by A. M. Taylor
I barely heard Keegan as he said: “Maddie, we should get out the car, they’re about to make the announcement,” but I still managed to leave the car and follow him to the crowd of reporters. I was numb, bloodless, reduced to rubble. Someone said my name but I couldn’t do a thing, even as I realized it was Ange.
“Mads, are you okay?” she said to me, her voice reaching me from somewhere very far away.
I nodded, unable to speak and then, thankfully, Chief Moody cleared his throat and began to speak, cameras and microphones directed at him. Someone brushed up against my arm and I jumped, pulling away from them, only for them to grip my arm a little tighter.
I looked around to see who it was, and Leo stared down at me, pale blue eyes concerned, his mouth pinched tight. “You okay?” he mouthed at me, although he may have spoken the words aloud and I simply couldn’t hear them. Once again I nodded, words stacking up in my throat unable to break free and turned back to Leo’s father standing on the steps of the police station, the deep blue of his uniform standing stark against the gray of the day. Stood just behind him and to his left were Gutierrez and Lee, watching calmly as he addressed the press.
The Chief’s broad shoulders were rigid, his eyes trained on the paper in front of him almost the entire time as he intoned: “Thanks to the hard work and cooperation of local police officers here in Waterstone and Forest View, along with the expertise of the Wisconsin Department of Justice Special Agents, we have been able to determine that in light of recent evidence, the case of missing person Nora Altman will be reopened, and treated as a murder investigation. After careful analysis, trace DNA evidence from the aforementioned victim was found on the same weapon that was used in the attack on Noelle Altman. I can confirm that Nathan Altman is the only suspect in this reopened case, although he has not yet been formally charged. It is our great hope that we will finally be able to bring some peace to Nora and Noelle’s parents, and the community at large, as well as bring justice to the perpetrator.” He then finally raised his head to stare straight into the wall of cameras that were trained on him, and said without a hint of modulation in his voice: “There will be no further questions at this time.”
It was all over in a second, the Chief turning his back to walk into the station followed by the agents, the reporters dispersing, talking to the cameras, calling in to their editors.
“That’s it?” someone said. “That’s all we get?”
I walked away from the crowd, pushing past people until I was somewhere alone, staring down at the frozen ground as I threw up the pancakes I’d eaten with Keegan earlier. Someone’s hand landed on my back but I shrugged them off, away from me, couldn’t look at them whoever they were. There was a boulder the size of Australia crammed inside my chest and even as I tried desperately to breathe, in, out, in, out I hated what I had been reduced to.
I hadn’t even realized I was crying until someone gently turned me round to face them, pulled me into a hug and then handed me a crumpled but clean tissue.
“This is good, Mads,” they murmured into my hair, “this is the best possible scenario. They’re finally going to find out what happened to her.”
I pulled out of their arms, blew my nose and finally looked at who was comforting me: Leo. He wasn’t dressed in uniform, so he must have just headed down here when he heard the announcement was going to happen.
“Did you know?” I asked. “Did you know they were reopening the case?”
“No. Dad didn’t tell me anything. It’s all the agents’ decision anyway, he’s just the media liaison at this point.”
“Nate,” I said, his name suddenly unfamiliar in my mouth, my throat full of barbed wire, “it was Nate.”
“Looks like it,” Leo said, then fell quiet for a while. The only sounds were those of the crowd talking and dispersing, shouts punctuating the cold air, the slam of van doors closing and opening issuing a mechanical screech that shuddered down my back and made me jump. Leo looked back at the station steps, now empty, abandoned and said: “I should get you out of here. They’re not going to be making anymore statements today.”
I was shivering even though I wasn’t cold, not really; I wanted someone to tell me how to feel, to give me a rule book to follow, beats to be played out. All I’d ever wanted, for ten years, was to know what had happened to Nora, to finally know by whose hand she’d been taken from us. I knew it wouldn’t bring me closure, resolution. I knew I would still have to live with it for the rest of my life, to try and fit whatever shape my life took around the missing piece that had been gone for so long already.
But I hadn’t expected it to feel the way it did now that I finally did know. Nate Altman. There was a way for me to make sense of all this, there had to be, I reasoned, but I couldn’t find it, wasn’t sure if I wanted to. It was that thundercrack of change again, the giant rift that tore through life and demanded we attempt to keep up, and I no longer knew if I could. I’d let everything slip through my fingers, and now there was nothing left to hold on to.
“Come on,” Leo said, his voice as firm as the hand at my back, “let’s go.”
I let him push me back towards the car park as we weaved around still-milling reporters and cameramen. Ange found us just as we were getting to Leo’s truck and told me Keegan had left to write up about the statement from the Chief on his blog. I nodded along, hearing her words but barely taking them in. Her face was strained as she spoke, her words brittle and near to breaking point. I wanted to ask her what she thought, how she felt, how any of this was real, what we were supposed to do now, but she had a job to do and I didn’t want to hold her back.
“I’ll see you later, okay?” she said, and I told her she would.
