No Service (4 page)

Pulling over at a roadside stand, they stocked up on firewood from a stand selling corn, tomatoes, and cords of logs wrapped together with twine. They dropped the money into the little metal box zip-tied to a PVC pipe with one end embedded into the ground. It cost almost a quarter of what the supermarket was charging when it came down to price per log and the amount of wood was nearly double what most store bundles offered.

The comfortable quiet continued as they drove into the next township almost 15 minutes further south. The college kids were out of the area during the off season. This meant that most of the activities in the area were for all ages instead of attempting to attract the hungry, drunk, and hungover part-time residents.

It was like Main Street USA, as they crossed the bridge to properly enter the downtown area. The buildings were two- or three-story brick structures with quaint little cloth overhangs above the first floor. The upper floors were all rented apartments, likely empty during July. The lower floors were all small local entrepreneurial businesses. Many of them were swanky, progressive art galleries and studios. Pottery was out on the sidewalk on tables. Canvases were lined up along street corners.

Jess felt deeply relaxed as they moved through the stop-and-go traffic caused by the pedestrians randomly meandering into the street. It would have been presumably faster to get out and walk.

After passing all the beautiful little stores with the busy customers hustling around with armfuls of artisan foods and handcrafted jewelry, they reached the Wal-Mart, parked in one of the only open spaces in the far back, and headed inside.

Over an hour later, they emerged with ice and the ingredients to make s’mores. The parking lot was as full as ever.

“If you hadn’t stopped to look at those t-shirts, we could have been out of there probably twenty minutes sooner.” Jess ripped open the top of the ice bag viciously and poured out its contents onto the food in the cooler.

“Then why did you say ‘Oh, sure, honey, go right ahead’ when I asked if you minded?”

“I didn’t think you’d take all day to do it!” Jess dumped the ice that wouldn’t fit out onto the ground.

“Now what are you doing?”

“I’m getting rid of what doesn’t fit. What do you think I’m doing?”

Chris moved around the car to have a look at the discarded ice. “I could have fit that. You shouldn’t have gotten rid of it.”

“It’s practically crushed. I doubt there’s any room left in the cooler anyway.”

They stood glaring at each other for a minute then Chris silently walked around the driver’s side door and got in. He needed to stop and think. He needed to slow down. He had to escape the situation, but he couldn’t leave her standing in the sun in a parking lot, so he knew that if he went back to pretending to fume she’d probably let him.

Jess threw herself into the passenger’s side. Jess brooded. So much for a relaxed little day trip to get away from the insanity they’d been experiencing. Her anger was more like a dragon in waiting, not a monster tearing apart its cage. She knew this wouldn’t set off a panic attacked. She’d just be pissed.

Chris pulled into a parking lot just off the main drag of downtown. Across the street was a diner that looked like it was a throwback to an older time. At the door, they greeted the waitress warmly, then proceeded to avoid eye contact with each other. After their drink order was taken, Chris put a hand out on the table.

“We shouldn’t be fighting like this,” he said trying to fix the damage. “We don’t want to be like Mark and Steph and here we are, acting like this over a trip to the store. I’m sorry, babe.” He genuinely didn’t want to fight with her. Despite their past arguments, she was a savior in his life and he truly loved her.

Jess turned to face him, prying her eyes away from crowded street. He seemed to be really sincere, but sometimes he would just give in if it meant she’d stop sulking and complaining. He’d told her as much before and it had, of course, launched her into a tirade. This felt genuine though and she thought his eyes said it best, whether he realized it or not. She’d never tell him though. When they did fight, she needed to know what his tells were so he couldn’t poker face his way into sucking up and trying to slip his way out of trouble. “I’m sorry, too.”

With a laugh, he added, “Our blood sugar was just low, right?”

Jess laughed along with him and put her hand on top of his. She wondered how long he’d wanted to say that. He’d probably been thinking of it since they’d gotten in the car at Wal-Mart, but he had probably mulled it over a thousand times to make it sounded as hilarious as he thought. “Not like we’re even in a rush to get back,” she said with a devilish smirk. Right as they were sitting down to order, the site next door back at camp should be clearing out and the odd couple would almost definitely be driving through the checkout lane at the registration office.

As they ate the complimentary bread, two older women were seated at the table across the aisle from them.

“Oh my gosh, it’s on the news again,” said one of them pointing up at the single television screen mounted near the ceiling.

Jess looked up and saw a picture of a dark-haired young woman in what appeared to be a crummy driver’s license photo. The text at the bottom declared that she was missing for the second day in a row. Her car had been found with clear signs of a struggle about five miles from the entrance of the state park.

“Chris, check this out!” she said poking him in the hand as he reached for more bread.

He turned to look at the screen as they showed aerial footage of the road she had been found on and how close it was to the campground and the lake. The shot panned back down from showing Lake Ontario and focused on the dirt road below. A car was pulled far off to the side with black skidmarks showing the path the tires had taken and the driver’s side door was wide open. Jess wasn’t sure that constituted something that looked like a struggle, but from the air there wasn’t a lot of visible evidence of anything except an empty car on the side of the road.

The news continued to cover the story in depth, repeating and replaying everything from hard fact to speculation. For such a rural area, this was a big deal. People in the region basically never went missing and definitely never in such a supposedly violent way, though that was still only assumed. It was so unusual and no one had dug up any other instance of such a thing happening for as long as anyone could remember.

The police had begun a sweep of the area with search parties and dogs, but so far nothing had come to light. They had combed through the majority of the woods, but there was still no evidence that’s where the girl had ended up.

Officers were even searching the campgrounds going site to site and inspecting tents and campers. The cameraman focused in on policemen searching cars as they came and left the park.

