Last Exit in New Jersey

by C. E. Grundler

  “Are you sure you want to know?” Stevenson frowned. “Yes, of course you are. Maybe you should have known all along.” He tugged at his bound hands and sighed. “I really could use a drink and a cigarette right now, but I guess untying me is still out of the question. Remember your first night here, I said there’d be a prize. You want your answers? Open the cupboard below the stairs. There’s a latch beneath the middle shelf; release it.”

  It might have been a trick, but she couldn’t see how. She followed his instructions, and the cupboard wall swung inward to reveal a hidden closet her initial exploration of the house hadn’t uncovered. Light slanted across cobweb-laced shelves, stacked with shoeboxes and papers.

  “Bottom shelf,” Stevenson called, his voice weary. “Right side. Brown manila envelope.”

  It was there beneath a layer of dust that hadn’t been disturbed in a long time. She took a seat at the kitchen table, sliding out several brittle newspaper clippings. A chill washed over her as she recognized the first headline; the cover page of the Bergen Record from nearly seven years back.

  FAMILY OF 4 KILLED IN TRAGIC PARKWAY CRASH

  Below the headline was the image of a charred, mangled Mercury station wagon smoldering in a blackened crater on the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway. In the background, a bright yellow sign stated ominously, “LAST EXIT IN NEW JERSEY.”

  The inset photo of Jeremy Matthews, permanently frozen at age fifteen, grinned brightly beside his big sister Helen and their parents. Hazel sucked in her breath as she stared at the boy. It was her Jeremy. She’d met him only two weeks earlier, while he was on vacation in Cape May. He’d seen Witch sail in at dawn and went down to the docks for a closer look, fascinated with the ancient schooner and even more so with Hazel. He was awkwardly sweet and disarmingly funny, and he had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. They’d spent every moment of that day together, walking on the beach, eating ice cream, sailing in her dinghy. She remembered laughing when he claimed that they were meant to be together forever. It was the same day she’d had her first kiss, and he gave her that ring, the one she still wore. By night he had to leave, heading back to north Jersey in an over-packed station wagon, but not before they exchanged numbers and addresses, promising to write and to call. Her father assured her they could visit him in a few weeks when they would be passing nearby.

  “The funeral ran late.” Stevenson interrupted her thoughts. “Private ceremony. Toward the end, a distinctly ugly old Kenworth pulled in and parked a respectable distance back…too far back to read the name on the door. You waited until everyone was leaving and then you came over.” He frowned, his expression distant. “I remember…you had wildflowers.”

  Hazel remembered as well, as though it was yesterday. She and her father were on the Turnpike in RoadKill, listening for the traffic report to roll around, when they heard the tragic news about the funeral for a family that died on the Parkway. As the names of the victims were announced, Hazel’s father pulled over. They sat in silence for a bit, and he promised he would take her to the cemetery so she could leave flowers.

  Hazel shuddered as she dropped the clipping to the table and stared at Stevenson.

  “I know. You have questions.” Stevenson nodded to the clippings. “Keep reading.”

  She returned to the stack; the next one was dated three days before the Parkway accident:

  ARSON SUSPECTED IN MONTVALE OFFICE FIRE

  The building’s occupants were listed as Spirig Insurance and Benjamin Matthews, CPA. Hazel held up the clipping toward Stevenson so he could see what she was reading.

  “That was the first try. Jeremy’s dad’s office. The ground-floor office was vacant,” he explained. “Someone placed an accelerant and a timer in it. Ben had a new client meeting that day, a nonexistent one, it turned out, but he got stuck in traffic and ran late.”

  The next, dated ten days later, read:

  PARKWAY CRASH CAUSED BY EXPLOSIVES

  Hazel held that up as well.

  “Try number two did the trick. Enough explosives to take down a small building,” Stevenson said. “Enjoying my scrapbook? You wouldn’t have any more of those darts? Good stuff. Better than scotch. I’m nice and numb. Wears off too fast, though. I think I need a higher dose.”