“You want me to drop you home?” Leo asked as he exited the parking lot. I didn’t answer immediately, staring blankly out the window at a day I couldn’t get a grip on. “Mads?” Leo prompted gently.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to go home yet.” The thought of being somewhere familiar, somewhere warm and welcoming, felt wrong somehow.
We were coming to the edge of Waterstone when Leo signaled right instead of going straight ahead. “Do you mind if we stop at mine, then? I need to change into my uniform.”
“You’re heading back to the station?”
“Yeah, my shift starts in a bit.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” I said, only dully aware of him sitting next to me in the truck. It had started to snow and I stared out through the windshield to where it was rapidly filling up my field of vision.
The world narrowed suddenly, and daylight wiped itself away; the road was edged by thin figured trees, weighed down by layers of white snow, their branches hung like icy specters above us. My body felt light and heavy at the same time, like a balloon filled with lead was lodged somewhere in my stomach, and I wondered at those bare, fragile branches holding up all that frozen water. We stayed on that narrow road for a while before Leo turned left and I started to pay attention to where we were.
We were out by the lakes, just a few minutes’ drive from the Altmans’ own lake house. The rough-hewn wooden sign by the side of the road said
PINE GROVE LAKE
and I stayed staring at it, even as we passed by, craning my neck to make sure I read it right.
“Pine Grove Lake,” I said, my voice snagging as I sat up a little straighter in my seat. “This is where you live?”
“Yeah, I moved in ages ago, right after I graduated from the police academy. It’s my parents’ old summer house.”
“Doesn’t it get lonely?”
The road we were driving down was little more than a track. It had been cleared of snow, but I had found it hard to believe the plough made it down here; Leo must do it himself, I thought. It was banked high with snow, the bottom layers graying with dirt, the trees bent under the weight of snow and ice, stick figures waiting to set off at a run, if only they could get out from underneath their wintry burden.
“I’m used to it now. Ev
ery winter I think about moving, but then summer rolls around and I change my mind again.”
The truck came to a stop, and I followed Leo into the cabin, trudging through the snow. I stood for a second as he unlocked the door and stared at the frozen lake, its wide expanse sheathed in ice; you couldn’t tell exactly where the lake ended and the earth began but there was a small hut out on it for ice fishing that promised refuge of some kind.
“Make yourself at home,” Leo said as he opened the door and we walked inside. He turned back to me and shot me a grim smile. “You want a drink? I’ve got whisky and a couple of beers.”
“No, I’m okay. I think it’s a little early even for me,” I said, drawing out my phone to see if mom or dad had tried to call me.
“Fair enough. You won’t get any signal with that out here, I’m afraid,” he said, pointing at my phone.
“Yeah, I figured. You got Wi-Fi instead?”
“Sure, the password’s on the cork board over there,” he replied.
The password was written on a Post-it and stuck to the frame of the cork board, the rest of it covered in photos, overlapping and crisscrossing one another. I examined them while tapping in the passcode and waiting for my phone to connect to the internet. Almost all the photos had Nora in. In some of them she was grinning, but more often than not she was posing or pouting. I pulled one off the board, careful not to tear it, and stared down into her smiling face. It must have been taken with flash, the photo, because Nora’s face was ghost white, turned up towards the camera in a wild, ecstatic grin. She was sandwiched between Louden and Leo, and I wondered who had taken the photo, both boys staring down at Nora with laughter in their eyes.
It was a wonderful photo, brimming, bursting with energy, practically fizzing with it. It looked as though flakes of snow were falling through the dark air, but Nora was in summer clothes and both Leo and Louden were wearing T-shirts, so it couldn’t have been winter. I took a closer look and realized it was ash raining down on them, blurry and indistinct, but undeniable. There was a noise behind me and I realized Leo was stood behind me, suddenly resplendent in his uniform.
“You took that photo,” he said, “remember?”
“Really? When?”
“Oh, the summer after Nate and I graduated high school.”
“I’ve never seen it before though.”
“Well, you were using my camera. I’ve got a bunch of photos from around that time that I’ve never got round to putting on Facebook or whatever.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” I said softly, still gazing at all those images of Nora.
“Do what?” Leo asked, his voice a little sharp suddenly.
“Look at these every day. Look at Nora every day.”
“Why? Don’t you have any photos of her?”
I let my eyes wander over every single photo, tracking Nora, drinking in her face. It had felt okay to do it like this, in one go, but I couldn’t have photos of her on my wall or on my desk, or wherever people hang photos, somewhere I walked past every day, getting so used to her image she just became a part of the scenery.
I still had a vital, visceral reaction to her image, even ten years later, because I’d never wanted to get used to the fact that she was just a photo to hang somewhere, rather than Nora. But I didn’t quite know how to say all that to Leo or perhaps I just didn’t want to, so I simply said: “It’s too hard,” and left it at that, turning away from the cork board as I did so.
“I get that,” he said looking at me as something passed over his face. Upbeat all of a sudden, or simply just trying to change the subject, he asked: “You want some coffee? I don’t need to be at the station for a little while.”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
I wandered from the kitchen into the living room area, which was small and a little cramped, with a TV dominating the main wall. There was a bookcase overflowing with DVDs and games’ cases, the bottom shelf stacked with comic books and graphic novels. I crouched down next to it to read the titles, thankful for the distraction.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been there, if I ever had been; certainly not while Leo was living there full time.
