by David Bell
“What do you think?” he asked.
I had no doubts about what I was looking at. Despite the grime and scum from the pond, the flattened tires, the rust, I knew immediately what it was.
“That’s Marissa’s,” I said. “That’s her car.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
I stepped toward the vehicle, standing a few feet away. I held my right hand out but didn’t touch it, as though I expected to feel some tangible emanation from the car that would pass into me.
Troy moved behind me and closed the door to the unit, presumably to prevent the light from leaking out into the night and possibly calling unwanted attention to us. Then he was standing next to me.
“If you found this in a pond, submerged . . . did you find a body inside?” I asked.
“Nope. That’s what those gas crew boys were worried about when they found it. They started thinking up all sorts of juicy scenarios, like some Mafia guy put out a hit and hid the body in a Robeson County pond. The Mafia stuff is far-fetched, but people do drown in ponds and creeks like that a good deal. They drive off the road, maybe they’re drunk or tired, and they end up in a body of water they can’t get out of. The family reports them missing, and it can take years to find the vehicle, if ever. Like I said, there are a lot of remote little bodies of water in a rural county in Ohio. If the water doesn’t recede and give up its secrets, we may never see what’s in there.”
“Right,” I said, my mind distracted. If there was no body in the car, why had it ended up in a pond one county away?
“Are you sure it’s her car?” Troy asked. “It’s been a long time.”
“I’m sure.”
I remembered it well. She drove it the whole time I knew her. When she graduated from high school, her father had bought her a brand-new 1991 GMC Jimmy. Black. He told her the SUV would be safer in an accident than a small car. We drove the thing all over: road trips to Columbus, trips home for the holidays, late-night runs to White Castle or Taco Bell. And we parked in it a lot. The backseat was spacious. Marissa kept a couple of blankets and a pillow in the car at all times, removing them only when she knew she would see her parents, and we made liberal use of them during our nocturnal visits to local parks or the football stadium, any place we could find a little bit of privacy.
Some nights we fell asleep in the back of the SUV, our heads together, our bodies intertwined. We’d come awake at one or two in the morning, meet each other’s eyes in the darkness, and laugh at the absurdity of ending up passed out in a postsex coma in the middle of a Tuesday night. And then we’d drive back to the dorm, exchanging sleepy good nights, our clothes and hair rumpled.
Believe it, I knew the car.
“Same color, same make,” I said. “I recognize that dent in the rear bumper. Marissa backed into a fire hydrant once. Her dad was furious. She always had a frame around the license plate that said Hanfort High, Class of ’91. I don’t see that, but I’m sure it’s hers.” I started walking around the car, moving toward the passenger side and examining it from another angle. “She loved this car. She really did. She even named it. ‘Betty,’ after the salesperson at the dealership. Her parents probably sold it after she died.”
“I don’t know who,” Troy said, “but somebody ran this vehicle into the pond up here.”
“Is that all you know about it?” I asked.
“When the police find a car like this, they figure one of a few things. One is what I told you before: Someone’s been in a wreck and might be dead in the car. But we figured out quickly that wasn’t the case. No body. There’s also the possibility of insurance fraud. Someone runs their car into a remote pond, claims it was stolen, and then they get a new car out of the deal. Risky, of course. Insurance companies don’t look too kindly on fraud.”
“Those aren’t the only two options, are they?”
“The third and most likely option is that the car really was stolen. You know, kids take it joyriding, realize they might be in the soup with the cops, so they ditch it somewhere. Or someone’s stolen it and tried to sell it or use it for parts. Those cars come back stripped of anything valuable.” Troy patted the back of the car. “This car was worth a lot back in 1994 or so. Not everybody had an SUV in those days. They could have sold it, or they could have used it for parts.”
“Was it stolen?” I asked.
“We looked into that. Whoever put it in the pond emptied the thing of any personal effects. No papers, no CDs. No license plates. Like you said, not even the license plate frame. They wanted it hidden, and then they hoped if it did get found, no one would be able to identify it. Of course, they couldn’t remove the VIN number. And that’s how we traced the car back to the Minor family. That didn’t take long at all.”
“And what happened?”
“We found out they weren’t in the area anymore. And no one had ever filed a stolen-car report. It was strange. A car that was probably pretty nice and relatively new when it went missing was just allowed to go without anyone filing a report? You’d think they’d want the insurance money no matter how rich they were, right?”
“They had some money, but they weren’t super-wealthy. Upper middle class.”
“And those people want the money more than anyone else, right? They’re still hungry for more. But if they didn’t file a report, there wasn’t much we could do. We couldn’t locate them, and it’s not really a crime to leave a car in a pond out in the middle of nowhere. Illegal dumping, I guess. Unless . . .”
I looked over the side of the car. I saw something near the front right bumper.
“Unless?” I said, the wheels turning in my mind. “Unless you were covering up a crime?”
“Exactly.”
