by Roger Bray
They looked at each other. There was nothing more to say. Talking about it was revealing more details but nothing that would change Alex’s situation for the moment.
Chapter Four
Hazel turned as she reached the end of the driveway to give Alex a final wave, but he had stepped inside and began to close the door. Her smile dropped away a little, she was a little disappointed but happy that they would soon be together again and back to the life that they should have been living before she had messed it up.
She had had a lot of time to consider what had happened and, while she recognized that, for whatever reason, her mental state had been thrown out of whack, she alone was responsible for not trying to fix the problem before it had reached such a godawful state.
Everyone had offered help, everyone that saw she was suffering stepped up and tried to help. Alex? If she could have described her perfect mate, the man she would trust above all else to be there for her, to help her when she needed it, it was Alex. And she had quite willfully tried to blow that relationship away. Why? She had no idea. Maybe her feelings for herself had tried to destroy what they had in a self-fulfilling prophecy that proved her worst fears about her worthlessness to be true.
Whatever it was, the sex with Nicholas wasn’t as good as with Alex, the relationship with Nicholas was a pale shadow of what she’d had with Alex. Nicholas was wealthy, polite, and attentive and he wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t her man. He never would be, and the most stupid thing was that she had known that all along. When she had first got together with Nicholas and announced to Alex that she was leaving, she knew she was making a terrible mistake. Even when the words came out, she knew that she was somehow sleepwalking toward a disaster. But with each step she couldn’t stop, the whole debacle took on a life of its own and, at times, she felt like an outside observer, watching this stupid woman take a wrecking ball to her perfect life. An explosive spiral from which she couldn’t escape. But the little voice had been silenced or at least pushed way off into the background like a half-remembered memory to remain grumbling at her until at last her true self had returned and the truth of her reality had crashed through the shaky facade she had tried to build.
Guilty and feeling stupid. How could she face her friends and family again, knowing what they were thinking, or what she would be thinking if she were an outsider watching someone else’s train wreck of a life, rather than the reckless engineer, pushing the throttle to the stops, caring little for the consequences?
But her meeting with Alex had dispelled nearly all of her fears. She still felt stupid and guilty but to be sitting in their kitchen, in boring domestic normalcy was uplifting and reassuring to her. His words, his concern, and his forgiveness had done more to reset her mind against the stupidity of the past months than anything she could think of. The tears she had shed were a sign of happiness, and a relief that he had not rejected her outright, which she had half expected in her negativity.
But he hadn’t; he had accepted her frailty and embraced her, taking her back without a second thought and more than ever she realized how much she loved him, how much she wanted him and to be with him. And she would be soon. The only cloud on her horizon was the conversation she had to have with Nicholas.
She pressed the button on the key she held and there was a soft “beep” and a single flash of the turn signals as the Volvo unlocked. Hazel was shivering slightly and glad to be getting into the car to warm up as soon as possible but, as she stepped around the door, she glanced down the street. In the darkness between the street lights she saw, parked and in its own patch of darkness, Nicholas’s E-class, its silver paint work dulled to a metallic gray by the shadows.
Her heart sank as she looked at the distinctive shape of the hood and hesitated before moving her gaze up to the windshield where, when she did, she could clearly see Nicholas’s silhouette in the driver’s seat.
“Shit…” she muttered, “Shit, shit, shit.” And she slowly closed the door of her Volvo and walked toward the Mercedes.
As she reached the car, the driver’s door opened and Nicholas Rowe got out, smiling sadly at her. He stepped forward and stopped, leaning back onto the side guard, looking at her.
“Nicholas…” she started before he raised his hands to stop her.
Hazel realized that he was embarrassed, of what she wasn’t yet sure but when he spoke she knew.
“I’m sorry,” he began, “I had no intention of parking up like this and spying on you.”
“Why are you here, Nicholas?”
He laughed, “Why, because I’m parking up and spying on you of course.”
The forced laughter didn’t help the mood, Hazel was now feeling guiltier, and she didn’t want a situation to develop where Nicholas and Alex would confront each other out here in the street. This is not the way she had wanted this to go down at all. She knew that the only person to blame here was herself and she did not want to hurt anyone but in these circumstances, someone always gets hurt and she would be naïve to think that it could have turned out otherwise.
“I drove around for a while after you went out. I sort of knew that you would be coming here and wasn’t going to do this, believe me, but I needed to know if you were here. Whether that means good or bad news for me, I still don’t know but, I didn’t want to do this, be like this, some kind of stalker creeping around the place. I was going to have a quick look, but then I saw your car parked there and I stopped only for a moment, but then you came out and here we are.”
“Yes, we are,” Hazel agreed, “but I don’t want to do this here.”
She smiled and touched him briefly on the cheek, he took her hand and smiled back at her before exclaiming, “Your hand is freezing,” he reached out and touched her cheek, realizing that she was shivering slightly in the cold evening.
“You’re right, let’s not stand here freezing to death. Do you want to come back home?”
He meant his home, the home he had opened up to her, but which he knew would be his only again soon enough.
