by John Rector
“Ellis?”
“Mr. Ellis.” I pointed to his notebook. “That’s how Victor introduced him to me.”
“And Victor is?”
“His boss.”
I saw him glance over at Charlie, then back to me.
“I’m not making this up,” I said. “They were there.”
The detective looked down at his notebook. “How much did you drink before the accident?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “A little, but—”
“Your blood alcohol was point one five,” he said. “I’d say that’s more than ‘a little.’ You certainly had no business being behind the wheel.”
“I told you,” I said. “I was in the passenger seat.”
I could hear the tension in my voice, and I reminded myself to stay calm, but it was a struggle.
“You were the only one in the vehicle when first responders arrived,” the detective said. “Are you saying the other two just got up and walked away?”
“It’s possible.”
“There was also a handgun found in the vehicle. It was registered to you.” He looked up at me. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They stole it.”
The detective frowned, flipped a page in his notebook. “We spoke to the young woman who owned the car. She claimed that you two were friends and that you borrowed the vehicle with her permission.”
“Abby.”
“Abigail Pierce,” he said. “She told us that you’ve been acting erratically lately. Drinking, drugs.”
“That’s not true.”
“She said you’ve been distraught over a breakup with your wife, and that she’s been encouraging you to leave town for a while to clear your head. She’s worried about your state of mind.”
I heard Kara inhale, sharp, then whisper, “Oh God.”
“Abby is the one behind all of this,” I said. “She’s the one who—”
The detective turned to Kara. “Did you two split up recently?”
“A year ago,” Kara said. “But recently—”
“That has nothing to do with what happened,” I said. “Abby is lying to you, and unless you do something it’s going to be too late.”
“What’s going to be too late?”
“She has a list of doctors’ names. She’s planning on finding them. She’s going to—”
“Come on, Nick.” Charlie put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. Then he looked over at the detective. “He has a concussion from the accident. I don’t think—”
“I’m not making this up.” This time, keeping my voice down was impossible. “I’m telling you, Abby is behind everything, and if you don’t do something—”
“Nick.” Charlie’s eyes flashed wide, and he spoke slowly. “Calm down.”
I looked from him to the detective, then to Kara. She was staring at her hands and absently picking at the corner of her thumbnail. There were tears on her cheeks.
I stopped talking.
Charlie walked around the bed to where the detective was standing, then motioned to the door leading out into the hallway and said, “Can I talk to you for a minute, Tom?”
The detective flipped his notebook shut, then followed Charlie out into the hall.
Once they were gone, I reached out for Kara.
“I’m not crazy, you know.”
Kara took my hand and smiled, but it never touched her eyes. “I know.”
I wanted to tell her not to worry, but I couldn’t.
A minute later Charlie came back into the room alone. He closed the door behind him, then turned on me.
“Either you hit your head harder than we thought, or you’re completely out of your mind.” He walked over to the chair and began gathering his things. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I told him the truth,” I said. “Which is what I should’ve done from the start, but I didn’t, and now look where I am.”
“You’re alive.”
“That’s not what matters.”
“It is to me.” Charlie coughed, stepped closer. “It’s all that matters to me.”
I kept quiet, and Charlie reached out and squeezed my arm.
“I love you, Nick.” His voice was soft. “But goddamn, son, you need to learn when to walk away.”
35
The detective made a phone call from the hallway. When he finished, he opened the door to my room and motioned for Charlie. They talked for a while, and when they came back into the room the detective handed me a citation for operating an unsafe vehicle and unlocked the handcuffs.
I thanked him.
“Thank your old man,” he said. “He’s the reason you’re not going to jail today.”
I rubbed my wrist, nodded.
He handed the cuffs to the uniformed cop. “Don’t make me regret this.”
I told him I wouldn’t.
The detective turned to Charlie. “You take care of yourself. If you need anything at all . . .”
Charlie waved him off, shook his hand.
Once the cops were gone, Charlie went over to the chairs and started gathering his things.
“You’re leaving?”
He nodded, didn’t answer.
“I should go, too,” Kara said. “It’s late. I need to get home.”
I tried to smile, but the idea that she had someone waiting for her touched a hollow spot inside me, and I couldn’t pretend to be happy.
Kara must’ve noticed because she leaned over and kissed my forehead. Before she pulled away, she whispered, “Don’t worry, Nick. Everything is going to be okay.”
I decided to believe her.
The next day I checked out of the hospital. Kara had offered to pick me up and take me home, but I didn’t want to see her, so I called a cab from the lobby and waited outside until it arrived.
The day was bright, and the sky was clear and blue.
When the cab finally arrived, I gave the driver the address, then sat back and stared out the window as we drove. I didn’t say anything else until we got to Jefferson Park and pulled up outside Abby’s house.
