Crossroad

by W. H. Cameron

I nod and attempt a smile. “Where did you come from?”

  “The sheriff let me ride with him.” Her brow creases with worry, and she looks toward the gate. When her gaze returns to me, I think I can see tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I was almost too late.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “I tried to tell you at the café, even though I wasn’t sure if it even mattered. But then everyone was saying you killed that man and blaming you for all kinds of things I knew you wouldn’t do. That’s when I went to the sheriff.”

  I still don’t understand. The effort to make sense of what she’s saying requires more than I have left in me. I want to melt into the rocky ground. But the tears in Paulette’s eyes are almost too much to bear. I lick my lips and taste blood.

  “That day the bodies went missing, I’d gone to the football stadium to meet Landry after he was done lifting weights. You can see the back of the funeral parlor from the stadium parking lot,” Paulette says.

  She must have seen Quince. No wonder she ran out of Cuppa Jo so fast that day when he appeared.

  The sheriff crouches beside Paulette. I hear his knees crack. “How you doing, Mellie?”

  “Fucking great, Hayley.”

  The old tub of butter actually laughs.

  “We’re gonna get you to the hospital here in a jiff. Your aunt and your friend will meet you there. But I thought you’d want to know I have Quince in custody. When I told him we had a witness who saw him steal the bodies, he actually burst into tears. Now he won’t stop talking.”

  “I only saw him drive in and out, Sheriff.” Paulette frowns. “I mean, the time was right, but—”

  “It’s okay, Paulette. He confessed.” He gives her a reassuring smile, then turns back to me. “He also told me all about Jeremy. Claims he had no idea what Omar was going to do.”

  The moment in the van returns in a crushing flood of memory. I don’t want to think about Jeremy dying like that. “He was still going to help Duniway kill me.”

  “I figured.” His eyes soften. “For what it’s worth, Mel, Quince only confirmed what I already knew. You’re a foulmouthed pain in the ass, but I know you didn’t shoot that young man.” He pats my shoulder. “I never believed you had it in you to begin with.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The Apple Peddler

  As promised, Aunt Elodie and Barb are waiting when the EMTs roll me out of the ambulance and into St. Mark’s emergency department. I let them fuss over me until the nurse comes to roll me into the treatment area, and then I ask Barb to take Aunt Elodie to pick up the hearse. “I’m fine,” I insist. “They’ll keep an eye on me here.”

  There’s some argument and a few tears. In the end, I know Aunt Elodie will want to get Uncle Rémy to familiar ground, even if it is the New Mortuary prep room. It’s one of the places he’d be the most comfortable.

  A couple of hours later, after I’ve been scanned and stitched and wrapped in gauze, it’s Danae Wood—floating to the emergency department—who informs me they want to keep me overnight as a precaution. When I say I’d rather spend the night in jail, she laughs. Maybe she thinks I’m joking. I don’t want to get into my issue with hospitals, so I resort to pure force of will and a little active bitch face until she sees things my way. It was hard enough to sit still while the doctor stitched my forehead and for the X-rays that led to my finger in a splint, my right leg in a walking boot. For the million cuts and scrapes on my arms and legs, I ask for the bandages with rainbows and unicorns.

  “Those are for kids, Mel.”

  “I can be pretty immature.”

  Danae laughs again, then promises to return shortly with my discharge orders. I doze and dream of a forest full of ghosts and a desert full of bones. When I wake again, hours have passed. The lights are dim in the treatment room.

  I’m not mad. But for the second time in my life, I leave a hospital AMA. This time I don’t even sign my name—I just hobble through the small emergency department and out into the cool morning air. The sun is just peeking over College Ridge.

  Twenty minutes later, when I limp into the Sheriff’s Department office, Sheriff Turnbull himself, lord of the manor, is sitting at one of the desks behind the counter.

  “You working graveyard now, Sheriff?”

  “Just waiting for you. I’m surprised you let them keep you.”

  “They took so damn long to do my paperwork, I fell asleep.”

