The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  Starting at the beginning, I paged through the planner, meticulously reading every entry on every date. I soon noticed my father had a color-coded system for highlighting different categories of entries — pink for reminders of birthdays, blue for business meetings and deadlines, green for doctor and dentist appointments, orange to highlight financial month- and year-ends, and yellow for his regular fishing trips. I focused my attention on this last category. Otter Creek, Lake Winnipesaukee, Battenkill River, Manchester, Lake Champlain — there was something familiar about the locations of his angling expeditions.

  I read the names again, more slowly, and remembered. I was almost sure that Manchester was one of the Vermont towns Ryan had mentioned when he told me about the old serial killings. Quickly, I riffled through the two planners, writing down dates and names. When I’d made a note of every trip out of town, including some supposedly for business purposes, I rang Ryan and asked him if he had a list of the dates and places of the killings back in 2006 and 2007.

  “What’s this all about, Garnet?”

  “I promise I’ll tell you everything — just as soon as I figure it out myself,” I said. “Can you email me that information?”

  “How about I just read them off?”

  “Fine,” I said, figuring that he’d rather not leave a record of him sharing case information with a civilian.

  Five minutes later, I was staring down at the chronologically ordered list Ryan had dictated, comparing it to the place names from my father’s planners. My heart gave an unpleasant kick when the very first items on each list correlated. Antoine Marshall, a twenty-two-year-old electrician’s apprentice from Meredith, New Hampshire, had disappeared on a weekend in 2006 when my father had been participating in a fishing tournament at Lake Winnipesaukee, just outside the town. Shit.

  I moved to the second item on Ryan’s list. Sean Walton had been a good student at Huss University. He’d gone missing on August the eighth, 2006, and his body had been found two days later in Bangor, Maine. I checked the list from the planners. No correlation in dates. In fact, there was no mention of Bangor in my father’s planners that I’d seen at all.

  One by one, I checked the entries on the lists, but found only one more possible correlation. Ewan Grady, seventeen, had been killed in April 2007. He’d been a runaway, squatting in an old hunting cabin just outside Manchester, so no one had been sure of the exact date he went missing. Based on the state of the corpse, the medical examiner estimated he’d been dead around ten days by the time he was discovered in an abandoned building site on the last day of the month. My father had been on a fishing trip to Battenkill River, just northeast of Manchester, on the twenty-first and twenty-second of that month, so there was a possible overlap.

  Two matches, maybe only one, out of a list of at least twelve unsolved murders and umpteen out-of-town trips? Mere coincidence. Rolling my shoulders in relief, I headed back to the kitchen.

  “Sit,” my mother said, pointing to a chair at the table. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  I watched her anoint a stack of pancakes with a generous drizzle of syrup. “I don’t think that rule applies when the meal is high fructose on top of carbs.”

  “Any more visions or messages from beyond?” she asked eagerly.

  “Not a one.”

  “They don’t always come spelled out in bright lights on billboards, you know. Although they can, of course.” She nudged the plate of pancakes closer to me. “Spirits will talk to you in all kinds of ways — you need to open yourself and keep your peepers peeled.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “Now where’s your father at?”

  My mother called for him while I tucked into a pancake. It was delicious — light and fluffy and sweet. I’d missed this. I smeared the top of a fresh pancake with butter, realizing as I did so that it was how Colby had preferred them — without syrup. This one’s for you, I thought as I took a big bite.

  A light tinkle to my right had me glancing sideways. Two coffee cups dangling on the mug tree were swinging ever so slightly on their hooks, as if a hand had just brushed across them even though no one was near them.

  “Hey, kiddo,” my father said as he entered the kitchen.

  “Hey, Pops.”

  Ruffling a hand through my hair, he sat down opposite me at the table. How could I ever have suspected him, even for a moment? He was the kindest, gentlest man I’d ever met.

  Helping himself to a stack of pancakes, he asked, “What are my two lovely ladies up to today?”

  I had an idea I’d be spending the day in a state of frustration, racking my brains to think of anything I may have missed.