“This is it right here.”
Charlie’s car was parked out front where I’d left it. I paid the driver, then got out and stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the house, as he pulled away.
For a long time I didn’t move. There was a soft breeze passing through the trees, and the leaves above me shimmered in the sunlight. I breathed it all in, then started up the path toward the front door.
Halfway there, I knew.
The curtains were open, and when I got to the porch, I stepped up to the window and looked inside. The house was empty, the walls bare. Abby was gone.
I walked back to the car, feeling each step.
At first it was hard to sleep.
Part of it was my ribs. Any movement sent sharp, jarring waves of pain through my chest, sucking the air out of my lungs and making it impossible to breathe.
Then there were the noises.
Footsteps in the hallway, a neighbor’s voice outside my door, even the hum of the elevator would pull me awake, and I’d lie in bed with my eyes wide and my heart racing, focused on the sounds long after they’d faded away.
I spent those first few sleepless nights sitting in my living room with my door bolted, staring out at the stretch of city lights along the horizon, trying not to think.
On the fourth night, I’d had enough.
I packed a few things, then drove across town to Charlie’s house. He knew I was coming to stay, but I still rang the bell before I used my key to open the door.
“It’s just me, Pop.”
Charlie came around the corner, oxygen tank in tow. He watched as I closed the front door. Then he motioned for me to follow him.
“Come on. I’ve got s
omething to show you.”
I left my bag by the door and followed him into the kitchen. There was a newspaper spread open on the counter. He picked it up, checked it, then tapped his finger on the page and handed it to me.
“Halfway down.”
I scanned the page and found the headline I knew he wanted me to see.
RENOWNED GENETICIST’S DEATH RULED A SUICIDE
As I read the article, all I could hear was Abby’s voice in the back of my mind, telling me that Travis had a true gift with suicides.
When I finished, I handed the paper back to Charlie. I wasn’t sure what to say about it, so I didn’t say anything.
Charlie opened one of the drawers and pulled out a pair of scissors. He cut the article out of the paper and said, “So it begins.”
“What can we do?” I asked. “Who can we tell?”
Charlie looked at me, his eyes tired. “You know we can’t tell anyone. She made sure of that.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We watch.” He held up the clipping. “And we start a file. We keep our eyes open and wait for her to slip up.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
Charlie smiled. “Everyone slips up eventually.”
Over the next few weeks, my father spent hours at the library, combing through national newspapers and searching the Internet for any recent suicides involving scientists. He made calls to old cop friends, who were happy to humor him and his new retirement hobby, and they agreed to update him on any relevant cases that came their way.
They understood. Once a cop, always a cop.
Charlie didn’t ask me to help, and I didn’t offer. I knew that Abby was long gone, and searching for her by following a trail of suicides was pointless. She’d lived on the run her entire life. She knew how to disappear, and if she didn’t want to be found, she wasn’t going to be found. To me, it didn’t make sense to try.
One time I asked Charlie why he bothered. I told him that Abby was a ghost, and that trying to track her was a waste of energy. When I finished talking, he looked at me, frowned, and said, “Is that why you think I’m doing this?”
I walked away and never mentioned it again.
All I wanted to do was drive.
I didn’t have anyplace to go, but that didn’t matter. The road cleared my head, and the longer I drove, the more my thoughts faded into the highway, leaving me empty.
Lost in the gray.
A month after I walked out of the hospital, I told my father that I was leaving.
“Where are you going?”
“Depends,” I said. “Does Lonny’s offer still stand?”
Charlie took off his glasses and dropped them on the table in front of him.
“You want to go to Mexico?”
“It’s as good a place as any.”
We were sitting at the kitchen table, and the morning sun was bright outside the window. I could hear the traffic from the highway in the distance and the quiet murmur of the television on the counter.
“Are you sure about this?”
I told him I was.
Charlie watched me, and I could tell he was trying to choose his words carefully.
“You can’t run from yourself, Nick.”
“I’m not running,” I said. “I’m searching.”
“For what?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know yet.”
Charlie’s face softened. He reached for his glasses and slipped them back on. “I’ll call him and let him know you’re on your way.”
“Thanks, Pop.”
I got up and rinsed my coffee cup in the sink. There was a stray black dog passing outside the kitchen window, and I stood there, watching him until he was gone. Then I headed back to my room to pack.
Charlie stopped me. “Nick?”
I turned around.
“About your search.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “If you let it, it’ll find you.”
36
I crossed the border on a Tuesday and made it to Lonny’s fishing cabin a day later. I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived, and as I followed a white-sand road through a thick overgrowth of trees toward a scattering of one-level fishing cabins, I imagined the worst.
