by Jamie Mason
Jason stood at the open shed door and wondered why his mind made that question sound like How many lawyers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Bayard had said it would take a few days to process his request to the State Investigative Unit for corpse-sniffing dogs and ground-penetrating radar, and Jason hadn’t trusted his voice enough to ask for anything more specific.
But now he wondered.
Pre-Harris Jason would never even have made it out the back door, across the yard, and through the plank door of the shed to take stock of his tools. It was crazy.
He marveled that a good percentage of his reluctance to take up the shovel was purely physical. After he’d put Harris in the ground, his muscles had shrieked for days—every movement pulling hot, barbed threads through places in his body he hadn’t even imagined could hurt. And for reasons he had not cataloged, he’d denied himself the comfort of an aspirin or an hour against the heating pad. The last of the soreness had faded after a fortnight, but the memory of it was still sharp enough to factor into the plan.
The plan. How long would it take? How long had it taken going the other way? The timeline of that night was fuzzy at best. Jason was fairly certain that Harris had died (Harris didn’t die . . . you killed him) sometime near 9:00 p.m. He recalled looking at his watch over and over afterward, but that somehow the time refused to imprint over the squelchy sounds slithering into his ears and the glistening reds, grays, and ivories he was seeing. He knew he’d only just stretched out under the covers, a barely breathing slab of cold and ache, when the dawn began seeping through the curtains in the tiniest increments of blue.
He’d meant to take Harris to the sinkhole, to throw him in and never look back. That had presented at least two problems. Jason had already been noted in the woods by one of the county’s uniformed finest and, should Harris be found, that encounter might come back to haunt Jason. The car was the other issue. Jason knew himself well enough to predict it would become his albatross. His home was already tainted, the living room doomed to gather dust and cobwebs from now on, but that couldn’t be helped. If he would never again be able to load groceries into the trunk or drive Dave from Accounting to lunch in it for the sheer horror of the forensic ghost riding shotgun, he was going to need new wheels. In the interim, while he waited for the invisible smoke to clear the barrel of his metaphorical gun, he’d be sure to drive himself straight into a tree out of pure distraction.
But losing the sinkhole as his sanctuary bothered him out of proportion to any logistical problems. To deliver Harris’s body to the one place Jason loved most would have been to surrender the single little victory he’d managed throughout the whole ordeal. He wouldn’t do it. After all, he had a shovel, and the big pie-wedge lot was more than he needed. He rarely went out back anyway. He figured he could better control what happened if he just kept the whole thing close and tidy.
That he was only adding a grave to the veritable cemetery already there was a punch line well beyond the reach of his inner comedian.
Certain elements of that night stood out in inexplicably lively detail. He remembered wanting to eat the sandwich he’d been about to enjoy just before his dinner was knocked out of priority by Harris’s arrival. He had imagined the bread growing drier each time he’d had to hustle through the kitchen for towels, bags, spray cleaner, gloves. Insane tears had stung the corners of his eyes as he tipped it into the trash before turning in for what was left of the night. And a fat, brown spider had flinched and brandished its forelegs at him in the shed as the shovel handle pulled through its web. From that night on, he couldn’t see a spider without thinking of it.
He’d been unusually aware of his nakedness under the sputtering showerhead once it was all done and everything—plus one—was in its rightful place. He’d watched in fascination as the grime lifted from the sparse trail of hair tracking down his belly. It wound down along his leg and swirled onto the porcelain in a sooty stream, dragging his gaze to the drain as it swallowed his secret. He’d showered until the water ran cold and the goose bumps raced over his skin in sweeping surges.
While dressing for bed, his reflection had mocked him, withholding the transformation that should have been apparent. He looked just as he always had. Tired, for sure. A little stressed. But doughy, and familiar, and very, very Jason.
