Paper Ghosts_A Novel of Suspense

by Julia Heaberlin

  “Just give me that gun.”

  “Why?” But, to my relief, he hands it over.

  I empty out the bullets. I use my sack to wipe Carl’s prints off the gun. Then I throw the bullets and gun as far as I can into the woods. Not brilliant, but it will do. The rain is starting to fall harder again. It will help clean things up.

  I’m getting much more efficient with one hand. I look at Marco’s shoe. A lot of blood, but Carl just winged him. What a baby.

  “Take their picture, Carl. Then let’s go.”

  “You can’t abandon us here in the middle of nowhere,” Fred whines. “Creeks could rise. We could drown.”

  I check their rope. A snug, wet snake. “Don’t worry. We wouldn’t leave you here to die.”

  “That’s sarcastic,” Carl tells them. “She’s not as nice as she looks. She’s mean as a hornet.”

  66

  “Oh, geez,” Carl complains. “Now she stinks like well water.”

  That’s all it takes to remind me that even though Carl didn’t point his gun at my head or tie me to a pine tree, he’s not benign.

  The lady in the rain is sitting in the backseat again, apparently after mucking around in Carl’s well. I don’t want to think about what this means. I wonder where Walt is. Marco and Fred are yelling their heads off outside the window, struggling against the rope, as Carl turns the key in the ignition. Rain sloshes down the windshield. Barfly’s whine is set to A-sharp.

  I want to plug my fingers in my ears but I know that won’t erase the noise. Ever since I hurled a sack at the heads of those men, I’ve been attempting to hold back a flood of emotions and doubts about how deep the moral scar will be when I’m done with Carl. My gut feels like it’s being torn apart. My head, beating with questions.

  Carl is reversing into the narrow road of pine walls where he tore a shrieking scratch across the side of the truck less than twenty-four hours ago.

  “Shut the f up!” Carl is yelling at the backseat. I don’t want him fighting with a ghost while he attempts this maneuver. As much as I’m itching to ask questions about her, I turn around: “Please leave Carl alone right now, OK?”

  “Don’t worry. She’ll leave. She hates my driving.” During the ten terrifying minutes it takes for Carl to back out an eighth of a mile, I wish I could slip through metal into the wind, too.

  By the time he spins us onto a more decent road, my teeth are hurting from gritting them so hard. The back fender of the truck is wrecked. The good news is that I almost immediately see a cell tower peeking out of the trees up ahead, outlined against a blue-gray patch of transitioning sky. So we aren’t as buried alone in here as I thought.

  “Good job.” I’ve been praising Carl every couple of minutes no matter what he bangs into. We’re back on James Dean Drive, and he’s navigating the loopy road at the pace of a John Deere tractor. I’m worried about when he’ll jam on the gas. I try to peer over the edge of the ravine to the junkyard cemetery, but it is too overeaten with kudzu.

  “Where are we going now?” Carl asks.

  I think about the two men we’ve left back there in the mud. The pressure of my timeline. Carl is supposed to be back at Mrs. T’s tomorrow by midnight. If he isn’t, she will most certainly call the police. She’ll lie about why he’s missing but still blame me. Anything to keep the money coming.

  “We can go wherever you want,” I say. “Wherever Walt wants. I need to make a call, OK?” I pick up Carl’s gold iPhone glittering on the console.

  Carl’s mouth twitches. “You aren’t worried about somebody finding us through that thing?”

  “I’ll be fast.” I’m thinking that people seem to be tailing me without a problem, no matter what I do. I had to have missed another tracker. Were Fred and Marco following me since the beach? Was Gretchen in on it? Or had her grief and guilt blinded her to a bastard who swore marriage vows while knowing he let Violet, her best friend, sink into the murky Gulf?

  The phone trembles in my hand as I stab out the number.

  When I hear Andy’s steady voice on the other end of the line, I feel a rush of gratefulness. A warm hand on my cheek.

  “Thank God,” he says. “Are you OK?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Feldman with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are my guys correct that you left a hospital with him in Alpine with a splint on your arm?”

