Cold Woods

by Karen Katchur

  “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not,” she said and squeezed her tightly.

  “I’m not talking to you.” Carlyn wiggled free and flipped onto her back.

  “I saw what you wrote about me in Dannie’s slam book. Do you remember? Back in seventh grade?”

  “I didn’t write anything about you. Those things were stupid.”

  “I know your handwriting, Carlyn. You think I’m perfect.”

  “Perfectly certifiable.”

  She very well could be. She didn’t know who or what she was, but she decided she wasn’t someone who’d intentionally hurt her friend. She needed her. Maybe they needed each other. Maybe she could give Carlyn what she wanted. She leaned over her again, hovered an inch above her face. “I’m sorry for being a jerk,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” Carlyn whispered.

  The game she’d started playing with Carlyn didn’t feel like a game anymore. She pulled Scott’s T-shirt off, tossed it to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Carlyn asked.

  “No more talking,” she said and rolled on top of her, kissed her neck, her lips.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Parker sat at his desk at the station in front of the computer, researching the last thirty years of Trisha Haines’s life. There wasn’t much online. She didn’t have a Facebook account, or any account for that matter, on any of the tell-all, oversharing social media sites. It took some real digging to find something, and then it was only that she was married. He redirected his search under her married name. It was as though she barely existed, which was saying something in the internet age. All he came up with were a few society pieces. The photos were the grainy black-and-white kind that could’ve been anybody if you didn’t look closely enough. She was overshadowed by her husband in most of the shots, a much older man by the name of Sid Whitehouse, whose own face had been turned away from the camera in every single shot. There wasn’t much information about him, either, other than he was a businessman, but what kind of business wasn’t clear. He was described simply as a high roller.

  There was a reason Trisha had kept a low profile. There usually was. She’d turned up in the system, a couple of misdemeanor offenses for disturbing the peace, specifically public drunkenness, as recently as six months ago.

  From what Parker gleaned off the little information he’d found of her high-society profile, minus the misdemeanors, Trisha lived the kind of lifestyle most people dreamed of when they were on the outside looking in. It was when you were on the inside that nothing was as it seemed. Or it appeared that way to Parker.

  Sharon Haines was a little easier to pin down. She hadn’t left the area ever since moving to the Slate Belt in 1979. She’d worked nights as a bartender at a place called Foxy’s when Lester had disappeared, and later she’d managed the service station downtown until retiring. She lived off social security checks. She never remarried. She’d claimed to be sleeping the day Lester disappeared, tired from her previous shift at the bar. Her alibi was flimsy. No one had seen her until she’d shown up for work around seven p.m. Nothing in the file from her coworkers mentioned anything about seeing fresh bruises on her arms or face. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have any. Most battered women knew how to hide them.

  To Parker’s way of thinking, the most remarkable piece of information about Sharon Haines was that she had a clear motive for wanting Lester dead.

  He checked his watch. He’d been here all night. Around three a.m. he’d thought about going home, but sleep hadn’t appealed to him. Sleep meant dreaming. The last time he’d had a few hours of sleep, he’d woken in a pool of sweat. He’d had another nightmare, the one where the guy’s brains were on Parker’s face rather than on the autumn leaves. His father had been in the shadows, yelling, What have you done? as though it had been Parker who had pulled the trigger.

  The morning shift had come in about an hour ago. Sharmaine was sitting at the front desk. The smell of coffee was strong. Geena walked in carrying two cups from a coffee shop.

  “Traffic was a nightmare,” she said. She commuted from Bethlehem, where she’d told Parker she owned a condo close to headquarters. She set one of the cups on Parker’s desk.

  “Thanks,” he said. No one had ever brought him coffee before. None of the guys ever had, that was for sure. He was touched by the gesture. This was a perk of having her as a partner. She took a sip from her cup.

  “What have we got?” she asked, sitting across from him at her new desk.

  “Not much,” he said. “I think Sharon’s our best suspect, given her history with her husband.”

  “Agreed, but what evidence do we have to support it?”

  “None yet.” He leaned back in the chair. “I think it’s time we set up a tip line. Maybe someone will come forward with some new information.”

  She nodded.

  His phone went off. The lab’s number flashed on the screen. “Reed,” he said. Five minutes later he hung up.

  “What is it?” Geena asked. “Spill.”

  “That was Cheryl,” he said. “She made a cast of the bat, matched it to the depressed fracture on Lester’s skull. She can’t say the bat was the exact weapon used, but she can confirm that the bat is consistent with the specific pattern of the injury. She’s sending the report over. Also, the location of the depression on the left temple leads her to believe that whoever had struck Lester was standing in front of him. So we’re looking at someone who is right handed.”

  “Okay,” Geena said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “There’s more. As it turns out, the bat isn’t a baseball bat but actually a softball bat. Some official size that meets some standard.”

  “In other words, there’s a chance it belonged to a girl.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” He stood, grabbed his jacket.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To talk to my old coach at the high school. Just a hunch about something.”

  “You want me to ride along?”

