Crossroad

by W. H. Cameron

  “His car is at the trailhead by the Hensley School,” I say.

  The sheriff gives me a quick nod, then turns back to Jeremy. “Check it out.” He takes his chin in his hand. “Why leave the cash, though?”

  “Wayette isn’t I-5 at rush hour,” Jeremy says, “but Saturday afternoon during camping season makes it a risky spot for a robbery. The woods would make more sense.”

  “Which puts us back at accident.”

  “Unless you turn up a suicide note,” Varney says.

  I make a face. Pride no more killed himself than he hiked the Cerise Creek Trail. He was too focused, too driven. I also can’t picture him sitting on the guardrail, ass to the wind. “Where’s his gear? The trail between here and the school has to be long enough he’d at least bring a water bottle. Maybe a trail map and an emergency kit too.” A flare gun wouldn’t surprise me.

  “How would you know?” Varney says. “Were you two close?”

  They all stare at me, Jeremy the hardest.

  We had three uncomfortable conversations, none a basis for friendship. “I barely knew him. But the few times we did talk, he didn’t come off as a total idiot.”

  Varney frowns. “Well, I only met him the one time”—he lifts his chin toward the sheriff—“after that boy’s autopsy, you remember.”

  The sheriff nods.

  “He was pretty agitated, but I can’t say I thought him likely to harm himself. I’ll request his medical history, though.”

  “Maybe Mizz Dulac chucked him over.” The voice comes from the direction of the wayside. We all turn to see Chief Deputy Omar Duniway laughing as he tramps toward us. The lowering sun silhouettes him, but I can feel his eyes on me. He pushes into the group, elbowing Jeremy aside. “Sorry I’m late, Sheriff,” he says, eyes still on me. “A word, please?”

  “Of course.”

  The two move down trail to the top of the falls. Duniway glances down but seems indifferent to the body.

  Beside me, Varney stretches the gloves between his hands again. “I was at a barbecue. It’s supposed to be the weekend.” With that, he heads for the wayside.

  Frowning, I strain to hear Duniway and the sheriff. The swallows darting through the gorge are louder.

  Duniway is talking fast, half with his hands. The sheriff nods once or twice and kneads the sun-reddened flesh on the back of his neck.

  When Duniway shuts up at last, the sheriff looks my way, his eyes grave. He waves for us to join them. I hesitate, but he gestures again.

  “Come on, Mel. You too, Deputy.”

  All I can do is follow Jeremy.

  We gather in a circle. The sheriff tilts his head at Duniway. “The chief deputy has a matter he’d like to discuss.”

  Jeremy’s eyes bounce between his two superiors. “What’s going on?”

  Ignoring him, Duniway hooks his thumbs in his gear belt. “Anything you want to get off your chest, Mizz Dulac?”

  Something in his tone makes my throat clench with sudden misgiving.

  “Nothing? You’re usually so full of sass.” He chortles, a false sound from him, then pulls a small gray electronic device from a pouch on his belt. It has an LCD display and some kind of lens on one end. “Know what this is?”

  No one answers.

  “Laser distance meter, accurate to three-hundred-thirty feet. More than enough for our purposes today.” He points up at the bridge. “From the guardrail to where our decedent struck is eighty-nine feet, seven inches. May not be important, but I like to be thorough.” Quick nod to the sheriff . “For the report, you see.”

  “Okay,” Jeremy says. “So what?”

  Duniway lowers his gray stare onto me. “The way it works is you point the laser to wherever you want to measure, in this case from the bridge to the point of impact. This particular model links to your phone, with a viewfinder to help you aim. It’s got zoom and everything.”

  “Omar, we get it.” The sheriff sounds tired, which is perhaps even more unnerving than Duniway’s giddy performance.

  “Right. Well, a few minutes ago when I stopped on the bridge to measure the drop, I saw a curious thing in the viewfinder.” He shows me his yellow teeth. “Mind telling us what you put in your pocket, Mizz Dulac?”

  The ground seems to quake beneath my feet, as if it could give way any second. I attempt to laugh. “Women’s jeans don’t have pockets.” Of course they do—too small to be that useful maybe, but adequate for a locket on a chain.

