Murder Road (20 page)

I opened the driver’s door and slid out, trying to keep low so that Trish wouldn’t see me.

I had waited too long. From the corner of my eye, I saw a movement. I jumped to my right just as something whistled past my head and hit the pavement.

A tire iron. Trish, her eyes black and her face dead of expression, had swung a tire iron at me. And she was lifting it to swing it again.

I ran.

My sneakers hit the gravel on the shoulder of Atticus Line as I pumped my legs, sprinting back the way we’d come. I didn’t scream, didn’t utter a sound. I saved all of my breath for running. Overhead, lightning flashed in the sky. The wind, hot and damp, picked up.

I heard Trish’s footsteps behind me, and then they stopped. She didn’t speak, either, didn’t call my name or curse. The Lost Girl had nothing to say about killing me. She just wanted it over with. My death was the point. It always had been.

A few seconds later I heard the car start, then turn around on the road. I changed course, leaving the shoulder of the road and running through the trees. It was dark in here, and I ducked to avoid the low branches that were only shadows, hoping I wouldn’t trip and fall. I tried to keep my footsteps quiet as Trish’s car pulled to the side of the road again.

When I heard the car door open and Trish get out, I slowed my pace. I was far into the trees now, hopefully hidden in the dark, and I didn’t want her to hear me. My breath was sawing in my chest, and I silently gasped for air, feeling a cramp low in my stomach. I could see the opening through the trees, far to my right, where the road was. I could see the glare of headlights.

Would she come after me? I couldn’t think of her as Trish now; I had to think of her as the Lost Girl, because that was who she was. And if the Lost Girl wanted me dead, I had to think she wouldn’t give up. She would find me.

I wasn’t safe hiding in the trees, waiting for her to go away. Even if I could find a good hiding spot in the dark, I still wouldn’t be safe. Now that Trish had a weapon, I had to assume she was carrying it. I took the jackknife from my back pocket and unfolded it, pausing to listen for footsteps.

“Hello?” Trish’s voice came from the road. “What happened? Where did you go? Are you okay?”

A lie, or was that really Trish? Had the Lost Girl let her come back for a moment, long enough to trick me into showing myself?

I hesitated, not sure which way to go. And then I turned and saw that a man was standing next to me.

He was young—twenty, maybe. He was wearing worn jeans with a hole in one knee and a jean jacket. On the lapel of the jean jacket were pinned buttons, the round, plastic kind that had graphics or sayings on them. One was dark blue, with the words
May the Force Be With You
in yellow letters. The other was a Union Jack with the words
Punk’s Not Dead
over it. The man’s hair was blond and tousled, and he was so close that if he had been alive, I would have been able to hear him breathe.

“Carter Friesen,” I whispered.

He didn’t seem to hear me. He didn’t speak. He turned away, walking into the shadows, and then he was gone.

I wanted to follow him, to find him again, but it wasn’t possible. Carter Friesen was gone; he’d been dead since 1991, when he’d been stabbed on the side of Atticus Line, maybe where I was right now. Maybe he’d tried to run. Maybe he’d almost gotten away. But he’d died anyway.

Who had his killer been? Someone with a slack expression and black eyes. Someone who, I realized now, hadn’t known what they were doing. Someone who had no urge to be a killer, who maybe didn’t even remember doing it. Which was why they had never been caught.

Damn it. Why had I come all this way? Why had I sought out the Lost Girl, just to lose my nerve? I wasn’t going to run.

Instead, I circled through the trees, making my way slowly toward the road again. Trish’s car was still there, the lights on, but I didn’t hear her voice again. Had she left the road, looking for me? Or was she still there, waiting for me to show myself?

I was still holding the knife, though my hand was slick with cold sweat. I was behind the car, and I couldn’t see anything moving, though the car was running and the headlights were on. My sneakers crunched the gravel at the side of the road.

“I’m here,” I said, my voice a croak.

Nothing moved, and I heard no sound. Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the road. Trish was nowhere to be seen.

