After the sheriff was inside, Matthew smiled and said aloud to himself, “Now, that should be interesting.” He then turned and continued walking north.
At Second Street, he stopped and crossed over to the west side of the street. He then headed south for about twenty-five feet to a large mound of dirt next to a hole in the sidewalk in front of Rhonda’s Bridal & Floral. There was a lot of mud on the sidewalk flowing from the pile of dirt, and it now covered Matthew’s shoes. He leaned over and looked down into the hole. He smiled and turned around back toward Second Street. Before walking, he glanced further up Main Street and saw two women crossing Second Street and heading directly toward him. It was Amanda and Chelsea Reese.
Amanda looked in Matthew’s direction, but Chelsea was busy talking to her mother and not looking his way. These two women saw the world through much different eyes. He knew one would see the spinning wheel, and one would see only the space between the spokes. He turned and moved close to the building, stepping directly toward the front window of Rhonda’s Bridal & Floral. He then stepped up and through the glass and stood next to the male manikin in the window display. The manikin was wearing a dazzling white tuxedo—a perfect outfit for any wedding day.
As Chelsea and Amanda passed by the window, Chelsea was at first looking toward her mother but then looked past her mother and saw Matthew standing in the store window. Chelsea immediately stopped on the sidewalk and put her hand in front of her mother to stop her from walking as well.
“Mom, look at that!” Chelsea said, pointing directly at Matthew. “Why is Matthew Duncan standing inside that window?!”
Amanda looked directly where Chelsea had pointed. She was looking right at Matthew, but her expression didn’t change, except that she seemed to be straining to see what Chelsea was looking at. Amanda’s eyes darted back and forth in the general area where Matthew stood next to the manikin.
“What are you talking about, Chelse?” said Amanda. “You think Matthew Duncan looks like that manikin?”
“No!” said Chelsea, pulling her mother closer to the window. The two were now standing only inches from the glass, not more than two feet in front of where Matthew stood on the other side of the glass. “I’m talking about—”
Until that moment, Matthew hadn’t moved at all in the window, but just then he raised his right index finger slowly up to his mouth and across his lips, making the “keep quiet” sign. He also moved his head slightly back and forth. He stared at Chelsea as he did this, and she fell silent.
“Talking about what?” asked Amanda as she glanced at her daughter to see why she’d suddenly stopped talking.
Chelsea stared at Matthew for a few more moments. “I’m…” she began slowly. Matthew continued to shake his head slowly back and forth while keeping his index finger up to his lips.
“You’re what, Chelse?” asked Amanda, looking back and forth between her daughter and the window where she was staring.
“I’m…talking…about how much that manikin looks like Matthew Duncan,” said Chelsea very slowly.
“That’s what I just said, and you said ‘no.’ So which is it?”
“What I meant was—parts of the manikin remind me of Matthew.”
“What?!” exclaimed Amanda as her gaze now shifted solely to the manikin. “Uh, are we talking about the same Matthew Duncan here? I mean you did get a pretty good look at him when he was in the river and at dinner, right? This manikin has light hair and is only a bit taller then either of us. Matthew Duncan is about a foot taller and has dark hair. Exactly which part of this manikin do you think looks like Matthew Duncan?”
Chelsea kept staring at Matthew. He then pointed to his eyes.
“His…eyes,” replied Chelsea.
Amanda studied the manikin’s eyes. They were poorly painted-on blobs of brown color—dull and lifeless. Amanda squinted a bit harder at the manikin’s eyes. She shook her head and looked at her daughter. “His eyes?” asked Amanda. “You think those eyes look like Matthew Duncan’s eyes? Are you serious?” Amanda glanced back to the manikin before turning and nudging Chelsea out of the way. “Let me look from your angle,” she said.
Amanda stood exactly where Chelsea had just been but continued to see only the manikin. She glanced back at her daughter who stood slightly behind her. Chelsea gave her mother a coy smile before looking back at Matthew in the window.
“I don’t get it, Chelse,” said Amanda, turning back to the manikin. “This short manikin with dull brown eyes caught your attention enough to stop you on the street—and you say parts of it remind you of a tall man with brilliant blue eyes?”
When Amanda had finished, Matthew put his hands together into prayer position and then cocked his head to one side and rested it on his hands.
“Sleepy,” said Chelsea after a bit of hesitation, as Matthew nodded in the affirmative. “Yes, their eyes are different colors, but both have eyes that look sort of sleepy to me.”
“Sleepy?” Amanda asked as she once more shook her head and turned away from the window to look at Chelsea. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t see sleepy in Matthew’s eyes. This manikin’s eyes are just plain awful and lifeless, and I don’t see any resemblance at all. Let’s get going. We’ve still got to pick up a few things.”
Amanda started walking toward their intended destination, but Chelsea lingered a bit, looking at Matthew as she started walking backwards from the window.
“I think if anything,” said Amanda loud enough so that Chelsea could hear, “I wouldn’t call Matthew’s eyes sleepy at all. He’s a very handsome man. It’s just too bad that he’s also a murderer.”
At that last remark, Matthew lost his kindly smile and grimaced slightly as he shook his head back and forth and gave a slight good-bye wave to Chelsea.