  Duniway mock-frowns and swivels his head from side to side.

  If I run, they’ll catch me. If I jump, the shallow pool below won’t save me, not on a July afternoon months after the last rainfall. Might be just as well. No one here would care. Duniway could play with his toy, measure the distance to my body. Turnbull would have a new tale to tell at the Bear Lodge: Crazy Mellie and the Locket of Doom. Jeremy would have to find a new target for his wheedling.

  I wonder if any of them would stop the salamanders from disturbing my remains.

  “Deputy Chapman,” Duniway says, “please take Mizz Dulac into custody.”

  I sense Jeremy’s dismay without having to look. “What are we talking about here, Chief Deputy?”

  “Can I be any more plain? She removed evidence from the scene of an active death investigation. I want her cuffed, I want her in my truck, and I want it now.” Duniway’s yellow teeth are those of a predator. “It’s time this little chippy explained herself.”

  PART FOUR

  Regrets

  As the flowers are all made sweeter by

  the sunshine and the dew, so this old

  world is made brighter by the lives

  of folks like you.

  —Epitaph of Bonnie Parker, died 1934

  THIRTY-ONE

  White Room

  They take the locket. They take my purse. They take my boots and belt. Duniway wants to take my bra too, but the sheriff steps in. “What do you think she’s going to do, Omar? Hog-tie you with lingerie?”

  Only Fitz laughs. “Maybe you’ll get to wear one of those stripy prison outfits.”

  They leave me in my blood-streaked T-shirt.

  Duniway sticks me behind a metal table in a small room across the hall from the sheriff’s office. Sits facing me. His tobacco breath could wilt flowers.

  “You gonna answer my questions, or you gonna be a problem?”

  Helene once gave me a wallet card. On one side, it listed what to do “If You Are Arrested.” On the other, “If You Are Sexually Assaulted.” They took my wallet, but I’ll never forget the theme common to both sides: Don’t trust the cops.

  “Someone broke into Kendrick Pride’s car. You were seen poking around it this afternoon. Care to comment?”

  “No.” That’s all I can manage. Anything else and my voice might break.

  His gray eyes bear down on me. I fold my hands on the table to keep them from shaking. There are red abrasions on my wrists, but at least they took the handcuffs off.

  “Why’d you steal the locket? You don’t seem like a jewelry girl.”

  Metallic light shines from a mesh cage on the ceiling. The room is painfully white and clean, as if rarely used. Can’t be much call for murder interrogations in Barlow County, land of bar fights and domestic abuse. In one corner of the ceiling, a small glass globe holds a camera. No red light, but that doesn’t mean we’re not being recorded.

  “If you talk to me, maybe I can help you. You’ve not been charged yet.”

  Yet.

  But I’m not listening to Duniway. I’m thinking about what I’m going to say to Aunt Elodie. I lifted evidence from … what? A crime scene? If Pride’s fall into Tsokapo Gorge was an accident, it didn’t become a crime scene until I took the locket. The crime of idiocy, especially with Duniway already trying to implicate me in body snatching. But in Aunt Elodie and Uncle Rémy’s eyes, I did something far worse—I stole from the dead. Duniway can do whatever he likes. It’s Aunt Elodie I can’t face.

  “Is there something s
pecial about the locket? Is that why you broke into his car? Were you looking for it?”

  Duniway’s tone reminds me of my therapist back in the psych ward. Fifteen months ago, though it feels like fifteen years. Like him, she was firm but cajoling. Urging me to talk, to engage with my Plan of Care. She had translucent skin like antique glass. Each evening, she’d bring me to a room adjacent to the nurses station, an anonymous space with vinyl furniture and a framed watercolor of mountains like you’d see in a Hampton Inn. A window with blinds looked out on the ward. She’d leave the blinds open, close the door. To onlookers, we were a television with the sound muted.

  “You seem like a night owl,” she said at our first meeting.

  I sat on the edge of the couch. “I don’t know what kind of owl I am.”

  “You’re up at night and sleep during the day. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Time has no meaning here.”

  She smiled like a character in a diarrhea commercial. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think? There are clocks. There are windows.”

  “A window is no better than a movie on a screen.”

