by Amanda Tru
First surprise, then…
What was it?
“What did he tell you his name was?” Missy demanded.
“Josh,” Cosette answered. The greasy burger she’d been eating sat heavy in her gut. “Josh Lawson.”
Missy pushed the phone away as if it were a venomous snake. She leveled her gaze at Cosette.
“I don’t know who you think he is or what this man has said to you to convince you to fly all the way out here, but God must be looking out for you. That must be why he sent that snowstorm and closed the highway. And why he made it so you and I could meet, so I could warn you about what you were about to step into.”
Missy glanced down at the picture of Josh in his trooper uniform one last time, and her entire body shuddered.
“That man is not who he claims to be. He’s not a trooper. His name is Adam. And if it weren’t for that snowstorm keeping him from driving out here, you might not even be alive right now.”
That man is not who he claims to be. He’s not a trooper. And if it weren’t for that snowstorm keeping him from driving out here, you might not even be alive right now.
It didn’t make sense. Cosette could hardly think straight. It didn’t seem possible that they were both talking about the same person. It was a mistake. And Missy was… well, Missy was strange to begin with.
“I went to high school with this guy,” Missy told her. In an instant, Cosette knew her gut couldn’t handle the burger she’d just fed it.
“His real name’s Adam Bird,” Missy continued, “and he’s single-handedly responsible for the Copper River Valley’s only cold-case murder. Ever.”
Cosette could hardly breathe. She could feel her diaphragm trying to expand and contract, but the air wouldn’t move in or out of her lungs.
“Hey.” Missy reached out her hand and laid it on top of Cosette’s. “Take it easy. It’s all going to be okay. Remember, he can’t get here yet. The highway’s closed. You still have time to get away.”
Cosette could scarcely understand the words. Her mind still looped the word murder on relentless repeat.
Murder.
Murder.
Murder.
How do you know he’s who he says he is? Mom had asked. How do you know he’s not some kind of murderer?
But how did it add up? How did it make sense? That Cosette should land in Anchorage on the one day a snowstorm closed the Glenn Highway. And then that the one person she should meet at the airport was from Josh’s same town and just happened to know that he’s a dangerous criminal and not even a trooper like he claimed.
What about all their conversations? What about his insane work schedule, all those nights he had to be out on call or driving hours away to patrol a region that spanned hundreds of miles? He was an amazing guy, kind and caring. He could talk for hours about his nephews and nieces and how much he enjoyed spending time with them.
He wasn’t involved in anything criminal. He couldn’t be.
“Hey, you okay?” Missy was snapping her fingers in front of Cosette’s face.
Cosette blinked. “What?”
“You okay?” Missy repeated. “You blanked out. Are you all right? Are you in shock or something?”
Cosette tried to remember how to speak. “No, I… It’s just that… Did you say something about murder?”
Missy let out a heavy sigh. “It happened a long time ago,” she began. “We were high schoolers. There was this girl in our class. New kid. Dawn.” She paused and studied Cosette quizzically. “Come to think of it, she was from California, too.”
Cosette wished Missy would skip the trivia and explain the part about how that made Josh some sort of murderer. It had to be a mistake. Maybe he just looked like someone Missy knew from her past.
“She and Adam started dating. She was really into him. Like, really into him. I was her best friend. She talked about him all the time. And then…” Missy paused.
Cosette held her breath. If she thought it’d get her to talk faster, she’d reach out and shake Missy by the shoulders.
“He killed her right after graduation. She wanted to break up with him. He’d gotten really possessive. Didn’t want her to go off to college in Fairbanks, thought she should just stay local so he could keep on telling her what to do and she could be his beck and call girl. And she almost did it. Almost agreed to his terms. I’m the one who talked her out of it. I’m the one who told her not to throw her future away for some low-life like him. So she dumped him, and what did he do next? He killed her.”
“And this was in… Where did you say you were from?”
Missy twirled her straw around in her cup. “That was in Slana. Almost a hundred miles past Glennallen and twice as remote. Took the troopers about two hours to get out there once I discovered her. I’m the one who found her. Guess I shouldn’t leave that part out.” She crossed her arms and stared at her cup. After a moment of silence, she gave a loud sigh and a shrug.
“She’d been stabbed at least twenty times. I don’t know how much you know about criminology and junk like that, but it pretty much means it’s almost impossible that a stranger did it. That many stabs, that close range, you’ve got to be crazy mad at someone to go that far. I still remember how…”
Missy gave a shudder and lowered her voice. “She was still alive when I found her. Just lying there. I’d been trying to call her all day. I was getting nervous. She was going to break up with Adam that morning, and I still hadn’t heard from her.” She made a noisy sniff. “I should have gone over earlier. I knew something was wrong. I just knew it. I asked her who did it. I begged her to tell me so I could give a name to the troopers when the got there, but he’d slashed her neck, her throat. She couldn’t even…”
Missy couldn’t seem to say anything more, which was fine because Cosette wasn’t sure she could stomach more details.
