Nine Years Gone (5 page)

Being from Idaho Falls, Roger Arteaga would only have been an ancillary figure in Holly’s death investigation, but he was better than nothing. I got on my laptop and browsed my local library’s website until I found a database that indexed the personal information of people across the United States. Within a minute, I had a printout containing Detective Arteaga’s home address, his wife’s name, his home phone number, and even an estimate of his yearly salary. I called the number listed and waited for him to pick up. He answered on the third ring.

“Hi,” I said, speaking before he could. “I’m looking for Roger Arteaga, please.”

“You’re speaking to him,” he said. “Who is this?”

“My name is Steve Hale, and I’m a writer from St. Louis
.
Are you able to talk for a few minutes?”

“I could be if you tell me what you want.”

“I’m interested in a case you worked. Holly Olson. She was a young woman at the University of Utah. Do you remember her?”

“Yeah, I remember her,” he said.

I leaned forward. The antique metal mechanism on my chair squealed, reminding me that I should probably buy a can of WD-40 sometime. “I recently stumbled across your investigation into her disappearance, and I wondered if there’s been a resolution to the case. Was her boyfriend ever prosecuted?”

Arteaga, at first, didn’t respond, but he stayed on the phone. “You’re a writer, so is this for a newspaper article?”

I shook my head. “Nothing of the sort. In fact, I guarantee that nothing you tell me will leave my office without permission. I’m considering writing a book about a missing persons case, and while researching my book, I came across Holly Olson’s name and your investigation. One phone call led to another, and now I’m talking to you.”

Arteaga paused long enough to cough violently before speaking again. “You said your name is Steven Hale?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding and pushing myself back from the desk. Researching a novel was time-intensive, but it was easy. Books gave up their information without too much resistance, and if I couldn’t find something I needed to know, I made an educated guess. I write fiction, after all, so if I get a detail wrong, I can simply claim my fictional world operates under different rules than the real one. Prying facts from an unwilling source was considerably more difficult.

“Why do I know your name?”

“Do you read mystery novels?” I asked, my voice rising.

“Ahh,” said Arteaga, drawing the single syllable out. “That’s how I know you. You write the Benjamin White books.”

My shoulders relaxed. “Yes, I do. If you’re a fan, I’d be happy to send you a book. I expect a box of my latest any day now. You’ll have it months before it’s out in stores.”

“I’m more of a Dennis Lehane fan. Do you read him? His books are all good.”

“Yeah,” I said, a little quickly. “Lehane’s books are second-to-none.”

“You should try writing like him sometime. Might sell better.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “What prompted Salt Lake City detectives to pick Holly’s boyfriend up and question him overnight?”

“That sounds like the sort of question you’d be better off directing toward detectives in Salt Lake.”

“You’re probably right,” I said, pushing back from the desk to stand up. “I can’t get in touch with them.”

“Then I don’t know what I can tell you.”

The direct approach wasn’t working. I needed a new tack. “Holly was a college student, so did she have a roommate I could talk to?”

“Sure,” said Arteaga. “Young woman named Lauren Hampton.”

The name was like a whisper in the back of a room. I recognized it, but I didn’t know why.

“Is she still around?”

“She’s long gone. Skipped town, probably with Brandon Yates, Holly’s old boyfriend.”

I flipped through my notepad until I found a clean page.

“So you think Brandon and Lauren had a relationship.”

“You could say that,” said Arteaga. “I’m pretty sure they were fucking.”

That would constitute a relationship of sorts.

“Did you think Lauren was involved in Holly’s death?” I asked.

“Lauren was Brandon’s alibi. She said they went to a movie together the afternoon Holly disappeared, had ticket stubs and everything.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking Arteaga must have misunderstood my question. “Beyond providing Brandon an alibi, do you think Lauren was involved in Holly’s death?”

“Couldn’t prove it, but yes. It took two people to pull this off. One to ride with Holly, and one to drive the chase vehicle after they dumped Holly’s car and body. And, as it so happens, a little girl swore up and down she saw all three of them together in a gas station southeast of Salt Lake City the day Holly disappeared. We even had grainy surveillance images from that station of three people who fit their descriptions.”

I had a feeling I already knew how this ended, but I needed to ask anyway. “What happened?”

“Brandon’s family was rich, and that little girl’s family was poor. His lawyers talked to her parents, and she changed her mind. Claimed she didn’t see anything, and that our detectives tricked her into saying what she did.”

As I wrote that down, the voice in the back of the room stopped whispering and started speaking aloud. Lauren Hampton was Tess’s maternal grandmother’s name. I had gone to her funeral in seventh grade.

“If I sent you a picture, do you think you could recognize someone in it?”

“I might.”

