“We could drive to the other side, and it’d be about a six-mile walk. Up to you.”
Eddie had a pretty good idea of what Martin would choose, knowing Martin wouldn’t want to draw a lot of attention or spend more time than necessary on the trail. Eddie also wasn’t about to tell Martin about the little footpath they could’ve accessed from the county courthouse, which would’ve been just a half-mile walk from the courthouse parking lot across fairly flat terrain to the little hutch. Eddie had picked this way because he wanted to get a good look at the factory in daylight. The big, silent building made the hair on the back of his neck rise every time he came near its shadow, and even though it had been searched top to bottom twice when Hazel disappeared, Eddie always felt her there, swore she’d be right behind him when he turned around.
“I’ll get wet,” Martin said, and Eddie was clotheslined with both relief and reawakened nervousness. He remembered how spooked the officers seemed every time they stepped inside the concrete walls, as if they were disturbing an ancient graveyard. Eddie was more nervous about the living. What if whoever had Hazel was watching from the factory, saw Eddie traipsing across the field, then took Hazel, and vanished?
Eddie realized, with a sinking, gasping feeling, that he assumed whoever had Hazel would know Eddie on sight, would have known him before, and one name kept surfacing in his mind: Jonathon Walks. For the first time, he was grateful that Martin hadn’t given him back his phone, or he may have called Jonathon, just to see if he got a feeling one way or the other. If Martin was right, one little phone call could tip him off and send him and Hazel out of Tarson.
They parked the car alongside the chain-link fence. Eddie pulled the hood over his head before stepping out of the car. It felt colder here than at the station, the sun blocked by elevation and trees, the wind sliding down the mountain, but his skin felt like it was on fire, his blood nearly boiling in his veins. Without a word, he walked into the woods, this time with Martin trailing behind.
They climbed the first rise, weaving between trees.
“We’re not on a path,” Martin said.
“Didn’t think you’d want to run into anyone,” Eddie answered. “And didn’t you ever hear that the shortest path between two points is a straight line?”
Martin, save his labored breathing, stayed quiet the rest of the way.
It felt strange to be in these woods without calling out for someone. The only sounds were the rustling leaves under their feet and birds chirping overhead.
They reached the little stone hutch, the door propped open, and for a moment Eddie froze. What if a new piece of jewelry sat waiting for them atop the earth? What would it mean for Hazel? He wondered if Ama escaping gave Hazel a better chance, that whoever had her—not Jonathon, he wouldn’t commit to that yet—would keep her alive longer having lost his next victim. He would be enraged, Eddie realized. The reality of what Hazel might be facing struck him square in the chest, and he doubled over, catching his hands on his knees.
Martin’s feet appeared next to his, and Eddie felt his hand on his back, light and unsure.
“Go sit,” Martin said. “I can take it from here.”
Eddie propped himself against the outside of the hutch as the spinning sensation faded, and he watched Martin maneuver through the door. He listened to Martin push aside leaves with his foot, then the sounds turned softer, and Eddie imagined he was prying at the earth with his fingers.
“Find anything?” he called to Martin.
“No. Wishing I brought a shovel right about now.”
“How far down are you going to dig?” Eddie asked.
“Until I find something.”
Eddie peered into the hutch, saw Martin’s streaked face, brown fingers. He saw himself in Martin’s eyes, the desperation, the need, the regret.
“Let’s take turns, then,” Eddie said.
They dug all morning, layer after layer of earth coming out of the hutch. The sweat and exertion made Eddie drive harder, grateful for the feeling of doing something, watching the hole grow. Martin, on the other hand, seemed to grow more agitated and less committed with every turn. As the sun began its slide toward the west horizon, Martin emerged from the hutch with defeat hanging off his face, pulling on his shoulders.
“Nothing,” he said. He planted his knuckles at his waist and tilted his head to the sky.
Eddie wondered if he was having a few choice words with whatever higher power he believed in. He knew that look, knew that talk. He’d had them both out here at least a hundred times.
“Let me have one last go,” Eddie said, and was squeezing through the propped door before Martin could disagree. He dug like a man possessed, chipping away at harder ground with the sharp end of a rock. A chunk of dirt broke off, and he pulled it away. Beneath it, something silver caught his eye. He reached into the soil, not daring to hope, unwilling to alert Martin until he was sure. The first object was a silver spoon, the kind used to ladle soup or punch. He set it in his lap, then felt around the fresh hole with numb fingers, unearthing several silver coins. He brushed the dirt off of one well enough to read the year: 1980. Old, but not remarkably so.
He breathed out a sigh and rocked back on his heels, his bad knee throbbing for want to stand. One more go, he told himself, and reached inside again, tilling the earth with his hands. Something round and hard passed between his fingers, and he plucked it from the dirt. The piece of silver was like the threaded end of a screw, but on its head was a dished, metal plate. He’d seen these before, a decade before, when Hazel started learning how to play a violin. It was a tuning peg she used to change the tension on the string. Nine years old, and she’d had to teach Eddie how to do it.
There, inside the hutch, Eddie could remember the way his wife and his daughter belly laughed at his utter inability to hear the difference in the string as he twisted the knob back and forth, loose and tight. It had all sounded the same, like how all shades of blue were just blue. For Hazel and Raelynn, sounds were a spectrum of the color. Looking down at the tuning pegs, Eddie nearly cried, blindsided by a memory he hadn’t thought of in years. It was a gift, a painful, heartbreaking gift to remember something again, as if seeing it for the first time.
Blinking back tears, he felt around in the loose earth, and found another one, and then a third. Next, he pulled a steel string from the ground, coiled like a little gray snake, and he jerked back with recognition as if the wire had struck out to bite him. The girl from the board, who panhandled and played a fiddle on the town square, who walked away from the promenade one night in the direction of Tarson Woods and was never seen again.
Eddie lumbered out of the hutch, his spine howling from being hunched over, his nails filled with dirt, and his eyes wide with speculation. He held out his hand for Martin to see what he’d found. Martin went still, then reached a finger for Eddie’s palm, and his gaze leaped to Eddie’s face.
Without saying a word, they each peered behind each other, searching the woods like two lost kids with night coming and proof a monster was somewhere close.
The girl with the fiddle.
Hazel.
Ama.
Proof someone had left a memento of each behind.
“Put it all back,” Martin said.
Eddie closed his fist around it. “Why?”
“Whoever is out here, whoever has your daughter, he is methodical, obsessive. He may be able to tell that someone’s been in here digging around, but I’m damn sure he knows what’s buried here, and if he sees it’s still here, he may not be as concerned. But if his ritual ground is dug up and things are missing, we will lose him,” Martin said carefully.