On his little wheeled platform, the paralyzed man rocked to and fro with such force that only his stumps stopped him from tumbling off the cart. The whistling from his trach tube grew high and urgent, like a referee calling a bad play. And tiny balls of tight white foam formed in the corners of his mouth.
MERCUROCHROME
The call from the Atlanta Homicide detective was professional and courteous.
The woman identified herself as Detective Dana Turpin, but she did not acknowledge that she had known him when he was just a boy. Yet Turpin must have sought out and volunteered for this unpleasant task—the coincidence would otherwise have been just too great.
Other than confirming his identity, there was no preamble and she flatly told Kyle that his sister was dead.
“At this time,” she said, “we’re deeming it an accidental overdose.”
And it was only there that Kyle felt the detective’s voice belied a deeper level, an unspoken insight.
Kyle thought of the phone calls he was going to have to make. The family was scattered now, and their interactions tended to focus on holidays and funerals. But he did see them from time to time. Except for Grace, of course. He had not seen or spoken to Grace in two decades, since she ran away at the age of seventeen. No one in the family had. And if he was being honest, it had really been thirty years since he’d last seen Grace, since the summer she was seven years old.
Detective Turpin went on to sketch out a few details of Grace’s final circumstances. Kyle knew the Clermont Hotel and that portion of Ponce de Leon Avenue, and he understood that this matter would not be delved into any deeper than was strictly necessary.
Voice still flat, Detective Turpin said that there was a note.
“Oh?”
“Not a suicide note,” she said.
“Well, what kind of note is it?”
“It was found in her pocket, tucked inside a prescription bottle.”
The detective paused, and Kyle instinctively understood that her training was to not give out too much information all at one time, to parcel it out, to see if the other party would add to it—perhaps in an incriminating way, or an exonerating way. Kyle had nothing to add, but still felt compelled to fill the uncomfortable silence.
“Really?”
“Yes. The note was addressed to you. It has your name on it.”
Pause.
“My name?”
“Yes.”
“Am I allowed to see it?”
“It’s not a suicide note.”
Pause.
“I don’t understand.”
“It will go in an evidence bag and be stored in the case file.”
Pause.
This time Kyle didn’t fill in the silence. He stood there mute, holding the cell phone to his ear.
“If you like,” the detective volunteered, “I can read it to you.”
“Please, yes, thank you.”
“It says, ‘Go to the green pond.’ That mean anything to you?”
Kyle could not find the words to answer. Did that mean anything to him? It meant everything to him.
“No,” he finally said. “No, that has no meaning for me. But, unless she had changed, Grace was using drugs, and had been for quite some time.”
“It’s sad, but, unfortunately, this kind of thing happens a lot more often than most people think.”
“Yes. Thank you, Detective.”
KYLE FEELS LIKE AN INTRUDER IN
the country of his childhood. A foreigner. I do not belong here, he thinks.
Eden Road is paved now. The cornfield has been graded and a cluster of bevel-sided split-levels has been put up (an architectural style that Kyle’s wife disparagingly refers to as “double stacks”). The sweet potatoes and peanuts have been turned under and replaced with a rolling expanse of green suburban lawns. Cookie-cutter houses crowd the land that Grace and he once burned to the ground.
Their old house is still there, looking small and insignificant. His father had lived there, alone, until a series of ministrokes erased so much of his mind that he could no longer care for himself. The silver lining of the brain damage was that Boyd Edwards no longer had to dwell on the fact that he had once been accused of molesting his daughter and that his wife had left him and married an Atlanta real estate broker.
The cow pasture is gone, replaced with a subdivision. The subdivision is recently built; many of the houses sit there unsold. Still, Kyle has to do what the note says. He has to go to the green pond. He carries a shovel with him. He explores the new subdivision, the asphalt streets and poured concrete curbs. He thinks of the old Joni Mitchell song about how they paved paradise and put up a parking lot, but this was never paradise. Maybe for a while it was. And that makes him think of another Joni Mitchell song. The one that starts off with the child of God walking along the road.
He carries the shovel with him through the subdivision. Off to one side, behind an unsold brick colonial, he sees a stand of young pine. Green and tender, no more than ten feet tall. A slat privacy fence has been built around the pines to obscure the view of what would have otherwise been an eyesore. The weeping willows have been bulldozed (their roots are bad to clog drainage and sewer systems) but he’s certain this is the spot. The fence is at least two feet taller than he is, and Kyle is a big man. There is no way he can climb it. He kicks at the slats along the bottom until he finds a loose one and wedges in the shovel head. He pries two boards loose and creates an opening that he can slide through. He remembers how they used to slide under the barbed wire fence, holding the wire out of the way for one another, and he wishes Grace were here to hold the boards apart for him.
The pond is just a hollow depression now. The crackled remains of green algae cover the surface like a potter’s glaze, with cattail springing up from the center of it. It remains a natural drainage spot, not fit to build on, so the developers have fenced it off. But the development of the land has altered the normal movement of rainwater, so it no longer receives enough runoff to remain a pond. It is a marshy depression in the earth, clotted with weeds.
He digs carefully, not wanting to damage whatever it is that lies beneath. He sifts through each shovelful, checking it, before scooping out more. It’s nearly dark before he finds what Grace has sent him here to retrieve for her.
There is no note sending him ever onward to grander and grander adventures. What he sees is a tiny plastic hand reaching out from the dark earth—as if reaching out for help that arrives thirty years too late.
He immediately knows what it is. He’s careful, like an archaeologist, as he unearths it and brushes it off. Although its features are faded and deeply soiled, he notes the costume that was once red, white, and blue, the large bust; and he can just make out the Amazonium bracelets on its wrists that can deflect bullets.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my generous editor, Natalee Rosenstein, as well as Kaitlyn Kennedy, Robin Barletta, Jamie Snider, Tricia Callahan, Luann Reed-Siegel, and Michelle Vega at Berkley Books. I am lucky to work with these talented folks, and proud to have a home at Berkley Prime Crime.
Robert Guinsler, literary agent nonpareil, put the universe in motion and made it deliver. Thank you, Robert.
Officer Scott Luther of the Kennesaw Police Department guided me through some of the law enforcement aspects of this story. Any mistakes in that regard are mine.
Victor Daniel and Jeff Jerkins advised me on points of local geography and history, but in many instances I took liberties—particularly with the course of Sweetwater Creek as it winds its way through Cobb and Douglas Counties.
Don Scarbrough and Aly Lecznar at Sweetwater Creek State Park were very helpful to me.
I am indebted to the staff and tireless volunteers of the Walken Creek Farm Literary Retreat. And my thanks to Ed Schneider and Robert Leland Taylor, whose input made this book better.
My son, Zachary, at age five, told me about The Paralyzed Man. Thanks, big guy.
And my
wife, Andria, never stopped believing. Not even for a second. Her encouragement and input during the writing of this novel sustained me.
At the End of the Road Page 20
