I followed her through the staff door and through the labyrinthine corridors to the cramped office we used to share. My desk had been taken over by stacks of books and drifts of paper, as I knew it would be. She gestured toward it as we sat down. “Sorry about the mess. How are you?”
I shrugged. “As well as I can be, I suppose.”
“Well, I won’t waste your time with my condolences, but I hope you know you have them. Now, what can I do for you?”
“Just trying to piece together a few things, that’s all. Do you think you could set me up on a computer?”
“Sure thing.” She led me to a row of machines in the back. “Let me know if you need any help, even though I know you won’t,” she said, and then she left me to it.
I remembered what Jim had said about Allison being in some kind of trouble. Had he meant legal trouble? I clicked on the Pacer icon on the screen and typed in my login credentials, hoping they were still valid. Pacer is an electronic database of court records across the country, so if Allison had any kind of police record, it would be on there. I plugged her name into the search engine and hit Return. The computer whirred into action.
Just one entry. I double-clicked.
Agency Case 38-471
IN THE DISTRICT/SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF PALM SPRINGS
AFFIDAVIT by Police Officer
In Support of Complaint
State of California
Plaintiff
Vs
ALLISON CARPENTER
Case number 8YU-11-39GT
I, Jerome Ramsay attest to the following and state:
On 2 August 2016 at approximately 12:55am I was dispatched to 622 N Palm Canyon Dr., Palm Springs, for report of reckless driving. MATCOM dispatch informed me that a female had called 911 to report that a woman driving a blue Mercedes S-Class was swerving between lanes. The female also reported that there was a man in the passenger seat.
I arrived at the scene at 1:03am and quickly located the vehicle, which was driving far below the legal speed limit and veering erratically across the road. I flashed my lights several times but the vehicle failed to pull over, and a short pursuit ensued until I witnessed the person in the passenger seat take the wheel and pull the car over to the side of the road. I approached the vehicle and found the operator, a woman in her late twenties, to be clearly over the legal limit for alcohol and possibly under the influence of narcotics. When I asked her for her license and registration, she produced a California state driver’s license that identified her as a Ms. Allison Carpenter of 2799 Adrian Street, San Diego CA. The car was registered to the passenger, a man in his early sixties named Mr. John Dwyer, also of San Diego. He did not appear to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Ms. Carpenter refused a breathalyzer test and I arrested her at the scene for suspected DUI and placed her in the back of the police vehicle. I instructed Mr. Dwyer to follow us in his car but he did not appear at the station.
Ms. Carpenter was released on bail later that morning.
Jerome Ramsay, Police Officer
Subscribed and sworn to or affirmed before me at Palm Springs, CA on 08/03/2016
I scrolled through the rest of the documents, but they’d either been sealed or blacked out. No formal charges were ever filed against Allison, and the case had been dropped.
What on earth had she been doing driving around in that condition with a man my age? I wondered. And how had she managed to get out of the charges? From the police notes, it looked like a pretty open-and-shut case.
I sat back in the chair. My God, Ally, I thought. What were you thinking?
“Excuse me.”
I looked up to see a man with a shock of thick gray hair and small, round glasses looming above me. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but did you by any chance used to work here?”
“That’s right.” It had been four years since I worked there. I was surprised anyone remembered.
“I thought you looked familiar. I’m sorry, I can’t seem to remember your name . . .”
“Maggie,” I said.
“Maggie, of course.” He smiled and the corners of his eyes crinkled. He looked kind. “I’m Tony. Nice to see you again.”
“You too,” I said, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember having seen him before. Still, there had been so many people to walk through the doors of the library during my time there—there was no way of knowing all of them.
“Do you mind?” He sat down in the chair next to mine without waiting for my reply. “My knees,” he said, smiling apologetically. “They can’t handle much these days. An hour or two of sitting down and they’re cooked.” I thought of the strange aches I woke up with, the dull pain in my hip if I sat for too long, the way the bones in my ankles clicked when I walked. He leaned forward and rested his hands on his thighs. “So, what brings you back to Bowdoin?”
