“You seem to have a memory for details, too.”
“Michael was special. He was one who grabbed your attention, even if he never made a sound. And seeing that kind of thing… well it’s not something I’d easily forget.”
“What did you think about the trial?”
Mrs. Jacobs let out a sigh. “I remember that I was the only person who sat on his side of the courtroom. Maybe he killed those animals, and maybe he didn’t. But I know him enough to know it wasn’t out of meanness. We had begun dissecting animals in class—frogs, fetal pigs. His precision was… remarkable. He had the right feel for it. He handled each part of each animal so carefully. If he cut open neighborhood animals in the same manner, well, he shouldn’t have done it, but it’s nothing to lock a kid up and throw away the key for. And he certainly didn’t deserve what happened after the trial.”
“What was that?” Martin asked.
“Some roughneck senior boys pushed him into that river. I know they did. And then what they carved on that tree.” She shook her head. “If anyone should have their names dragged through the mud and face a trial, it should be bullies like that.”
“Mrs. Jacobs, do you know of anyone who might have a picture of Michael? I visited his mother, but she didn’t have any.”
Mrs. Jacobs tsked and slid open a desk drawer. “I keep a photo album of my favorite students. Michael didn’t care to have his picture taken, but I got a good one of him one day. It was the last day of school for the year, and he was the only student who didn’t seem happy about it. I tried to cheer him up, make him feel special, so I told him I took pictures of all my favorite students. You should also check the library for that year’s annual—1988 or ’89, I believe.”
She handed Martin the photograph. A ray of sunlight had streamed through the window and spotlighted Michael at his desk. He looked five years younger than anyone else in the class, but his eyes were ancient and ringed with exhaustion. Shoulder-length, greasy hair fell across half his face. His hands were in two fists under his chin, and the corners of his mouth were pulled up in the faintest smile.
“Thank you, Mrs. Jacobs,” Martin said. “Can I keep this photograph for a little while?”
“Sure. May I ask what this is about?”
“Off the record,” Martin said, and Mrs. Jacobs nodded. “Off the record, we are looking into what really happened that day at the river. I’ll be in touch.”
MARTIN Chapter 67 | 8:30 AM, December 7, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
MARTIN WAS NEARLY TO THE station when he glanced over at Eddie. His forehead was pressed against the window. His gaze was fixed on the trees blurring by, but Martin had the feeling he wasn’t seeing them at all. Eddie hadn’t said a word for the entire drive.
“You okay, Eddie?” he asked quietly.
“It’s been months since I’ve seen the school,” Eddie said. “Got to where I couldn’t even drive by it. I’d look too hard for her, or feel like the worst person on earth if I drove by without at least a glance.” Eddie let out a shuddering breath. “All this time, I knew she was out there to be found, and now she is out there—we know she is—and it feels like she’s farther away than ever before.”
Martin didn’t know how to answer. He couldn’t promise that they’d find her, and it seemed trite to say they’d try. Six days into this investigation, and Martin was struggling. Eddie had been fighting this battle mostly alone for months. Reading a face and asking questions was Martin’s job, and he had no idea what to say.
“Martin, can I go home? Just for a bit?” Eddie asked, breaking the silence. “I just need to be where I feel her.”
“For as long as you want,” Martin said.
Eddie steered Martin north, then down several little roads. His property was on a cul-de-sac, and the front was mostly shielded with trees. The driveway curved left, and then a little white house appeared, one story, trimmed in gray, with a porch extending across the front. There were two rocking chairs framing a bay window, and Martin wondered if Eddie could bring himself to sit in one with the other empty, rocking with the slightest breeze.
Martin trailed Eddie up the steps and through the front door. Everywhere Martin looked, he saw places where two people should sit: two chairs in the living room, an old wood table with two mismatched chairs in an open space beside the kitchen. Martin was accustomed to the quiet in his own home; no one had ever lived there with him. He wondered at the shadows Hazel’s memory cast in every room, and he thought about what Michael’s mother had said about filling the silence.
They walked down a narrow hall, and Eddie paused by a door to the right, his fingers frozen on the knob, and even before he finally nudged it open, Martin knew this must be Hazel’s room. Daylight streamed through two big windows, shining on a wooden desk. The bedframe was made from whole boughs of slender trees, and her bedspread, still tossed to the side like Hazel had climbed out that morning, was a patchwork quilt.
Eddie pointed to it.
“Hazel made her bedspread from her mother’s dresses the summer after we moved here,” he said, flicking a finger near the corner of his eye.
A lump rose in Martin’s throat as he remembered who he’d thought Eddie was—what he thought he’d done.
“Look around, if you want to,” Eddie offered. “You want to know about Hazel, this is where she spent most of her time.”
Eddie pulled open a desk drawer and withdrew a black recorder. “She wrote her own songs, covered others. Those last few months, she was always singing. She was working on a song, got real private and silly about it. That’s what makes me know it was good.” He smiled then. “I haven’t been able to play this. Hey, you think… you think they’d play it at the fundraiser? That way, no matter what happens, she’ll be heard one more time. She’ll sing to a crowd.”
We’re going to get her back, Martin wanted to say, but standing in her room, the possibility she’d one day walk around in it again seemed far away and improbable. Martin had seen too many people nearly rescued alive to believe the odds were in Hazel’s favor. When he finally spoke, he said: “There won’t be a dry eye in the house.”
Martin opened the second drawer in the desk. There was a stack of notebooks, a handful of CDs, and a couple of pencils. He put the notebooks on the desktop, then flipped open the first one. There were more doodles than words, then a few short poems and several sketches of a girl with her eyes turned down, shoulders slumped. Self-portraits, if Martin had to guess, and he checked to make sure Eddie wasn’t looking over his shoulder. Eddie was standing by Hazel’s bed, his fingers on her pillow. Martin turned away, feeling like an intruder, and continued flipping through the notebook. Finding nothing, he leafed through the rest of the stack.
The corner edge of a picture stuck out of the bottom notebook. He slid it from between the pages. It was a candid shot of Hazel, her head thrown back, mouth open in a carefree grin. In front of her, a man pumped his arms as if in some kind of victory.
“Who’s this?” Martin asked, flashing the photo at Eddie.
“That’s Jonathon Walks,” he said, confirming Martin’s suspicion.