MICHAEL Chapter 14 | December 1985 | Tarson, Georgia
I LEAP FROM THE TOP stair and land in the grass. Mother is close behind, the slap of her house shoes on the concrete landing, the heat of her breath urging me faster. I chance a look back. Her bathrobe sails behind her, the cape of a villain in a comic book, her cheeks red against her pale skin, her brown eyes nearly black with focus. She opens her mouth to breathe or shout, and all I see is teeth.
I swerve left and zigzag between trees. Leaves fly up in my wake. The shadows cast from boughs and branches have a dizzying effect on the path ahead. I look back again. She’s farther from me now, but still coming, and she’s picked up a stick.
I stare for a moment, my eyes on the stick. She’s screamed herself purple. She’s tied me to the piano bench for a full night, only cutting me loose come morning for fear I’d pee on the wood. She’s held a metal cable to a flame before using it to burn the sheet music for Für Elise into the skin between my shoulder blades. But her eyes are fixed on me like a cat on a mouse, and maybe it’s the shadows or the grime and grease from a week without a bath or the way her lips are pulled back, but here in these woods, I do not recognize her face at all.
I turn uphill, a steep climb—I will need to use my hands and feet near the top—and scramble for the ridge. Still she comes. I claw my fingers into the black earth and pull. She is longer and faster on the hill somehow, gaining ground, her fingers a body’s length from my heel.
“Get back here, Michael!”
I crest the ridge and hear a growl, not from below but from the side. Three dogs stand across the trail that runs to Cold River. Their bodies arch in reverse, hips above shoulders, noses tipped down, eyes staring up. But they are not watching me. They spring forward, and I jump to the side. My toe snags on a rock, and I tumble. My arms fly up, shielding my face and neck, and I bring my knees into my body. In my mind, they are already tearing through my jeans, gnawing on my bones.
The rumble of anger in a throat grows louder. I peer through the fold in my limbs. The dogs are facing away from me, pointed like three arrows down the hill. Then they hop and shuffle, bark and yap, and one goes charging down.
“Stop!” I sit up, reaching out, but the other two descend from view, and I hear a shriek and a crunch of dry leaves crushed under a sudden weight.
I climb to my feet. I do not want to walk to the ledge. I do not want to see. But maybe I do. Maybe my mother’s skin has been pulled away and I can see what monster has been growing inside her since Father died.
I tiptoe to the place the terrain plummets and peer down. The bathrobe is visible on the hillside, but the dogs are nowhere to be seen. I slide down with one foot braced in front of the other. My mother is not under the robe. She’s vanished like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, dissolved into a trail of smoke, and I wonder if my mother—my real mother—has returned.
I pick up the robe and walk home, picking bits of leaves and debris from the pilled fabric. I climb up the steps and open the door.
She’s standing in the entry with a stick, one end red and slick with fresh blood.
“Come inside and close the door,” she says.
MARTIN Chapter 15 | 8:00 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
MARTIN STACKED THE CASE FILE, his notes, and the evidence from Eddie’s car on his living room floor and sat down cross-legged in front of it. A new case was like a puzzle with no box top as a guide. With enough Adderall in his system, Martin would thrill at the void of information, at the possibilities. Tonight his medicine cabinet was empty. His head throbbed with the sensation of reawakening withdrawal.
“Don’t,” he whispered to himself, and rubbed the empty place on his ring finger. He drew in a deliberate breath and let it out slowly. He didn’t have to solve the case tonight. He just had to create a starting line.
He turned his attention to what he’d taken from Eddie’s van, which consisted of two large binders and a spiral-bound notebook with doodles covering the front. He opened the notebook first. Hazel’s Heart was written in big, loopy cursive at the top of the inside cover, then the date below it: October 15, 2004. Martin flipped through the pages. Some entries were brief; generally when the day was forgettable. Other entries took up five pages or more. Every now and then the writing was centered, the sentences short. Poetry, he assumed.
He reached the last page. The entry was dated a year ago yesterday. It was a short entry, relatively upbeat but otherwise typical. No mention of meeting someone, some horrible experience, suicidal thoughts, future plans, or burning excitement over some plan so secret she didn’t even chance writing it down. Her handwriting looked loopy and relaxed. He thumbed back a few more pages, looking for anything new or a sudden change. Nothing. Wouldn’t a teenage girl pack her journal if she’d intended to leave town?
Martin had to admit that he agreed with Eddie: Hazel hadn’t run away. She hadn’t walked into those woods with an ulterior plan. Something had happened to her, and Martin had a suspicion that something was Eddie. But what did this missing attorney have to do with it?
He outlined his thoughts on his pad of yellow paper, then opened Eddie’s first binder. It was divided by three tabs: newspaper articles, search patterns, and maps. The second binder was divided into two categories: suspects and related cases. Martin zeroed in on the last section. Had Eddie used previous cases as inspiration? He flipped open the section and froze—the top case was his case: Toni Hargrove and the trail that had ended at a vandalized pay phone seventeen miles from his new front door.
“No fucking way.” Had he been unknowingly hunting Eddie Stevens all along? Eddie didn’t at all match the skeletal profile he’d developed while working in Savannah: a man in his late twenties or early thirties, probably white, physically fit, with a violent history. Eddie’s file at the Tarson station had mentioned he was a handyman with a specialty in metal repair and car engines. Would he have had the patience and the wherewithal to remove the number buttons from a pay phone?
He grabbed both binders and his keys and headed for his car. He needed to keep connecting the possible dots while they were lining up so well, and there was no way he’d fall asleep with his brain in this high a gear. He still wasn’t sure what kind of resources the office would offer, but there was a huge whiteboard, a roll of Scotch tape, a full-size computer screen, a box of markers, and spotty internet service, which was more than he had at home.
His brain began mapping what he knew as he drove to the station. The bigger unknown was Ama Chaplin, and Martin was sure he’d at least find a bio on her website. She probably had a Facebook page, too. If Eddie was the culprit, why had he picked Ama to mark the anniversary of whatever he did to Hazel? Was it convenience, pure and simple, or was the choice more personal?
He unlocked the station door. No one else was there. All for the better, Martin reasoned. He wanted to stitch up the evidence against Eddie as tightly as possible before presenting it to the captain. These guys held a soft spot for Eddie for some reason, and Martin knew his opinion of the man would be unpopular at best.
He gathered all the intel he had so far on Hazel’s disappearance and what he’d retrieved from Eddie’s van, pulled loose the pages of Eddie’s binders, and arranged everything on his desk in chronological order. He began with the cases Eddie had saved in his binder and ended with the notes he’d taken when Ama’s assistant called the second time.