I moved up to the front of the car and bent down for a closer look. The right front bumper had a small dent, a slight inward crumpling, and the headlight was shattered. I thought hard, and felt certain the damage hadn’t been there when Marissa drove the car at Eastland.
“This dent,” I said. “I don’t think it was here before.”
Troy came over and studied it, standing behind me and looking over my shoulder.
“Who knows?” he said. “The car went headfirst into the pond. It’s possible it hit a rock or something on the bottom. Or those boys who dragged it out could have banged it up. They’re not exactly brain surgeons with that wrecker.”
“Was there anything else inside? Anything that might make you think a crime had been committed?”
Troy laughed. “After all that time? Nothing. Mother Nature has wiped it all away. If anything had ever been there in the first place.” He patted the car again. “What we have here is a mystery. A family suffers the loss of their daughter, they move away, but they leave the car behind in a pond in another county. And they don’t report it stolen or make an insurance claim on the vehicle. It seems suspicious as shit, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe they junked the car because it was too painful to see.”
“You can give a car to charity,” Troy said. “And they moved away. They could have left it here. They’d never have to see it again.”
“I still don’t understand something,” I said.
“What?”
“What is your interest in all of this?” I asked. “You talk to Nate, and Marissa’s death comes up. But you don’t tell him you’re coming here. Apparently you didn’t tell him about the car. You didn’t want me to tell anyone, even though I had to guess that on my own. And you borrowed these keys for one night only. We’re doing all this cloak-and-dagger stuff out here on government property. Why? Why do you care about Marissa or this car?”
Troy walked past me just then. He bent down and looked at the dent in the fender, the one I had been examining. As he stared at it, I tried to place something in my mind, something Laurel had said when we were in Hanfort. But it didn’t come back to me.
“I don’t know,” he sai
d. “Something isn’t right here. And I guess I feel like I should have seen it when we found the car. But that was just as I was retiring, and I didn’t press it. I was a little burned out, I guess. One foot out the door. When Nate told me about you, I thought it was an invitation from the universe to hand this off to someone who might really pursue it and find out what happened. I figured that guy might be you.” He turned back to me. “Some cops retire, and they never think twice about cases they worked. They never think again about the job. Other cops stay up at night worrying about things they might have missed. I guess I’m a stay-up-at-night kind of old cop. This stuck in my brain for some reason. Something’s not right about it.”
“But you said I couldn’t tell anyone about it.”
“I said you can’t mention my involvement. You can’t tell anyone I brought you here. But since you were already looking, I thought this might connect some dots for you.”
“Maybe. But why is it still here?” I asked. “Why hasn’t it been disposed of or auctioned?”
“They keep them for a year or so. They’ll be getting rid of it soon. They’ll junk it since it’s so trashed. I doubt it would run or do anybody any good.”
“They’ll just get rid of it, huh?” I said, staring at the car.
“That’s the way it goes. But we need to get out of here now. We’ve been here too long.”
“Wait,” I said. “Can I just have a minute? Just one minute?”
“No, we need to—”
“Just one minute.”
Troy looked at me like I was nuts. And then he looked at his watch.
“One minute,” he said.
I expected him to leave me alone, but he didn’t. He stood over by the garage door and waited, his hand resting on the handle.
I walked away from him toward the driver’s side of the car. Over the previous two weeks, I’d realized I didn’t possess many tangible things that tied me directly to Marissa. Some letters and cards. A few gifts she’d given me that I’d carried with me from place to place. But that was about it. No clothes. No lock of hair. Nothing I could hold in my hand and say, “This is a piece of her.” The car was the closest thing, an object I closely, intensely associated with her. A physical place we occupied together when we were happiest and most in love.
I tugged on the door handle, but it didn’t budge. I wished I could take the whole car with me. Possess it. Have it. But I knew there was no way.
I heard Troy tapping his foot.
I reached out and touched the car one more time, and then we left.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The noise woke me just after midnight.
I’d fallen asleep with the newspaper articles from Hanfort scattered across the bed. I’d pored over them and stared at them again, expecting something to jump out and tell me what I needed to know. I felt the same way I’d felt in high school, studying for a math exam. Symbols and numbers danced before my eyes then, a messy jumble refusing to cohere.
Connect the dots, Troy said.
But the dots I saw didn’t make sense. Something was missing.
I didn’t know what really drove Marissa away, both from her life and from me.
These thoughts cycled through my brain as I came awake. I’d been dreaming of Marissa, seeing her face again. The two of us in a park, holding hands, walking together.
Even though the dream was heartbreakingly real and painful, I wanted it to go on forever.
But then something thumped in the other room.
I sat up and waited, blinking sleep away. I looked down at the floor. Riley lifted his head, one ear cocked. He’d heard the noise as well, and it was enough of a concern that he actually rose to his feet and stared in the direction of the other room.
“What is it, boy?” I asked. “Was that in the parking lot?”
He remained frozen for a long moment, and then he turned to look at me.
I let my head fall back against the pillow. As soon as I did, the noise came again.