“I have to run.” Cosette stood up as a wave of nausea swept over her whole body. She raced to the bathroom and locked herself in. Her heart was pounding, her skin dripping with sweat as she heaved into the toilet.
How do you know he’s who he says he is?
Cosette had done everything she could to erase these echoes from her mind, but now she wanted nothing more than to hear her mother’s voice.
God will always be there to protect you.
Cosette’s mother was a strong believer. A woman of faith. Loved to read her Bible. Loved to pray. Loved to sing in the church choir every Sunday and Wednesday and Good Friday and Christmas Eve.
God will always be there to protect you, but if you put yourself deliberately in danger like this, what can you expect him to do?
Cosette wanted to put her hands over her ears to deafen her mom’s dire warnings.
How do you know he’s who he says he is? How do you know he’s not some kind of murderer?
She didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t have to believe it.
But why would Missy make something like this up? Cosette never landed her big audition or made it onto the big screen, but she knew enough about acting. The kind of emotional trauma conveyed in Missy’s voice wasn’t fabricated.
There was only one explanation. Missy’s best friend really had been killed by someone named Adam, someone who happened to look an awful lot like Josh. But they weren’t the same man. That was all there was to it. Easy enough mistake. After all, Missy had only seen that one picture.
A mistake.
A simple, honest, tragic mistake.
Cosette was startled by a knock on the door.
“Are you all right? I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m okay,” she called out. She wasn’t heaving anymore, but she still wasn’t ready to leave the bathroom. Maybe it was the grease from the burger. Maybe just nerves.
She couldn’t come out. Not yet.
Missy kept knocking.
“Give me another minute,” Cosette called out. She needed time to think. Focus her attention and decide what to do.
Missy was wron
g. That’s all there was to it. Lots of people looked like someone else. How could you recognize someone you probably hadn’t seen in years from a single photograph?
Simple, honest, tragic mistake.
Cosette just had to keep repeating those words to herself until her body calmed down and started to believe what her brain had already figured out.
Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket.
Josh.
I’m so sorry. Got delayed.
Cell service was down. Miss you like crazy. Are you doing all right? Hugs.
Warmth and relief swept over her. She took a deep breath, steadied her nerves, and typed back, I’m fine. Grabbing some dinner in Anchorage.
It seemed as if an eternity passed before his response came through.
Should be there in less than two hours.
Cosette nearly wanted to laugh when she thought about how viscerally she’d reacted to Missy’s story. That’s what she got for having a mom who was so paranoid.
Her hands were steady when she wrote back, Can’t wait. See you soon. Hugs and kisses.
Cosette spent the remaining few minutes of their meal trying to figure out how to let Missy know she wouldn’t need to share a hotel room with her after all. Outside, the snow continued to pile up. Four or five inches had accumulated on Missy’s windshield just in the time it took them to eat dinner.
Ordinarily, Cosette would opt for a walk after such a full and greasy meal, but that was impossible with all this snow and the midnight darkness. Josh had warned her it would be strange seeing the sun set so early in the afternoon this time of year, but she’d pictured a few hours of gray dusk, not pitch blackness like this.
“You ready to head to the hotel?” Missy asked as she put down a few five-dollar bills to cover the tip.
“Guess so.” There really wasn’t anything else for Cosette to do unless she felt like hanging out in the airport lobby for two hours. She’d go with Missy, spend a couple hours warming herself up, resting from her flights, and Josh would be knocking on her door before she knew it. Cosette made a show of checking her purse. “How much did you say a room would be there?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll cover the bill.” Missy was walking so quickly out the door that Cosette had to scurry to keep up.
“Actually, I think I’ll get my own room,” she said as Missy unlocked her car.
Missy paused for a moment, her hand suspended above the driver’s side door handle. “You sure?” She arched her eyebrows, and for a moment, Cosette worried that Missy could see right through her. Read her mind and know her plans.
Well, so what if she did? Why should Cosette worry about what a total stranger thought of her?
“It’s about $120 a night,” Missy answered dryly.
Cosette thought about her few tens folded into her wallet and decided that once they got to the hotel, she’d just find a late-night coffee shop. She could wait for Josh there. Couldn’t be too bad, could it?
Missy pulled out, and they drove for a few minutes in silence. “When’s he coming to pick you up?”
“What?”
“This so-called trooper you’ve obviously fallen for. He texted you, didn’t he?”
“How did you know?” Cosette asked before she could muster up a creative lie.
Missy shrugged. “I know things. You’ve got the same look in your eyes when you talk about Adam that Dawn had when she was alive and going boy-crazy over him. Before he killed her.”
Cosette tried not to let her voice get too defensive. “If he killed her, why didn’t he go to jail for it then?”
“He did.” Missy’s answer was far from what Cosette had been expecting.
“What?” Cosette tried to guess how old Missy was, how many years ago it could have been that she and this Adam guy and his murdered girlfriend were high-school graduates.
“He was convicted, sentenced to prison, then two years later got off on a technicality.”