  He studies me for what feels like a very long time. “You needed the rest. Hungry?”

  “If you offer me a cold boiled egg and plain white toast, I’ll commit a fucking felony.”

  “I think we can do a little better than that. Come on.”

  On the way out, we’re met in the first-floor lobby by a pair of suits. I wait, disinterested, while the sheriff steps aside to chat with them. Soon, the sheriff waves me over.

  “These gentleman are with the Oregon State Police.” He introduces them as they shake my hand. The names don’t register, and their faces might as well belong to mannequins. Featureless, the color of putty. They’ll need to talk to me, one says, but later is fine. They’ve just finished a long interview with Quince. They’ll be seeing Shelby at the hospital next.

  “Is she okay?”

  “In better shape than you, I suspect.” One of the putty-faces molds itself into something like concern. “They’re keeping her for observation, but just as a precaution.”

  “When can I see her?”

  They defer to the sheriff, who looks at his watch. “We’ll check in after we eat.”

  The sheriff leads me down the Barlow Building steps and through the park, letting me set the pace. We turn down Third Street in the direction of the community college, then turn again on Palmer Street.

  A half-block down, the sheriff holds the door for me at a tiny diner. We take a seat next to the window. I nod when the waitress asks if I want coffee. She offers me a menu. “Just—whatever,” I say. I think back to Uncle Rémy taking me to breakfast that morning the train arrived in Portland, more than a year ago. A world away.

  The sheriff waves off his menu too. “Bring us each the German apple pancake platter. With scrambled and bacon.” When I don’t disagree, she leaves.

  “I didn’t even know this place existed.”

  “The Apple Peddler? I think you’ll like it.”

  The waitress brings our coffee and leaves a carafe on the table. I look out the window.

  “Lydia Koenig is gone. We found the white pickup you described at the airport.”

  “It was her truck, then.”

  “The school’s, actually. Maintenance vehicle.”

  That mystery solved, at least.

  “Anyway, a private plane took off around eleven last night. Flight plan said Salt Lake City.”

  “Let me guess. It never arrived.”

  “You must be psychic.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “You probably also won’t be surprised the asylum was a total loss.”

  As planned.

  “The crew had to let it burn. We’re not equipped to handle a building of that size in the middle of nowhere. We’ll be weeks picking through the rubble, but they did find one body just inside. A woman.” His lips pull away from his teeth. “We believe it’s the nurse. Shelby says she unlocked her door after the fire started.”

  Shelby seemed to like Fina, and I guess freeing her counts for something. Still, I can’t work up much sympathy. Fina could have helped those girls escape any time.

  “Do you think you’ll catch Lydia?”

  “Out of my hands. This show’s going federal.” He stirs his coffee, even though he’s added nothing to it. “I’m sorry you had to go through all this, Mellie.”

  We’re back to Mellie. I don’t correct him. Fuck it. It’s fine. “When did you know?”

  “About Omar? Not until last night.”

  “But you suspected.”

  “Wha
t makes you say that?”

  Because of what Danae said about the autopsy, how Sheriff Turnbull personally carried the samples to the state crime lab. He didn’t trust anyone else, not even his chief deputy. But I don’t want to get Danae in trouble, so I say, “You told me about Nathan’s bullet and the fourth set of bones in the retort. You knew something was up, but if you really suspected me, you wouldn’t have …” I let my voice trail off, not sure how to finish the thought.

  “Been so indiscreet?” He finally adds cream to his coffee. “Honestly, I didn’t know what I knew. Things weren’t adding up, but I wasn’t in a position to read all the signals. You may not know this, but even though I grew up in Barlow, I was away for much of my adult life before I returned to take over as sheriff. As you might guess, a small department is a tight, close-knit organization.”

  “I suppose Chief Deputy Duniway thought he should have gotten the job.”

  He nods.

  “Why didn’t he get it?”

  “He’s not political.” He shrugs. “Neither am I, as far as it goes. But I haven’t been around long enough to piss the wrong people off.”