  “Nah, it might turn out to be nothing. But do me a favor and run out and pick up a pack of cigarettes and a pink lighter. I got one of the daughter’s friends coming in to talk later this morning.” He tossed Carlyn Walsh’s statement from the old paper file onto Geena’s desk. “I’ll be back in time. We’ll see what she knows.”

  Parker pulled into the high school’s parking lot. He checked in with security before heading to the gymnasium. Coach Friedman was in his office in the back of the boys’ locker room. Parker poked his head inside.

  “Hey, Coach,” he said.

  “Parker.” Coach motioned for him to enter. “It’s good to see you,” he said. “I was surprised when I got your call. Did you know you still hold the record for most receiving yards?”

  “No one’s broken it yet?” Parker smiled. His old football coach and gym teacher looked good. His hair was mostly gray now and his face a little weatherworn, but overall, he hadn’t changed much in the last decade or more.

  “No one’s come close,” Coach said about Parker’s record. “What brings you by?”

  Parker pulled out his phone and showed him the picture of the softball bat. The bat had once been bright blue with a red logo, but now the colors were faded, dulled from years of being buried on the mountain. “Do you recognize this? I thought it looked similar to the old softball bats in the gym.”

  Coach looked closely. “It’s in pretty rough shape. I can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. We’ve got about a dozen or more of the old aluminum bats in the cage. Let me make sure the girls’ locker room is clear.” Coach called the female gym teacher—a name Parker didn’t recognize—and asked her to check the girls’ locker room.

  Parker waited for Coach in the gym. He picked up a stray basketball, tossed it at the net, watched it bounce off the rim. It wasn’t his sport. Memories flooded him: time spent with friends, football drills, sweat, basic screwing around. Becca used to hang around after practice, leaning against the wall outside the
locker room, her big gray eyes finding him in a crowd of jocks. He’d been young, blind, not seeing the way she’d looked at him, who she was, what she’d meant to him. He supposed it was what some called hindsight. Either way, it didn’t do him much good now.

  “All clear,” Coach said and joined him by the locker room door.

  Parker had never been inside the girls’ locker room during his time in high school. It wasn’t much different from the boys’ locker room, other than the lack of urinals. It had the same outdoor carpet, lockers, graffitied benches, open showers. Coach grabbed a set of keys, unlocked the cage, where balls, bats, and bases; jump ropes; and hockey sticks had been more or less thrown in organized piles. He pulled a couple of softball bats out of a bag buried in the back. The girls wouldn’t have their unit on softball until spring.

  “They do look similar,” Coach said and handed a bat to Parker. “It’s the same logo.”

  Parker agreed. “Any chance I can look at your inventory records?”

  He followed Coach back to the office.

  “I’m not sure how far back you’re looking to go, but it’s only been in the last decade that we’ve gone digital.”

  “1986,” Parker said.

  Coach hitched his thumb to a large filing cabinet behind him. “You’ll want to search in there, then. It should be listed by the school year. We keep a report of what equipment we had at the start of the year and what we ended up with at the end. You’d be surprised how much of it disappears or gets damaged and tossed out.”

  “Disappears as in stolen?” Parker asked.

  Coach threw up his hands. “Kids will be kids,” he said. “Well, I have a health class in a couple of minutes.”

  “Understood.”

  “I’ll leave you to it.” On his way out, Coach said over his shoulder, “It was good seeing you, Parker. Don’t be a stranger.”

  “You too, Coach,” he said, feeling a thousand years younger. Like it or not, for better or worse, Parker wasn’t the same easygoing kid he used to be, but every now and again, tucked somewhere inside the man he’d become, his younger self emerged. Don’t lose sight of that, he said to himself, worried what impact the job had already inflicted on him.

  Parker opened the top drawer, worked his way down to the 1986–87 school year, Trisha’s senior year. Kids were constantly going into the cages for equipment, which led him to believe that Trisha would’ve had access to the bat. And if she’d stolen one and brought it home, wouldn’t that also mean her mother would’ve had access to the murder weapon?

  “Have a seat,” Parker said.

  Carlyn Walsh sat across from him and Geena in the small plastic chair in front of an old table in one of the interview rooms. She kept her coat on and her scarf tied around her neck. She was sending a signal that she didn’t expect to be here long.

  “Thanks for coming down,” Parker said. “Do you know why we asked you here?”

  “I assume it has to do with Lester Haines. I read about it in the paper.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “Not well. I only knew him as Trisha’s stepfather.”

  Parker pulled out the pack of cigarettes and pink lighter Geena had picked up for him. He dropped them on the table.

  “Do you smoke?” Parker asked and offered her a cigarette.

  “No,” Carlyn said.

  “Ever?”

  “I tried it once when I was a kid. I didn’t like it.”

  She seemed nonchalant about it. He put the pack and lighter back into his pocket. It probably wasn’t her lighter that they’d found at the scene. “You mentioned you had appointments today. What is it you do?”

  “I’m a clinical psychologist. I specialize in children with behavioral disorders.”

  The last person Parker wanted to be questioning was a psychologist. What would she think if he told her about his dreams—the blood, the brains stuck to leaves and sometimes spattered on his face. He wiped his cheek, scratchy with stubble. He wasn’t going to see a shrink, no matter what Geena may or may not have overheard the lieutenant or anyone else say about him. “How long have you been a psychologist?” he asked.

