. “Are you hungry? You can’t drink all this beer on an empty stomach.”