I walked slowly to the middle of Atticus Line, giving the car a wide berth. “She’s got you,” I said, louder now. “This is what she does, Trish. She takes innocent people and makes them killers.
She’s making you do something you don’t want to do. Don’t let her.”

Still nothing. I turned in a circle, looking all around me, but the shadows didn’t move. I didn’t hear a footstep.

“Shannon?” I called out into the darkness. “Is that who you are? You lived in Midland. You wore a jacket from Midland High. You had a son.” The wind kicked up, making the sweat on my neck prickle. “Carla was your friend,” I shouted. “She still thinks about you. She looked for you, put a notice in the paper. She wonders where you are.”

I walked toward the front of the car, keeping a distance from it. As always, there were no other cars on Atticus Line. This place was wrong and dead. It was the worst road in America. It deserved to be destroyed and plowed under, replaced with an ugly freeway. I was sure that there were more bodies here, left in the woods and never found. Atticus Line was that kind of place.

I had no idea how Eddie and I had come here. Eddie was driving, and I’d dozed off, and when I opened my eyes, we were—

I froze, and this time I didn’t know whether the chill at my back was the ghost or whether it was me.

I thought I was going the right way
, Eddie had told the police. But as Quentin had pointed out, there was no sign, and he wasn’t using the map. Why had he ended up on Atticus Line, thinking he was going the right way?

“Shannon?” I shouted.

You were going the wrong direction, Mr. Carter.
Quentin’s voice in my head.

And then, Eddie:
I know this place.

He didn’t, though. He didn’t know this place at all.

Shannon did.

“Shannon, what did you do?” I cried. “How did you get us here? Why?”

There was the scrape of a shoe on gravel, a low moan.

I walked slowly toward the car, holding the knife in front of me. The wind brushed the trees, making them sound like rain. I moved one foot, and then the other.

Sitting against the side of the car, her back to the closed passenger door, was Trish. Her knees were up, her hands in her lap. She tilted her head back to look up at me. When lightning lit the sky, I saw that her eyes were normal, her expression drawn in pain. Both of her hands were gripping the tire iron in her lap. Her knuckles were white.

Our gazes locked, and her look was pleading. She couldn’t speak, and she didn’t have to. I knew what was happening. She was fighting it.

She was fighting the Lost Girl as hard as she could.

I thought of Rhonda Jean. I thought of Max Shandler in his big, black truck, going out to pick up beer. Was this how it had been? Had Max felt a chill on the back of his neck as he picked up Rhonda Jean? Had he felt the compulsion Trish was feeling now? Had he fought it?

How scared had Rhonda Jean been when she realized the man who had picked her up was pulling a knife?

The jacket she had been wearing—Max Shandler’s jacket. Had he awoken from a horrible fever dream and realized what he’d done, just like this? Had Max, the real Max, put his jacket on her and told her to run?

Had she stumbled away, bleeding, until Eddie and I pulled
over? While Eddie and I were talking to Rhonda Jean, deciding what to do, Max Shandler had been losing his struggle with the Lost Girl. He had been getting back into his truck to chase us down. To finish the job.

I closed my knife and pocketed it. In one quick motion, I took the tire iron from Trish’s hands and threw it as hard as I could into the trees. It landed somewhere in the darkness in a hush of leaves.

I grabbed Trish’s hands and pulled her up. She was freezing, her skin like ice, her body stiff but unresisting. “Move,” I told her.

I pushed her around the front of the car, making her legs move. She moaned softly, but I didn’t let her go. I shoved her into the driver’s seat and put her hands on the wheel of the running car.

“Drive,” I told her. “As fast as you can.”

I slammed the door.

Trish found strength somewhere, and with a roar, the engine opened and the car took off. The back fishtailed briefly on the gravel, and then the taillights faded as she drove away.

I didn’t wait to see if the Lost Girl was still there, if she would come for me. I turned and ran, heading back down the road the way I had come, running down the middle of Atticus Line. When there were footsteps behind me, I didn’t look. When there were footsteps beside me, matching mine, I didn’t look.

When lights appeared in the trees by the side of the road, I didn’t look.