  Ignoring his request, she held up the next clipping. This one was from four months before the fire and accident, and mentioned a golf outing to benefit mental health services.

  “Other side,” Stevenson whispered, looking away.

  Hazel read:

  HELEN CHRISTINE MATTHEWS & JAKE EDWARD STEVENSON TO WED

  Leaning against the white Mustang, a younger, trimmer, more carefree version of Stevenson grinned beside a young woman with a mischievous sparkle in her blue eyes. Jeremy’s sister. The clipping announced their upcoming October wedding.

  Stevenson shifted and winced. “I could really use a drink right now. I’m starting to get feeling back, and I don’t like it.”

  Hazel stared at the clippings, mystified. “I’m sorry about Helen. But I don’t see what that has to do with me. There’s a reason we’re having this conversation, and I want to know what it is.”

  “I can see that.” Stevenson dropped his head back against the cabinet. “I’m serious about that drink, and you might want one too.” He looked at her. “No? Okay. Helen and Jeremy’s old man was born to be a CPA. Very orderly guy. Liked to keep all his documents up-to-date. Guess who old Ben had just happened to name Jeremy’s legal guardian if anything ever happened to them? Helen and yours truly.” He gave a tired laugh. “We’re scrambling, getting ready for the wedding, and he springs it on us. We say yeah, sure. Whatever. I’m thinking it’s weird, but also kind of a nice gesture. He trusts me.”

  “But Jeremy died,” she said, staring down at his picture.

  “Did he?” Stevenson laughed humorlessly. “Do the math, princess. Throw in years of reconstructive surgery and take a wild guess who our singed friend Hammon is. Or, more accurately, was.”

  Hazel stood so abruptly the chair fell over. She’d been there at the cemetery; she’d placed flowers on Jeremy’s grave!

  “Yeah. That’s the same look your father had. You need a minute, or should I continue?”

  Hazel righted the chair and sat down, feeling her earlier dizziness returning. There was so much to be confused by all at once. “Go on.”

  Stevenson nodded.

  “Jeremy had a real talent with computers, and he usually worked for his dad after school. One day he called me bragging about how he’d found something strange with one of his dad’s clients, some sort of error in their records; he was quite pleased with himself.” Stevenson smiled the slightest bit. “He was saving up for a car, and he figured this was worth a guaranteed raise. His dad said he’d look into it, talk with the client, and give the kid a bonus if he was right.

  “After the fire, Jeremy had a hunch it wasn’t just a simple error, that the arson was intended to destroy what he’d found. He told me he’d backed up a copy before the fire and put it somewhere else, and he wanted to show me everything. They were going out to dinner, the whole family. I was supposed to go too, but couldn’t make it. I told him I’d come by after I got off work and we’d talk. He was a sharp kid, real sharp, and I had a bad feeling he was right.”

  Stevenson swallowed and a strained expression crossed his face. “Two hours later the police are on my doorstep telling me Ben, his wife…and Helen are dead, with Jeremy not far behind. I get to the hospital…the poor kid’s…unrecognizable, just burned flesh and shattered bones. His heart had already stopped once; they didn’t think he’d last, and I was getting hit with whether to revive, organ donation and all. I’m still numb, and I’m thinking, Thanks for the gesture, Ben. They said Jeremy suffered so much damage that even if he did survive, he’d never be right again. There were metal fragments from the car too deep in his brain to risk removing.”

  Stevenson turned away, leaving Hazel to study his weary profile, his defenses down and the
underlying pain exposed.

  “I couldn’t forget Jeremy’s phone call. There’s one cop, he’s already working the investigation on the arson, and he must’ve believed me when I told him the kid knew something, and IF Jeremy lived, someone would try again. Paperwork was altered, Jeremy was declared dead, John Doe went into surgery, and Hammon came out.”

  Hazel sat across from Stevenson, knees pulled to her chin, arms wrapped around her legs, listening in silence. It wasn’t the time to comment even if she could imagine what to say. Stevenson looked grim.