  “What guys? FBI guys? You were really following me?”

  “You didn’t think I was going to leave you out there on your own, did you? They caught hell for losing you. A truck jackknifed in front of them. I’m tracing this call, OK? But I’m going to keep talking. The license plate you asked me to run was a rental to a Marco Barone out of the Woodlands. His name popped up in my computer as someone who was a witness way back in a Galveston disappearance. Violet Santana. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Yes. He and a friend of his are ready to be picked up.”

  Dead silence.

  “OK,” he says. “If you’re not going to add to that right away, I will just keep talking. I’m reluctant to make you feel justified in any way whatsoever, but your poking around is giving life to the Vickie Higgins case in Calvert. The woman who gave Vickie’s husband an alibi—his second wife, it turns out—walked into the police department yesterday. She admitted she lied about where he was the afternoon wife number one was killed. Apparently, a little chat with a serial killer and his nutcase daughter scared the shit out of her the other day. Now she’s having nightmares about a wedding veil smothering her. I’m guessing all of this means something to you.”

  When I’m silent, he continues.

  “So Feldman probably isn’t guilty of killing either Vickie Higgins in Calvert or Violet Santana in Galveston, correct?”

  “No. It seems not.”

  “And these are two cases you connected to Feldman, correct? Are you going to give me a clue what you know about Violet?”

  Two of my three red dots on the map, eliminated. Redeemed. I’m struggling to remember how much I told Andy a year ago while I was looped up on a Lemon Drop martini and how much he has figured out on his own.

  I do know when he uses the word correct in a question, it’s not sweet talk to a former lover. I’m an interview subject. A lead. Useful. Why he hasn’t stopped me. Still, I’m going to have to trust him a little.

  “Do you still think Carl Feldman killed your sister?” he asks.

  And there it is. The big, ugly question.

  The forest is crawling by. Carl seems like he’s in a daze. We are still only a couple of miles from the clearing where we left two killers.

  “I have your location,” Andy says.

  I hang up. Then I text Carl’s recording of Fred and Marco to Andy’s number. I hesitate over the picture of them roped to a tree. Then I send that, too.

  “What are you doing with the phone?” Carl asks suspiciously.

  “I’m turning it off.” And I do.

  * * *

  —

  The windshield wipers are beginning to squeak. The rain, letting up. Ahead, the sky is light. Once we’re on a smooth section of highway, Carl swings us over to the shoulder. I take the wheel. His eyes are glazed. I’d rather drive with one arm than worry about him falling asleep or forgetting that he’s driving.

  If I keep it to forty-five miles an hour with a crunched fender and friendly, blinking taillights, if I scoot over for every trucker rumbling by at eighty-five, I think things will be fine. Carl hasn’t told me yet where he wants to go, so I’m just trying to keep myself on the right side of the yellow line using one hand.

  I’m battling any doubts about giving up by reciting the Moscow Rules in my head, a mantra of John le Carré. My trainer used to bark them at me when I was at my lowest, a rat at his feet.

  Trust your gut.

  Assume nothing.

  Everyone is potentially under opposition control.

  Don’t look back; you are never completely alone.

/>   “Walt wants some collard greens and black-eyed peas,” Carl announces.

  Lull them into a sense of complacency.

  “OK,” I agree. “Where? I need my bearings.”

  “We like the Pickett House up at the next exit in Woodville. I used to go there with my aunt and uncle. Mashed potatoes, biscuits, fried chicken. Real food.”

  Vary your pattern and stay within your cover. Go with the flow; blend in.

  I’m not sure what my cover is anymore. I’m filthy. Smelly. And I can’t remember the rest of the Moscow Rules.

  I begin to mentally number a new list in my head.

  I stop at No. 1.

  Seven years before Rachel disappeared, Carl stood in front of my house and snapped a picture of my sister on the roof. He had to see a five-year-old me through his lens, too.

  67

  Carl saved me.

  It really is his most brilliant play yet.

  It takes me all the way to the Pickett House to figure that out and to push away feeling grateful.

