Crossroad

by W. H. Cameron

  A heavy silence falls between us. My fingers twist the damp napkin into shreds. My eyes steal around the Mercantile. Cleaning supplies in one direction, wine in the other. Fishing tackle in the middle. You can buy groceries, or camping gear and ammo. Rent DVDs or skis. Fill out a wilderness permit so the rangers know where to look for your body. Today’s lunch special at the deli is a meatloaf sandwich with your choice of fries, whipped potatoes, or coleslaw. The soup of the day is tomato, probably from a giant can. Tastes good, though. Better than the coffee.

  “I talk to my brother,” I finally say, and shrug again. “He’s dead too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Still.”

  I nod. Still.

  “May I ask what happened?” Before I can decide what to say, he shakes his head. “Forgive me. It’s none of my business.”

  “It was a long time ago,” I say again, my voice at the threshold of sound.

  I realize, too late, what that sounds like. With a throwaway line, I’ve dismissed Fitz as old news. His memory is a pressure at the base of my throat. I want to apologize, but I doubt Pride will be so understanding of the voice in my head if I start talking to it right here in front of him.

  “Maybe you should change the subject,” Fitz seems to whisper. He deserves better of me.

  I toss the wad of shredded napkin into my half-empty glass. “What did you want to talk about, Mr. Pride?”

  “The accident.”

  “I didn’t see the accident.”

  “I understand that. But could you describe what you did see?”

  “Haven’t you read the crash report?”

  “It hasn’t been made public.” He shakes his head. “The investigation is ongoing.”

  I wonder if he knows the sheriff ordered a full forensic workup on Nathan Harper, not just an external exam. If not, I won’t be the one who blabs. Not that I feel obligated to keep the sheriff’s secrets, but he and Duniway don’t need another reason to get up in my shit.

  “Whatever you can remember,” Pride says, “would be a great help.”

  With what, exactly? But I go ahead and describe the scene, sticking to details I saw in the Ledger. Two cars in pieces and the pickup burned out on its side. I read they had to put the horse down.

  Pride bows his head. “I understand the survivor died last night.”

  “I hadn’t heard.” He must be another Swarthmore client. A part of me feels guilty that I’m more concerned about who’s handling his funeral arrangements than the fact that he’s dead.

  “Did you know him?”

  I rub my eyes. “Mr. Pride, fifteen thousand people live in Barlow County.”

  A faint bloom appears in his cheeks. “I just thought—someone in your position must meet more than the average number of—”

  “Dead, Mr. Pride. The people I meet are dead.” That’s not strictly true. Someone has to answer the door—survivors usually, in various stages of grief. I’ve encountered screamers, gigglers, quiet weepers, and stoics as expressionless as Pride himself. Whatever their state, making friends with the undertaker’s apprentice isn’t high on anyone’s list.

  “Of course.” He sips coffee. “I don’t suppose he said anything at the scene. Maybe something about how the wreck happened?”

  My mind flashes to the bloody gash on Zachariah Urban’s forehead, to his rattling cough and his plaintive, “Did you see her?” as his head lolled in the direction of the pale figure on the desert.

  “I think he had other things on his mind.”

  “I understand.” His eyes lose focus as if he’s thinking. “You said there were lots of parties at the crossroad. Are we talking high school parties?”

  Rapist shitbag parties. “Yeah,” I say through my teeth. “Mostly.”

  “Because of the Spirit?”

  I could be sipping wine with Barb by now. “Because of the isolation and easy escape, more likely.”

  “People say you saw the ghost.”

  “People say a lot of things.”

  Outside, a guy with a Santa Claus beard comes out of the dive bar that shares a parking lot with the motel and the Mercantile. He straps a thirty-pack of Busch to the back of his motorcycle. The bike’s exhaust pipe sounds like gunfire as he heads toward Dryer Lake. Even a crap beer would be welcome at the lake on a hot day like this. I watch until he disappears, wishing I hadn’t agreed to this conversation. Wishing I’d locked the New Mortuary door the other night. Wishing I’d taken Uncle Rémy’s money and run, or never gotten involved with Geoffrey. Or fucked things up with Helene.