I studied him. He looked like a nice enough man, but I didn’t like him sitting down uninvited and asking questions about my business. It put my back up. “My computer at home is broken,” I lied. “I thought I’d come here while I wait for it to be repaired.” There was a pause and I realized he was waiting for me to ask him a question. “And yourself?” I asked reluctantly. “Are you a professor here, or . . . ?”
“Me? Oh, no!” He let out a laugh that was louder than strictly allowed within a library. “No, no, I’m just one of those sad old retired guys who uses his senior discount to take classes.”
“That’s nice.” I’d seen his type enough to know that he was probably divorced or widowed. Married men his age didn’t audit classes. Their wives did, to get away from them, but the married men tended to stay at home.
He shrugged. “It fills the time. Just started art history and French literature, God help me. Next semester I’m moving on to archaeology.”
“Very ambitious.” I turned back to the computer screen, hoping he’d take the hint.
I felt him hesitate. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him open his mouth and waited for the next question, but instead he closed it again and pushed himself up onto his feet. “Well,” he said, “I’ll leave you alone. I just wanted to come by and say hello. I was always sorry I didn’t introduce myself when you were here, and then one day you weren’t here anymore and I kicked myself for missing my chance. But here you are.”
I held up my hands. “Here I am.”
He gave me a wave before wandering back to his desk. I felt a twinge of regret for giving him the brush-off. He was probably just a lonely man looking for a little conversation. Harmless. I glanced at the stack of books on his desk—Proust, Berger, Maupassant. A hell of a way to spend a summer. I should have been kinder.
I pushed the thought aside and turned back to the computer. I had work to do. I brought up the National Transportation Safety Board, typed in the details of Ally’s crash, and hit Return.
NTSB Identification: CEN36FA455
14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation
Accident occurred Sunday, July 08,
2018 on Electric Peak, CO
Aircraft: MOONEY AVIATION 3
Injuries: 2 fatal
This is preliminary information, subject to change, and may contain errors. Any errors in this report will be corrected when the final report has been completed. NTSB investigators either traveled in support of this investigation or conducted a significant amount of investigative work without any travel, and used data obtained from various sources to prepare this aircraft accident report.
On July 08, 2018, about 1700 mountain time standard, a Mooney Aviation 3 airplane, N65EF, was destroyed by impact forces and post-impact fire following an apparent loss of control near Boreas Mountain, Colorado. The airplane was registered to and operated by a private individual under the provisions of the 14th code Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. The flight originated from Chicago Midway International (MDW) and is thought to have been destined for Montgomery Field Airport in San Diego, California (MY
F), where the plane departed from on Friday, July 06, 2018, but no flight plan was filed. The pilot and passenger were fatally injured.
The initial impact point was located about ten feet south of the main wreckage and contained the airplane’s nose landing gear. Based on the position of the airplane and the impact point, the airplane was traveling in an easterly position at the time of impact. The entire airplane was almost completely consumed by the post-impact fire that ensued, making recovery from the wreckage difficult. The pilot’s remains have been recovered and his identity has been confirmed by his next of kin. The passenger’s body has not yet been identified at the time of writing. The seriousness of the crash and the state of the wreckage indicate that fatality is certain and that the passenger’s body was likely thrown clear of the aircraft on impact, though conditions at the site make a full investigation difficult. No anomalies could be found with respect to the engine or engine accessories; however, the extent of the fire damage precluded a complete examination and testing of components. There is some evidence that the crash site had been interfered with before investigators arrived on the scene. It is thought the interference was likely due to local wildlife.
At 1600 MDT the local weather observation for Boreas Mountain reported wind from 340 at 9 knots, 10 miles visibility, clear sky, temperature 73F, dew point 25F, and altimeter 30.21 inches of mercury. Weather is not thought to have been a factor in the crash.