  I slip my hand into the Hawaiian sack and bring out the old photograph of my sister balancing on our roof. I lay it on the plastic tablecloth near my amber-filled iced tea glass that reminds me of my mother’s whiskey.

  I slide the photo toward Carl, who is shoveling black-eyed peas into his mouth. His plate is loaded with fried chicken, gravy, greens. There’s something obscene about his appetite, like he’ll never get enough.

  We’re sitting at the end of a long picnic-style table with a grim old East Texas farmer who probably slaughters wild pigs for pleasure. Right now, he has no interest in us.

  If he knew what Carl was, the information I was trying to dig out of him, I think he’d retrieve his shotgun from his pickup and take care of business for me.

  “I found this in the drawer in your aunt’s sewing cabinet.” I keep my voice low.

  “That girl’s about to fly,” Carl replies.

  “Did you take this photograph?”

  “A spontaneous classic. Almost made it into my book.”

  “Do you know this girl’s name?”

  “Have no idea.”

  “Right,” I say sarcastically. “Her name is Rachel. She’s my sister.”

  “Well, there’s a coincidence. Is that why you think I killed her?”

  “Carl, you led me to this picture. You know whose house this is.”

  “Sure. My cousin’s.”

  A grim chill rolls over me. “What was your cousin’s name?” I can’t bear to think we’re related, that Carl’s blood runs in mine. In Rachel’s.

  He pulls over a small bowl sloppy with peach cobbler. “Edie is what we called her. She was a lot older than I was. We didn’t get along.”

  I snap to. “You mean Edna? Edna Zito?” My Edna? Nursing home Edna? The Edna who lived in the house before us?

  “Edie, Edna. We called her Ed, too, when we wanted to bug her. What difference does it make? The day I showed up, she’d already moved away. A little girl in the front yard told me that the lasagna lady didn’t live there anymore. And then the kid on the roof jumped. Total chaos.”

  I was that little girl on the lawn. That whole afternoon is a blur—neighbors, an ambulance, my mother on the ground alternately cuddling my sister and screaming at her. Now I know that Carl was there, too.

  “Is there a particular reason you were visiting your cousin Edna?” I struggle to keep my voice even.

  He glares at me for a few seconds. “Oh, what the hell. In honor of your sister, I’ll throw you a bone. Edie was blackmailing me. After my uncle died, I put that photo of the Marys out there as mine. It ran in an international photo magazine. Won a little prize. Edie had one of my uncle’s original prints. She’d been threatening to expose me for months. People weren’t as forgiving back then. There was a code. I’m not saying I don’t regret it. I’m damn good on my own.”

  I let this sink in. Unromantic, despicable, with the ring of truth.

  “You still let them print The Marys in your book.” I don’t keep the contempt out of my voice. “Your published book.”

  “That was years later. My editor insisted. Everybody loves a prize winner.” He shrugs. “A small risk. I’d searched her room at the nursing center a few days after I shot this picture of Supergirl. And her house, top to bottom.” He pauses. “Your house at the time, I suppose.”

  I’d dreamed of Carl’s fingers roaming our drawers. Fingers that stank of darkroom fixer. Tainting my sister’s things. My things. Were we home? Sleeping?

  Rachel’s photograph is still flat on the blue-checked tablecloth, facing Carl. He couldn’t know that her Superwoman cape was made out of an old flowered sheet inherited from our grandmother. He couldn’t see the clothespins clipping it to the shoulders of her T-shirt or the purple stain when she spilled grape juice in bed the year before.

  “Tell me,” I say coolly, tapping the picture, “is this also the day you started stalking my sister?”

  Carl shoves his bowl away. “You have it all wrong,” he grumbles. “Don’t push.”

  A weird calm settles over me. You think I’d be boiling with frustration and rage, reaching across the table, curling my fingers around his neck. Even the farmer with his knotted arms should not be unable to pull me off of him.

  Instead, I don’t move. I press my hips harder into the wood bench.

  It is on my lips to ask Carl: What did you do with Rachel’s body?