  As the proverb says, if wishes were horses we’d drown in manure.

  “Were any kids out there that night? Besides Trae and Nathan, I mean.”

  “Christ, you’re unrelenting.” I yank the napkin out of my glass and drop it, sopping, on the table. I don’t drink, though. The translucent liquid has a sickly blue hue.

  He swallows, and for the first time he seems unsure of himself. “I’ve been trying to find anyone the boys might have known around here. I even asked at the schools, for all the good that did me.”

  “Well, they sure as shit didn’t know me.”

  “Of course not.” He put his hand on the leatherette portfolio. “Just one more thing, if I may.”

  Like I could stop him. Fitz whispers, “Locket” as Pride opens the portfolio. Inside is a hand-drawn diagram of the crash site, with rectangles for the wrecked cars and dotted lines to indicate their likely positions when all hell broke loose.

  “I worked this out from the skid and yaw marks at the crossroad,” he says. “I believe Trae’s car turned from Wayette Highway onto Route 55, westbound, then stopped. The Cadillac was in front of them, at an angle across both lanes, blocking the way. Does this look correct?”

  “Everything was already in pieces by the time I got there.”

  He doesn’t seem to hear. “The pickup driver must have been going very fast. He tried to swerve, too late, and rammed the Cadillac into the Subaru, then spun out and rolled. The Subaru was thrown from Route 55 into the ditch on the Shatter Hill side of the highway, and the Cadillac ended up to the left, at the opposite corner of the intersection.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  His lips pinch. “We found Nathan more than a hundred yards away. One of the men and Trae were out of their cars too. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what about the baby? Where did she come from?”

  I don’t know.

  He stares at the diagram, then uses a pen from his jacket to point out two lines running across the intersection. “These are the Cadillac’s tire marks.” He taps. “The Subaru’s are here, and this third set show how the horse trailer fishtailed before it detached and rolled into the desert. Lot of speed there.”

  “NASCAR fast,” according to Fitz.

  “There’s one more thing,” Pride says.

  Isn’t there always?

  “Another set of tire marks.” He sketches two lines running perpendicular to the Subaru’s skid marks and crossing over them. “They’re fresh, darker than the others.” He makes a little hmm sound.

  “They aren’t mine.”

  “I didn’t think so. They’re not from a braking skid. I’d say they’re from a rapid start.”

  He studies the diagram as if he can divine hidden truth by going over it again and again.

  “You think another car was involved?” I say, curious in spite of myself.

  “Involved? Or a witness? Impossible to say without more information.” He looks up. “If another vehicle was present, it couldn’t have been badly damaged.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “I’m no expert in collision analysis, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  His tone tells me he’s pretty damn sure.

  “Have you told the sheriff?”

  But I know the answer even before he shakes his head no. Spotty cell service. Wednesday morning at the cros
sroad comes to mind, when I asked if he trusted the cops. They struck him as competent.

  Competent isn’t the same thing as trustworthy.

  Pride rests his elbows on the table and steeples his hands. “Is there anything else you can tell me?” His eyes drop onto me like falling stones. “Anything?”

  A couple at the deli counter is asking about vegan options for their sandwiches. An electronic tone sounds at the entrance as someone else exits. I wish it were me.

  “What are you afraid of, little sister?”

  Maybe I’m sick of having to explain myself. Pride has buried me with questions, and the locket will only raise more: “Where did you find it? What exactly were you doing out there again? How did you spot it?”

  “Did the Spirit guide you?”

  Reluctant, I reach between my legs for the locket.

  “Just give it to him, Mellie.”

  The fine chain is cold in my fingers. I take a deep breath, exhale. “I found something of yours.”

  Pride raises a quizzical eyebrow. “Of mine?”

  “I think so. In the desert near the crossroad.” I raise my hand, allowing the locket to dangle from its chain. The oval pendant spins as I lower it to the tabletop, well clear of my coffee-soaked napkin. The engraved letters catch a gleam of sunlight through the window.