  “I’ll be at the church,” my mother said.

  “Preparing for the Armstrong funeral tomorrow?” Dad asked.

  “No, Irene’s in charge of that. She wants to remove all the Christmas decorations before the service, says it’s not fitting to have those up on such a sad occasion. Irene has got a bit of a bedbug about what is and isn’t fitting. Of course, everything will just need to be put back up again afterward — you can’t have the church bare on Christmas day, now can you? And she’ll have to do that herself because I don’t have time to be diddly-daddlying.”

  Dad lifted the two mugs — completely still now — from the mug tree, poured himself and me a cup of coffee, and asked my mother, “So why do you need to go to the church today? I’m assuming you’ll need me to drive you there?”

  “I sure do. I’ve volunteered to help with the Christmas packages for the needy. Tomorrow, Reverend Scholtz will deliver them to all the homeless and the old folks about town.”

  “‘All the homeless’ — how many does Pitchford have?” I asked.

  “It used to be just Lyle Wallace,” Dad said. “But now, with the drug problem getting out of hand, there are more every year.”

  My mother sniffed. “Michelle Armstrong thinks if she plays a blind eye to the problem, it will go away. There’s no end to the list of things that woman is wrong about.”

  My mother rambled on about the town clerk’s many faults, but I was no longer listening. Lyle Wallace. His name kept turning up, but he was probably just a sad, harmless guy, as Ryan had said. Thinking about Lyle and the police together fired a memory in my brain. Lyle Wallace had been the homeless guy on the bench outside Chief Turner’s office when I gave my statement on the day after Colby’s body was found. Hadn’t there been something about him wanting to make a report? I remembered how Turner had dismissed him as crazy, but what if he’d been there to report something about Colby, what if he had known something?

  I swallowed the last of my coffee, wincing at the lukewarm temperature. “I’ve got to get going.”

  “Where to?” my father asked.

  “I have people to see.”

  And a promise to keep.

  42

  NOW

  Friday December 22, 2017

  I found Lyle Wallace on the corner of Main and Mohegan, near the Methodist church; maybe he’d heard they’d be handing out goody bags for the poor soon. By day, he looked a lot less scary.

  I pulled up near him, lowered my window and called out, “Can I buy you breakfast? You and Cat?”

  He nodded warily.

  “Hop in. We’ll go to Dillon’s.”

  He stared at me suspiciously for several long moments, then appeared to consult his cat about the wisdom of accepting a ride from me. Oh God, was I as crazy as Lyle, consulting thin air for guidance on my actions?

  “Better I meet you there,” he finally said.

  “Fine. I’ll get us a nice table and order the coffee while I wait.”

  “Hot chocolate. Not coffee.”

  “Hot chocolate it is. Any preference food-wise?”

  “Hot beef on rye. Toasted. No pickles. And better you get takeout. Pete don’t allow … cats inside.”

  Lyle was waiting outside Dillon’s by the time I emerged with his sandwich and drink, and a tuna salad mi
nus the salad. He, or perhaps his cat, again balked at getting into my car and instead led me to a bench in a quiet side street. I perched on the freezing wooden slats, shivering as the icy chill cut through my jeans and began freezing my butt. Lyle, apparently unbothered by the cold, opened the takeout box of tuna and placed it on the sidewalk beside the bench. But the cat — its amber eyes fixed unwaveringly in my direction — didn’t approach.

  “Not hungry this morning, Cat?” Lyle asked it, tucking into his own food.

  Cat hissed. I was pretty sure it was hissing at me, or, more accurately, at the space beside me, but I didn’t tell Lyle that. He seemed mistrustful enough as it was.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” I began.

  “Figured that.”

  “Ten years ago, a high school senior by the name of Colby Beaumont was killed in Pitchford.”

  Lyle stopped chewing for a moment but said nothing.

  “You remember?”

