by Casey Dunn
Martin’s blood ran cold. “Who am I speaking to?” he repeated through his teeth.
“Esther Kim, reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.”
“Well, Esther, no recovered body makes a hard case for a murder,” he said, throwing her a bone. A hungry reporter was often more compliant than a starving one.
“So there are no leads for Hazel’s whereabouts at this point?”
“Hazel’s disappearance is not an active investigation,” he responded.
“But you know about her disappearance and you’ve been on the job… three months, is that correct?”
“It’s still fresh in people’s minds up here.”
“And Ama said ‘Hazel,’ upon waking after surgery, is that correct?”
“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“I have a source who confirms that this occurred.”
“I’m sure you do.” Damn that nurse. He plunked down in his office chair and pulled Hazel’s case file from his drawer. He flipped through it. No one had added any notes or updates.
Esther paused, and the silence was a magnet for Martin’s thoughts, drawing everything he didn’t want to say dangerously close to the surface. It wouldn’t do any good to link the seven cases in the media when all they had was speculation and a couple of coincidences. The tip line would flood with nosy neighbors and phony psychics, bored teenagers and old women who watched too much true crime TV.
“I know these incidents are linked, Detective. I’ve been researching Hazel’s case since the day her disappearance was made public. Two women disappear on the same trail exactly one year apart, and one man, the last to admit to seeing them both, was arrested in connection to Ama Chaplin’s shooting. This is textbook. Unless it really, really isn’t. And my money is on option number two.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because if you thought Eddie was responsible for both incidents, he’d be formally charged by now. There has to be something of significant value to be gained by holding off, and I want to know what it is.”
“Is that all?” Martin said, releasing irritation into his voice.
“I have my own theory.”
“Is it a theory you’re sharing?” He swiveled his chair 180 degrees and connected dots on the ceiling with his gaze, and he realized he was making an “H.”
“Hazel Stevens is still alive.”
“What evidence do you have?” he asked. “Because from where I sit, with her file on my desk, it would be a pretty short article. One, maybe two sentences at most. Something like this: ‘I think Hazel Stevens is still alive because her body hasn’t been found and a gunshot victim might have said her name. The end.’ I don’t know, Esther. I’m no literary critic, but I don’t think that’s a winner.”
“So the Hazel Stevens’s file is on your desk?” Esther said more than asked, and Martin grimaced. “There’s more to this, and we both know it.”
“Well, if you write something useful, let me know. I might even buy a copy,” he said, and hung up.
Martin’s attention shifted over his shoulder in the direction of the office where Eddie was waiting. He checked his cell phone’s call history once more, confirming his ex-wife had called him once more while he slept. He wore this truth like armor, and, before he could talk himself out of it, he headed for Eddie’s room. To his surprise, the door was unlocked. He cracked it open. Eddie was sitting in the center of the couch, his shoes still on and his feet on the floor. His eyes were closed, but they opened as Martin approached.
“Can I come in?” Martin asked.
“It’s your office,” Eddie said.
“It’s not, actually.” Martin walked in and leaned against the wall. He was fairly convinced Eddie hadn’t shot Ama on purpose, but that didn’t mean Eddie wasn’t a threat. He was a big man, twice Martin’s size. He was also, if his story was to be believed, willing to fire a gun at someone running away, and if he was completely blameless in this mess, he had reason to be really, really pissed-off.
Eddie sat back and crossed his arms. “You look like you have something to say, though. So why don’t you just go ahead and say it.”
“I don’t know whether to call it good or bad,” Martin started, “and honestly, most of it is just theory at this point.”
“I’m listening. If you’re actually going to tell me something this time, that is.”
“I am, but what I’m about to tell you is between you and me. Nobody else. Understood?”
Eddie nodded, his eyelids narrowing.
“When Ama woke up the first time, she said one word before knocking out again. I wasn’t lying to you about that.”