When I saw my car at the side of the road, I felt like weeping in relief. And still, I didn’t stop. I kept my feet moving, my legs pumping, and I didn’t slow down. Not until I had opened the door, the key in my hand.

When I got out of the car at Rose’s, the front door banged open and Eddie came out. He strode down the front walk toward me. “Where the fuck have you been, April?” he shouted. “It’s late. I came home and you were gone.”

His voice was ragged, his expression frantic. He was still wearing his running clothes. His hair was tousled, as if he’d been running his hands through it. He was army big, furious, and coming rapidly toward me, but I never had a whisper of fear. All I felt, looking at him, was that I loved him so much I could barely stand it.

I had never loved any man in my life, but Eddie had changed all of that.

I was bone-tired, and my legs felt like they were on fire. It was full dark now; I had no idea what time it was. I unzipped my
windbreaker and slid it off, letting the warm night air cool my sweating skin.

Eddie stopped in front of me. “Well?” he said. “I was going to call the cops.”

“It’s her,” I said.

He frowned, confused. “What?”

“The Lost Girl. All of the murders—they’re her.”

His gaze searched my face. “Where have you been?” he asked, his voice lower now.

“Where do you think? I drove to Atticus Line.” I dropped my jacket and stepped forward. “Tell me how we got here, Eddie.” I raised my hands to his jaw, cupping his face, feeling the scratch of his stubble on my palms. “You were driving. Tell me the truth. Tell me how we got here.”

His gaze locked on mine, and I looked into his eyes. Eddie Carter’s eyes. I watched the emotions at war in them, fear and confusion and the lingering anger over my leaving. The worry about me. Part of him had thought I’d left him. He didn’t have to tell me that—I already knew.

“I thought I was going the right way,” he said.

“Why did you think that?” My voice was almost a murmur. “We were going the wrong way. Didn’t you know? Did someone tell you which way to go?”

The words made him flinch; I felt it under my hands. “April.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“No one told me.” He ground the words out. “But I was so sure.”

I dropped my hands to his shoulders. The muscles were bunched, his body tense, but his skin was warm and familiar
beneath the cotton of his T-shirt. “She brought us here,” I told him. “It wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t random. It wasn’t a wrong turn. She brought us here, and she just tried to kill me.”

Our gazes locked. “Tell me,” he said, calmer now.

“I will. I’ll tell you everything.”

He was still under my touch, our gazes still locked. “Who’s crazier, April?” he asked. “Me or you?”

“I don’t know, but you don’t have to worry. I’m going to fix everything.”

“You can’t fix it.” He closed his eyes. “You can’t.”

“Eddie,” I said, “you haven’t seen me try.”

Neither of us were sleeping. I was halfway into a doze as gray dawn crept into the sky outside our bedroom window, and Eddie was on his back on the bed next to me, his breathing even and his body still. I knew he was awake.

We had talked, speaking in low voices in bed for a long time. I told him what had happened to me, about Trish and the tire iron. Eddie had been rigid as he listened, and he barely spoke.

“Jesus,” he said when I finished. “So that’s why they can’t solve it. It was someone different every time. Someone random. Someone who doesn’t remember.”

“All of them except for the first one,” I said. “The Lost Girl. We don’t know who killed her. That’s the key.”

We’d pretended to sleep then. But now, as dawn light began to edge into the sky, Eddie said, “April, I want to explain.”

I was too tired to follow. “Explain what?”

“What happened before I was discharged. The things Quentin said.”

I had to reach back into my memory. “You mean the fight he said you got into? The gun?” I let out a humorless laugh. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about my mother being a convicted murderer first?”

“You didn’t trust me with that,” he said softly, and those were the only words he needed to make my rib cage feel like it was closing in on itself. “You’re protective, April. You think I don’t know that? I’ve always known there are pieces of you I can’t see. You told me what you could. I feel like I should have seen the rest.”

“My mother was a criminal,” I said into the graying darkness. “I was never part of it. You can believe me or not if you want, but that’s the truth.” I could barely breathe, the words were so hard. “But I didn’t turn her in, either. I spent the money she made. There was a lot of money, sitting in a bank account that I never told you about until my mother cleaned the account out. But until then, I kept that money. And I lied for her over and over again.”