“What do you mean?”
“He got some other court to review his case. His parents paid for him to get some power-hungry lawyer from the Lower 48, convinced the judge to throw out the conviction.”
“I’m confused. So he is or isn’t guilty?”
“Oh, he did it, all right. But as far as the law is concerned, it’s as if it never happened. Even got it wiped off his record.”
Cosette chided herself. She had no reason to act so defensively. This case and whatever weird twists and turns the trials took had nothing to do with Josh because Josh had never killed anyone. He’d never met Missy, never dated this Dawn girl. He just had the bad luck of reminding Missy of someone she knew five or ten years ago. That was all.
“I’m telling you,” Missy said as she tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel, “that boy is trouble. And I’m going to tell you exactly what I told Dawn. It’s easy for girls like you to fall under his spell. So don’t do it.”
“I’ll be fine.” Cosette crossed her arms, shivering with cold.
Missy gave another shrug. “All right. But I’m warning you. He acts all charming and nice and considerate, but inside he’s a monster. You’re dating a man who’s gotten away with murder. I have no doubt he’s willing to do it again.”
Cosette didn’t answer. The lighted sign for a hotel blinked in the distance. She would be glad to part ways with Missy soon. She was tired of this conversation, this company, this entire night. She didn’t want Josh speeding in a snowstorm but prayed that he might miraculously get here quicker than he expected to.
By this time tomorrow, she’d be in his hometown, meeting his friends, laughing as she told them the story of the strange woman who was convinced Josh was some murderer named Adam.
It would be funny tomorrow.
Tonight was a different story altogether.
Missy slowed down and turned into the hotel driveway. “You never answered my question by the way,” she said as she pulled into a parking spot.
“What question?”
“When is he coming to pick you up?”
Cosette figured it was too late to come up with some other story to tell. “About two hours,” she answered quietly. “I think I’ll just wait in the lobby or find a coffee shop or something.”
“Suit yourself.” Missy said. “But I’d be careful if I were you. You have absolutely no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
Cosette was glad when Missy offered to drop her off at the diner around the corner. She was even more thankful that during the entire ride, Missy didn’t mention Josh or Adam once.
“Thanks again for everything.” Cosette leaned over the open door after getting out of the car.
Missy’s smile was soft and genuine. “No prob. Hey, let me give you my number in case you end up in trouble.”
She didn’t specify exactly what sort of trouble she expected Cosette might get into, and Cosette found herself wondering if this somewhat gruff stranger was kinder and more welcoming than she’d first given her credit for.
Cosette texted Missy so they’d have each other’s contact info, thanked her new friend, and shut the door. Josh had texted just a few minutes earlier. He was making good time and was over the highest parts of the pass where the snow and ice were the worst. Another hour and a half, and he would be there by her side.
Inside the diner house, the waitress introduced herself as Dottie and led Cosette to a little side table. Cosette ordered a hot tea and bowl of fruit then texted Josh to let him know where she was.
Be there real soon, he answered. She didn’t like the thought of him texting while on the road, but she was too excited to finally meet him in person to say anything more than Be safe.
She laughed at herself as she reread her text. She was starting to sound like her parents.
Apparently, Alaska’s version of a bowl of fruit was underripe honeydew melons, a few red grapes, and some slices of canned peaches. She took a surreptitious photo to upload later so her Californian friends could get in a laugh or two.
“How’s that tea?” The waitress had a slight Southern drawl that sounded entirely out of place up here in the arctic.
“It’s great.”
“Can I get you anything else?” Dottie asked, eyeing Cosette’s uneaten fruit.
Cosette glanced down at her bowl as well. “Maybe a bagel?”
The waitress smiled. “One bagel coming up. Do you want one cream cheese pack or two?”
Cosette instinctively looked down to check the menu before remembering Dottie had already taken it away. “Do you have low fat?”
Dottie gave a little chuckle. “Where are you from, honey?”
Cosette wasn’t sure exactly what gave away the fact she wasn’t local, but answered with the single word, “California.”
Dottie’s voice grew in volume until Cosette was sure that all the other patrons in the dining room, sparsely packed though it was, were listening in. “California,” the waitress repeated. “You picked a heck of a week to travel up here, what with the snow and the ice and the darkness.” She shook her head. “You aren’t gonna be driving, are you?”
Cosette smiled. “No, my friend’s picking me up in a little bit.” She hoped the restaurant was slow enough on a night like this that Dottie wouldn’t mind if a little bit actually turned into more like an hour and a half.
“So who’s this friend?” Dottie asked, and Cosette was almost certain the waitress winked at her. “Old roommate from college, maybe? You up here for a girls’ weekend, is that it?”
Cosette shook her head. “No, it’s my boyfriend.” She held her breath, half expecting Dottie to sit down and ask for the story of their entire relationship, start to finish. With Cosette’s luck, the waitress would claim to know Josh as well and insist that he was a convicted murderer who got himself out of jail and his record purged.