Rose Albert was acquitted, but later that year she was found dead in her home. The coroner declared the cause of death a heart attack, and she was quietly buried, her death a footnote in the back pages.
Fiona peeled herself off the sofa. She felt hideous, as if she’d gone on a bender, though all she’d done was sit in her dark apartment and read. She put coffee on and got in the shower, but that only made her shiver no matter how hot she turned the water tap. She washed quickly and got out again, then dried off. She gulped her coffee and tried not to think of Jamie, of what he was doing right now. Of Garrett Creel. Of Tim Christopher with a baseball bat, coming up the walk behind Helen Heyer.
Maybe she was coming down with something. Her head was throbbing, and her throat was still sore. She dug in her cupboards and found some ibuprofen, some cold meds, an old Halls. She took the pills and popped the Halls in her mouth, wincing at its waxy old texture and menthol taste. She had no time to be sick, not now. Not yet.
She needed to settle some things.
She put on her coat and boots, pulled a thick wool cap over her still-wet hair, and walked out the door after grabbing her keys.
* * *
• • •
The dawn was gray, the wind icy and bitter, which meant only one thing: snow on the way. It was nearly December, and from now until April, Vermont would fight the winter battle as it always did. Old Barrons Road was quiet, though Fiona could see movement on the Idlewild property through the trees. The pause to retrieve Sonia’s body was over, and the restoration had started up again.
But she didn’t go to Idlewild this time. She found the rough, overgrown driveway on the left-hand side of the road instead of the right, and followed it into the overgrown weeds where the drive-in used to be. She remembered walking along Old Barrons Road, talking to Jamie on the phone. It felt like years ago. But he’d reminded her that the old drive-in had still been open in 1994. On the night Deb died, it hadn’t been running any movies, because November was the off-season, but it was still a hangout for kids who liked to drink in an abandoned lot. The police had interviewed as many of those kids as they could find, but none of them recalled seeing Tim Christopher’s car parked at the side of Old Barrons Road, which he must have done in order to dump Deb’s body.
The drive-in had closed sometime in the late nineties, and like most people, Fiona had assumed that it was an empty lot. Until she’d met Stephen Heyer in Portsmouth, and he’d told her that he’d seen her because he slept here sometimes. The old man who used to run the drive-in lets me use his place.
Her car rumbled over the dirt path, brushing the clumps of overgrown weeds. The screen was long gone, as was the popcorn stand, but a sign remained, placed along what was once the driveway where the cars would patiently line up, waiting to pay admission. It was a four-foot billboard, showing a dancing hot dog and a can of soda, doing a jitterbug on cartoon legs. WELCOME TO OUR DRIVE-IN! the lettering proclaimed. Water had damaged the edge of the billboard, and time had faded its colors, but surprisingly the vandals and graffiti artists had left it alone, a relic in the abandoned lot.
Fiona pulled the car just past the sign, to where the open lot was, and put the car in park. She was cold, her spine shivering, though she was huddled in her coat with the heat on high. Snow coming, she thought. She looked around. Where the hell does Stephen Heyer sleep in this place?
She pulled out her phone, thinking to call someone about something important, but then she stared at the display, bewildered. Her thoughts were moving too fast, spinning out of her hands. I’m not sick. I’m not. She thumbed through her contacts and almost dialed Jamie, just to hear the rumble of his voice. But she flipped past his number and dialed Malcolm instead.
She got his answering machine. She could picture it, a literal machine, an old tape-recording answering machine that sat in his phone nook—because of course her father had a phone nook—next to his nineties-era landline phone. The phone rang, and the machine whirred to life, sending Malcolm’s voice down the line, asking her to leave a message. And then a loud beep.
“Daddy,” she said, “there’s something I have to tell you.” She told him about Stephen Heyer, how he’d found her, what he’d told her. About how she’d seen Helen Heyer, who had nearly been beaten to death with a baseball bat by Tim Christopher the year before he’d met Deb. She was still talking when the machine cut her off.
