Murder Road (11 page)

I awoke to a gentle tap on the bedroom window. Faint gray light was coming through the blinds, the first light of dawn.

The tap came again. I grabbed Eddie’s shoulder, but he was already awake, his body tense beside me. “Stay here,” he whispered.

He got out of bed in the near-dark and crouched next to the nightstand. Then, still low to the ground, he angled his head so he could see past the edge of the blind without moving it.

I watched his tense expression turn to a bemused frown. “It’s that cop,” he whispered.

“What cop?”

“Syed. But he isn’t in uniform.”

We exchanged a look. Then we reached for our clothes.

Officer Syed was waiting for us in Rose’s backyard. He was wearing jeans and a gray tee with a brown leather jacket over it, and the sight of him out of uniform was jarring, as if it made him a different person. The clock radio in the bedroom said it was just after five o’clock in the morning.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said as we came out the back door and crossed the grass. “I wanted to talk to you, but not in an official capacity. And not where anyone would see.”

I glanced back at the house, which was silent. Rose must be a heavy sleeper. The houses on either side were dark. Rose’s neatly fenced yard backed onto shrubby green space and, beyond that, trees.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asked.

Officer Syed shifted on his feet. “I guess they didn’t fill you in on too much when they let you go.”

“They didn’t fill us in on anything,” Eddie said.

Officer Syed nodded. He was in his early thirties, clean-shaven, handsome, a little tired at this early hour, his dark hair brushed back from his forehead. His wedding ring looked new, like mine. I wondered what his wife was like and if they had any kids. His eyes were troubled, as if he’d heard something upsetting.

“Max Shandler has been officially charged with murder,” he said.

Eddie and I were silent. Somewhere far off, a starling called in the trees.

Officer Syed took a deep breath. “I grew up here,” he said. “Max is only a few years younger than me. I can’t say we were
friends, but we were acquainted. Everyone is acquainted in a town this size.” He turned to us, his brown eyes pained. “If you’re gonna ask if I ever thought Max could do this, the answer is no. He wasn’t one of those guys you know is headed for trouble. So no, I never thought he could.”

“Did he confess?” I asked.

“No. At first he told us that he was home alone when Rhonda Jean was killed, but then he admitted he had no memory of that night. None at all. He remembers getting in his truck to pick up some beer, and nothing else.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s a lie, too—I don’t know. Max has a lawyer now, so he isn’t talking.”

Eddie crossed his arms as an early-morning breeze ruffled the grass. “Was it the backpack? That was the evidence that proved it?”

“Rhonda Jean Breckwith’s backpack was in his truck, yes,” Officer Syed said. “There’s blood on the backpack. There’s also blood in the cab of the truck. We’re testing all of that. A neighbor passed Max’s truck as it left his driveway that night, so we know he left home. And the jacket Rhonda Jean was wearing when you found her, when she died—that jacket belonged to Max Shandler.”

We were quiet. I remembered Rhonda Jean in the army-style jacket that seemed too big for her, that she’d pulled closed as she stood at the side of the road. Mitchell hadn’t said she was wearing a jacket when she left Hunter Beach and got into the truck.

“After we left Atticus Line with you two yesterday morning, we sent two uniforms to keep searching the roadside,” Officer Syed continued. His expression was stark. “They found the knife in the grass. It had blood on it. We’re processing it for fingerprints. Max probably kept a knife in his truck because if you get in an
accident, a knife is handy for cutting your seat belt. A lot of us keep a knife in our car for that.”

I spoke up. “Officer Syed—”

“Call me Kal,” he said to me with an attempt at a smile. “It’s short for Khalid. It’s what you can call me before my shift starts.”

“Kal,” I said. “You’re saying that this man picked up Rhonda Jean, stabbed her, then put his jacket on her and left her at the side of the road? Why would he do that?”

Kal shook his head. “I wish I could tell you. Max doesn’t have a criminal record. He’s twenty-eight. He works on his parents’ farm. He had a fiancée for a while, but it didn’t work out. She never called the cops on him that we know of.” He lifted both hands and scrubbed them through his hair, his frustration and confusion evident. “I keep thinking, I’m a cop in this town and I had no idea Max could do something like this. No idea at all. And then I think about the other hitchhiker a few years ago.”

“Katharine,” I said.

“Could he have done that?” Kal asked, tormented. “We’re looking into the timeline, but it looks like Max was in town when that happened. Katharine was strangled and left dead—not stabbed, put into a jacket, and left alive. But she was a hitchhiker on that road. Which means it could be—Jesus, I can’t even think the words. In my town, right under my nose, while I was dealing with drunks and teenagers and car accidents and beach parties. It can’t be.”

