A Shattered Lens

by Layton Green

  Just to be sure, Preach hurried to pull up his own evidence report from the day he had found the bloody leaf pile in the woods. His notes confirmed it. “Silver cigarette lighter. Floral pattern etched in gray lines along both sides.”

  He turned back to the report. Someone had stolen the silver lighter from Alyssa Carson on August 21, when she had attended a meeting of local documentarians at the Creekville Arts Center. During a restroom break, she had left her purse and camera on the sink, thinking no one else was around.

  But someone must have entered quietly behind her.

  Someone who had stolen the lighter and left it in the woods behind Claire’s house, possibly on the same night as David’s murder.

  35

  It took Blue two full days to work up the nerve to go to Old Fort, her father’s hometown. Telling herself she was afraid of hitchhiking was a copout, and she knew it. She wasn’t scared of hitching. At least not very much. Staying too long in the Black Mountain homeless shelter was a much greater risk, though the place wasn’t as bad as she had thought. She had enough food and her own cot in a great big room that smelled like ammonia. The shelter was for women only, which was comforting. But she knew Cobra was looking for her, and there were too many desperate people around who might rat her out. She lived in fear of hearing the gang assassin’s motorcycle rumbling outside the shelter door.

  She had to move on.

  After half an hour of thumbing on the main state road out of town, Blue managed to hitch a ride down the mountain, ten miles east to Old Fort. A white-haired farmer in a Ford Bronco as old as Father Time gave her the lift.

  Before she knew it, before she had time to second-guess or even process her decision, she was standing on the desolate Main Street of Old Fort, breathing in the sharp air, surrounded by mist and the bluish- black humps of the mountains. The town had a far different feel from the energizing vitality of Black Mountain. This place felt old and worn out, used up, discarded. There was no sign of tourism and very little life on the street. Where was everyone ?

  She thought of her father and what it must have been like to grow up in this place. She imagined it had been much different back then. A vibrant soda shop where all the kids gathered, a few diners where everyone knew each other, a baseball field with emerald-green grass and plump bases as white as doves. Not this shell of a town she saw around her: crumbling brick storefronts with no sign of gentrification, broken windows, abandoned buildings, missing signs, unpainted shutters.

  Or maybe, like everything else she associated with her father, she had distorted the image. Maybe the town was better off than ever, and he had grown up in abject poverty with bad teeth and white trash neighbors and bare feet covered in coal dust. It pained her that she didn’t even know.

  Blue couldn’t seem to make herself walk down the sidewalk. Now that the reality of the moment loomed, she was absolutely paralyzed by the thought of knocking on her relatives’ door.

  What if they turned her away?

  What if he was there, and he turned her away?

  As much as she worshipped his memory, she had never forgotten the rejection. It had stayed with her like a permanent stain, a full-body tattoo that only she could see.

  You think he loved you, Blue?

  So why did he leave you behind?

  Why had he never written ?

  Never visited?

  He left you there to rot.

  No. He didn’t have a choice. There was a reason, a good one. There has to be.

  On the bus out of Greensboro, the passenger beside her had let Blue look up her father’s old address on her phone. The house was a few blocks off Main. A quarter mile from where she was standing.

  Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  The memories of her father, the one thing good and true in her life, were too precious too risk. They were too special. They were everything.

  Shaking, she stood in the center of the tiny town she idolized and feared above all places on Earth, willing her feet to move, eventually taking her camera out and chronicling this stage of her journey. That helped her to breathe. Removed her from the situation.

  After walking up and down the main drag for the tenth time, she popped into McDonald’s for another cup of coffee, trying to summon her nerve. She sat in the back and picked up a dog-eared copy of a Buck Rogers novel that looked older than Mick Jagger, and which someone had left on a table. Science fiction was cool, she thought. Our world was so on the edge of being a sci-fi novel. The next twenty years could make the last century of progress seem like the Bronze Age.