  “Twenty years.”

  “I bet you’ve seen it all,” Geena said.

  Carlyn looked back and forth between the two detectives. Her hair was straight; the ends brushed her shoulders. She wore little if any makeup. She had a strong jawline, and her eyes were set wide apart. She appeared calm. The only clue Parker could discern that she was nervous was the way she gripped the leather case in her lap. “There are very few surprises in life. Wouldn’t you agree?” she asked Geena.

  Geena didn’t answer her one way or the other.

  “People surprise the hell out of me every single day,” Parker said.

  The corners of Carlyn’s lips turned up slightly.

  “I know you gave a statement back when Lester first disappeared,” he said.

  “I was just a kid then. I don’t remember exactly what I said.”

  Parker nodded. “Can you tell me what you do remember about that time?”

  “I didn’t keep tabs on my friend’s stepfather, if that’s what you’re asking. We were teenagers, too wrapped up in our own world to pay much attention to the adults around us. If anything, we stayed as far away from them as possible, and especially from Lester.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t have any proof, but you just know things. He was a mean drunk. I don’t think there was a person on our block who didn’t know this about him.”

  “We know the local police were called a few times. Other than that, did anyone ever confront him?” Parker asked. “Did you ever see him arguing or fighting with any of the neighbors?”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said. “It’s not like it is today. Back then, people minded their own business and kept to themselves for the most part. There wasn’t a whole lot of meddling or sharing like there is today. Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse: respecting people’s privacy or blabbing it to the whole world on social media sites. I suppose the answer lies somewhere in between.”

  “Did you ever see Lester fighting with Sharon?”

  “Sure, they argued, but I’d never witnessed him hitting her.” She paused. “I do remember seeing bruises on Sharon’s arms and face, and this one time, there were marks on her throat.” She touched her neck.

  “That must’ve been hard to see,” Geena said.

  “I worried about Trisha and her mother living there with him, so yes, it was hard. I think I can say we—Dannie and I—were afraid of what he’d do, how far he’d go. It was obvious he was out of control when he was drinking.” She hesitated. “I suppose that’s the adult in me talking. I’m not so sure I could’ve articulated what I was seeing or what was happening when I was a teenager.”

  Parker nodded. “Who is Dannie?”

  “She was a friend who lived across the street from Trisha. The three of us were good friends. Best friends,” she added.

  Parker flipped through his file, finding a Danielle listed as a person who’d been questioned. “Dannie is short for Danielle?” he asked.

  “Yes. Danielle Teagan, although she goes by Danielle Torino now.”

  “Okay. Do you remember where you were the day Lester went missing, December fourth, 1986?”

  Geena was taking notes. She looked up, waiting for Carlyn to answer.

  “I imagine I was in school.”

  “And after school?”

  “I spent a lot of my free time at the library most days. Or I was home. I don’t remember exactly, but it should be in my original statement.”

  Parker flipped through the folder again. He pulled out a couple of sheets of paper. “It says here that Trisha stayed at your house the night he disappeared.”

  “If that’s what it says, then it must be true.”

  “Was your mother or father home at the time?”

  “My father left when I was five years old. My mother worked the night shift at the hospi
tal. Trisha stayed with me a lot during that time.”

  “Didn’t she like being home?”

  “You’d have to ask her.”

  “Do you know what Sharon was doing that day? Or that night?”

  “She might’ve been working. She worked nights as a bartender. But I don’t know if she worked that night. Like I said, we were teenagers. We were wrapped up in our own lives.”

  “One more question,” he said and pulled a photo of the softball bat from the folder. He’d learned from the files in the coach’s office that three bats had gone missing during the 1986–87 school year. He’d sent the serial numbers to the forensics lab to see if one of them was a match. “Have you seen this before?” He passed it to her.

  She glanced at it. “No.”

  “Take another look. Does it look familiar to you?”

  She glanced at it again. “No, it doesn’t look familiar.”

  “It’s the same kind of softball bat the high school used.”

  “I was on the cross-country team. I didn’t play softball.”

  “What about gym class?”

  “Could be, I guess. It was a long time ago.”

  “Okay,” Parker said and put the photo back inside the folder. “I appreciate you coming down and talking with us.”

  Geena pushed her chair back. They stood and escorted Carlyn to the front desk. They watched her walk to her car, put her leather case on the passenger seat. Then she got in on the driver’s side and started the engine. As far as Parker could tell, she never checked her phone for messages, which was unusual these days. She pulled out of the lot onto Route 191. They continued to watch her drive away until she was no longer in sight.

  “What do you think? Is she telling the truth?” Geena asked.

  “Honestly,” Parker said, “I’m not sure.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Trisha’s head felt as heavy as a slab of slate, her mind dull and gray. Her memories of the events of the last couple of nights were like tiny slivers of rock peeling from the edges before flaking away. She was somewhere between waking and dreaming. She could sense someone in the room with her, someone who was close, wheezing. There was a hand on her shoulder, shaking her, trying to wake her up.