  K&S.

  The color drains from Pride’s face. Hesitant, almost as if he doesn’t believe it’s real, he touches the locket with the tip of one finger. Then, abruptly, he sweeps it up along with the portfolio.

  “Please excuse me.”

  His chair scrapes as he pushes away from the table. An instant later the door tone sounds. Just like that, he’s gone.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Solve for X

  When she’s home, Barb knits. It’s a quiet, almost unthinking act. Just the faint tick of the needles or the hushed glide of yarn from the bag at her side. She never loses the thread of the conversation, never passes up the chance for a sharp retort. And she never misses a stitch.

  Her current project is gathered in her lap. Something delicate, knitted with fine, emerald wool.

  “What are you making?”

  I’ve been speed-talking my way through the last twenty-four hours. Quince and Duniway, Jeremy herding me at Dailie’s, the search warrant, Pride’s belief there was another car at the crossroad, and his abrupt exit after I brought out the locket. To my disappointment, Barb has never heard of Molly Claire’s Girls—she didn’t even know the Spirit had a name. She was more interested in how Notch reacted to my tip.

  When I ask about her knitting, Barb’s eyes don’t stray from her needles. “It’s something pretty.”

  “I figured that much.”

  “It’s for you.”

  We’re sitting in the Adirondack chairs on her deck, surrounded by potted tomatoes and peppers. I grab my wine glass from the table between us. “What makes you think I need something pretty?”

  “Oh, honey.” Now she looks up. “Because you think you don’t.”

  It sounds like something Helene would say. Nearby, a gray jay screeches in the currant hedge screening Barb’s cottage from her neighbor’s. A breeze carries the scent of water from the lake, a fifteen-minute stroll downhill through xeriscaped plots surrounding log houses, stone cottages, and A-frame chalets. Sailboats dot the blue expanse beyond, and fishing boats bob up near the dam. On the far shore, the unexpected green of the golf course shimmers, too far to see if anyone has braved the day’s heat to play. In the distance, a private jet descends toward us, on final approach for the airport. Aliens arriving from another world.

  “I just think you should treat yourself sometimes,” Barb continues. “You can’t spend your life draped in mortuary quips.”

  I cross my arms over the “You’d Look Better Embalmed” printed across my chest. “It’s not all mortuary quips.”

  “Let me guess. You’ve got one that says ‘Girl Raised by Wolves.’”

  “Wolves would have been an improvement.” I’ve never discussed my parents with Barb, and for a second I worry she’ll start asking questions. But she just shrugs.

  “Thank god you have a sad tale of childhood woe like everyone else.”

  “Your mom is great.” Barb once let slip that her mother was why she could afford to live at Dryer Lake on an instructor’s income.

  “My mother, sure.” She leaves that floating there like a turd in a punchbowl. I don’t ask. “My point is you’re allowed to look pretty.”

  “Who am I supposed to impress?”

  “No one but yourself, sweetie.”

  “I’m impressed by my ‘I Put the FUN in Funeral’ tee.”

  She goes back to knitting. “You’re impossible.” I watch the jay hop from stem to stem in the hedge. The closest I’ve ever come to calling somewhere home has been here in the Oregon high desert. I have a place to sleep and a closet to store my droll undertaker wear. But for how much longer? If Uncle Rémy was well, I might weather whatever Duniway throws my way. Keep my head down, focus on the work. Learn from Carrie and Wanda and Aunt Elodie. Grow up to be a real mortician.

  “Every little girl’s dream, right?”

  Why not?

  But with Rémy fading and Elodie seemingly following him into the dark, I feel adrift. I wish the bodies were still missing. Then, at least, Duniway would have a mystery to solve. As it stands, the bodies disappeared on my watch and reappeared in a spot I had ready access to. For him, the question isn’t who stole them, but how to tie me to the theft. He must have enough circumstantial evidence to arrest me. That he hasn’t suggests he hopes to find something more damning.

  “Maybe you should talk to your lawyer, little sister.”

  “I don’t have a lawyer.”

  “What’s that?” Barb says.