  He rubbed his fingers across his lips and then rattled off, “2007. Second rainy season. Government seeded clouds. Chemtrails not contrails. Sick cows. Red Sox won the World Series. Meteor shower, Perseid power. Star in the east? Government loosed a shooter at Virginia Tech. Kryptonite. Big blizzard in December.”

  “Right,” I said. “When that storm ended, they found Colby’s body in Plover Pond. And when the cops interviewed me the next day, I saw you there — at Pitchford Police Station. It was you there, wasn’t it?”

  “Maybe. Who wants to know?”

  “I do.”

  He took another large bite of his sandwich, wiped mustard off his mouth with the back of a gloved hand. “I think there’s pickle in this.”

  “They said you wanted to make a report?” I prompted.

  “Who said? The CIA?”

  “What? No. I think it was Ryan Jackson.”

  “Because they monitor my thoughts. All the time.”

  “No, they d– Gee, that must be distressing.”

  “Got to block them.”

  “Of course, I see that. So … were you there to file a report that night?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Was it about the CIA?”

  Lyle shook his head. “Waste of time. Turner was in their pocket.”

  “Wow. So, what did you want to report? Was it something about Colby?”

  “Uh-huh. I seen something.”

  “What?” I asked, trying to hide my excitement in case it spooked him.

  “A car.”

  Just when I thought I’d have to extract the information from him word by single word, like a dentist pulling teeth, Lyle launched into a long, rambling story. On the night Colby was attacked, Lyle had known the weather was about to take a turn for the worse. He could always tell, always. That was one of the reasons the CIA wanted in on his brain. So, he decided to bed down in the bandstand — did I know there was a storage area under it where they kept chairs and banners and things?

  I did not.

  Well, it was a good place to shelter in a storm. He’d been headed there when he stopped to take a pee against a tree — you didn’t want to be stuck with a full bladder under the bandstand with the snow piling up against the access flap — and he was midstream when he saw a figure walk by some twenty feet away, in the direction of the road. No, he couldn’t see who it was, but he reckoned it was a man because it was tall, though it was dark and the person was wearing a coat, so he couldn’t say for sure. And did I know they wear disguises? And for sure this one would want a disguise because he was up to no good.

  How did he know that?

  Way he was looking around, checking. But he didn’t see Lyle, no sirree. Lyle could disappear when he wanted to. Become invisible. Was I sure I’d told dickface Dillon to hold the pickles?

  I was. What about the man?

  Well, he, Lyle, had craned his neck around the tree and watched as the figure walked to where his car was parked on Pond Road, got in and driven off. No, he hadn’t seen the plates. The headlights hadn’t come on until it was some way down the road. What kind of a car? A big one. Expensive. One of those European types. No, not a Mercedes, or an Audi or a Volvo. A BMW? Yes, he thought that was the one. Lean and mean. And it had carried the man off into the darkness, and that was all he knew and even the NSA couldn’t prove otherwise.

  “Did you ever go back, tell Chief Turner what you saw?” I asked. “Or Officer Jackson?”

  “They weren’t interested.” He swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and crumpled the wrapping into a tight ball inside his fist. “Gotta go. Can’t talk too much, or they’ll kill me like they killed Doc Armstrong.”

  “I heard he’d given himself an overdose.”

  “That’s what they want you to believe, but he didn’t kill himself.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He looked at me like I’d asked a dumb question. “He wasn’t done drinking yet.”

  Remembering the pleasure with which the doc had downed his Johnny, I said, “I guess he wasn’t at that. So, who do you think killed him? And why?”

  The man in the vision had been insistent that Armstrong should keep his mouth shut about something. Perhaps he’d paid the doc another visit later. Dead men tell no tales.

  “Done talking, now.” Lyle stood up, and as he loomed over me, I was again aware of how big he was. “Can I have some money?”

  “Sure, thanks for your help.” When I gave him a twenty, he solemnly handed me the screwed-up ball of sandwich wrapper.