Eddie watched him without responding. Martin inhaled and let it out slowly. There would be no going back after this. He would have to answer every question, field every emotion, and he would be committing his investigation on a path shaped by Eddie’s innocence. It was a high price to pay, especially if he was wrong.
“Hazel.”
“What?” Eddie sat upright, and his brow crushed down on his dark eyes.
“Hazel. Ama said ‘Hazel.’ ”
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what her nurse reported.”
Eddie leaped to his feet, and his face lit up with a smile. “That’s good, right? That’s better than good. She might know something.”
“That’s what I thought, Mr. Stevens. But when I went to question Ama, she said she didn’t remember anything.”
“Well, that’s okay. It’s in there. It’ll come out. When people go through that kind of thing, sometimes they forget, right?”
“That could be.”
Eddie went still, but Martin could see the wheels of his mind turning behind his weary eyes.
“You don’t think so. You think it’s something else,” Eddie said.
“I think she’s remembering a lot more than she lets on.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it wasn’t the first time she’d tried to tell someone about Hazel. I think she tried to tell you, too.”
“She didn’t say a word to me. She was… she was dying.”
“She didn’t say it.” Martin paused and stared blankly at the ground as he considered what to say, how to tell him about his daughter’s name written in blood. “Come with me,” he said.
Eddie followed at a distance, nearly tiptoeing at first. Martin led him to room two. He wondered how Eddie would react to seeing his daughter’s picture in a line of others. No doubt his mind would jump to the worst conclusion. Sometimes the worst conclusion suited. Martin’s gut told him this was one of those times.
“Mr. Stevens, if I show you this, if I bring you in on this investigation, it is off-the-record. Do you understand that? We do this after hours. Me and you. Nobody else knows. Business hours come and you go back to the office for the time being. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Martin opened a manila folder and retrieved the picture of Eddie’s jacket. He pinched it hard between his fingers, waiting as Eddie took in each photo on the board.
“What is all this?” Eddie asked.
“These are people who walked into Tarson Woods or have a strong association with the area, and have disappeared without a trace.” Martin scanned the line. “Except her. Her body was found.” He pointed to the redhead. “She’s related to an old case of mine.”
“So why is she up there?”
“I’m not quite sure why I put her up there, to be honest with you. I just feel like…” Martin’s voice dropped off. Like I was more interested in sailing away on a cloud of diazepam when she called for help from a rest stop twenty miles from here. “Like she belongs,” he finally said.
“So if she didn’t disappear in Tarson Woods, why does she belong?” Eddie pressed.
Martin glanced at his profile. “You had her case in your notebook. So why don’t you tell me why she’s up there?”
“There’s a footpath that ends at that rest stop and goes all the way to t
he edge of Tarson Woods. A little overgrown, but it’s there. I found it when I was looking for Hazel. I think transients use it, mostly. A woman getting cut up and killed like that a few feet from a trail nobody knows about… it just felt like she belonged,” Eddie echoed.
“You know, that folder and the fact that you had that case in it is one of the reasons I thought you were guilty.”
“Well, damn.” Eddie shook his head. “Thought?”
“You shot Ama, no question there. But I don’t think you hit her on the head, bound her wrists, and burned lines into her legs.”
“I didn’t even see anything like that on her. There was so much blood,” Eddie said softly. “It was dark. And I swear to God, I didn’t aim for her. I tried to shoot the man who had her, and she jumped in front of him.”
“You realize what a stretch that is to believe, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going out on a limb for you, though. In all fairness, you had a folder full of information about other murders and missing people in your van. You couldn’t have made yourself look more like a serial killer if you’d tried.”
“That wasn’t my intention.” Eddie sat on the table. He wiped his face, but the heaviness remained. “I wanted someone to remember Hazel, to look for her, someone to believe that she didn’t run off and leave me. Hazel wouldn’t leave me like that, not by choice.”