Eddie laced his hands on his chest, his gaze still fixed on the ceiling. “When I bought the gun, I didn’t know whether it was to use on me or on someone else. I couldn’t decide.”

I rolled onto my side, facing him, listening.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he went on. “I was dreaming about terrible things. No one I talked to could help me. It just seemed like if there was a way forward, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything.”

I wanted to touch him, but I knew he didn’t want me to. So I stayed still.

“I didn’t like guns as a kid,” Eddie said. “Didn’t even like them as toys. And there I was, years later, and I knew how to kill people.
It was one of the skills I’d learned. I didn’t want to be the man I was. But I was. They were going to send me on another tour, so I bought a gun. I figured if they came for me, I’d kill either them or myself. Because I knew how. And then I got in that fight—which I never do, but I did that day. I don’t know why. That led to my discharge, and they weren’t going to send me back anymore. I was ashamed of it, so I didn’t tell you. I thought I could leave it behind.”

“You can.” This time I did touch him, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Leave it behind, Eddie. It isn’t easy, but I think you can do it. I think we both can.”

“Those days of leave Quentin talked about—”

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t think for a second that I’d believe you’re a murderer.”

“Why did she draw us here?” he asked. “We just wanted to get married and move on, both of us. Why are we here?”

“I don’t know.”

There was another moment of quiet, and then Eddie sat up in a swift motion, his legs swinging over the side of the bed. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.

I blinked. “Hear what?”

“I heard something.”

I hadn’t heard anything, but I rolled off the bed and stood as Eddie strode to the bedroom door in his old tee and boxer shorts. I recalled the things I’d heard—or thought I’d heard—in this house. Had Eddie heard them, too?

In my short nightie—it was cotton, but it was lacy, because when I packed, I thought I’d be on my honeymoon—I followed him into the main room. Darkness had started to fall away, and the furniture in the living room was just visible, the hump of the
sofa and the dark squares of pictures on the walls. Nothing moved, and except for the ever-present ticking of the clock on the wall, there was no sound.

I followed Eddie’s back as he walked slowly toward the front door, listening between steps. “Out here,” he whispered.

Maybe it was Kal again, or maybe it was one of the other cops who was supposed to keep an eye on us at night. Were they still out there, sitting in their cruiser, or had Quentin and Beam reassigned them? Were Eddie and I still a threat?

Eddie stood at the front door. He put his hand on it, as if he could sense vibrations, and suddenly I had a bad feeling.
Don’t open the door
, I thought. I wanted to grab him, to tell him that opening the door was a bad idea.

“They’re gone,” Eddie whispered, letting out a breath. Then he unlocked the door and swung it open.

Outside was an empty porch and gray sky. The warm, damp air of a summer dawn. A breeze rustled the trees. There was no other sound in the silence.

Eddie stepped onto the porch and looked around. “Someone was here,” he said, and this time he sounded confident, completely sure. He walked barefoot down the steps to the front walk, looking left and right. “Maybe they went around back,” he said, holding up a palm briefly in my direction. “April, stay there.”

I crossed my arms over my breasts, hugging myself as he strode off through the grass around the side of the house. I could barely breathe. Far off in the sky, a starling called. I edged my feet forward, letting my toes touch the threshold of the front doorway, feeling the warm air on my bare legs. It was a beautiful morning for someone who hadn’t almost been murdered a few hours ago.

Then I saw it.

“Eddie, here,” I said, keeping my voice calm so I didn’t alarm him. “Come back and look at this.”

He reappeared instantly from the other side of the house, because he’d done a swift circle through the backyard. “What?” he asked.

I pointed.

Rose had a black mailbox affixed to the brick wall next to the front door. The corner of the mailbox was propped up by something that had been shoved inside. It could have been a flyer, or it could have been the mail, but I had the feeling it wasn’t either of those. I could see an edge of bright pink lettering, a familiar typeface I’d seen many times before.

Eddie walked back up the steps, lifted the lid of the mailbox, and pulled it out.