Eddie supplied the words for him. “A serial killer.”

Kal nodded. “Yeah. That.”

“Quentin has thought about it, though,” Eddie said. “That’s why he and Beam showed up so fast that night.”

“It’s been going on for twenty years,” Kal said. “Hitchhikers getting killed on Atticus Line. But it isn’t all the time, you know? There’s a stretch of years between each one. The victim before Katharine was in 1991, and he was a nineteen-year-old boy. The force is pretty divided about it. Some cops think it’s just bad luck—something that happens when you get a lot of hitchhikers on a back road like that, where there’s no one to see. People are partying, drinking hard, doing drugs. Sooner or later someone gets killed, and how will you ever solve it when everyone who was there has already left? Most of them don’t even give their last names. So maybe it’s just a numbers game.”

“That isn’t what Quentin thinks,” Eddie supplied. “That’s why he kept asking me if I’d been here before, why we were on that road. Like it couldn’t have been a mistake.” He shook his head. “He wanted to know if I was hunting.”

Or me
, I thought, remembering my conversation with Beam.
Maybe it was me that was hunting.

“Katharine O’Connor was only two years ago,” Kal said. “Max could have killed her. So could you. The kid in 1991, too.” He and Eddie exchanged a glance, and Kal looked away. “Katharine was an upper-middle-class girl who was taking a year to travel while she decided what she wanted to do with her life. She wasn’t a runaway. She was meeting people and having fun. She called her parents collect every other day from wherever she was, until the day that she didn’t. Her family was beside themselves. They made a lot of noise. Quentin and Beam worked the case hard, but they never got anywhere. The case went cold.”

“And then we showed up,” I said. It made sense now, why we’d been leaned on so hard, why we were suspected. The police had
nothing to show for Katharine, no results after all of that pressure. They had been looking for someone to blame.

“I haven’t been on the force all that long,” Kal said. “There’s a class system between the local PD and the state police, and with my name and the color of my skin, you’d better believe I’m at the bottom of it. Guys like Quentin and Beam don’t sit down with me to talk about their murder cases.”

Exactly what Rose had said about Robbie. “Still, you’re involved,” I said.

“Of course I am. This is my town. I suspect that Quentin has talked to experts to give advice on whether this is one killer. Maybe some of the deaths were linked and others weren’t, you know? Maybe one serial killer started in the seventies, and when Atticus Line got a reputation, it drew another psychopath to keep it going. Maybe there’s just one person, hunting along that road, starting in his twenties and still going. He wouldn’t be that old.” He shook his head. “If so, that person couldn’t be Max. But Quentin doesn’t think any of it is bad luck or a numbers game. He doesn’t think those murders happen just because it’s a dark, remote road. He thinks there’s a killer. There have never been any witnesses—just bodies on the side of the road. No one has ever seen anything. Until you two.”

The sun was rising now, the light orange tinged with yellow, like a bruise. The sky was hazy and the wind was hot. Eddie and I had been the break in Quentin’s case, until the evidence had pointed to Max Shandler instead. If Max was convicted—if the blood and fingerprint evidence connected him, along with the fact that Rhonda Jean was wearing his jacket and her backpack was in his truck—then it blew up the theory of a single serial killer on
Atticus Line. It also blew up the theory that Eddie and I killed Katharine O’Connor—or anyone else. It sent Detective Quentin back to square one for the earlier murders, which would stay unsolved.

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“One of the kids at Hunter Beach saw Rhonda Jean get into a black truck that night,” I said. “She was hitching. She wasn’t heading for Hunter Beach; she was leaving.”

“You two went to Hunter Beach?” Kal looked shocked. “Who said they saw her?”

“A kid named Mitchell,” Eddie said. “Age twenty or so, long, curly hair. Dark blond. Five-six, five-seven maybe, a hundred and eighty pounds. If you’re lucky, he might still be there.”

Kal looked flustered. “Jesus. I—I’ll need you both to come to the station and make an official statement.”

“No,” Eddie said. “You have your killer. You’re done with us. Do your own murder investigation. We’re getting our car back and leaving town.”

“Mr. Carter, this is important.”

Eddie crossed his arms over his chest. In the old tee he’d yanked on to come out here, the pose made his biceps rise. He wasn’t posing like that on purpose, but it still had an intimidating effect. “My wife and I are leaving town,” he said again. “There’s nothing you folks can do to stop us. We’d like our car back, but we’ll walk if we have to. No more interrogations. No more drives on Atticus Line. We’re done.”