  Her diarrhea smile went saccharine. “Would you like to go outside? How about lunch tomorrow in the courtyard?”

  Everything was a negotiation. In exchange for lunch in the courtyard, she wanted to hear why I didn’t believe my parents were trying to help me. For a visit to the library, I had to recount the ways I’d sabotaged myself at UMass. When I asked to make a phone call, she wanted to know what I missed most about Geoffrey.

  She didn’t believe me when I said nothing. She had notes on what had happened when his mother and father confronted me after my return from Paris. My own parents had showed up in the middle of the fray, suddenly aware of me for the first time in years—embarrassment overcoming indifference. Between my exhaustion, my frayed nerves, and too many cocktails on the flight from Paris, I’d made the slip that landed me in psych hold.

  “Fitz, please tell these assholes where he is so they’ll get off my fucking back.”

  Mistake. In the week since Geoffrey had vanished, I’d already begun to think of him as a memory, someone I’d known in another life. I wasn’t sure I’d even recognize him if we passed on the street. Our brief, tumultuous marriage had carved a divide between what I once was and who I might become, a chasm that bottomed out in the gendarme’s office in Paris at the moment I finally saw cherry blossoms.

  “What would you like to happen here?” the therapist asked my third night on the ward.

  “You know what I want.”

  She surprised me by taking out her cell phone. “Tell me the number. I’ll make sure whoever answers would like to talk to you.”

  “What do you get out of it?”

  “This isn’t about me, Melisende.”

  I leaned back and pulled my knees up to my chest. The painting on the wall went soft and wet. I told her the number. She dialed and listened, then lowered the phone to her lap. “It went to voicemail.”

  I held out my hand. “That’s okay.” Voicemail was better, in fact. She hesitated, but I told her I’d do whatever she asked. Talk about Geoffrey, about Cricket and Stedman. About Fitz. Dig the pus from my wounds and put it on display.

  “Honesty is all I ask,” she said as she redialed. I’d refused my medication that day, and my hands shook when she offered me the phone.

  “Helene, hi. It’s me. I’m sure I’m the last person you want to talk to, and that’s fine. I just wanted to say …” She watched me intently. “I just wanted to say I hope you’re okay. That’s all. I hope you’re okay.”

  The therapist wanted to hear about Helene, but I’d lied. I was done talking.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” she said.

  There wouldn’t be a tomorrow. My seventy-two-hour hold had expired. During the night, before the hospital could alert Cricket and Stedman, I checked out AMA. Later that morning, Cricket called my cell phone to say they had changed the locks at their house. Unless I made significant changes in my lifestyle, I wouldn’t be welcome back. “Whatever. I lost my keys in Paris anyway.” I tried Helene again, but she didn’t answer. If Aunt Elodie hadn’t called later that day, there’s no telling where I’d be now.

  There will be no AMA checkout with Duniway. Just questions and more questions.

  “Did you speak with Kendrick Pride after the Mercantile? Maybe on the Tsokapo Gorge bridge?”

  The room feels short of air.

  “Was he angry with you?”

  In my mind, I picture Helene’s wallet card, simple declarative statements that come back to me as Duniway natters on.

  You are legally obligated to identify yourself, but not to answer any other questions.

  “Did you two fight?”

  Do not volunteer any information.

  “Did you see him fall?”

  Do not argue, use profanity, or raise your voice.

  “Did you help him fall?”

  Whether detained or arrested, ask for an attorney.

  “I want a lawyer,” I say, my voice unexpectedly loud in the conspace.

  He nods as if it’s exactly what he expected. “You know what that makes you look like.”

  “Like someone who passed high school civics,” is what Helene would say. I keep my mouth shut.

  Duniway goes to the door and calls for Deputy Roldán. When she appears, he says, “She wants a lawyer, let her call a lawyer.” To me he adds, “This late on a Saturday night? Good luck.”

  Deputy Roldán leads me to the large shared space where the rest of the staff works, a half-dozen desks in two rows behind a high counter. Town Common’s vintage streetlights shine through the windows, most half open to let in the night air. I hear music from the Whistle Pig—Saturday night is live bluegrass. Dailie’s looks busy, and a few people linger outside the antiques mall. I’m only a little surprised no teens loiter in Memorial Park. It strikes me how cocksure Landry and his friends must be to hold a beer bash in full view of the Sheriff’s Department.