She hung up.
You’ll kill him with this shit, Jamie had said.
And then her father’s voice, when she was fourteen and her mother didn’t want the distressing picture he’d taken in Vietnam framed and put on the wall. Do you think they won’t see the real world, Ginny? he’d said. Do you think the real world will never come to them?
Fiona touched her cheeks. There were tears there, though they were cold and nearly dry. She wiped them off with her mittened hands and got out of the car.
The wind stung her cheeks. She walked across the clearing that had once been the parking area of the drive-in, where everyone would have parked facing the screen. Her boots crunched on the dirt and old gravel. The sky lowered, angry and gray. She walked toward where the screen would have been, trying to see past the rise there. She couldn’t see anyone or any cars, but she noticed that the abandoned lot was scrupulously clean, free of litter or garbage, which didn’t compute with a place teenagers had been using for decades.
At the other end of the gravel she saw it. An old house, set back, nearly hidden by trees. A trailer, parked farther back in the shadows. A pickup truck on the drive. Hell, she thought, someone really does live here.
“Help you?” a voice said.
She turned to see a man of her father’s age, though heavily muscled, his head shaved in a military crew cut. He wore a thick parka, boots, and old army pants, but it was the rifle slung casually across his forearms that Fiona stared at, cradled in his grip a little like a baby.
“I’m looking for Stephen Heyer,” she said.
The man shook his head. “He’s not here.”
Fiona blinked. Her eyelids were cold in the wind. “He told me he sleeps here sometimes.”
“He does,” the man said, “but not today.”
Fiona felt her shoulders slump. This had been her only idea; she didn’t have another. “But I need to talk to him.”
The man looked at her curiously, and did not move the gun from his arms. “Sorry,” he said. “And I hate to point it out, but you’re trespassing.”
“I didn’t know this was private property,” Fiona said through her fog. “I thought it was abandoned. Sorry.” She looked around. “Where does Stephen sleep?”
“My trailer,” the man said. “I have a few people who come by there when they need a place. Some peace and quiet. I’ve been letting people sleep in my trailer since 1981.” He paused. Fiona tried to take in this oddly specific fact, as if there was something about 1981 she should know. It didn’t occur to her what he was waiting for until he said, “My name’s Lionel Charters.”
Oh, right. “Sorry,” she said. “My name’s Fiona. Fiona Sheridan.”
Lionel went still. “What is Malcolm Sheridan’s other girl doing in my drive-in?”
That made her meet his eyes. Malcolm Sheridan’s other girl. “I guess you were here when my sister died,” she said.
Lionel nodded and didn’t look away. “My uncle Chip started the drive-in in 1961,” he said. “When Chip died, I took it over. I ran it until 1997. Not many drive-ins lasted that long.” He shrugged. “It didn’t bring in much money, especially toward the end, but I don’t need much. My wife left in ’eighty and my son died in ’eighty-one. Ever since then, it’s been just me.” He seemed to be looking at her closely, but Fiona had lost her focus again and things were slipping. “I was here that night. I was here every night. I was here when they found her, too. I could see all the commotion when I stood at the end of my drive and looked acro
ss Old Barrons Road. The ambulances and such. It was a shame, what happened to your sister.”
Fiona swallowed, unable to speak.
“I’ve heard Stephen’s story,” Lionel said. “He’s wanted to talk to you for a long time. I take it he finally did.”
“Is it true?” Fiona asked, her voice a croak. “I’m not a good judge. Did he fool me?”
Lionel was quiet for a moment, and then he shook his head. “Stephen didn’t fool you,” he said, and the wariness in his voice was almost mixed with kindness. “What happened to Helen was real. If you’re wondering if Tim Christopher did it, he did. Just like he killed your sister. I’d swear that on my son’s grave.”
“Why?” she asked him. “What makes you so certain?”
Lionel looked away.