An iPhone with the ForeFlight mobile application was recovered from the accident site and sent to the NTSB Recorders Laboratory for examination and download.
I sat back in my chair. So Ben’s body had been found. Shannon and Jim must have known but decided not to tell me about it yet. Didn’t want to get my hopes up, I guess. It was clear from the report that the investigators thought she was dead, even if they couldn’t find her body. I reread it. “Thrown clear of the aircraft.” “Local wildlife.” I didn’t want to picture either, but of course I did, one after the other. “Fatality is certain.” I stared at those words until my eyes unfocused and my vision started to blur.
The necklace, though. They’d found her necklace. How could they have found her necklace but not her?
If they’d found his body, that meant his parents would know now, too. Mr. and Mrs. David Gardner. Had they spent much time with Ally? Did they know her well? I had to talk to them. I had to ask them what they knew.
I stood up too quickly, and for a second, the room swam.
“Maggie? Are you all right?” I looked up to see Tony staring at me from his desk, face full of concern. I waved him away and gathered my bags.
The green of the quad was a blur. All those kids sitting on the grass or walking in twos, heads dipped together, talking and laughing. God, they looked so young. Did all of them have lives they kept secret from their parents? Did they go home on break and sit around the dinner table and eat the food that their mothers cooked for them and laugh at their father’s jokes, all the while knowing that they had secrets they would never share?
Allison
The clouds arrive thick and fast, blown in on a strong breeze that kicks up just as the sun begins to make its way home for the evening. I watch them gather above me, the gray stalking across the blue, enveloping it in its cloak and smothering the sun. The air presses down on me like a fat thumb. And then, like a sheet being ripped in two, the clouds break and the rain starts to fall.
It’s slow at first, a gentle patter on the leaves, but it quickly turns to a roar. I hide beneath a canopy of trees but the water drips through, and I’m soaked to the bone in minutes.
The temperature plummets. There’s nowhere for me to hide, and none of my gear is waterproof. My teeth chatter noisily in my skull, my arms pinned tightly across my chest. Fear starts to scratch. For the first few minutes of the storm, I’m frozen to the spot by shock and indecision and the weight of my now-soaked bag. I stare down at my shaking hands as though they aren’t my own.
His breath was hot on my face and I had to stop myself from grimacing as he traced the outline of my mouth with his finger. “Such a pretty girl.”
I leaned across the bed and took another bump. Dee had been right: It had been over quick, and I’d barely felt a thing. Like I wasn’t even in my body at all.
I gathered the sheets around me and walked to the bathroom. A row of halogen bulbs framed the mirror and I squinted into the light. My pupils were wide and jet black, crowding out their rims of green. They looked strange to me, foreign and alien. Unrecognizable.
“Hurry up, baby!”
“In a sec!” I called. My voice echoed off the marble floor.
There were miniature soaps lined up on the sink, a sewing kit, a shower cap. I decided I would take all of it before I left, along with the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner and lotion and one of the thick robes that hung in the closet. I didn’t need any of it, but it didn’t matter. I felt it was owed to me, along with the stack of twenties I knew he’d leave on the table. I’d have to wait until he left to take them in my hands—“Don’t touch the money in front of them,” Dee had said, “it makes you look cheap”—and then I’d raise the bills to my face and inhale their scent of leather and metal and soap.
See? I thought as I walked back into the bedroom. Easy money.
Move. You have to move.
I stumble, legs heavy. I take a few steps forward, rainwater streaming down my face, plastering my filthy hair to my forehead, blurring my field of vision. The rain is torrential, hurling itself angrily to the ground like a raging toddler. I try to take a deep breath and get a lungful of water instead. Splutter and choke.
Okay. Stop. Just wait.
I throw my bag to the ground, where it lands with a wet squelch. My fingers have begun to blue again, and I tuck them tightly into my armpits to warm them. It’s grown so cold so quickly, and the trees give only some shelter from the wind howling through the forest. I can feel my toes beginning to numb in my soaking sneakers, the nerve endings stinging before they go dead.