“Mr. Stevens, all due respect, but had you killed yourself at the trailhead where your daughter disappeared and had a stack of unsolved cases in your possession when you did it, best case, it would look like a grieving father who couldn’t live life without his runaway daughter. Worst case, it would look like a confession. The case would have stayed closed forever. I know it hasn’t all gone like you thought it would, but it’s a really good thing for Hazel that you went in after Ama. Whether we’re looking for her or her body, now at least we know to look.”
Martin’s own words tunneled through his brain and into his ears. When a victim was missing this long, bodies were often found only if a killer led police to where they’d taken them. Hazel had been missing for a year. Dead or alive, they weren’t going to find her without help. If Eddie had shot the man who had taken Hazel, they may never have found her. Eddie’s story, then, might be absolutely true: Ama may have jumped in front of the bullet in hopes that Hazel would be found.
But why? She didn’t know Hazel beyond her name, as far as Martin could find, and Eddie swore he’d never met her before that night. A parent would take a bullet for a child, a spouse for a spouse, a friend for a friend… but one stranger for another when an escape option is already presented? Recognition washed over Martin, and hope clawed from the depths of his racing heart, made buoyant by the sudden current. All of these scenarios had one thing in common: one person was saving another living soul.
“Are you absolutely sure your daughter has never met Ama Chaplin? Has she spent any time in Atlanta?” Martin pressed.
“We went to Atlanta a couple times a year—go see the World of Coke, maybe catch a Braves game—but she never went without me. Hazel doesn’t have many friends. She isn’t social.” Eddie glanced down. “Wasn’t.”
“She’s not a body yet, Mr. Stevens.”
“I know the statistics. I could quote them in my sleep.”
“Then answer me this. Let’s say Ama jumped in front of the bullet like you say. Why would she do that?” Martin’s voice sped up.
“I don’t know.”
Martin handed Eddie the picture of his jacket, the HAZ circled in black ink. “Why would a woman take a bullet for her captor and then try to write a name in blood if the only thing out there to find is a dead body?”
MARTIN Chapter 45 | 10:15 PM, December 3, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
EDDIE WAS ALL MOTION, NONE of his limbs satisfied to rest for longer than a full second. Even if he stopped to stare at a photograph or a page of notes, his fingers would tap the closest solid surface. Martin’s attention was divided between Eddie and his notes. He felt more useless by the second, especially in the presence of Eddie’s renewed sense of hope, which was a palpable thing. It spurred Martin to dig deeper. It made it hard to breathe.
“It’s someone they all knew,” Eddie said suddenly. Martin looked up from his case notes.
“What makes you say that?”
“Hazel wouldn’t walk off with a stranger. Like I said, she didn’t have a big social life. She barely spoke to people she did know. I even told her…” Eddie pressed two fingers against his closed eyes. “I warned her not to talk to anyone she didn’t know. I said that to her, Detective.”
“Call me Martin,” he corrected quietly.
“Martin. I told my daughter that.” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “She wasn’t wearing headphones. No one could’ve snuck up on her. She knew the world isn’t all nice. I tried to be real honest with her about the good and the bad. She wasn’t sheltered. And she could run, Martin. She could run faster than all the boys on our old street when she was nine years old. If she got a split-second head start, there’s no way anyone could’ve beat her off that trail. My wife used to say she was built like a greyhound.”
Martin’s focus tripped on Eddie’s mention of his wife. He could barely bring himself to look at the widower, revisiting how sure he’d been that Eddie was responsible for not just one crime but three: Ama, Hazel, and Raelynn. Even last night, swallowed by the pit of desperation and dead ends, he’d reached back for that conclusion just like he’d reached into the medicine cabinet for want of a fix.
“Martin?” Eddie’s voice reached Martin in the internal maze he was building.
Martin cleared his throat and blinked the haze of recent memories clear from his mind. He wanted to ask Eddie about his wife’s death, but now was not the time.
“Were teachers interviewed at the time of her disappearance?” he asked instead. “Did they ask if she seemed to be close to anyone new? Did any new students enroll midyear?”