  What sci-fi movies did she love ? The original Blade Runner, oh yeah. Alien, Dune, Inception, The Matrix. The Eighties were a glut of riches. Robocop, ET, Terminator, Return of the Jedi, Tron, the list went on and on.

  Speaking of movies, there was one kind in particular she hated. The pretentious, postmodern ones where rich and famous people flitted in and out of fancy hotels and European cliffside resorts, going from one disillusioned conversation to another, complaining about the meaningless of their lives. Some clever critic in an online article had referred to these movies as reflecting “a culture of numbness.”

  Really?

  These people might want to live for a few weeks in a housing project, or the trailer park where Blue grew up.

  Maybe they would make a different movie.

  Redefine their definition of numb.

  Blue realized her foot was tapping incessantly under the table. She knew she was avoiding reality by thinking of the movies again. She was out of money now. It was her father’s family or the homeless shelter. A middle-aged man in a faded army jacket opened the door, and Blue caught her breath. Could it be her father? He was the same age and trim build, and her father had a jacket just like that. He had served in the Gulf War before Blue was born.

  The man faced her way, and she scoffed. This man had the face of a ferret. Her father looked like a young Daniel Day Lewis with short hair. The one from The Boxer.

  An hour later, she started getting stares from the employees. Blue slid out of her chair and stepped outside, hugging her camera against her chest, and started walking toward the house. One foot after another, she told herself. That was all we could do in life.

  And then she was there: standing on a sharply sloped street off Main, in front of a house with beige siding and maroon shutters. The house had its own yard with its own mailbox, and a flagpole that proudly displayed the stars and stripes. There was a groomed flowerbed, a gravel driveway, and a layer of rocks on the slope near the street to ward against erosion. It was small and simple, yet perfect. An embodiment of the American Dream.

  Even if her father wasn’t inside, someone in that house, a relative, would know where he was.

  Why in the world had she waited so long? He would be thrilled to see her! The new chapter of her life was about to begin, the last decade a bad memory!

  With her legs feeling like twigs unable to bear her weight, she approached the front door and rang the bell. Moments later, a grayhaired woman in her sixties answered. A kind smile softened a pinched face that had a lifetime of hard work etched into its craggy lines. Blue tried to picture her father in this woman. She thought she could see it. The crinkle at the corner of her eyes, the firm jaw.

  “Yes?” the woman said, with a hint of suspicion.

  “I, um . . . do you know if Donnie Blue lives here?” she blurted out.

  “Who?”

  “Donnie Blue,” she repeated, sure the old woman had misheard her. “He’s my father,” she added shyly.

  “There’s no Donnie Blue here, honey. You sure you got the right address?”

  Maybe a distant cousin had moved in, Blue thought. She described him and asked again. The woman still looked confused.

  “Who’s there, Meryl?” a male voice called out.

  The old woman turned her head. “Someone for Donnie Blue. You know the name ?”

  “’Course I do. That’s the family we bought the house f
rom.”

  “How long ago was that?” Blue managed to croak.

  “’Bout ten years now, I reckon,” the man called out, as he walked into view. He was burly, with tanned arms and a dome of thinning white hair.

  Blue had to swallow a few times before she could speak. “Do you know where they live now?”

  “Moved to Ohio, I believe. Job transfer. Father’s name was Jesse. Donnie rings a bell, and I know they had a son. That must’ve been him.” He shook his head. “He didn’t live here when we bought the house, though. I’ve never met him myself”

  Blue trudged up the steps to another homeless shelter on the edge of Old Fort. It was called the Promise House, and it housed runaway teens and single mothers. She had no choice. Unless she called her mother or sold her camera, neither of which she was willing to do, she had to find enough work to eat and leave town again. That or resort to stealing.

  At the moment, she didn’t really care. Learning that her father’s family no longer lived in Old Fort had floored her. A far larger part of her than she cared to admit had held out hope that he would open the door and sweep her off her feet.