Chelsea continued watching Matthew while walking backwards in near bewilderment behind her mother. Eventually, when they were too far down the street for Chelsea to see through the glass anymore, Amanda turned around to see why her daughter hadn’t caught up. At that instant, Matthew stepped down from the window, through the glass, and proceeded to walk the other way. Chelsea put her hand over her mouth in surprise; however, Amanda saw nothing but her daughter’s reaction.
“What are you doing?” asked Amanda.
Chelsea kept her hand to her mouth and turned fully toward her mother, keeping her hand lightly on her lips in a mock yawn. “Oh, just getting a bit tired.”
“You have to face away from me to yawn?” asked Amanda.
“I’m a weird teenager. What can I say?” said Chelsea.
The two then turned and began walking together down Main Street—the mother with a slight look of uncertainty and the daughter with her own version of a Mona Lisa smile.
After Matthew left the store window, he headed up Main Street to Second Street, where he paused for a moment before turning left, heading west. Eventually, he passed the last storefront and then the last house in Cottonwood proper. At the town limits, Second Street became County Road 40. Matthew continued heading west. He knew the road well, having traveled it countless times in his youth and as a young man. He knew that just beyond the next hill, the road would turn widely to the north and then curve back to the west around Yampa Mountain. On the northwest side of that mountain, the land opened up into a rich and fertile valley—home of Yamamoto Farms.
Seventy-Eight
The Darkest Ride
Seeing Matthew earlier in the day had given Rebecca a new infusion of hope. As she closed her garage door and pedaled off her driveway up the street, her legs felt powerful. She was bursting with energy, and though she faced only a few-mile bike ride to work, she felt she had the energy to ride a hundred. Things are going to work out, she thought to herself as she left the town behind and headed north up the darkening highway toward the Home. She knew she had to pass by Eddie’s house, but with the infused energy she now felt, if he should somehow interfere with her in any way, she felt confident he would get the worst of t
he interaction.
After a mile or so, Rebecca moved more to the center of the highway, near the yellow dashes and stripes of the lane markers, for no particular reason but that it was completely empty. The air was sweet and clean, scented with the freshness of the damp evergreens lining both sides of the road. Occasional puddles were scattered along the blacktop of the highway, and they glistened like silvery pools as they were caught in the beam of her bike light. She felt alive and energized, looking down at her ring frequently while riding, thinking all the while—I’m going to have faith.
Most people are generally unfamiliar with how quiet an electric car can be, even when it’s very close by. This was exactly the case for Rebecca. She was unfamiliar with the fact that they can sound like nothing at all and can be approaching from behind without a person hearing a thing. It wasn’t the sound of the car that drew Rebecca’s attention, but more of a spatial awareness. Rather than actually hearing anything, Rebecca sensed something was behind her.
As she turned around, she was surprised at how close the car was to her, and even more to her shock and dismay, its headlights were off, and the vehicle was approaching her rapidly—the driver wasn’t slowing. She immediately veered sharply over to the far right, onto the gravel shoulder. She initially thought that perhaps because it was getting dark and the car’s headlights were out, the driver hadn’t seen her. That thought quickly passed as the electric car followed her maneuver—pulling over to the right side of the road and straddling the road and shoulder only twenty feet behind her. She began to pump the pedals as hard as she could, steering wildly back to the center of the road and then veering far over to the left-hand shoulder. Her sudden maneuver momentarily brought her a few more feet of separation, as the electric car slipped a little on the gravel shoulder when the driver also made a quick turn to the left. But the gap quickly closed again, and the car was now less than twenty feet away and closing. It was clear to her that the driver meant to either run her off the road or ram into her.
With the front bumper of the car only a few feet from her back tire, Rebecca glanced down into the dark ravine to her left, and reacting, more than thinking, she aimed directly for it. The ravine was steep and narrow, and she felt certain this was one place the car couldn’t follow her. Her years of mountain biking around Cottonwood had taught her the roughness of the terrain—large rocks were common—and immediately after leaving the highway, she narrowly missed a large one and nearly lost control of her bike as she descended to the bottom of the ravine.
What she hadn’t counted on was the mud. The recent rain had saturated the sandy soil that filled the lowest portion of the ravine. Once her tires hit the wet sand, she felt her bike slow down as though she had hit quicksand. She came close to a complete stop and had no choice but to dismount her bike. Once off, she continued to push her bike forward through the sticky damp sand. She felt she wasn’t moving fast enough, and instinctually she looked up and to her right, confirming her suspicions. The car, still with its headlights off, had pulled up even with her on the road. She pushed the bike harder, no longer daring to look over at the car, but a moment later when she was pushing her hardest, she thought she heard the sound of a car door opening.
She could feel panic setting in. She was almost, but not quite, across the sand to the firmer hillside beyond the ravine, but pushing the bike was slowing her down. She thought for a moment of letting her bike go and running up the hillside on foot. She dared not even take the time to look back to see if someone had actually gotten out of the car and might now be edging down the ravine and approaching her—though her instincts told her this was the case. In a final burst of panic-induced and adrenaline-powered effort, she managed to get the bike across the sand to the firmer soil of the hillside. In one quick motion, she was back on the seat and pedaling hard up the hill.