  “I don’t know what did more damage: the accident, or surviving to learn everyone including him was dead and buried. Those surgeries, skin grafts, the therapy, it was hell. It changed him. The more they reconstructed, the more Jeremy disappeared. It wasn’t just the new identity; he went into a cocoon of bandages and came out someone else. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, remember anything. Not the accident, not the phone call, not the backed-up information, and he wouldn’t even speak to me. His doctors said frontal lobe damage could wipe out recent memories. They said that part of his mind was gone.”

  He looked up, smiling grimly. “They were wrong. When his therapist told me about his imaginary friend, I knew it was the girl at the funeral, the one in the truck. You. Only there were no records of anyone named Annabel, or anyone else you could have been. No classmates, neighbors, relatives, no one. If he’d had any name or address for you, it burned with him. I searched for years with only that moment from the funeral and the memory of that ugly old truck to work with.”

  Stevenson shifted his weight, clearly uncomfortable but resigned to the fact that she wasn’t freeing him just yet. “His doctors said he blamed me for everything. He decided I was covering something up, that their deaths were my fault. The more I tried to fix him the more he fell apart. I watched him disintegrate, and I couldn’t do a damned thing to stop him from self-destructing. He nearly killed himself a few times; I had to have him supervised constantly. When he was seventeen, he managed to disappear; for six months I couldn’t find him. I thought he was dead until Gary found him holed up in that boat, and he started tapping my bank account.”

  Stevenson smiled to himself. “Him and that damned boat. I finally had some way I could help him. That, and leaving ‘hidden’ cash lying around. It’s his money—his parents’ life insurance and the money from selling their house—but the only way I could get it to him was letting him think he’s stealing it from me.”

  Stevenson took a break and Hazel waited silently. She didn’t know what to say. He continued. “You didn’t know him long, but you made some impression on him. Enough to create Annabel, enough to hold him together and keep him going. Enough for someone terrified of water to take up living on a boat. I’d given up hope of ever finding you…and then, all these years later, that truck rolls into Cape May and you climb out. I had to find out if you were the real girl to Hammon’s fantasy Annabel. But you turned out to be hostile, unsocialized, uncivilized, utterly unmanageable, and even more hell-bent on disliking me than him.” Stevenson grinned.

  “But why? You think I know where this data is? I don’t.”

  “I didn’t expect you would. But if he remembered you and fixated on you the way he did, then it’s possible he remembers other information, and reconnecting with you could trigger those repressed memories. And more than that, you might be the key to reaching him, helping him before it was too late. So yes, you were absolutely right. I was following you, and hiring your dad to move my boat was just an excuse to meet you face-to-face and see who you really were. When the time was right, I planned to explain all this and reintroduce you two. Then everything went to hell.”

  Stevenson looked around the room. “So here we are, right where we both would have been seven years ago, if my life hadn’t been destroyed.” Stevenson’s chin dropped and he gazed down at his bound hands. “Helen loved this place. It was vacant, abandoned, and she would drive me past all the time and tell me how unbearable it would be seeing it torn down. I told her it was too far gone to save. She had no idea I’d bought it, I had crews inside doing a full restoration, planting the gardens out back. From the street you couldn’t tell a thing. She thought the wedding was going to be at her parents’ house. This would have been my surprise, my gift to her.”

  As unimaginable as it all was, it made perfect twisted sense. Stevenson’s questions and comments from those first days all fell into place, and it explained so much of Hammon’s baffling behavior. Micah would have found it all very amusing, and for Hazel that was strangely comforting. It validated everything Micah believed right to the end. She knelt beside Stevenson, untying his hands.

  He rubbed his wrists. “I won’t try to say I know how you feel right now over what happened to Micah. But I do know how it feels to lose everything you love.”

  I’M DOING IT AND THIS TIME NO ONE’S STOPPING ME

  In the predawn darkness, Revenge cut through the offshore Atlantic swells, heading due east on autopilot, nonstop until the fuel ran out. Then Hammon figured he’d take every sleeping pill he had aboard, slice every hose, and take a nice, permanent nap as the boat went down.