  Roldán points to an empty desk. “Dial nine for an outside line.”

  The chair creaks beneath my weight. The phone looks older than I am, dense black plastic with a row of clear buttons below the worn touch pad. I’m tempted to call Paris and leave the phone off the hook.

  “Can’t I use my cell phone?” I don’t remember phone numbers, not even Barb’s. Everyone is in my contacts list. Tap a name, send a text. Talk only as a last resort.

  “Your personal effects are secured.” She taps a printed list of phone numbers, mostly staff, taped to the desktop next to the phone. “Bouton Funerary is on there. Or maybe I can scare up a phone book?” The doubt in her voice tells me how likely that is. She walks away without waiting for an answer.

  The only lawyer I know is dead. The Bouton number will forward to my cell phone, then the mortuary voicemail box when I don’t answer. Aunt Elodie may get the message, or Wanda on Monday morning.

  I punch nine and dial the one number I do know by heart, then wait through the familiar voicemail greeting.

  “Helene, hi. It’s me. Jesus, you know that.” I hate how predictable I’ve become. “I did something stupid, and now I’m in trouble.” Roldán sits on one of the empty desks, her back to me. “That’s not why I’m calling, though. I don’t expect you to do anything. It’s not your problem, and I’m not asking for help.” I take a breath. “I just hope you’re okay.”

  Roldán approaches when I cradle the phone. “Did you get something worked out?”

  “I left a message.”

  She smiles sympathetically. “They’ll call back. They always do.”

  Helene hasn’t called back in a year and a half. There’s no reason to think she will now. Especially since I didn’t tell her where I was.

  Roldán takes hold of my upper arm. Then she guides me to the basement jail and puts me in a cell. Cinderblock and concrete, all white—though unlike the interrogation room, the paint is scratched with profanities and crude drawings of boobs
and dicks—though one talented soul scratched out a deft Pubic Hair Rapunzel. The plastic bench mounted to the wall is narrow, and barely long enough for me to lie down. A compact fluorescent bulb hums in its overhead cage. Above the steel door is the small globe with the camera. The only color is the stainless steel of the combo toilet/wash basin and inexplicable flower print on the toilet paper.

  Roldán leaves me there, then reappears with bottled water and a plastic-wrapped sandwich. “Don’t try to flush your trash.”

  The sandwich is processed cheese and white lettuce on damp bread. I drop it uneaten on the floor by the toilet but drain the water bottle in one long pull. Though the cell feels hermetically sealed, sounds filter in. Weeping and swearing, a rhythmic thud like someone knocking their head against the wall. I lie back on the bench and wrap my arms around myself, wondering if Landry is nearby or if he bailed out already. The cell isn’t cold, but I shiver anyway.

  “Mellie, you’re going to be fine.”

  Fitz’s voice sounds like its coming from the bottom of a steel drum.

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “You’re just feeling alone. But this isn’t the first time, is it? Do you remember?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Yes, I do.

  Nine years old, wandering the house by myself, I found a photo album in my mother’s bedside table. All pictures of Fitz. None of me. He came to me that night, a voice in the dark. Dead a year, yet his voice coaxed me to bed and sang me to sleep.

  He’s been with me ever since.

  “Sing to me, Fitz?”

  He laughs. “Only if you sing too.”

  “They’ll throw away the key.”

  “Nonsense. It’ll be like Lúthien enchanting Morgoth’s hordes in Angband.”

  I scoff at the Tolkien reference, but he insists. So we sing Fitz’s favorite song, one from our grandmother’s record collection about a gangster shotgunned in a hotel lobby.

  I hope the whole goddamn jail can hear us.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Postmortem Stain

  No blanket, no pillow. Not even a real bed. The noise never ends, but at some point I drift into a fitful drowse. I dream of vultures and bullets and falling, of lying on a stainless steel preparation table. Carrie leans over me, Landry beside her. “I cut her right there.” He points at my neck. “She wanted it to be easy for you to find the artery.”