I thumbed through the pictures on my cell phone until I came across a picture of Vince, Isaac, Tess, and me from Vince’s twenty-first birthday. We were all so plastered we could barely walk, but it was the only picture I had of her accessible. I sent it to him and waited, my breath held, for him to respond.

“The boys I don’t know, but the girl is Lauren. How’d you get the picture?”

I felt like someone had just pushed me off a cliff.

“Are you sure the girl in the picture is Lauren Hampton?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice under control.

“Positive. How’d you get it?”

I swallowed. “Someone sent it to me along with some information about Holly. I didn’t know who she was, so thank you for clearing it up.” I paused. “I . . . I think I’ve wasted enough of your time. Thank you very much.”

Before Arteaga could say anything else, I hung up and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, feeling almost as if I was going to throw up.

Tess killed her. That’s why she stole her ID. As her roommate, she would have had access to her mail, maybe even her birth certificate and Social Security card if they were in the apartment. That was probably why she used her grandmother’s name, too. She had access to her stuff.

I didn’t want to believe it, but there was a voice deep inside me, the one cultivated after years of reporting and studying crime and seeing death close at hand, that told me otherwise. I thought back to the blank, absent coldness in her eyes at the gun range. It was the same look I had seen on mug shots of men and women convicted of murdering their spouses, their friends, or their neighbors.

I took deep, calming breaths. For most of my life, I had loved Tess, and not the puppy-dog love of adolescence, but real, mature love, the kind that springs from a deep knowledge and connection with your partner. She couldn’t have murdered someone; it wasn’t in her character. She had to have a reason. Right?

I couldn’t even convince myself.

I stared at my notebook for another twenty minutes, willing things to come together and make sense, but they refused. Eventually, it became time to pick up Ashley from school, so I closed my notebook and drove. The final bell wouldn’t ring for another ten minutes, but already a seemingly endless stream of SUVs, station wagons, and minivans lined the roads. I parked about two blocks from the front entrance and joined a crowd of parents and guardians who, like me, had arrived comparatively late.

Within moments of the bell ringing, a wave of children rushed through the doors toward a line of beaming parents. Others, including Ashley, held back, stepping out diffidently, allowing the other children to scurry around them. When my niece saw me, a smile lit her face, and she lost whatever inhibitions had held her back earlier and started running. As she ran towards me, I held out my arms to catch her and hugged her tight before we walked back to my car.

We had a quiet afternoon and evening at home. I helped Ashley with her homework, and then, once Katherine came home, we sat down to have dinner at the kitchen table. At half after seven, I went into the garage to turn on the space heaters for my meeting with Isaac and Vince. The room had a red and brown plaid couch and matching recliner I had purchased at a thrift store, an old television the size of a small chest freezer, and, to complete the cliché, a fridge full of beer. Set apart from the rest of the house, it was as private a spot as my friends and I could easily get.

Vince came at about a quarter to eight, grabbed a beer from the fridge, turned on the TV, and sat on the couch. I did likewise and sat on the other end, waiting in silence as an anchor from one of the twenty-four-hour news channels tried and failed to make a procedural vote in the Senate seem interesting. We figured Isaac would be late, so neither of us said anything about him. When he arrived twenty minutes later, he wore a pair of jeans stained with engine grease, a navy blue sweater, and a black leather motorcycle jacket that hugged his wiry arms and thin frame. He held up a half-empty bottle of Scotch.

“Let’s get this shindig started,” he said, twisting off the top. “You got shot glasses, Steve?”

“Cabinet beside the fridge. Same as they always are.”

Isaac pulled out three glasses, filled them with liquor, and then carried them to the coffee table. By his unsteady gait, I’d say he and Johnny Walker had already spent some time together.

“To Dominique Girard,” he said, picking up a glass and looking at Vince and me in turn. “May his casket fail, may worms eat his organs, and may his children curse his name for eternity.”

He pounded the shot and exhaled. His breath smelled hot even across the room. He pointed to the remaining two drinks. “You guys want yours?”

Vince looked at the glasses and shook his head. “If you had brought Blue Label, maybe, but not Red. Besides that, we’re not here to get wasted. Steve’s got some news.”

“You’re a douche,” said Isaac, looking at Vince before turning his attention to me. He picked up a second glass, tilted it towards me, and then threw it back. “Congratulations.”

“Why the congratulations?” asked Vince.

Isaac walked over and put his hand on my shoulder while looking at Vince. “I’m guessing he finally knocked up Katherine.” He looked down at me. “If you want me to be the godfather, I humbly accept.”

Vince scoffed, walked to where Isaac stood, and took a shot from his outstretched hand. “If anybody’s going to be the godfather, it’s me. You’re not even Catholic.”

“I’m pretty sure the kid’s not going to care,” said Isaac. Vince started to respond, but I spoke over him.