He unrolled it, and Alicia Silverstone’s face looked up at us. Someone had left us a copy of
Seventeen
magazine.

In Rose’s kitchen, Eddie and I turned on the overhead light and opened the magazine. It wasn’t much of a mystery how the magazine had arrived—it had to have come from the Snell sisters. Rose sure as hell didn’t have a subscription to
Seventeen
, and neither had Robbie.

“Why the subterfuge, do you think?” Eddie asked, opening the pages. “If there are cops watching Rose’s place, they’d see her putting the magazine in the mailbox.”

I flipped past a Benetton ad, a thick card with a perfume sample on it. “I don’t think there are cops watching the house. The Snell girls work in mysterious ways.”

“What are you doing?” Rose came into the kitchen, wearing her neck-to-feet housecoat and an irritated look. “It’s early.” She caught sight of the magazine. “Why are you reading that?”

“It was left in the mailbox,” I said.

Rose huffed. “Beatrice Snell.” Her voice dripped with disdain. “She’s probably in trouble with her parents and her phone privileges are cut off. Or she thinks someone is listening to her phone calls. What did she put in it?”

The magazine flipped open to the middle, where the subscription card was. Taped to the subscription card was a small envelope. Eddie detached it and opened it. I was starting to realize that no one had a sense of drama like a teenage girl—especially a Snell sister.

Eddie unfolded the paper inside the envelope and read it over. He didn’t say a word. Then he handed the paper to me.

“What is it?” Rose asked, impatient.

I scanned the page, which was a photocopy. “It’s a missing person’s report,” I said. It had been filed by a man named John Haller, stating that his daughter, Shannon Haller, had not been seen or heard from since March of 1976. Shannon was aged twenty-six at the time. The report was filed in December of 1977.

Shannon Haller’s father had filed a missing person’s report.

“I don’t get it,” I said, handing the page to Rose to read. “When we were at the Snells’, the police file said that they checked with Midland and they had no record of a woman missing.”

“Look at the dates,” Eddie said, his voice calm. “The Lost Girl’s body was found in April of 1976. The missing person’s report was filed in December of 1977. There wasn’t a report filed when the police file was written. Not until over eighteen months later.”

“You think this is the girl whose body they found?” Rose asked, her eyes reading the page from behind her large glasses. She read the description that John Haller had filed in the report. “ ‘Brown hair, past shoulder length. Five-five, slender build. Brown eyes.’ ”

Eddie and I exchanged a glance, both of us remembering the Lost Girl’s face. “We can’t assume it’s her,” I reminded him. “There are millions of girls with brown hair.”

“How many of them are from Midland, and how many of them died in 1976, aged between twenty and thirty?” he asked.

I shook my head. “How did the Snell sisters get this?”

“I have no idea.” Eddie picked up the magazine and leafed through it. “There’s more.”

Rose and I moved closer and read over his shoulder. In the margin around an article about the five best eye shadows to buy this season was handwriting scrawled in ballpoint pen. An address in Midland.

At the bottom of the page was written:
You’re welcome
, punctuated with a heart.

It must be John Haller’s address. Shannon’s father still lived in Midland. I was exhausted, so bone-deep tired, yet my pulse started to pound in my throat. We had to go talk to Shannon Haller’s father. We had to do it right now.

The ghost on Atticus Line had tried to kill me. I had to know who she was, once and for all. I had to know if she was Shannon.

I grabbed a pen from the phone nook. I flipped the pages of the magazine to an ad for Calvin Klein perfume and wrote along the edge, since this was the Snell sisters’ preferred form of communication.
Trish
, I wrote.
Age around 40, Asian, drives a dark green Toyota.
Married, has at least one child that is old enough not to need a car seat anymore. Possibly a dentist or works at a dental office. If you can locate her, please check on her and make sure she’s okay.
Then I ripped out the page with the Midland address on it. I put it with the photocopy of the missing person’s report. I walked to the front door, opened it, and put the
Seventeen
magazine back in the mailbox.

I walked back into the kitchen. Rose was frowning. Eddie’s gaze met mine, and his expression was stark and determined.

“Let’s get dressed,” he said.