I wasn’t far off.
Lonny’s cabin was standing, barely. After seasons of storms, the roof had been stripped of shingles, the cement foundation was crumbling, and the paint on the warped walls was weatherworn and peeling away in long strips.
No, not far off at all.
I parked out front and sat in the car, listening to the steady roll of the ocean, smelling the salt in the air, and wondering if coming here had been the right choice. It’d seemed like the right move at the time. And with me gone, there was no reason for Abby to go after Kara.
In a way, me leaving made her untouchable.
At least I hoped so.
I got out of the car and walked around the cabin. Lonny had arranged for new shingles, drywall, and paint to be delivered, and I found everything stacked in back and covered with a blue tarp. I checked that it was all there, then went around to the front door.
I’d stopped in Tucson to meet Lonny and pick up the key to the cabin, along with all the tools I’d need to do the repairs. He’d mentioned that the last storm was a bad one and that there might be damage inside.
I held my breath and turned the key.
There was a large hole in the roof, but the air inside smelled clean—no mold, no rot.
The cabin had three rooms. A main room attached to a long hallway that doubled as a kitchen, a bedroom without a bed, and a small bathroom with a claw-foot tub. I walked through each room, checking for signs of damage, but to my surprise it was dry.
I spent the rest of the day unloading the tools from my car and making a list of everything that needed to be done. It was a long list, and by the time I’d finished, the sun was going down over the water, and a chorus of insects sang to me from the trees.
That night I rolled my sleeping bag out in the living room and stared up at a scatter of stars through the hole in the ceiling. They calmed me, and I let my mind wander.
As usual I thought about Kara.
The first thing I did was patch the hole in the roof, but it took me longer than expected. By the time I’d finished, I knew I’d need help to do the rest.
Then I found Teddy.
He was an American, or rather a Texan, and he lived in a Chevy van that he kept parked on the beach. He had graying black hair that he cut close to his skull, and a large tattoo of an even larger woman across his chest.
He called her Rosie.
“Like the song,” I said. “Whole lotta—”
“No, dude.” He stopped me, and the expression on his face turned dark. “She’s nothing like the song.”
I didn’t say anything else about it. But it was hard to hide my disappointment.
The only bar in San Miedo doubled as a post office. It had three wooden tables out front on a patio, white plastic chairs, and a choice of beer, whiskey, or tequila.
At least the beer was cold.
For weeks Teddy and I would work a few hours every morning, then walk into town for lunch. Afterward we’d stop at the post office, order drinks, then sit at one of the wooden tables and watch the people pass by until the air turned cool and the sun sat low and red over the water.
We had nothing but time.
I never told Teddy about Abby or about what’d happened back home, and he never asked. It was one of the things I liked about him. We were where we were, and how we got there didn’t matter.
All I knew about Teddy was that he’d been a bricklayer in Dallas, and then one day his wife cleaned out his bank account and ran off with a woman she’d met online.
Teddy took it as a sign.
“Most
of the time the universe is quiet,” he said. “But sometimes, if you listen carefully, it tells you exactly what it wants you to do.”
“The universe told you to come here?”
“That’s right.” He grinned at me, lifted his drink. “Same as you, brother.”
Teddy had life all figured out.
There was no phone at the cabin, so Charlie sent letters. They’d arrive at the post office about once a week. I’d pick them up and read them at night when I was alone. Every one was written in his nurse’s handwriting.
This didn’t surprise me. Charlie didn’t like to write, but I didn’t care. The writing might’ve been Penny’s, but the words were all his.
Most of the letters were short. He’d update me on his health, which doctors he liked, and which ones he believed were trying to kill him. Sometimes Penny would chime in to say that he was still a shithead but that he was doing great.
Mostly, though, it was Charlie.
I wrote back, wanting to know if he’d heard from Kara and if he knew how she was doing, but he didn’t respond for a long time. When his next letter finally arrived, all it said about her was that she was doing well and that she was happy.
It made me smile.
It took longer than I’d expected, but eventually Teddy and I finished the repairs on the cabin. As usual we celebrated with drinks at the post office.
That was when he told me he was leaving.
“I’m going to head south,” he said. “I’ve got friends who run a resort in Costa Rica. I thought I might give that life a try for a while.”
“The universe is telling you to move on?”
Teddy smiled. “I knew you’d understand.”
“You got enough money?”
“I got what you paid me,” he said. “I don’t need any more than that.”
I turned and looked out at the street. Part of me was sad to see Teddy leave. We’d become friends, and I would miss our afternoon conversations, but I also knew that nothing in life was permanent.
I held up my beer. “Buen viaje.”