  I walked down the hill to Main Street where my car was parked, mulling over the new information, wondering what to do with it, questioning if I could even believe it, given its source. At the corner, I turned to give Lyle a wave. He was still standing beside the bench, watching me. Cat was at his feet, eating the tuna.

  43

  NOW

  Saturday December 23, 2017

  The church was packed for Dr. Armstrong’s funeral. I’d arrived before my parents and been roped in to hand out programs at the door. It seemed the whole town had turned out to pay their respects, even Lyle Wallace, whose cat narrowed its eyes and hissed at me as they walked inside.

  Blunt, looking marginally cleaner, but higher than the church steeple, snuck in at the last moment and took a seat in the back row, then slipped out during the last hymn. Michelle Armstrong — clutching her pearls and every inch the distraught, grieving widow — sat up front beside Jessica, in the same pew where the Beaumonts had sat during Colby’s funeral. I tried to stop myself thinking about that, but there were too many similarities to avoid it: the same church, the same unconvincing platitudes by the same old minister, the same dreary music, even a framed photograph of the deceased on the table up front. Doc Armstrong hadn’t been cremated yet, so at least there was no urn of ashes.

  When the service ended and everyone drifted across to the church hall, I stayed behind, trying to ignore the headache I could feel gathering behind my eyes. Jessica, her eyes shadowed and her face pale, was collecting the funeral programs from where they’d been left on the pews.

  “Hey, Jess?”

  She didn’t look up. “Yeah?”

  “Did you do this at Colby’s funeral? Collect the programs, I mean. They were blue.”

  “Now that you mention it, I think I did.” She gave me a sad smile and picked up another paper. “It must be my thing.” She paused, a faraway expression in her eyes, and then let the papers fan and slide from her hands onto the floor of the aisle. A score of Doc Armstrongs smiled up.

  “Let’s go get something to drink,” I said, tugging her to the church hall, where the reception was being held.

  “I don’t think they’re serving vodka,” she murmured.

  We shared a smile, and for a moment, it was like how it used to be between us.

  In the crowded hall, she got herself a cup of coffee and went to join her mother. I grabbed a plate of finger sandwiches and sought out Ryan.

  “Have you double-checked the call logs yet? Scrutin
ized the land development?” I asked.

  “I’m fine, thanks, Garnet, and how are you on this sad occasion?”

  “I’m sad — happy, now? And since you ask, I’m also vexed at the slow pace of this investigation.”

  He gave me a lazy grin. “Vexed, is it?”

  “Yes, vexed. Very, very vexed,” I confirmed. “So please tell me if you’ve found out anything.”

  “We’re still checking whether any of the numbers with an 802 area code belonged to a person whose name started with a J.”

  As we talked, we made our way through to where my parents were standing, chatting to the Beaumonts.

  “And the land deal?”

  “I spent yesterday checking that out, and it’s as kosher as turkey bacon.”

  “But—”

  “I investigated it myself, Garnet. And I did a thorough job, because I have a place there — a bachelor unit which I bought off-plan back when it was still being developed.”

  “You own property there?”

  “I do.”

  “You live there?”

  “No, I live in town now, in a bigger place. I keep the golf estate property as an investment and rent it out.”

  “Hmmm.”

  If Ryan Jackson owned property there, how willing would he be to investigate any wrongdoing or illegalities that would jeopardize his investment?

  “Good investment, is it?” I asked, biting into a cheese-and-tomato sandwich.

  “Sure.”

  My parents were standing with Colby’s mother, father and uncle. Roger Beaumont gave me a disapproving look as we joined them, but said nothing.

  “How’s Cassie doing, Mrs. Beaumont?” I asked. It still felt strange to address her directly as Bridget.

  “Much the same. I’m sure she’d love to see you again when you and your parents come for dinner tomorrow evening.”

  Roger pinched his lips together. I guess his sister-in-law hadn’t told him she’d invited the McGees.

  “Sure, okay.” I blinked several times, trying to ward off both a threatening yellow haze and my worsening headache.

  “Can Ryan come, too?” my mother asked. Clearly she was set on matchmaking the two of us.