He’d felt absurd to the point of disgust, all bound up in his flannel pajamas, and in a fit of manic vitality, he’d clawed at the faded plaid, sending buttons pinging off the dresser mirror. Thready, little rips filled the silences between his sobs. And with a longing that seemed perverse in context, Jason still remembered too clearly the cool thrill of bedsheets sliding over his skin that night; skin so well scrubbed that it was more naked than a simple lack of clothing could account for.
No red and blue lights whirled into his window as he lay there, and no militant pounding came at the front door, nor any pulsating chop of helicopter blades with a SWAT team dangling from underneath. No one was coming for Harris. And no one ever would.
Where there should have been relief, there were two needling pains. One poked home the thought that he probably knew Harris better than most anyone else. No one knew where he went or whom he met. Harris iced his trail as he went along because he was smart enough to know that it was the only way for him. With this stab of insight, Jason realized that there may have been just the feeblest attempt at connection, if not exactly friendship, in the details Harris had shared about his solitary habits. He had tried to explain himself, and what that pale generosity had meant, Jason would never know.
The other hurt scraped a bold, burning underscore to Jason’s default station in life: more than ever, now and for always with this impossible secret, he was alone.
The radio alarm startled him most days, but that morning, as his stare pulled the blank, white ceiling down through his eyes to smother his thoughts, the sudden surge of some castrated boy band in midwhine goosed a scream from Jason. He had dressed quickly, stifling the thought that the man he was covering up was not the same man he’d disrobed in a frenzy just a little while earlier. He’d not been nude for longer than eight minutes at a stretch ever since.
Working at the math now, his calculations put the actual digging and planting at seven or eight hours. His idea, however reckless, was to buy a couple of evergreen saplings and place them into the hole that he’d dig Harris out of. A few to the left and right of the pit would hopefully stand in for some authenticity. He’d ply the excuse that it was a good time of year for planting and explain that once they’d gained some height, the new trees would improve the winter view from the house. There was truth there. It really had bothered him that the closest electrical tower was just barely visible, November to April, through the leafless trees. Mrs. Truesdell had done something similar, screening the borders of her property with fast-growing cypress trees, and she seemed pleased enough with the effect.
But the success of the whole thing was contingent on the result of a day’s (or night’s) worth of gardening, and he was perfectly prepared to admit, even from the outset, that it might not work. And then what? If it didn’t look good enough, or his resolve wobbled when it came time to face Bayard with a laundry list of new lies, what was left? As soon as he put shovel to soil, he was committed to play it out or run.
It would be easiest to go to Mexico, but the thought of himself south of the border amid the cacti—a man who turned pink if he even looked out on a sunny day for too long—was enough to make him laugh, even while staring into his musty garden shed in about the worst fix he could imagine. But at least he could drive there. He wondered if he could beat Bayard’s intuition to the airport, to try a neutral European sanctuary and a gentler climate. His passport would betray him, though. Bayard would know exactly where he went, and something about his ease and his golf shirts told Jason that he’d pack lightly and come looking for him. A man could get lost in Mexico or points farther, especially if he had a head start. So it was south, if he had to run.
R
egardless, he had no margin to dally. His reticence was a birth defect, but as such, he’d also learned to live with it, like congenital blindness. He had already proved he could work around it. His courage was best stored for when he’d need it most—for seeing Harris again, what was left of him anyway, and then for looking Bayard straight in the eye and defending another hole in his lawn as the most natural thing in the world.
• • •
Leah couldn’t keep her eyes from falling out of focus. After all those years together, the white noise of thinking of Reid was so automatic it was like not thinking about him at all. That wasn’t the problem. He was there at every corner and every doorway. It seemed at some point they’d marked every inch of that town with a kiss or a fight, a tire track or a footprint. Over all their years together, they’d probably filled every cinema seat and sat at nearly every table in every restaurant, except for the Tuscany Terrace, which had mostly been out of their budget save for birthdays, anniversaries, and the inevitable, and somehow depressing, marriage proposal.