Hazel hesitated, she was standing outside what she again considered her home, but didn’t want to make that distinction now.
She nodded, as that had been her intention all along. To go back to Nicholas and tell him she was leaving him to return to Alex. Seeing him parked in the street had thrown her but now she could get that back on track and have a civilized conversation with him. Do this like adults with dignity and once it was done, at least Nicholas and Alex, could move on without guilt.
“That would be nice, I’m freezing out here. You go ahead, and I’ll follow you.”
“OK, I’ll see you there,” he leaned forward to kiss her, but she turned her head to offer her cheek, he kissed it, but the gesture had already told him how the conversation at his home was going to go. He pulled back and smiled at her briefly before getting into the E-class, starting it, pulling out, and driving off leaving Hazel standing on the side of road.
“Shit,” she thought, shaking her head, that wasn’t good.
She was leaving him, she was leaving and going back to her husband and now he knew, there was no doubt in her mind that he knew. No matter how civilized Nicholas was both of their emotions would be running high and she did not want their relationship to end with an argument. It was unfair on him. He had done nothing wrong, except maybe to move in on a married woman when he had the chance; but she’d let him, encouraged him and left Alex for him, so she couldn’t blame him.
“Oh well,” she thought, “I’ll go to his house, have the talk, pack my things and leave.”
She walked back to the Volvo and got in. She started it up, the lights came on and with a quick flick of the turn signal, she pulled out and drove down the road, she had already traveled about seventy-five yards when she realized that she could hardly see through the wind shield; she turned the heater and fan up to full and directed it onto the windshield, and once she turned on the air conditioner to draw in the moisture as well by the time Hilyard Street tu
rned into 6th Avenue the windshield was clear. She continued through Eugene passed the back of the 5th Street Public Market and toward Highway 99 when the feeling of unease in her increased. The confrontation with Nicholas, if that’s what it could be called, was not what she had wanted to happen.
She suddenly felt that she should go back to Alex that night. It seemed silly to drive all the way out to Nicholas’s house on the north shore of Fern Ridge Lake to have an argument with him, pack a few things, turn around, and drive back again.
There was nothing in what Nicholas had said, or anything in his manner but she felt sick.
Through the northern outskirts of Eugene and now on Highway 99 she looked for somewhere to pull over to call Alex and tell him of her fears and ask if she could come straight back. Then she’d ring Nicholas and tell him that she had changed her mind and wouldn’t be coming over that night. She could make an excuse, although she didn’t think that he would believe her, and maybe she could go over in a couple of days. She wondered if she could talk Alice into going with her for moral support.
Alex would, she had no doubt, say yes straight away, but she thought it only fair to give him a chance to think events through for a little while before his wayward wife turned up again.
By the time she had made the decision she was almost out of town and she pulled over onto the side of the road opposite Empire Park. She looked around regretting that she hadn’t made the decision a couple of miles earlier where there were lights and a few late-night eateries. Here there weren’t even proper street lights. Through the gloom she could barely make out the wrecker’s yard on the far side of the rail road tracks but there wasn’t much else.
Hazel was one of those people that liked to walk around while she talked on the phone, no matter what the conversation was about, walk around and wave her free hand around, she never used hands free as she it felt that it was discourteous, if you are talking to someone then give them your full attention. However cold the evening might be Hazel decided to get out and make the call outside the car, she reached into the back seat to pull her heavy parka toward her so she could put it on as soon as she got out, folding it in her lap and reached across for her cell phone from off the passenger seat next to her where she had put it earlier, she pressed the home button to see how good the cell signal was and nothing, the screen remained black, not only blank, but dead.
A sinking feeling came over her as she pressed the power button and a sad battery blinked onto the screen before the phone used up the last of its reserves and died for good until it could be recharged.
“Oh shit, you have to be kidding me!” Hazel could have cried as she threw her phone back onto the passenger seat. She considered plugging it into the charger but knew from experience that it would take at least twenty minutes to have a usable charge and given the cell signal could be a little weak in patches out this way she would probably need more as her phone tried to connect to a tower.
OK, so two choices: go back to Alex now, or keep going out to Nicholas’s as planned. For all her fears, he had not actually said or done anything to make her feel afraid of how he might react. He had been his usual, polite self, it was the thought of being out there at his house, which was a little isolated from its neighbors, that worried her a little, but she reasoned that there was no reason at all for her fears.
She looked ahead at the dark road leading toward the turn off down Clearlake Road and passing the airport to Nicholas’s or, she looked in the rear-view mirror, where she could see the lights of the subway by the side of the highway, back into town, to Alex. With a nervous laugh, Hazel convinced herself that she was being irrational, Nicholas wouldn’t hurt her, she had never even seen him angry. And with a last accusing look at her cell phone, she threw her heavy coat onto the back seat, started the car and continued north out of town.
Chapter Five
Steve couldn’t hear much of the conversation, but he could see Alice pacing as she spoke to Hazel’s mom.