  “There’s still time.”

  He smiles. “That there is.”

  “So when you got serious about Nathan Harper, Duniway decided to make me his patsy?”

  “He needed someone the minute Quince got cute with the bodies.”

  “One damn body,” Duniway had said. “Quince is an idiot.”

  “No argument. Quince seems to have thought destroying the bodies would derail our investigation. What he didn’t realize was I was prepared to declare the whole thing an accident. We didn’t know about Nathan Harper yet, but if the bodies hadn’t been taken, I’d have seen no reason for a full forensic exam. He’d be just be another accident victim.” He considers his coffee. “Aaron was skittish during the autopsy, but I chalked it up to him being more internist than pathologist.”

  “So Duniway came after me.”

  “Yep.”

  “He picked the right target, didn’t he?” Outsider, no real connection to the community, hardly any friends.

  “Given how things worked out, I wouldn’t say that.”

  Our breakfast arrives. I’ve never had a German apple pancake. I tear into it like it’s my last meal.

  “When did you last eat?”

  “Who the fuck knows?”

  He chuckles as he chews bacon.

  “I told Shelby about her father,” I say after I finish.

  “So I heard.” He nods. “You keep doing my job for me.”

  I look out the window again. The sun is over the ridge now. I squint against the sudden scintillation of light. “She needed to know.”

  Our little apprentice mortician is growing up.

  He unbuttons his shirt pocket and pulls out a plastic evidence bag containing the locket. “Maybe you can give her this too.”

  I turn the baggie over in my fingers. If I hadn’t tried to take the locket from the gorge wall, Duniway wouldn’t have had cause to arrest me, at least not at that moment. No night in jail, no revelation about Pride’s livor mortis. Things might have gone very differently.

  Even Helene may not have come.

  “One thing I don’t get is why Mr. Pride didn’t tell you he was searching for Shelby from the beginning.”

  “According to one of his law partners, he’d been having increasingly contentious interactions with the Gresham police almost from the moment he reported her missing.”

  “When was that?”

  “Late October. Why?”

  Not long after she left. I ache at the thought of how differently things might have gone for her, and for her father, if only she’d known.

  “After one of her friends told him she’d been seen in downtown Portland, he started pestering the Portland cops too. Unfortunately, runaways aren’t a high-priority for law enforcement, especially older kids. So he decided to take a leave of absence in order to search for her himself.”

  The local cops had struck Kendrick Pride as competent, but competent wasn’t good enough. Jeremy had said it himself. The Barlow County Sheriff’s Department handled DUIs and bar fights, domestic disputes and drug offenses—not tracing teen girls who didn’t want to be found or breaking up baby trafficking operations.

  “So how close were Duniway and Lydia to getting away with it?”

  “Well, if you hadn’t brought that girl out of the forest, and if Paulette hadn’t come forward about Quince—” He shrugs. “Omar has lots of friends, people who’ll make excuses for him even now.”

  There’s more, but with food in my stomach and a cup of coffee to nurse, I find myself only half-listening. Dr. Aaron Varney had been quietly taken into custody early this morning. So far, he’s sticking to the story that he simply provided medical care for the girls. He was unaware of any improprieties. Bullshit, of course. The sheriff thinks he’ll open up, especially since Quince has already placed him at the resort home where they grabbed me. The house itself is unoccupied, property of a real estate holding company back east.

  It will be a long time before the whole scheme gets unwound, if ever. Who was involved, how many girls passed through the asylum and where they—or their babies—are now. The sheriff believes the actual transactions were laundered through the Hensley School. It may be difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt the asylum adoptions were illegal.

  “Traveling to Barlow County to complete a private adoption through a state-accredited youth facility isn’t against the law.” He shakes his head. “I expect to spend way too much time with the U.S. Attorney before this settles out, but at least my jurisdictional concern ends at the county line.”

  Which still leaves him with plenty to deal with.