The sky didn’t clear as the sun rose. Coldlake Falls was breathless. Sweat clung to your skin and mosquitoes whined in your ears when you stepped outside. My cold shower only cooled me off for a few minutes, and then I was wilting again.

Still, we packed our bags after having breakfast with Rose and telling her our plans. Eddie wanted to pay her for our stay, but she said she was going to send a bill to the Coldlake Falls PD. “I won’t give them a discount, either,” she said.

“I guess we’ll go home,” I said as I stuffed my bag of toiletries in my suitcase and dashed a sweaty lock of hair from my face. “Some honeymoon that was. I’ll see if the bowling alley can give me some extra shifts.”

Eddie put his arm around my waist, and despite how hot we
both were, I felt some of my grumpiness evaporate. “I could call the Five Pines Resort,” he said. “Maybe they can still squeeze us in for a few days.”

I made a displeased sound. I imagined us pulling up to the Five Pines Resort in our bloody car, looking to unpack our bloody clothes. If the police would give any of it back, that was.

I told myself that bloody or not, we could drive out of here, put this episode behind us, and go on with our lives. Maybe, after enough time had passed, we’d tell it as a hilarious story at parties.
Hey, did we tell you about the time we almost got accused of murder? The time an eighteen-year-old girl died of stab wounds in our back seat? That was really something.

I wanted out of here. I did.

I also wanted to know who the Lost Girl was. I wanted to know who had killed Katharine, who had left the wreath I’d found at the side of the road. I wanted to know if Max Shandler would be convicted of murder or if he’d somehow get off. I wanted to know if Gretchen got home—or wherever she was going—okay and if the other kids at Hunter Beach were still there. I wanted to know what the Coldlake Falls PD would learn when they went to Hunter Beach to do their own interviews, whether Mitchell would tell them what he’d told us, whether any of the other kids there had information that we’d missed.

The story hadn’t ended. But it didn’t matter—Eddie and I weren’t going to be here for the last chapters. We wouldn’t get to read it. And on that long-ago summer night, my mother had taught me that in order to survive, you sometimes have to cut and run. Leave people behind. Just go.

We didn’t hear from Detectives Quentin or Beam. Presumably, they were off doing the legitimate police work of a murder investigation instead of spending time harassing Eddie and me. We didn’t hear from Kal, and I hoped he was out getting the answers he seemed to need so desperately. I wouldn’t get to know the end of his story, either.

Rose made a phone call, and someone at the Coldlake Falls PD told her that our car was being returned to us. Robbie’s car had already been returned, parked in Rose’s driveway as she had demanded. For a woman who was so lonely and disliked, she had a lot of sway. I wondered if she would ever get over Robbie, or if she would just sit in this house forever, looking at pictures of Princess Diana. I wouldn’t get to know.

Eddie and I took Robbie’s car and picked up lunch, bringing it back for the three of us. We ate in the kitchen as the air conditioners whirred helplessly.

The afternoon was hot and somnolent. It looked like it was going to storm, and I hoped it would happen, that the sky would just get it over with. There was nothing to do but wait.

Eddie, restless despite our exhaustion and lack of sleep, asked Rose if she had any chores around the house she needed him to do. Rose tried very hard not to look pleased at the offer, though she obviously was. I left them dealing with trash bags that needed to be hefted out of the garage and went into our bedroom, where Rose had made up the bed while we were out. I picked up
Flowers in the Attic
and sat on top of the fussy bedspread, underneath the Princess Diana portrait, my legs stretched out in front of me. I aimed the fan directly at myself and started to read.

Wake up
.

A hand touched my shoulder.

Wake up.

I was cold. My throat was dry. I rolled over onto my side, trying to get warmer, and something slid off my chest and off the bed. It thumped to the floor.

I opened my eyes.

I was looking at the chair I’d found Rose sitting in a few days ago. It was empty. The room was silent except for the sound of the fan, still blowing softly. My skin was freezing, as if someone had dragged ice cubes over it. Why was I so cold?

I leaned over the edge of the bed and saw
Flowers in the Attic
on the floor. I’d been reading. I must have fallen asleep, the book on my chest. For how long? Why had I awoken?

There had been a hand on my shoulder. I looked around the room. There was no one here.

The sun slanted through the window—it was late afternoon. The cold seeped from my skin and sweat broke out on my back. I sat up on the bed, feeling the damp of my T-shirt where I’d sweated through it. Despite the fan, it was hot in here.

I listened for a second. There was only silence in the house. Where was everyone?

I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and got up, moving to the bedroom doorway. In the main room there was only silence, broken by the ticking of the clock on the wall. The kitchen was dim and clean, untouched since lunch. The mismatched chairs in the sitting room were empty.