“Wow, someone’s into Batman,” I said, my eyes roving over his comic collection.
Leo turned away from the coffee machine for a second and raised an eyebrow. “The secret’s finally out.”
“Have you read Saga?” I asked, not seeing it on the shelf anywhere.
“No, I haven’t. I didn’t know you were into any of that stuff.”
“I didn’t know you were,” I said right back.
There was a lot you missed when your whole relationship with someone revolved around one event. My eye was caught by a collection of sketchbooks to the left of the comic book stacks, their black spines making them stand out from the wash of red and white. I pulled one out, glancing back at Leo to see that he was still busy in the kitchen, and settled down on the floor with my back against the wall.
“Hey, have you eaten?” he said, unaware that I was now paging through what I figured was his own sketch book. “I don’t have a lot in, but I could probably make a couple of sandwiches if you’re hungry.”
“No, I’m fine,” I murmured, stopping to look at an intricate line drawing of a wolf’s head done in black ink, the wolf’s fur represented by dots and loops that reminded me of paisley patterns, or those adult illustration coloring books that were so popular for a while. It was so good that, for a second, I thought it might actually be a page from a coloring book, but I could see where the ink had bled.
“This is good,” I said, looking up as Leo passed me a mug and stared down quizzically at the sketch book in my lap.
“Oh, man what are you doing?” he said with laughter in his voice. “You found my sketch book?”
“Yeah, did you do all these?”
“Over the years, yeah.”
“They’re good. You ever do anything with them?” I said, thinking of my own abandoned attempts at cartoons, and comics that I’d long ago decided were a thing of my past.
Leo shook his head. “No. It’s kind of my guilty secret.”
“What? Why?”
Leo just shrugged. “Oh, you know. It’s just not what you expect a cop to do in his spare time.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
By now I’d leafed through most of the book, but there were a few loose pages at the end, obviously ripped from other sketch books or comp books and shoved to the back. I shuffled through them while taking a sip of coffee, not really taking any of them in until one stopped me short. Unsure of what I was looking at, I carefully drew out the piece of paper, which was divided into six panels like a miniature comic strip.
I stared down at it uncomprehending for what felt like several minutes but can’t have been, not really, before managing to say: “What’s this?” My voice was strangled, mutated; I barely even recognized it as my own. But considering I was holding something I hadn’t seen in over ten years I was surprised I managed to get the words out at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“What?” Leo said, standing up from the couch and leaning over me so that he could see what I was looking it. “Oh that’s something from years ago. Probably did it when I was still at school.” He waved his hand that wasn’t holding his coffee at me dismissively and sat back down on the couch.
I stared back down at the cartoon and then back at him, my mind reeling. I wasn’t sure what to make of his dismissal, but I wasn’t buying it.
“You didn’t draw this, Leo,” I said, trying to make my voice as even as possible. I didn’t want to rush to any conclusions, and at first I thought I might be seeing things, imagining them; it had been a long day, after all. I’d already felt the world smash to pieces around me, what if I was just trying to pick them up and fit them back together again but was missing crucial, integral pieces?
Leo looked at me and laughed. “Of course I did. It’s just a stupid cartoon I drew in study hal
l or something.”
I looked down at the cartoon again, double-, triple-, quadruple-checking that I wasn’t imagining holding a cartoon I’d drawn over ten years before that had turned up in Leo’s sketch book. But no—there it was.
It was similar to the one I’d found in Nora’s room the previous week, but finding that cartoon languishing in Nora’s teenage dream of a bedroom had made sense. Finding it there, in a house I wasn’t even sure I’d ever been to before, ten years later, didn’t make any kind of sense at all. Not that I could see.
I could have slipped it back into his sketch book, of course, placed it back on the shelf and gone back to sipping the coffee he’d made me. But just like always, I was scrambling to keep up, struggling to find a foothold, so I pressed on, trying not to worry about falling debris.
“Leo, these characters are called Wolfora, Foxeline, Haloe, and Squirange. They’re the ‘Forest View Furies’,” I explained. “I drew this. I drew them. They’re my characters.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is mine, Leo. My stupid cartoon, not yours. Where did you get it?” That was the question I really wanted answered, of course. Because the person who last had it in their possession was Nora. It was the final cartoon in a story about Wolfora having to fight an evil wolf who she thought she could trust and ultimately killing him and becoming the alpha. The evil wolf, of course, acting as a stand in for Louden.
I’d drawn it while sitting in CJ’s with Nora and Ange, just a few days before Nora went missing. She’d spent the entire time complaining about Louden, anguished and angry, but when she’d seen the cartoon I’d been drawing while she talked she laughed and demanded I give it to her. So she’d taken it and put it in her wallet and, as far as I knew, it was still in her wallet when she went missing. And now here it was, shaking in my hands, in Leo’s cabin. I felt as if I had fallen into another story, or was paging through someone’s diary and suddenly saw my own name.