  He was truly alone and losing what little mind he had left. Annabel had vanished hours earlier, leaving him lost and disoriented. He was barely able to drive the Viper and too afraid that in his attempt to crash he might hit someone else in the process. He already had Micah’s death on his conscience and that was enough. Going down aboard Revenge seemed the best option. It took hours of stubborn determination to find his way back to the boat, still waiting dark and silent at the Leonardo docks. By the debilitating headaches, he suspected Annabel was still lurking somewhere in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t talking to her and she wasn’t speaking to him, which was either really good or really bad. Not like it would make much difference. Not this time.

  It was too quiet. Too quiet on the boat, too quiet inside his throbbing skull. He leaned back, staring up at the fading constellations as Revenge rolled beneath him.

  “I did the right thing,” Hammon told the stars.

  “Are you sure?”

  Hammon turned to the vision beside him, smiling weakly. “Annabel. I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

  She stared ahead, not meeting his eyes. “Who else do I have?”

  “True. I guess it’s just the two of us again.” At least for what little time they had left. But he didn’t have to tell her that. She knew. She always knew. “You still pissed at me?”

  “Do I really need to answer that? You said you’d stay with her forever. Then you left.”

  “Do you know how painful that was?”

  “For you or her? You pushed her away when she needed you most. She didn’t know why.”

  “I had to. Stevenson wants revenge. I do too, I lost everything, but it’s too dangerous for Hazel. You heard Stevenson, he says I knew Hazel when I was Jeremy; I even gave her that ring she’s wearing. But I don’t remember any of it, not one thing. Stevenson thinks if I’m with her it’ll come back to me, but I don’t want to remember what he wants me to remember. Look what happened the last time because of what I knew. This ends with me. Once I’m dead there’ll be no me to remember anything, and she’ll be safe. And I should be dead. It’s my fault what happened to Micah.”

  She stared into the darkness and took a deep breath. “You risked your life trying to save them both. You didn’t pull the trigger, but if you kill yourself, you make Micah’s death pointless.”

  “She doesn’t need me. She’s better off without me.”

  “Is that what you really think?” she asked, regarding him in a strange way.

  He turned away. “No matter what anyone says, I’m not Jeremy anymore.”

  “She never thought you were to begin with. Do you love her?”

  “Yeah. But I’m also insane.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact.” She laughed softly. “True love is insane at best, especially under the worst conditions.�
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  “It’s too risky. I stay with her, one day we’d lift the wrong rock, I’ll remember the wrong thing, and it’ll all start over. I can’t take that chance.”

  “Then don’t lift any rocks. Leave the past where it is.”

  “It’s inevitable. I’m already remembering things I shouldn’t.” Hammon stared ahead. The faintest pink strands of dawn began to separate the dark sky from the black water. “I was starting to think there was some hope on the horizon. But you know what the horizon is, right? It’s an imaginary line you can never reach.”

  She slumped back, aggravated. “How about this? You remember anything you shouldn’t, I’ll just whack you over the head.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  She smacked him hard across the back of the head.

  “Ow!” he whined. “That hurt.”

  Then it sank in. That hurt. He broke into a grin, beaming. “That hurt! It really hurt!”

  “No,” Hazel said, smiling slightly through her tears. “That felt good.”

  Hazel, Hammon, Annabel, and Stevenson will all return in No Wake Zone.

  For a sneak peak at Chapter One, keep reading!

  No Wake Zone

  14:34 Saturday, September 18

  41°03’31.63”N 74°06’03.23”W

  Lake St, Upper Saddle River, NJ

  “Pull over,” Jake Stevenson said, looking grim.

  Hazel Moran slowed Stevenson’s black Mercedes and eased onto the shoulder, feeling the car lean as the tires sank into the grass. She took the sedan out of gear, switched on the hazard lights, and turned to Stevenson.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked, as though she didn’t know.