Something roared through Fiona. The restlessness she’d been feeling twisted hard in her gut, almost painful, and her blood jittered. She felt like screaming. “You saw something,” she said softly. “That night. You saw something.”
“I see a lot of things,” Lionel said, his face hard. “The ghost, for example. I see her.” He turned and looked at her. “Do you?”
Fiona felt her face blanch. “She comes here?”
“Not here,” Lionel said. “This isn’t her place. But over there”—he nodded in the direction of Old Barrons Road and Idlewild—“I’ve seen her walking plenty of times. Girl in a black dress and veil. The first time I saw her myself, it was 1983. I thought some teenager was playing a prank, dressing up, even though it wasn’t close to Halloween. Who knows what teenagers find funny? So I went over there.”
“What did she show you?” Fiona asked.
Lionel blinked, his gaze going cold. “That’s none of your business. Just like it’s none of my business what she showed you. What that girl does is cruel, a violation of everything that’s good and right. I never believed in ghosts until that day, and even now, I don’t believe in them—except for that one. I believe in that one. And I’ve seen her walk the road and through the trees, but I’ve never gone back across Old Barrons Road again. What she showed me, I’ll take to my grave.”
Fiona’s throat was raw; it felt like she’d swallowed razor blades. Still, she said to him, “November 21, 1994. What did you see?”
Lionel shook his head. “This isn’t going to help you, girl. Just like what that abomination across the road shows you isn’t going to help you. It’s only going to cause pain. He’s already in prison for what he’s done.”
She tried not to sway on her feet. “Tell me.”
He sighed. A crow flew overhead, giving off its hoarse cry. A cold wind whistled through the bare trees past the old lot. The first dry flakes of snow landed on Fiona’s coat.
“The cops came that night,” Lionel said, surprising her. She’d never heard that before. “Said there was a complaint call, but I know I never made it.” He looked around. “It was November, and there were four kids here, maybe five, sitting in a circle, drinking God knows what. They’d made a little fire, but it didn’t bother me. It wasn’t big enough to spread, and I knew that eventually those kids would get cold and go home.” He raised his gaze to the dirt-and-gravel drive Fiona had driven up, and lifted one hand from his rifle to motion to it briefly. “I was just telling the kids that no one had better puke in my bushes, when Garrett Creel himself came walking up that path.”
Fiona stared at him, shocked now. “Garrett Creel?”
“In the flesh,” Lionel said with contempt. “That old fucker never liked me. Never liked that I go my own way, living on my land, and I don’t care about his rules. He’d come here plenty of times, asking if I’m growing weed out here or cooking meth or something. As if I’d do that shit after what happened to my boy. But that night was different.” He turned back to Fiona. “He came walking up the drive, you see. From the bottom. Parked his cruiser down on Old Barrons Road and walked the rest of the way instead of driving. Why’d he do that?”
Fiona shook her head. She didn’t know. None of this had ever been covered in the papers, in the trial. She felt like she was Alice in Wonderland.
“So Creel comes up here, scares the shit out of the few drunk kids who were sitting here, gives them a lecture. Something about lighting fires—suddenly he’s Smokey the fucking Bear. He turns to me, tells me I’m liable if anything happens, just the same as if I was sitting there drinking shitty brew with those kids. All bluster. He took his time. He thought I didn’t notice, but I did. So when he walked away, going leisurely back down my drive, I cut across the hill over here”—he motioned to the left, where all Fiona could see was overgrown weeds—“and got a view of the road. It was dark, and Creel didn’t see me. His cruiser was parked on the side of the road. He got in, and the interior light went on for a second, and I saw Tim Christopher. Clear as I’m looking at you right now. Sitting in the fucking police cruiser with the chief of fucking police. Then Creel turned the car around and drove away.”
Her head pounded. This was like a crazy dream. Tim Christopher in Garrett’s police cruiser, and twenty years later, through the media coverage and the trial, no one had heard it. “Why would you lie about this?” she asked Lionel. “What reason would you have?”