  Quince also gave up Xavier Meyer, and during the ride to the hospital last night, I said he’d fallen to his death while chasing me through the forest. Someone will follow up on that eventually, but I hope to talk to Shelby before she tells her part in it. Best if she’s not dragged into that story. She’s got enough to deal with.

  Turnbull raises the coffee carafe and asks if I want more. I shake my head. The restaurant is starting to fill up, and people can’t help but stare. Bandaged, splinted, still in my filthy clothes, I look like a disaster epic extra. I’m sure I’ll be a topic of conversation on the Barlow grapevine for a long time. “Can we go?”

  He pays the check and then follows me out into the sunlight. It’s already starting to get hot. I limp to the corner, in sight of the hospital, then pause.

  “I’m sorry about Jeremy.”

  “You and me both. He was a good kid.”

  “Last night, you said you knew I hadn’t shot him even before Quince told you what happened. How?”

  He makes a thoughtful sound in his throat. “I watched the dash cam footage from his car.”

  I must look confused. “You could tell it wasn’t me driving?”

  “No, of course not.” He chuckles. “The resolution isn’t great on those things. Poor lighting on a dark road. No way to tell who was behind the wheel. But Jeremy reacted to something in the back of the van as he walked by. That told me the driver wasn’t alone.”

  “I made noise. Tried to anyway. I was still pretty drugged up, but I knew something was wrong.”

  “That must have been it. He turned and reached for his weapon. Then the inside of the vehicle lit up with the muzzle flash, and the van pulled away.”

  “It still could have been me.”

  “You trying to talk me into something here, Mellie?”

  Pride once thought I was trying to talk myself onto his suspects list. “No. Just that doesn’t seem like much. Jeremy could have been reacting to anything.”

  “It wasn’t much—but when I examined the video more closely, two things stood out. The first was the origin of the muzzle flash. It placed the shooter in the passenger seat. Then, as the van pulled out, a hand pressed against the rear window. A third person was in the back of the van. So I went throug
h the video again, frame by frame. I saw your face, Mellie.” He gives me a sad smile. “Just a couple of grainy frames, but it was enough.”

  He waits until I stop crying, then offers me a tissue. I give him points for not trying to hug me too.

  * * *

  In the hospital, he walks with me to Shelby’s room. Deputy Roldán, looking short of sleep, sits on a chair outside her door. “Just a precaution,” the sheriff says.

  “Lot of that going around.”

  Shelby is eating breakfast when I enter her room. Not the German apple pancake platter. An English muffin and a small heap of desiccated scrambled eggs. A little plastic cup of orange juice.

  “You want me to order you a pizza?”

  “God, yes, please.”

  I sit in the chair beside the bed. “It’s possible I saw you the night of the crash.” I think about the old rancher squeezing my hand as I caught sight of the pale figure out on the desert. “You’d already made it a long way.”

  She prods the eggs with her fork. “I just wanted to get away.”

  It couldn’t be her who lured me into the desert the night I found the locket though. She was miles away by then. But if not her, who—or what—did I see?

  Uncle Rémy told me the Shatter Hill Spirit appeared to wronged women and girls. Shelby certainly qualifies, as do so many others. Even me. We’re all Molly Claire’s Girls. But that doesn’t mean I saw a ghost. No doubt I imagined the figure I saw. Wove her out of the substance of hearsay and myth.

  Yet I keep thinking about how Molly Claire isn’t the only young woman who lost her child at the crossroad.

  “Fina was in the pickup with Lydia, you know.” Shelby’s voice shakes me from my reverie.

  “Last night?”

  She nods. “I never would have gotten near that truck otherwise.”

  I wonder if she knows Fina is dead. If not, that’s one death notification I’ll leave to the sheriff. Out the window, past the hospital parking lot and beyond a row of houses, stands the New Mortuary. Wanda, I understand, is arranging the transport of Kendrick Pride back to Portland.

  “What happens now? Do you know?”

  “The FBI is coming.” She shrugs. “My aunt too. I’m going to stay with her.”