“That’s not it. We’ve got a problem.”

“Is it not your kid?” asked Isaac, walking to his liquor bottle and pouring another drink.

“No, it is my kid,” I said, closing my eyes. “But, that’s—”

“So she is pregnant,” said Isaac. “
Mazel tov
.” He drank the third shot.

I stood up and gestured toward the couch for Isaac to sit down. Eventually, he took the hint, and I looked at them both and held my hands in front of me to keep either from speaking before I finished. “Forget about Katherine. She’s fine. Ashley’s also fine. We’ve got a problem, though. Tess Girard is in town.”

Even though two out of the three people present had heard the news already, the announcement still felt as if it chilled the room ten degrees. Vince’s skin paled a shade, while Isaac said nothing. Eventually, he looked at Vince and then back to me, wagging his finger, a smile breaking across his cracked, chapped lips.

“That’s funny,” said Isaac. “Morbid, but funny.”

“I had coffee with her this morning.”

Isaac dropped his hand to his side and allowed his laughter to die down. “See, now it’s stopped being funny. You’ve got to learn to quit when you’re ahead.”

Vince leaned forward and looked at Isaac and then glanced at me. “He’s serious.”

Isaac leaned back and ran a hand over his goatee. For the first time, I noticed flecks of white growing amidst the black on his chin, like salt that had fallen into the peppershaker. Had I seen that earlier, I probably would have mocked him; now didn’t seem like the right time, though.

“This isn’t a joke?” he asked.

“It’s no joke,” said Vince. “She checked into the Ritz-Carlton under the name Holly Olson. I had somebody look into her this morning.”

Isaac looked at me but pointed at Vince with his thumb. “How does he know this and I don’t?”

“Steve told me earlier.” Isaac started to say something, but Vince spoke over him. “He asked me to check her out before we brought you in to make sure it was really her.”

Isaac looked at me. “Is she okay?”

I wanted to lie to him and say everything was fine, that Tess had come, gone and wouldn’t be back again. But I couldn’t, not after everything we had gone through. My friends deserved the truth.

“I think she murdered someone.”

The comment seemed to suck the air out of the room for a few seconds, but then Isaac and Vince started shouting simultaneously. I held up my hands to quiet them down.

“One at a time. I can’t answer you both.”

Isaac stood and ran his hands through his hair before nodding at Vince to ask the first question.

“Who was it?” asked Vince.

“Her roommate,” I said. “Tess and some guy she was sleeping with killed her.”

“How is she not in prison?” asked Isaac.

I looked at him. “The detective I spoke to said they didn’t have enough to secure an indictment.”

“If she killed somebody in Utah, what the hell is she doing here?”

“I don’t know,” I said, leaning against my TV stand, a chunky, timeworn dresser one of my neighbors had put out as garbage a year ago. “Ostensibly to see me.”

“
Ostensibly
,” said Isaac. “What does that mean?”

“All outward appearances indicate that she came back to see me.”

Isaac closed his eyes. “Yeah, I know what the word means. Why did she tell you she’s back?”

“She said she came back to ask me to leave with her. I turned her down.”

“At least you did that right,” said Isaac, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He looked at Vince and then to me. “How do we get rid of her?”

“I don’t know if getting rid of her is our best option,” I said. “That might just drive her underground. If we know where she is, we can at least monitor what she’s doing.”

“Is that you talking, or your dick?”

“It’s common sense,” I said. “What would you do? Form a posse and run her out of town?”

Isaac held his arms out to the side and nodded. “Basically, yeah. She murdered her roommate. Someone able to do that, you don’t want them hanging around.”

“I know Tess. If she killed her roommate, she had a good reason.”

“Are you sure about that?” asked Isaac, narrowing his gaze at me. “The girl I knew was mean.”

I shook my head. “No, she wasn’t.”

“Yeah, she was,” said Isaac. “She was my friend, and I cared about her a lot, but if you pissed her off, you got hurt. What happens if one of us in on her shit list and doesn’t realize it?”

I crossed my arms. “If she was such a bitch, why did you hang out with us?”

“Are you seriously that dense?” asked Isaac. “I hung out with you guys because her friends were hot and easy.”

I looked at Vince for support. He shrugged. “He’s right. I liked Tess, but she wasn’t the nicest girl in the world.”

“Think about this rationally,” said Isaac. “Even if she’s just here to suck you off or whatever you guys are doing, she can still hurt us.”

“We had a good reason to do what we did. We saved her life.”

“We framed a man for murder,” said Isaac. “We lied under oath in a murder trial. That’s a class-A felony. If she gets her picture taken somewhere, we go to prison for ten years each.”

“You didn’t voice that objection nine years ago,” I said.