  She knew in her heart, of course, why she had never tried to come to Old Fort before.

  Because if he had wanted to see her, he knew where to find her.

  It might be better if he was dead. Then she could tell herself he had wanted to come back for her.

  After the staff checked her in and led her to the tiny cubicle where she would spend the night, Blue fell onto her cot and heaved silent sobs, feeling as if a part of her was gone forever.

  When Blue woke the next morning, she felt a tiny bit better. She was a resilient person. She knew this about herself. Depression did not become her. She would let herself wallow in her misery a while longer, lock away her father’s memory once again, and carry on. Find a way out of that gloomy little town and start over in a better place. Maybe Asheville, this time. The city had a reputation for welcoming artists and drifters.

  She stepped out of her cubby and looked around. Built into the repurposed basement of a Methodist Church, the shelter was little more than a dining hall and a large room full of cubicles separated by five-foot-tall plyboard partitions. The dingy, cramped interior made her think of runaway teens and serial killers again.

  Which made her scoff. She had read once, after watching The Silence of the Lambs, that at any given time there were a few dozen serial killers operating in the United States. Though disturbing, this was not a large number, compared to the population. Funny how terrified we are of imaginary things when our reality is far more desperate.

  Toughen up, Blue. You’ll get a job today. Work for a month and move to Asheville. Rent a pad with some other kids, find another job, and start filming again.

  Not wanting to lug her camera around all day, wary of being robbed, she wrapped the Canon in her jacket and asked the director of the shelter to keep it in the office. Thankfully, he agreed.

  After a long day hitting up every place in town she could think of for a job and having no success, she debated hitchhiking to Asheville the next day. On her way home, a few blocks from the shelter, she heard the whine of a motorcycle. Almost afraid to look, she glanced back and saw her worst fear manifest behind her, less than a hundred yards away.

  There were a few people on the street, but Blue knew it wouldn’t matter. This was not some punk kid on the lookout. This was the most feared enforcer she knew.

  As Cobra whipped his motorcycle into a parking space and jumped off, Blue turned and fled, cutting down a side street marked by a flashing red light across from a bait and tackle shop. A hundred yards down, she could tell the street dead-ended at a school of some sort. That did not look promising. Well before she reached the school, she saw a paved byway on her right, more an alley than a road. She dashed down it, deciding to take her chances with the unknown.

  There was no one around. No one to hear her cries for help. Footsteps pounded the pavement behind her. The alley was dotted with the backs of a few houses, lonely and shuttered. A barking dog strained at its leash to get at her as she sprinted toward a Hardees sign in the distance. She was in a town, not in the woods. Someone there could help her.

  The footsteps drew closer and closer. Blue kept running, arms and legs churning as fast as they could. As she passed a trailer hitch parked in the weeds off to the right, a hand grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. Before she could scream, Cobra covered her mouth and pulled her to the ground. Like oil on water, he slid effortlessly atop her, pinning her arms and holding a knife to her throat.

  “What do you want?” she said. “I don’t know anything.”

  He wasn’t even breathing hard. “I know you were there. Who have you talked to ?”

  Blue was about to spout that she had talked to no one, then thought better of it. Once she admitted there was no more evidence, he would kill her. Through the fog of her fear, she made a snap decision. “Yeah, I saw it. I filmed it.”

  Cobra grew very still. “You did what ?”

  “On a digital camera I stole.”

  “Where is it ?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  He pressed the knife tighter.

  “In Creekville,” she said, feeling a trickle of blood on her neck. “It’s in Creekville.”

  “No,” he said, after a moment. “I don’t think so. You wouldn’t have left it behind.”

  “Well, I did. I buried it in the woods.” Blue tried to slip her hips to the side, but she couldn’t budge. “Let me go!”

  Cobra’s voice was low and calm. “Take me to it, if you’re telling the truth. I know you have it with you.”

