I look out over them, unconcerned. Chorus is an elective music class. Students want to be here. The only trouble I may have would be from the two muscle heads in the back row—probably athletes who took this class thinking it would be an easy A.
Nothing about music is easy.
One of them catches me staring and locks eyes. I don’t look away. He blinks once. Twice. Three times. Then slouches down in his seat and drops his gaze to the cell phone he’s hidden in his lap. I watch him long enough to be there when his glance flicks up at me once more. He shifts in his seat, pretending it was an accident.
“Hazel, are you listening?” Mrs. Brownlow asks, the tone in her voice breaking from the melody.
Next to the window, a girl sits up and closes her notebook. She nods.
“We listen with our eyes, too,” she instructs, bringing her finger to the bridge of her nose.
That’s not your eye, I have to resist telling her.
Hazel watches Mrs. Brownlow for a few seconds before attention begins to leave her face a degree at a time. As the principal turns control of the class over to me, Hazel flips her notebook to the back cover and draws with a purple-ink pen. Her gold eyes are rimmed in charcoal black. She reminds me of a cobra, and although she is, at a glance, the smallest person in the room, her every movement triggers my nerve endings. A shot of adrenaline races down every limb, and I feel as alive as the moment I burst above the surface of Cold River when I had every reason to sink into the dark.
MARTIN Chapter 47 | 7:00 AM, December 4, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
MORNING CAME, BRIGHT AND UNFORGIVING. It had only been nine hours since he’d botched the phone call with Esther Kim, but with the sun up and his back throbbing from a three-hour nap at his desk, it felt like he’d already lost a whole day to her deadline. He had to hope Esther was bluffing and didn’t have anything sensational to report. Maybe the phone call had been purely a proverbial fishing trip, the anniversary of Hazel’s disappearance making for good emotional fodder, in which case he’d given her a ten-pound bass. He had half a mind to get a subpoena for her notes, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
He stared across the table at Eddie, who was leafing through Martin’s case file from Toni Hargrove’s murder.
“How do you see this kind of thing all day, every day, and not go crazy?” Eddie asked.
“Pain pills. Sleeping pills. Uppers, downers, whatever I could get my hands on.” Martin leaned back in his chair and pointed at Toni’s picture. “That woman died because of me. She called me from a pay phone not fifteen miles from here, and she had to leave a message because I had taken enough sedatives to down a horse. Never heard the call come in.”
“She should’ve called nine-one-one,” Eddie countered.
“The nine key on the pay phone didn’t work and the number three key was missing. I think my number must’ve been the only one she could think of with no nines or threes.”
“How did you know her?”
“I’d used her a few times as an informant. She turned tricks in Savannah. I kept her out of the pen. She kept me in the loop on a couple of her clients’ whereabouts, guys with ties to drug trafficking. Then one day, she was in the wind. I think she might’ve run her mouth to somebody, or someone found out she was relaying information. I hadn’t heard from her in years. I knew she’d been picked up a couple times in Atlanta for solicitation. I talked to her once when she was at the Fulton County station. She gave them my name and tried to tell them she was undercover. During that phone call she told me she was leaving corners behind and was going to be a singer. You know, she actually sounded genuine.”
“She said what now?” Eddie asked, and his expression turned to stone. “You said she wanted to be a singer?”
Martin swung his gaze across the line of faces again. Maybe Toni wasn’t the piece that was throwing off the picture. Maybe the first two—boys who Captain said didn’t even really fit up there—were coloring the line with the wrong tint.
“From what I know, it’s a fifty-fifty split up there as far as music is concerned,” Martin said. “And that’s being generous. Still, I think it’s worth a trip to the school, see what I can find out about your teacher friend. Don’t tell him I’m looking for him yet, just in case it turns out I need to be. We need to get you back in the ‘holding cell’ before anyone clocks in.”
“Okay,” Eddie said, and Martin could tell Eddie was less sure about Hazel’s teacher than he had been hours ago. Maybe it was the music link. Maybe it was the pictures of Toni’s body. Maybe tiny details in his subconscious were beginning to stick together, forming something not so small, not so easy to overlook.
MICHAEL Chapter 48 | October 22, 2005 | Tarson, Georgia
THE LID TO THE SHELTER is not how I left it. I leave my backpack aboveground, grip my cane in my right hand, pull the lid back, and hop down. The hatch door is wide-open. An old man sits at the table, his pale skin paper-thin and sagging, his scalp rung in short-cropped silver hair. His hands are clasped on the tabletop, and he’s spinning something between them.
“I knew it was you the second I seen you at the cemetery,” he says, and his voice registers his name: Mr. Bill. “You got gone. Why didn’t you stay gone?”
“Felt like the right time to come home,” I answer carefully.
“Your momma know?”
“You of all people should understand why I didn’t feel compelled to go knock on that door,” I say as I walk into the room.
“She’s better now, you know. Still can’t see much, of course. But better. She has regrets, Michael.”
“Regrets.” I nod. “I don’t believe regrets exist. Not really. I believe in Fate, Mr. Bill. Fate guides. Fate clears the path at our feet. Fate always brings us back to where we ought to be. So how can we have regrets? Mother taught me that, you know. She showed me how powerful Fate can be.”
“She told me,” Bill says quietly.
“She doesn’t understand Fate, Bill. Not even a little bit. And you… you shouldn’t be here.”
“I helped your father build this. I helped dig both tunnels. I helped install every cabinet. I know what should be here and what shouldn’t be.” He opens his hands, and the skeletal remains of Timmy’s fingertips appear in his palm.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I repeat, regarding him, the prickly sensation of being too warm spreading through me. Lady Fate is a raven in my chest, cawing and flapping, driving my blood ever faster. “But now you can’t leave,” I say, and I close the door.
AMA Chapter 49 | 9:00 AM, December 4, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
AMA SHIFTED IN THE PASSENGER seat of Lindsey’s Honda Accord, unable to find a tolerable position. She grunted, twisting again, and her mind turned to Hazel—underground. Hazel—chained to a wall. Hazel—another day spent in utter silence, despite Michael’s best efforts.
“I don’t think you should’ve signed yourself out of the hospital before they thought you were ready,” Lindsey said.