The terrain was bumpy and her bike light was shaking violently up and down, creating a kind of strobe effect on the ground and dark trees. Once she felt her speed was sufficient, she glanced over her shoulder, and though there were now trees beginning to obscure her view, she thought she could see the dark outline of the car on the highway below—its headlights still out. A few moments later, she glanced again, and she could still see the outline of the car; it seemed to be paralleling her hillside path along the highway below.
It was then that Rebecca realized her bike light, which had been on the whole time, was giving away her position on the hill. She reached down and turned it off, knowing that such an action meant she would now have to ride much slower, as the forest hillside in front of her was almost completely dark. Trees were large towering shadows, and rocks were vague dark-gray blobs. Riding along the rugged hillside in the daytime was dangerous enough—at night without a light was suicidal—but in considering her alternatives, it seemed the least dangerous of her choices. She slowed to nearly a crawl as she pedaled along the hill.
She worked her way at a diagonal to the highway—further away and higher up the hillside. Though moving slowly, she now at least felt an added sense of security with the bike light out, as she was certain the driver of the car could no longer see her position. She gave a passing thought to stopping in the dark and reversing her direction but decided against it, knowing her current direction took her closer to her ultimate destination of the Home.
She had ridden in the dark for close to five minutes when it hit her. It caught her full across the chest, knocking her immediately off the bike and onto the ground. Though she fell hard and was slightly disoriented and out of breath, her adrenaline was still pumping, and she quickly stood and looked around in the darkness. She could barely make out the shadowy outline of the tree branch that had been the culprit. She picked up her bike and, glancing back down through the trees, could see no sign of the car on the dark highway. Either she simply couldn’t see it, or she hoped her tactic of turning off the bike light might have forced the driver to give up and move on. Either way, she knew she wouldn’t be moving back toward the highway anytime soon, but she also knew she wasn’t going to be able to continue riding along the hill in the darkness without risking an even more serious injury.
Still feeling the need to continue moving toward the Home, Rebecca decided the best thing to do was to make progress with her bike along the hillside. She planned to take it slow, keeping far enough away from the highway, back into the forest, so that no one could see her. Eventually, she intended to carefully ease her way back down the hillside to the road and then pedal like crazy—with her bike light off.
After walking for several minutes, her head was clearing, and her sense of panic was diminishing. She realized the smart thing to do would be to phone both work and her mother—to let them know what had happened and approximately where she was. She felt around inside her bike bag for her phone and was dismayed to find the zipper of the bag was open, and both her wallet and phone were gone. She rested her bike on the side of the hill, took off her backpack, and searched inside it as well. She could only find her nursing uniform, personal items, and shoes inside—no cell phone or wallet. She looked back down the dark hillside in the direction she had just come from and realized what had happened. She must have forgotten to zip up the bike bag before leaving her house, and when she was knocked off and the bike toppled over, the cell phone and wallet must have fallen out. Realistically, she knew that in the darkness it would be impossible to find either of them. She would have to make note of this general location and return to search later, during the daylight. For now, there would be no phone calls.
The inability to make a phone call did not change Rebecca’s strategy to make it to work. She knew she would eventually need to make it back to the highway. She simply wanted to be cautious—making certain that whoever was driving the car had given up and moved on. She reasoned they would have no way of knowing exactly where she would emerge from the forest and back onto the highway. She would be exceedingly careful when she did approach the highway and, of course, keep her bike light off.
After walking at least ten more minutes in the dark, she found a spot that looked promising as a point to begin her descent to the highway. There was no particular reason for choosing that exact spot, except for the fact that she’d checked her watch and realized she was already late for work, and that if she could only get back to the highway, she could be at the Home in a matter of minutes.
With her eyes constantly scanning through the trees toward the dark road, she cautiously and slowly moved down the hill. As she cleared the last few trees before getting to the ravine near the highway, she looked first to her left and then to her right up the highway. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness enough to allow her decent visibility for a good distance up and down the highway in both directions. The road seemed clear and quiet.
Rebecca quickly moved down the final few steps of the hillside and into the ravine, across the wet sandy soil at the bottom, and then back up onto the highway. She mounted her bike and began pedaling hard toward the north. She knew the highway well enough to know she had walked far enough along the hillside to have passed the area she dreaded the most—Eddie’s house was now behind her, and it was a clear and clean shot to work. During her walk, she had considered the likelihood that it was Eddie who had attempted to run her off the road. On the surface, it seemed the most probable answer, though she was confused about the car itself. She wasn’t aware of Eddie having an electric car at his disposal; she wasn’t aware that CDEM and Gwendolyn Mercer had come to Cottonwood’s rescue earlier in the day.
Though riding a bike on the highway in the dark without a light was uncomfortable, it was not nearly as bad as being back on the dark, wooded, and rocky hillside. Though the yellow stripes of the highway were now dull gray lines in the darkness, she could see them well enough to guide her along the center of the road. She pedaled fast and took occasional glances behind her. Everything was clear. She had only to keep pushing hard, and she would be at work in a few minutes.
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