  “You’ll just kill me, no matter what I do.”

  “If you give it to me,” he said, “I promise there will be no pain.” “No pain?” she said, in a panic. “So you’re going to kill me!”

  He put a hand over her mouth and pinched her on the shoulder, in a soft spot that sent arrows of pain shooting through her. His palm muffled her scream, and he pressed the tip of the knife against her eyelid. “You’ll give it to me either way,” he said, in that emotionless voice she found so terrifying. “That I promise you.”

  Blue believed him with all her heart. Unable to think of a good way out of the situation, she told him where to find it, praying he might send her inside the shelter alone and give her a chance to run or call for help.

  The knife disappeared into his jacket as swift as any illusionist’s trick. He rose and jerked her to her feet. “We’ll see together if you’re lying,” he said, crushing her hopes. “And if you think of trying to escape, I’ll kill you before the cops arrive.”

  She had a few blocks to think of something, though she knew it was hopeless. His grip on her shoulder was like a bear trap. Cobra would never let her get away, not when he thought she had witnessed a murder.

  “And then?” she said. “If I get it for you?”

  “We will see who else you’ve told.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone or see anything. Take the camera and you’ll know what I mean.”

  “You were in the woods that night.”

  “I’ll take that to my grave. I swear.”

  “I know you will,” he said quietly, and pushed her forward.

  36

  On Friday afternoon, as a bank of storm clouds gathered in the distance, Preach pulled into the gravel drive entrance to Carroll Street Homes. The nucleus of it all. The gravitational center around which the case swirled.

  He realized someone unknown could have stolen the camera and the lighter and pawned them. The items could have ended up in anyone’s hands, including Claire’s. In fact, it looked like just the sort of fancy silver lighter she would carry.

  Yet calls to the handful of pawnshops in Creekville and Chapel Hill had gotten him nowhere. He had even widened the search to the entire Triangle area, enlisting Bill and Terry. If that didn’t pan out, Preach had a few other ideas, but first he was going to shake down the trailer park. A c
amera like the Canon would have stood out.

  As he rolled through the park, he recalled the girl with the Chinatown shirt from his last visit. She seemed clever and aware. Maybe she had seen something. A long shot, he knew. But sometimes the tiniest detail could break a case. She had also lived close to Nate. What if Alana had entered the women’s restroom and stolen the lighter and the camera?

  If the Chinatown girl didn’t know anything—he thought her name was Blue—he would go door to door if he had to. That lighter had a connection to the murderer, he could feel it. Maybe Claire herself had dropped it, and maybe not.

  But he was going to trace it back.

  While he was pondering why the lighter had turned up a hundred yards from the leaf pile—had the pair of murderers split up in the woods ?—another thought came to him.

  What if one of the two murderers hadn’t dropped the silver lighter ? What if someone else had? Someone totally unconnected?

  He stopped where he was, struck by an idea.

  What if someone else had witnessed the murder?

  A witness in hiding, running for his life ? The lighter, the stolen camera . . . could someone have filmed it with the stolen camera?

  Good God. If that was the case, or if someone connected to David’s murder even suspected it was, then another life could be in grave danger.

  He let out a breath. Things were spiraling. He needed answers.

  Earlier, he had talked to Alyssa Carson on the phone. She was on location filming a documentary in Charleston, South Carolina. Unfortunately, she had nothing to add, aside from reiterating the value of the camera and shouting at him that priceless footage from a recent film session was stored inside. What were the Creekville police doing, she wanted to know? Why couldn’t they find her camera?

  Good question.

  The trailer park was busier than usual, hourly workers starting the weekend early and kids playing in the muddy streets after school. The same thugs as before lurked on the edges, eying Preach as he rolled through. He tried Nate’s mother first, just in case, but she screeched at him to go away, demanding that he send Nate home. Preach asked her about the camera, which elicited a blank stare and another round of shouting.