There was no one here, and yet it felt like someone had just
been here. Like someone had only now walked out of the room, and if I touched one of the kitchen chairs or one of the chairs in the sitting room, I’d find it warm.

My thoughts were fuzzy as my brain slowly woke. Someone had touched me while I was sleeping. Someone had
touched
me.

There was a faint sound from behind the house, and I walked through the kitchen to the laundry room and the door to the backyard. The door was open, and through the screen I saw Rose and Eddie. There was a pile of dead branches in the middle of the yard, which Eddie had likely cut. Rose was cutting lengths of twine, and Eddie was using them to tie the branches into bundles. Both the front and the back of his T-shirt were soaked in sweat.

At the back of the yard, along the fence that separated Rose’s property from the woods beyond, was a garden—a long, dark row of turned earth. There was not a single plant growing in it, not a single weed. I remembered the cop, Kyle, telling us that Rose’s husband, Robbie, had died in the backyard while she’d dug that garden with a shovel.

I stared at that garden and a shiver went down my spine. How long had Robbie been dead now, I wondered? A year? Two? More? Why was nothing growing in July? Did Rose go out and dig it fresh every day all summer, so nothing grew in it? Had Robbie really died of a heart attack? I pictured a body lying there, where Eddie and Rose were standing now. What had happened that day?

There was a sharp knock on the house’s front door.

I jumped at the sound, biting back a surprised scream. I was completely awake now. I put my hand to my stomach, which was churning, and walked across the empty rooms to open the front door.

A uniformed cop stood there. It was Kyle, the cop I’d just been thinking about a minute ago. Kyle Petersen was his name, according to Rose. He gave me the same smirk I recognized from before.

“Mrs. Carter,” he said. “Your husband around?”

“What do you want?” I asked him.

He let his gaze move down and up my body. I was wearing my jean shorts and a cream tee that was probably wrinkled. My hair was likely mussed from sleep. Still, he didn’t scare me. I kept my chin up and didn’t move from the narrow slot I’d made when I opened the door.

“Well?” I said.

“We’re returning your car.” He gestured with his chin. Behind his shoulder, I saw Eddie’s Pontiac parked at the foot of Rose’s driveway. Sitting in the street, the motor running, was a police cruiser with Chad Chipwell, the other uniformed cop, in the driver’s seat. When he saw me looking, he gave me a small wave.

“Fine,” I said, holding out my hand. “Give me the keys.”

Kyle held the keys to the Pontiac up as if he was going to give them to me, but at the last minute he snatched them away, as if I were a toddler and we were playing a game.

“You know,” he said, “I had you pegged for killing that girl. Still would, if it wasn’t for Max.”

“Is he a friend of yours? Congratulations on being friends with a murderer.”

His eyes went dark with anger. I never did know when to keep my mouth shut. Then again, I wasn’t afraid of him. It was almost fun to watch rage in men like Kyle. They always thought it was so frightening. They had no idea how well I knew real fear.

“You really are a bitch,” he said.

“I really am,” I agreed. “Give me my keys.”

“Get out of town and don’t come back.”

“Believe me, I will. I’d love nothing more than to get out of your shitty, murdering little town. Now
give me my keys
.”

For a second, I thought he’d say something else. Something worse. Then Chad Chipwell tapped the horn of the cruiser, sending a cheery beep.

Kyle dropped the keys onto the porch next to his feet. Then he turned and walked back to the car.

I waited until the cruiser drove away, and then I stooped to pick up the keys. I looked at the Pontiac, parked on the street, and took a breath. There was nothing for it.

I retrieved my flip-flops and walked to the car. I turned the key in the passenger door and opened it.

It was awful.

The smell blasted out first—the metallic smell of blood, left to fester in the heat. I gasped for air and forced myself to look inside.

The police had done a thorough job. Black fingerprint dust—smeared where Kyle had touched it—was all over the wheel, as well as on the inside door handles and the glove box. Strips of fabric had been cut from the back seat, leaving the foam to spring out. More strips had been neatly cut from the fabric on the floor, and the rubber mats to put your feet on were gone. The former contents of the glove box—a map, the car manual, the ownership papers, one of my hair ties, a few quarters, an old receipt—had been placed into a large Ziploc bag on the front passenger seat. Mixed with the blood stench was the smell of some kind of chemical, or maybe alcohol. It was incredibly strong.

I blew out a breath.
Just get me out of this town.

I rolled down the window on the passenger side—the roller was covered in fingerprint dust—to let the blood smell out. I slammed the door. I didn’t bother to lock it. I didn’t think anyone would steal this particular car.

Then I went back to the house to let Eddie know we needed to do some cleaning.