  But now I know he wants me to.

  I know Carl has a lie all ready to go. So I don’t.

  Tomorrow will be different.

  Tomorrow, this is going to end.

  Carl is smiling at me across the table. “Did you sleep under a little bedspread with blue unicorns?”

  68

  It is one minute past midnight on my cheap watch.

  D-Day. The day I’m supposed to return Carl to Mrs. T’s or decide to kill him instead. The day I round up the final answers so I can bury my sister properly in the Weatherford cemetery where she twirled and flew and lived forever young just like Peter Pan. I’ve already bought her a plot that opened up twenty feet from Sophronia’s under a beautiful live oak tree. I’ve picked out her epitaph.

  The clock is ticking while Carl and I stand still. We’re laid up at a tacky motel named the Ten-Star, a little outside of Fort Worth. Carl is on the other side of the adjoining door, chattering away to Walt, to Barfly, to his wet lady ghost, who knows.

  He hasn’t spoken to me since right after we ate. I’d refused to take him on a hike at the nearby Big Thicket preserve so he could witness the work of a rare carnivorous plant called the Texas trumpet pitcher. He seemed to have completely forgotten our surreal to and fro over fried chicken minutes earlier. He wanted to shoot the trumpet pitcher with his new iPhone.

  “It’s such a clever damn thing,” Carl had enthused. At first, I thought he was talking about the phone.

  He was referring to the killer trumpet, which lures insects down a long, tall shoot that is like a vase for its sweet nectar. The insects either drown in the water that collects at the bottom or exhaust themselves struggling to climb out the slippery sides. “Their dead bodies are liquefied by enzymes,” Carl informed me. “Just wiped off the planet like they never existed.”

  It made me imagine the inside of his well in the Piney Woods, a basin of green soup with walls cloaked in slime, impossible to scramble up. It reminded me that serial killers have been part of evolution for millions of years.

  “It’s a condition,” he had demanded angrily when I said no.

  “Your conditions are closed,” I replied firmly, “until I know what happened to my sister.”

  In return for my threats, I get silence. I had turned the truck toward Fort Worth, not knowing what I’d do when we got there. In the end, I’d stopped short at this motel dump on the side of the road.

  I walk over and lock the adjoining door. There’s no chain. The Door Jammer is in the truck bed. I’m not sure I could shove it in place with one hand
anyway.

  I tuck the Glock under my pillow.

  * * *

  —

  Carl is looming over my bed. Everything’s dark except for a spooky blue light dancing on his face.

  “Walt thinks he knows where your sister is. He wrote down the address for you.”

  I sit up and switch on the bedside lamp. The faint hee-haws of Family Feud are floating through the adjoining door, which is wide open.

  “Didn’t you hear me? Walt has an address for your sister. I thought you’d be more excited.”

  Carl is holding two things: his iPhone, which is what made him glow in the dark, and a piece of paper ripped from the motel pad. A row of red, white, and blue stars is stamped across the top of the pad. Below that, some scratchy handwriting that doesn’t look like Carl’s.

  I wonder how long Carl has been playing with his phone. How many minutes before Andy or his “guys” track us to this room.

  I reach for the paper Carl’s holding. I can tell by the way he grips it just a little longer than he needs to that he’s still furious with me.

  He wasn’t lying, though. The scribble is an address on a farm-to-market road near Burleson. Not that far out of Fort Worth. Maybe ten miles from the house where Rachel slept beside me, where I last saw her face.

  “Sure, let’s go,” I say casually, as if it’s no big deal. As if we’re heading to the movies or to see a carnivorous plant. “Hand me your phone and I can map it.”

  “Check out of this crap place first,” Carl insists. “We’re not coming back.”

  * * *

  —

  The sky is light with wispy white cloud cover. Mood lighting, my dad used to call it when he got up early to go hunting. The kind of cool light that makes it easier to see where you’re going and harder to put a hole in a pretty animal without any guilt.

  Carl is navigating from the passenger seat, highly entertained by the friendly GPS arrow pointing the way to a red dot.