  “Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”

  She lowers the needles. “It’s worth considering—a consultation, anyway.”

  “I guess it would be handy to know how many years I’ll get for Abuse of a Corpse, One and Two.”

  “I thought there were three corpses.”

  I give her a look. How much would a lawyer cost? Most of Uncle Rémy’s gift is still in my savings account. I’m careful to budget my sangria and sweet potato tots from my modest Bouton earnings and have tapped into savings only to pay tuition for my prerequisites. What’s left will just about cover the two-year program when it starts in the fall. Assuming I’m still here.

  “What I don’t get is why Duniway thinks I’d have any interest in the remains of those three strangers anyway.”

  “Should I drag out my whiteboard? We can do a brainstorming montage like a TV legal drama.”

  Whiteboarding makes me think of Helene. That had been her way of breaking down problems in the old days, pre-Geoffrey. Colored markers, circles linking circles, goals and dependencies. For her, it was all about activism. Setting up a counterprotest at the women’s health clinic, confronting the administration about campus sexual assault. Her personal life—aside from me—never seemed to spin out of control. Now that I think about it, I may have been one of her whiteboard projects. We’d met when she walked me out of an off-campus party.

  “That asshole put something in your drink,” she’d said. I didn’t know who she was, but I liked her immediately. She took me back to my place and held my hair while I threw up, then put me to bed. The next day, when I awoke, she was still there. I thought she had the melancholy gray eyes of a French film star.

  I lift the wine bottle. “We’re almost empty.”

  “No points for the clumsy attempt at changing the subject.”

  “I just don’t know what to do.”

  “With my students, one of the first things I teach is to identify what you already know and work from there. Solving for x has to start somewhere. So what do you know? Three bodies from the crash—”

  “Four, actually.”

  “That kid in the desert. Right. And Kendrick Pride. He’s a variable. Tell me about him.”r />
  “He’s the only man in a hundred miles who doesn’t own a cowboy hat.”

  “Do you want detention?”

  I add a splash of wine to my glass. “He collects evidence like a TV cop.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  “A cop? Seems like he would have mentioned it.”

  “Unless he’s undercover. Did you ask him if he was a cop?”

  “No.”

  “You should ask him.”

  “And if he says no?”

  “He has to tell you if you ask him. It’s a rule.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

  “It should be.” She sips from her own glass. “Google him, then.”

  “What would that tell me?”

  She shakes her head. “Sometimes I think H. G. Wells brought you here, not Amtrak. Give me your phone.”

  I thumb the home button to unlock it and hand it over. She taps the screen, still shaking her head. “Why don’t you have any apps?”

  “I’ve got apps.”

  “Just the preloaded ones. Where’s Candy Crush? Where’s Toon Blast?”

  “Those are games, right?”

  “Jesus. Whose grandmother are you?”

  It never would have occurred to Cricket and Stedman to buy me a cell phone growing up, but my grandmother gave me one and added me to her plan as a graduation present. By then I was already a decade behind everyone else. I didn’t stream video or use social media. Helene used to flip out when I ignored her texts, but I honestly hadn’t noticed. My first Christmas in Barlow, Aunt Elodie and Uncle Rémy upgraded me to a smartphone, but the only app I’ve bought is an anatomy and physiology reference. Until recently, I thought Angry Birds were the ones fighting over dead boys in the desert.

  “Well, there you go,” Barb says after a moment. “Your problems are solved.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He’s an attorney.” Eyes on the screen, her thumb sweeps up every couple of seconds.

  “That actually makes sense.”

  “Family law, according to his website.”

  “He has a website?”

  “His firm does. He’s a partner.”

  “Let me see.”

  She hands me the phone. On screen is an About Us page for “Anders, Harper, Milton, & Pride, Attorneys-at-Law.” Sure enough, there’s an image of Kendrick Pride, fourth in the list of partners and ahead of a dozen or so associates, paralegals, and staff. His bio is remarkable only for how bland it is. Graduate of the University of Oregon and Willamette University College of Law. Husband, father. In his spare time, a youth soccer coach.