Isabel Harding still lived in Eugene, where she had been born, married, and raised Hazel, her only child. Her husband had passed away six years earlier, and Isabel had stayed living in the sprawling family home on the far side of Amazon Park. She had never said it, but she had always hoped for a brood of grandchildren to spend the holidays in the big house, and that had been the main reason she stayed there. Much too big for one person. The dream of the grandchildren was now gone but Isabel remained, hanging onto the happy memories that she had of her husband but now, more importantly, of Hazel.
When Alice rang Isabel, she had been pleased to hear her voice. They had been close and supportive of each other when Hazel first went missing, even more so when Alex was charged, Isabel united with Alice in her defense of him, determined her daughter should be found, doubtful that Alex had anything to do with it and, resentful that the police and the DA seemed determined to pursue Alex at all costs and to the detriment of anything else. Sightings of Hazel up and down the Oregon coast and into Northern California, initially followed up were ignored when the DA fixated on Alex and began the proceedings against him. The prosecution was convinced that it was case closed, and all that was now needed was the bother of a trial and an actual verdict.
She never believed the guilty verdict and supported Alex and Alice in any way that she could but as they moved through the appeals process, the doubts had started. Still not believing Alex guilty she almost inevitably reached a point where she couldn’t see an alternate story which explained Hazel’s disappearance. She could not bring herself to believe that Hazel would not have contacted her if she were still alive.
They had never argued, not once, Hazel’s terrible teens had been non-existent, and she had never been a worry to Isabel. So, to explain Hazel’s absence, the jury’s verdict of the DA’s narrative seemed to be the only viable one and slowly, after the last appeal, she had cut herself off from Alex and Alice and spent her days living in one room of the ten available to her, spending her days in the kitchen rearranging photo albums and scrap books about the only subject she cared about: Hazel.
Alice was worried about ringing until Isabel answered with a cherry hello when she realized who it was on the phone. Even so, and with some guilt that she hadn’t been in contact for quite a while, Alice spent some time talking about mundane things before raising the subject of the car. To her surprise, Isabel was not alarmed and didn’t ask any questions why she would be asking after three years. Alice got the impression that Isabel didn’t care and was glad when the older woman gave her permission to approach the police to get permission to have the vehicle re-inspected; she promised to send through a letter with her signature telling them so. Alice hung up with a sincere promise to call round and see her soon.
*****
“I’m going to have to go for a drive tomorrow and see an old friend of mine.” Steve said after Alice had told him that they had permission to inspect Hazel’s car.
“From the army.”
Steve nodded, “Phil Worthington, he was the best forensic scientist that I ever worked with, not only could he look at a crime scene and give you everything that you could want, with a bit more time he could tell you what the perp was wearing and what he’d had for breakfast.”
She looked at him unsure if he was pulling her leg or not before he relented.
“Well maybe not that far, but he can certainly work a crime scene and looking over Hazel’s car would be a fairly easy task for him.”
“And he will get what we need?”
“What we need, I have no idea? He’ll get what he can, if there’s something there, I have faith that Phil will find it. He can put the smallest clues together and then give an honest opinion based on those facts; he has a real knack of giving an investigator a workable scenario built up from the facts that he has.”
“Like what happened?”
“What is likely to have happened, or what could have happened based on the facts, and maybe, more importantly, what couldn’t have.”
/> “He gave it up?”
“Phil did the job for a lot of years and it probably burned him out a bit, too many bodies from drunken liaisons, too many beaten women and a few men, homicides, spree killers, serial killers: too many bloody remains after bad decisions; drunks, drunk drivers, drunken idiots in general, male and female. I suppose that when you spend a lot of years picking apart people’s stupidity and trying to make sense of it, it does take a chunk of a person’s soul and flushes it.”
“I thought you said that he was a forensic scientist in the army, how would he do all those things?”
“That and more; rapes, beatings, burglaries. Anything that a civil cop might see military investigators see situations just as bad. There are a lot of people in the military, most want to serve, some, a few, are common or garden assholes same as in the general population. Some people think of the military as above reproach, it’s ‘All American Boys’ dreaming of Mom’s apple pie, but some would beat Mom, rape her, and steal her apple pie. I think Phil had enough of it and left.”
“You make it sound as if he has hidden himself away.”
“He has, or at least when he left the army he went a bit off the grid; I think he was looking for solitude rather than isolation He still does work, but on his own terms.”
“He cracked up?”
Steve shook his head, “No, not cracked up, I think that he reached a point where he had had enough violence in his life, he had seen the worst that people could throw at each other and he wanted to leave that behind and have a quieter life, he wanted to find the good again. And if that meant sitting on a log and staring all day at a squirrel or woodchuck then he would be happy to do that.”
“And you know where he is?”
Steve nodded, “After he left Fort Bragg, he bought a hundred acres up near Morton in Washington State, he’s always telling me to drop by and share a beer or two. I think this might be a good time to give him a ring and let him know that I’m coming. I’ll take a drive up there tomorrow and have a chat with him. I’ll probably be gone a couple of days.”