“Well, good thing there’s not much in the car for them to go through,” Chris shrugged. “It shouldn’t take us too long to get through.”

“Ugh, but we’ll probably get stuck behind some massive RV where they spend forever looking through every nook and cranny.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was disrespectful toward the girl that had vanished. If Jess disappeared, she would want a thorough search done to try and find her, so it was unfair to complain about it when someone might be in very real danger. Chris hadn’t taken much notice though, so she dropped the idea.

After their meal, they began the journey back. In a few different fields near the park that had been so tranquil and calm in the morning, the police had trampled the ground and destroyed some of the crops as they wandered through looking for evidence. A lot of the corn was left broken in half and bowed over, as if the officers had found it too hard to simply walk straight down each row. The farmers were certainly going to be livid. It was easy to already picture news segments with an angry old man in a dirty baseball cap giving a soundbite that would be played over and over.

At the entrance gate, they were only the fourth vehicle in the line. It moved along fairly quickly with officers having people pop their trunks and then checking the interiors with a few quick looks.

As they pulled up, Chris tried to look as relaxed as possible, but not so loose that he looked drugged or suspicious. He always felt the same nervousness at the Canadian border, despite having nothing illegal or questionable on them. The officer asked him to pop the trunk, they rooted around inside for a moment, then waved them on through the gate.

They took the main road around to their camp loop. Officers were everywhere scanning the area and watching cars pass by. They couldn’t imagine being a first-time visitor and driving into camp only to find it looking like a crime scene. It probably looked even worse if you were a foreign visitor getting your first few impressions of America.

Pulling into their site, Chris swore loudly. Jess followed his gaze and added her own curse words. Mark’s rusty red truck was still parked next door.

“Just ignore him,” Chris said.

They climbed out and went about their business as if nothing had been awkward and unsettling about their morning encounter. At first, it seemed like they’d be left unbothered, but as soon as they relaxed, they heard, “Hey.”

Chris subtly motion for Jess to stay where she was down near the fire pit. He walked up to meet Mark at the side of the road. They spoke quietly for a bit, then Chris headed back to Jess.

“Steph still hasn’t come back. He wants help looking for her. I’ll go help him look, you can just hang out here.”

Jess grabbed his arm and squeezed tightly. “Don’t go with him. Please. The police can help him. He needs to report her missing.”

“He said he told the police this morning and they pretty much blew him off and said if they see anything they’ll let him know. He probably left them with a bad taste in their mouths. I mean, who knows how he reacted. I guess they pretty much tore up his tent and truck after he talked to them, but that’s about all they did. I’ll just commit to a couple hours. You can get some reading done while I’m gone.”

Jess gave a small tug on his shirt as Chris turned away. He spun back to face her. She put her face in close to his. “What if he did the same thing to Steph as whatever happened to the missing girl? I mean, how do you know you aren’t going to walk off into the woods with his crazy ass and then get knifed in the back?”

Chris patted her hand. “He seems really worried and pissed. I think he really needs help.”

Jess turned up the intensity on her attempt to get through to him. “Do you know why so many people get their asses murdered? Because the killer always seems like a nice guy! If the killer acted like what they were then no one would ever go anywhere with them.” Her voice was a low hiss as she pulled his arm in closer. “Seriously, do not go with him,” she said with a growl.

Chris glanced back at Mark, then looked his wife straight in the eyes. “Okay.”

Jess sighed and let go. Chris had a red spot where her fingers had been in a death grip on him. It surprised him how serious she had been. He went back to meet Mark and she heard him politely say that he didn’t want to leave Jess alone and that he’d have to get the police to help him.

“So then have your wife come with us,” Mark shouted gesturing angrily toward her as she watched out of the periphery of her vision.

Chris shook his head and declined one more time. Mark leaned in, inches away from Chris. “You’re both a couple of hoity-toity pieces of shit, you know that?”

Chris didn’t react and Mark fumed off toward his site again. They could hear him slam the door on his truck and with a furious squeal he backed out of the space and sped off around the loop. When he was out of sight on the other side, they heard his brakes shriek as he stopped for something, probably a person walking from the bathrooms, then even louder and angrier than before, they heard his truck rumble away.

“What a fucking nut,” Jess noted. “I can’t believe you nearly went with him.”

“Now I’m worried about Steph though,” he added. “I think we actually should say something to the police.”

Chris walked to the park’s security office and soon someone met them at their site. Neither of them had a cell phone signal and it meant hoofing it for help. The security officer had given Chris a ride back so he didn’t have to walk. He was an older gentleman with white hair and deep lines in his face. The officer had handcuffs and a Taser and little else on him. They explained what had happened ever since the weird couple had set up their site and Mark’s behavior through the whole situation. The man wrote everything down and called it in. No one had heard Mark report anything from the park side of things, but they would check in with local police.

The park security had been helping the officers with their search, and the lines of communication were supposed to be open between the two forces.

“See, he was lying!” Jess tapped her husband on the arm. “I told you he was a psycho.”

Chris shrugged and the officer said to call if Mark returned. They had people looking for his truck now and would be taking Mark in for questioning as soon as possible.

“They only said they were supposed to be communicating, but you get one or two little missed messages that don’t seem important and that’s how stuff falls through the cracks,” Chris said, shaking his head. He sincerely hoped he believed himself.

Jess and Chris sat at the campfire breathing in the scent of smoke and trying to eat lunch, but spending more time watching the flames, each thinking their own terrible thoughts. Chris assumed that Steph had probably run off and maybe found somewhere to hang out for the night, like at a party or something. Jess had automatically decided that Mark had probably taken her somewhere secluded and cut her into little pieces that he would then feed to wild animals while covered in blood and laughing like a psycho murderer. They each ruminated in silence wondering what to do, if anything.