“Shit.” I sat up.
Someone was in the other room. I felt certain.
I reached for my phone, prepared to dial 911.
Then whoever was out there called my name.
“Nick? Are you there?”
Did I know the voice? I stood up and moved.
“Who’s there?” I asked, standing at the door of my bedroom.
The lights were still out all over the apartment, but when I looked toward the living room, I saw one of my windows open, the curtains lifting and falling in the cold night breeze. When I’d come home from seeing Troy, snow flurries were blowing across the road, cutting through the beams of my headlights. I felt the chill entering the apartment.
I looked around, trying to find whoever had called my name. I held the phone in my right hand, ready to dial.
“I’m calling the police,” I said. “Where are you?”
Riley came and stood by my side. He made a low whining sound in his throat.
“Heather? Is that you?”
Then the person emerged from the darkness by the front door. She stepped into a shaft of light that spilled across the living room from the parking lot. The slender body, the long legs. The graceful movements. As she revealed more of herself, I felt my body going into overdrive. Heart pumping. Sweat flowing. A ridge of bumps up my arms and down my back.
“Nick?” she said. “It’s me.”
I leaned against the doorjamb for support. I nearly dropped the phone on Riley’s head.
“Marissa?” I asked. “Oh, Jesus, Marissa, it’s you.”
She bent down near the couch and flipped on a lamp.
When the light hit her, illuminating her, I knew it was true.
Marissa. She was there, right in front of me. Like a dream.
“Oh, God, honey, it’s you,” I said, stepping forward. Rushing forward.
And then she held up her hand, took two steps backward.
“No, Nick,” she said. “I’m not Marissa.”
I froze, studying her. I saw the subtle differences. She was shorter. Her face rounder. The hair not quite as fiery red.
“It’s me, Nick. You remember me, don’t you? It’s been a lot of years, but you must remember me. We were practically family back then.”
And then I understood. I knew who she was.
“Wow,” I said, standing in the middle of the room frozen in place like a man made of stone, every system in my body still in overdrive. “Yes, I do recognize you, Jade.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I looked over at the open window. The curtains settled back against the wall as the cold breeze died.
“Jade, why did you come in that way?”
She followed my gaze, her face unperturbed. “I had to be careful. I didn’t know what I was coming into.”
“Careful? I almost called the police.”
She turned her head back toward me. “That’s not really what I’m afraid of. Do you mind if I sit?”
Before I answered, she was moving. She wore jeans, running shoes, and a zip-up Windbreaker with a logo I didn’t recognize. While she settled onto the couch, I walked over and closed the window, locking out the cold air.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
Riley sniffed her hand, and then Jade started petting him. He gave in right away. His ears went back and his tail thumped against the floor. The poor sucker trusted everybody.
“Why don’t you sit, Nick?” she said.
I came closer to the couch but didn’t sit. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? All of it.”
“I do want to tell you all of it. That’s why I want you to sit. It’s not a short story.”
“Have you been following me?”
“No.”
“But you’ve been around, close to me. You were at the funeral down in Richmond, ri
ght? You came to the cemetery and then to the Russells’ house?”
Jade leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Something passed across the surface of her face, a small change that gradually grew. Her chin puckered, and her eyes filled with tears.
“What is it?” I asked, but I already knew.
The physical similarities. Her appearance at the cemetery and the house.
Someone claiming to be Emily’s birth mother.
Emily Russell.
“Your daughter?” I asked.
Jade nodded her head, and then buried her face in her hands. Her body shook with sobs. Riley looked at me, encouraging me to do something. I took a step forward, but Jade deserved more, so I sat on the couch next to her, pulled her to me, letting her cry on my shoulder. She smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke, and the sobs continued to shake her body with great force.
After a few moments, she calmed a bit, and between deep breaths she said to me, “My baby, Nick. They killed my sweet baby girl.”
* * *
We sat that way for a good long while until Jade slowly gathered more and more of herself. I went to the bathroom and found a box of tissues and brought them back. She accepted them and wiped at her face, smearing her eye makeup across her cheeks. I felt as helpless as every man feels in the presence of a crying woman, so I did the only other thing I could think to do. I went to the kitchen and poured her a glass of water.
As I did, I sifted through my memories of Jade. She had just told me we were like family, but I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. A kind of family, I guessed. She was three years younger than Marissa and me, and the two of them always had the kind of love-hate relationship common to most siblings. To be honest, I didn’t think about Jade a great deal when Marissa and I dated. I didn’t pay much attention to anyone else besides Marissa. Jade was the somewhat annoying and very precocious younger sister of my college girlfriend. I saw her life in broad strokes. She studied a lot and, according to Marissa, partied a lot. She visited Eastland a couple of times, sleeping in Marissa’s dorm room or house, acting a little wide-eyed at the flurry of activity and craziness on a college campus. But our own relationship was limited to snarky asides and teasing jokes, an unspoken acknowledgment that in some ways we were both competing for Marissa’s attention.