I can’t stop. If I stop, I’ll die. And I’ve come too far to die now.
I bend down and try to pick up my bag, but my shoulder screams and I let out a guttural roar as I drop it back to the ground. For a second, I’m convinced I’ve wrenched my arm from its socket, but after a few minutes the searing pain recedes to a dull throb. So ordinary now, this white-noise pain. So familiar.
Breathe through it. That’s what my mother would say. I was always getting hurt as a child—too-long legs and too-big feet always ready to get tangled up in one another—and I was forever turning up at the back door with a scraped knee or a split lip.
Breathe through it, she’d say as she dabbed at the scrape with rubbing alcohol. I know it hurts, Ally, but just breathe through it.
Breathe.
The pain in my shoulder dulls enough that I can hear myself think, not that I know what to say. I’m cold. I’m wet. I’m lost in the woods. Somewhere out there, they’re looking for me. They could be in these mountains right now, tracking me down like a dog. And there’s nothing I can do about any of it.
I pace around my bag, hoping the movement will force the blood back into my toes, but it feels like I’m walking on a bed of needles. It’s dark now, though I can’t tell if that’s down to the thick clouds covering the sun or the fact that it’s late. Time feels like a slippery, unwieldy thing. The rain hasn’t let up at all—if anything, it’s getting worse. It feels like the storm is getting comfortable now, and bedding down for a long night.
There’s no point in trying to push on farther.
I pull out the canvas and try to prop it up like a tent with a few loose branches as poles, but it collapses almost immediately. Anyway, it’s not waterproof, at least not fully, and it’s already soaked. There’s no way I can build any kind of shelter for myself with it, or with anything else I have with me.
I pull my bag under the biggest tree I can find and fold myself up against its trunk, knees hugged to my chest. The rain drips th
rough the pine needles.
I close my eyes, just for a second.
Maggie
I picked up the phone and dialed the number that Jim had given me, but no one answered. I left another message on the machine, but I didn’t hold up much hope for them calling me back. It’d been two days now, and I still hadn’t heard a word from Ben’s parents. I knew they were grieving, but I was grieving, too. That didn’t give them the right to ignore me. Not when my daughter had been engaged to their son. Not when he was responsible for her death.
The internet wasn’t much help, either. I typed their names in carefully—David and Amanda Gardner; have you ever heard a more moneyed pair of names?—but nothing much came up. David was registered as on the board of a local charity, and Amanda was mentioned in a few society pieces—contributing the flower arrangements for the Audubon Society annual gala, that sort of thing—but other than that, the two of them were internet ciphers.
I typed in Ally’s name again. Pages and pages of entries came up about her death. I clicked on one of them and scrolled past the crash report to her photo. It was the same one they’d used on the news: blond, thin, fancy. Nothing like my Ally. I inched my way down to the comments but quickly stopped reading them. Who were these people, these ghouls? How could they say these things about a dead woman, let alone my daughter?
Jim had mentioned when he’d called that he didn’t know when I’d be getting Ally’s belongings from San Diego. They’d tracked down the house she’d lived in with him—he gave me the address after I’d worked on him for a bit. I looked it up on the internet and used the street view to zoom in. I could see a hedge wall and a high gate, and then beyond it a glimpse of sandstone and glass. My daughter had lived in that house with a man she was engaged to and whom I had never met. The shock of it still took my breath away.
I don’t know why I’d been so surprised to learn they’d been living together—I knew it was normal for people their age to live together before they were married; I wasn’t some kind of nun—but still, it had taken me aback. I tried to imagine her clothes hung next to his, her books propped up on a nightstand next to the bed, her shampoo lined up on the edge of the bathtub. And now it would be a long time before I could claim her things and bring them home. My blood had boiled when Jim had said that. For my own daughter’s clothes, her hairbrush, her perfume—for any last scrap of her, I’d have to fight.
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