“Why would I lie about anything?” Lionel said. “Ask around about me, Sheridan girl. Ask your daddy if you want. I’m an open book, always have been.”
“Then why wasn’t any of this evidence in Tim’s case?”
“Because I was told to shut up about it,” Lionel said. “Clearly. By people who meant business. Those kids never saw Garrett’s car, but they saw Garrett. He lectured them. But when they were interviewed, not one of them mentioned it. Because the people who got to me got to them. It was Garrett’s force, and they were Garrett’s cops, every last one of them—none of them was honest. Kids are easily scared. I’m not, but I know when to shut up for survival. And that was one of those times.” He looked at her carefully. “Besides, they got him. Tim Christopher’s been in jail for twenty years. I had to choose the lesser evil.” His gaze cut over her shoulder, and she heard the hum of a motor. “Come to speak it, I think the greater evil is on its way.”
Fiona turned to see a boxy brown Chevy come up the drive and stop behind her own car, the engine idling. The driver’s door opened, and the big, heavy frame of Garrett Creel unwound itself from the driver’s seat and stood. He stared at her, squinting through the flakes of snow in the gray light.
“Fiona,” he said, his voice mild, ignoring Lionel Charters. “You don’t look so good, dear.”
Fiona looked at Lionel. His face was unreadable. He said nothing. He still cradled the rifle.
“I’m . . . I’m okay,” she said to Garrett, forcing the words out past her sore throat. The wind blew down the neck of her coat, and she shivered.
Garrett shook his head. “I don’t think so. You’re gray as a sheet. There’s something going around, you know.” He nodded. “Something real bad.”
Her brain tried to work—why was Garrett here? What did he want? But it was starting to feel like someone had placed hot coals in the spot where her skull met the back of her neck, and she felt sweat trickling down her back the same time as she shivered with cold. “I just need some aspirin,” she managed.
“I don’t think you should be driving, dear,” Garrett said. He hadn’t called her dear before, and something about it repulsed her. “You look too sick. I’ll take you home.”
“Garrett,” Lionel said.
“Shut up, Lionel, or I’ll have you shut down,” Garrett said casually. “Those junkies you let stay in your trailer—you think the cops won’t find a fucking pharmacy if they raid that place?”
“My trailer is for people going clean,” Lionel said. “You know that.”
“Going clean?” Garrett said. “Sure, like that son of yours? Died with enough coke in him to kill someone twice his size. Sounds clean to me.”
Fiona could feel the hostility radiating from Lionel like a vibration. “Get off my property,” he said. “You’re not police anymore. You’re not anything. This is private property. I own it. Get off.”
“You broke our deal, Lionel,” Garrett said. “It took you twenty years, but you broke it. You talked. I thought Fiona might find you, ever since she came to dinner at my house, full of accusations. So I’ve had a few of my friends keep an eye on her as a favor to me. Turns out, I called it right. We’re leaving now.” He stepped forward, his footsteps loud on the gravel in the cold air. He put a big hand on Fiona’s upper arm. “Come with me,” he said.
“Wait,” Fiona said.
There was a click, and she turned to see that Lionel had raised his rifle, aiming it at Garrett. “You let her go,” he said.
Garrett didn’t even flinch. “Are you gonna shoot me?” he asked. “You can’t aim for shit. You’ll hit her first.” He pulled Fiona toward his car as she tried to pull from his grip. “Go ahead, Lionel. Shoot at me. Kill Deb Sheridan’s sister while you’re at it. Then see how quick your little operation shuts down while you’re in prison.”
He opened his passenger door, and Fiona tried to twist out of his hold, but he had her tight and he shoved her inside with practiced precision. He’s not going to hurt me, she told herself as he got in the other side. He’s Jamie’s father. He was the chief of police. It’s daylight, with a witness. He just wants to talk.
Garrett started the car and reversed out of the lot. She looked out the window and could see Lionel Charters standing there, watching them, still aiming his gun.
chapter 30
CeCe
The Broken Girls Page 26