Leah’s mouth had been dry that night no matter how much water or wine she took in, because for good or bad, Reid had never been able to keep a secret. His brother had known. Their heads together then lurching apart, merry and red-faced, when she’d stepped into the room was clue enough. Reid’s gathering up his hair into a semirespectable ponytail and his fidgeting encouragement for her to dress up could hardly have been ruled subtle. The meandering route he drove was meant to manufacture surprise, but it merely drew out the dread.
The reward for “yes” was a beaming Sheila and a loving family legally bound to her; the price of it was the folding of a corner of her self-respect and the flowering of a strangling vine of resentment. She’d known this before she’d stretched a close-lipped smile over her dismay. She memorized the feel of it for future use, knowing she’d likely need it again, and said the word anyway.
But Reid had managed to hold on to a secret—his final one—for more than three years, and the not knowing had put Leah on edge. And it had left her there, to her unrelenting distraction. With Reid, the only thing that had kept her in possession of the upper hand was that, by confession or discovery, she always found out the truth. She was a sleuth, a hound dog, a nosy reporter, and utterly tireless in the race to the platform of superiority. She reigned benevolent from that podium of facts from which she couldn’t be lied to. Leah positioned herself as the Queen of Long-Suffering to hear his petitions for pardon. She’d extracted details from him in the same way you compulsively bend a hangnail and marvel at the odd satisfaction of the pain.
Not this time, though. She didn’t know how often Reid had stolen off to a place almost an hour from home, or if he would have kept up the long round-trip after the wedding. He’d no doubt lolled in a bed there. Someone had seen to it that he’d kept that last posture under a patch of dirt, and she’d never be able to squeeze one bitter drop of gratification from the story of it. She didn’t even have a picture of the place in her mind, and the dot on the map that showed her the town of Stillwater was wearing a bit thin as an anchor for her fixation.
The detective had played it coy when they’d last spoken; talked around it so deftly, she’d only realized he’d revealed nothing of importance after she’d hung up the phone. She’d wanted specifics but had been left with a kind and professional echo of “ongoing investigation,” “private property,” “protocol,” and “we’ll be in touch as developments occur.” And that just wasn’t going to cut it. She couldn’t concentrate, and although it would change nothing, just as it had always changed nothing, the details were the lid. Her own version of the story, complete with names, dates, and pictures, was what she screwed down tight over every unpleasant event in her life before she put it on the memory shelf. A pantry of poisoned preserves.
She pushed back from her desk and let the tears polish her eyes. How far removed was “sad” from “frustrated” or “adrift,” and would anyone be able to spot the difference? She was glad that tears for any of these were just as wet, and just as valuable a coin among her coworkers, who already gossiped over the discovery of Reid’s bones in Stillwater. She needed to trade in the tears for some time away from work.
“Chris?” Leah leaned in over the threshold to his office.
Her supervisor lifted his shaggy, graying head from his task. “Hiya, kiddo.” He bent immediately back to peering at his work, his nose inches from the computer screen. Leah waited for his brain to process the image of her pinked nose and too shiny eyes. He shot up tall in his seat and really looked at her. “Hey! Come in, come in. Shut the door.”
“I’m sorry to do this,” Leah said, as the door rattled into its frame. “It’s just with everything that’s happened, I can’t think straight.”
“What do you need?”
“A day or two. I thought I’d be okay.” She caught even herself off guard with a fresh torrent of hot tears.
“Hey.” Chris bumped his chair against the wall and hustled his paunch sideways into the tight passage around his desk. “You know you don’t have to ask. Do what you need to do.” Standing next to her, he seemed at a loss for purpose, his hand tapping out of any rhythm on her shoulder. “Grab your stuff and don’t even call until Monday, okay? I mean, unless you need something.”
Leah rubbed away the tears with the backs of her hands. “Thank you, Chris. You’re the best.”
“Get outta here.” He smiled, his eyebrows imploring a return of the same.
Leah obliged through the prism of new tears and set out to clamp a cover over the last story Reid would ever tell.