Isaac plopped down on the couch and leaned his head back. “I was a stupid kid nine years ago.” He paused and looked up at the ceiling, his entire body slouched. “For the first time in my life, I thought this was it, that I’d made it. I’ve got a decent job, I’ve got a girlfriend I respect, and now I’m going back to prison for something I did before I could even buy a drink.”

“Nobody’s going to prison,” I said. “We’ll figure this out. Even if she killed somebody, we don’t know that she’s trying to hurt us.”

“I don’t like this,” said Isaac, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He lit up and took a drag. “We should have just killed Dominique nine years ago and been done with it.”

“You know why we didn’t,” I said.

“Because you didn’t have the balls,” said Isaac, pointing at me with the tip of his cigarette. “We didn’t even have to do it ourselves. We’ve got kids in this city who’ll kill a stranger for twenty bucks. And these kids, they never talk. You find one of these guys, you can shoot his best friend right in front of him and he won’t tell the cops a thing. You can’t tell me Dominique didn’t deserve that.”

“You made your opinion known nine years ago,” said Vince. “We all said no. Girard needed to go away. We made that happen, and we can’t change it now.”

Isaac shook his head and stood up. “This is bad. This is really fucking bad.”

“What do you want to do, then?” I asked. “Turn ourselves in?”

“No,” said Isaac, flicking ash from the tip of his cigarette to the concrete. Normally, I would have told him to get a broom and clean the mess up, but I didn’t think now was the time. “I’m not going to turn myself in, and I’m not going to let you guys turn yourselves in, either. Vince might do okay in prison,” he said, turning to me. “But you’d never make it. You’d be dead in six months.”

“What do you suggest, then?” asked Vince, crossing his arms.

Isaac took another long drag before tapping the ash from his cigarette into an empty beer bottle on the coffee table. “I don’t know. God as my witness, Tess didn’t deserve what her stepfather did to her, and that son of a bitch deserved to die for it. We did the right thing, and I’d do it again without hesitation, but we’ve got to think of ourselves now. I don’t know what to do, but we’ve got to do something. I can’t go back to prison.”

“Nobody’s going to pris—”

I stopped speaking as the door that led to the kitchen opened, carrying with it a warm rush of air and the scent of cinnamon. My wife must have been baking something. When she stepped through the door, she looked at me and then to my friends, her brow furrowed. “Are you guys okay?”

“Yeah, we’re okay,” I said, hoping my voice sounded neutral and natural. “We didn’t mean to bother you. We’re just talking about something.”

She nodded and looked at Isaac. “Can you put out the cigarette? The smoke is going upstairs. Ashley says it smells
fucking terrible
.” She looked directly at me and bored her eyes into my skull. “Those were her words.”

I closed my eyes. Apparently my garage wasn’t as separate from the rest of the house as I had hoped. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow about the language.”

“
We’re
going to talk tomorrow, too,” said Katherine. She looked at the other men in the room. “No more cigarettes inside the house. Okay? You can do whatever you want in the backyard, but nothing inside.”

“Sure, sorry, Katherine,” said Isaac, throwing his cigarette to the ground and grinding it beneath his foot. “I didn’t realize it would go inside.”

She nodded and then closed the door behind her. All three of us watched it for a moment, but Isaac broke the silence first.

“I’ve got to go home and talk to somebody,” he said, grabbing his coat from the rack.

“Who?” I asked, my eyebrows narrowed.

He looked at me from head to toe. “My girlfriend. She asked me to call her at nine. We’ll talk later.”

“You want somebody to drive you?” asked Vince.

“What are you, my mom?”

“No. I’m the ex-cop who’s going to take care of his friend and prevent him from getting another DUI,” said Vince, standing. “I’m driving you home. You can pick up your car tomorrow.” He turned to me. “Is it cool if he leaves his car in your driveway?”

I nodded. “As long as it’s not blocking Katherine.”

“It’s not,” said Isaac.

“Good,” said Vince. He looked at Isaac. “Have another cigarette outside. I need to talk to Steve.”

Isaac pulled out another cigarette from his pocket and walked to the door that led to my driveway but stopped before stepping outside. “I expect to be included in any discussions from here on out. It’s not fair for you two to make decisions that affect us all.”

“I heard something about his big sister that he should hear,” said Vince. “It’s none of your business.”

“As long as that’s it.”

“That’s it,” said Vince. “Now give us some privacy.”

Isaac shook his head and looked at me. “I know what Tess meant to you, but you’ve got to put that behind you. Sack up and take care of her before this comes down on top of all of us.”

“If this comes back on us, I’ll take the fall,” I said. “Okay?”

“You can’t let it come to that.”

“I know.”

Isaac sighed and finally left, pulling the door shut behind him to give us some privacy. Vince stayed where he was.