“Officers went to the school a couple times. The captain did, too. We didn’t have a detective back then.”
“Okay.” Martin dropped his elbows down on the table and stared point-blank at Hazel’s photo. “We need to start the investigation into Hazel’s disappearance from scratch, like you woke up this morning and she was gone. If she’s still alive, there’s a reason. You say her circle was small, and that’s a good thing, especially since we both believe she knew whoever took her. She’s how we solve this case—hell, maybe all of these cases. She’s how we find her.”
Eddie lifted up on his toes several times and shook his hands loose at his sides.
“There’s just one thing, Eddie. We have to solve this without letting anyone know that we’re looking for her. We cannot let anyone know we believe she’s tied to the Ama Chaplin case.”
“Why?” Eddie came down on his heels.
“If whoever has Hazel realizes we know she’s alive, he will do one of two things—neither of them good.”
“Leave town, or…” Eddie planted his hands on his hips and dropped his chin to his chest.
“Shit.” Martin closed his eyes. The reporter from the AJC. She may not have enough of a scoop for a story, but she also may not have been showing all her cards. If she ran a story connecting Ama and Hazel, implicating Eddie Stevens in the murder of his own daughter, it would follow him for the rest of his life. If Esther instead took the angle about Hazel being alive, Tarson Woods would be crawling with do-gooders and the morbidly curious. Whether they meant well or not, they’d likely do more harm than good, and either way, they’d put a dangerous kind of pressure on whoever had taken her.
“Hang tight, Eddie. I gotta make a phone call.”
Back at his desk, Martin recovered the number Esther Kim used to call him and dialed her back. He glanced at the clock. It was past ten.
“Change your mind?” Esther answered, sounding very much awake.
“You can’t run your story,” he said.
“Becaus
e I’m right?”
“I don’t know that yet,” he answered.
“I’m running the story.”
“You can’t even have enough of a story to run!” Martin pled, exasperated.
Esther threw Martin’s words back at him. “You don’t know that yet.”
Martin drummed his fingers on his desk. He couldn’t ask her what she knew without revealing there was something to know. He needed something to point her to, something to keep her busy, in case she agreed and her word wasn’t as good as her pride.
“I don’t know what you know and what you don’t, but I am positive you don’t have the whole story,” he offered.
“I’m listening,” she answered.
“I don’t just have Hazel’s file on my desk. I have seven files.”
“Would the name on one of those files happen to be Toni Hargrove?” Esther asked, her voice sickeningly sweet. “I find it interesting, you coming to Tarson. Could you not get a job anywhere else after your little habit ruined your career and flushed your solve rate down the toilet?”
Martin went utterly still, his lips ajar, his mind racing. She’d dug into his history, his life. Here he’d thought he’d start over in Tarson, bring only the pieces of his old life with him that he wanted to, and she was going to unpack his entire past, spinning it whichever way made for a more compelling story.
Martin heard the sounds of paper rustling over the phone.
“Your wife—sorry, ex-wife—didn’t have much to say about you or Ms. Hargrove’s murder. She’s pretty frigid, honestly. Guess you have to learn how to be cold when you’re married to a detective. Or maybe that’s just her nature. She’s only quoted once in the article so far. I worry for her, though. You know how readers respond when a woman says ‘no comment’ to crimes against other women.”
“That’s low. And honestly, it’s the easy way out. It’s beneath you. Or it should be.”
“So give me something I can use,” Esther countered.
Martin managed a terse laugh, but inside he was in full panic. Stacy didn’t deserve this. Neither did Eddie or Hazel. “You’re right. This is a high-profile situation, and it deserves to be on the front page of every paper. It’s also much, much bigger than you realize. Eddie Stevens is a piece of it, but just a piece. You wait to run your story, and I’ll bring you into the station and tell you everything I know. You’ll have plenty of information, I assure you. Way too much to fit in a filler line from a washed-up detective’s ex-wife.”