• • •
Reid’s mystery would likely remain sketchy forever. Everyone who knew anything firsthand was already long dead, which was a strange thing to say about a group of such young people. It felt as if there should have been a disaster: an earthquake, a twister, or at least a road accident, to lose a trio so flush in their prime. What had happened was sordid and theatrical, and without the specifics, it was all too thick for Leah to properly absorb. Whatever details were to be had rested in the files and the guesswork of the detective, Bayard. He was the only one who could help her put it together, so that she could then put it away. She explained this, as best she could, to his voice mail on her way to corner him at his office.
If nothing else, a minor mystery of the universe would be solved that afternoon. Leah now knew how to make a room, crammed to the edges with file cabinets, computers, and cheap office furniture, look like a wasteland. You just paint it tan. Whoever had mixed the paint had overshot the nuance of neutral and condemned everything slimed in its supergloss to a pasty tribute to nausea. Slap a few bars of flickering fluorescent overhead, and it was no wonder that the three desks were empty. The look of the place weighed on the back of her throat like a spoonful of cod-liver oil.
“Can I help you?”
Leah whirled around to stare at the midchest buttons of a starched oxford-cloth shirt. Her gaze tracked upward as her feet backpedaled for some distance.
The giant smiled down at her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay. I was just looking for Detective Bayard. I tried calling him a couple of times on my way over here.”
“That was you, huh? I heard his phone ringing in the drawer.” He pointed at the uncluttered desk to their left.
“Well, the only reason I came on was that they told me he was here when I called the main number.”
“Well, they would have been right, if he hadn’t ducked out the back door a little bit ago.” The giant passed her and set a can of orange soda on the desk wedged into the farthest corner by the window. Leah stayed by the door. A little perspective was necessary to make a man that size manifest in one frame. “I’m Ford Watts. I work with Tim a good bit. Can I maybe help you with something?”
Leah’s speech had been rehearsed for Bayard alone. With that script in the wastebasket, she lost her prefab confidence and went red in the face. “My name is Leah Tamblin. He fo
und my fiancé, I mean, found his—you know. On Sunday. He was buried in someone’s flower bed. I just wanted . . .”
“Ah. Please.” Ford swept his hand at the spare chair in front of his desk, and Leah took the offered ease. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Soda?” He tilted his own unopened can toward her.
“No, thank you.”
“What can I do for you, Ms. Tamblin?”
The view was tailor-fit for the room. The window overlooked the parking lot and a Dumpster. The sun lobbed headachy splashes of light off the windshields, and Leah felt suddenly foolish, and on its heels, angry that she’d been driven to this. “I just want to know what happened. For three years, all I’ve known was that somebody burned up his car and that he was gone.”
“Tim told you about Boyd Montgomery, right? His confession in his suicide note—”
“Not that stuff. He told me all that.” Leah swatted away the official tone of what she already knew. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’m not trying to be difficult. I just want to see. I just want to have it make sense.”
“Ms. Tamblin, there will be a time for more complete disclosure, but there are still things from that scene which are under investigation. Everything is sealed until we’ve got it all sorted out. The evidence is pretty degraded, and being handled very carefully to preserve it. His effects will be turned over—”
Leah pressed her shaking fingers against her temples. “I just want to see. Can’t you understand that?”
Ford sighed into the quiet that had crowded into their shared space. Leah held hard against another storm of crying. “Listen,” he said. “Lyle Mosby is our chief forensic investigator. His office is about forty minutes from here. He’s a good guy. I can call him; get him to get you into the morgue and give you a moment. He’ll understand. He’ll let you see him.”
“See him?” Leah’s struggle with the offer played over her face. “See Reid?” Before she could weigh the effect of her outrage in all its bad form, the wave of frustration crested and Ford Watts took it full in the face. “I don’t want to see him! I want to know what happened! I don’t care about Reid!” Her eyes snapped wide, not at the revelation, but at having said it out loud. And very loudly at that.