37
A man with a big belly and an orange volunteer vest waves my rental car into a parking place on the grass. I’m a half hour early, and the lot is packed, vehicles spilling off the concrete.
I hop out and toss the man a smile with lots of teeth when I pass by. Oklahoma girls are raised to do that like we are all pageant material, but we’re also prepared to stab you in the gut.
The man in the orange vest probably thinks I’m just another teenager out here with her cellphone camera, drawn like a fly to dead things.
I’m thinking that he could be the killer.
It could be anybody in this creepy little hot pocket of a town.
For once, the living might be outnumbering the dead in this cemetery. I’m guessing at least five hundred showed up to witness this. Six television stations that I can count. I love crowds because I can slip around and hide, and I hate them because that means so can anybody else. All the cops out here sweating in full dress uniforms have the same idea—panning for Odette’s killer even though they’ve already had five years to find her and fifteen to dig up Trumanell.
I push my sunglasses back up and throw on another smile, this time for a little girl in a Batgirl costume dressed up in Odette’s honor.
Odette would love this little girl with the crooked mask, but she would hate this scene. She would hate that she is the No. 6 trending Twitter hashtag and Trumanell is No. 8. She’d hate this memorial-statue reveal that is pretty much declaring her dead, when not a piece of her was ever found.
I park myself under a tree right next to an old lady in a pink tracksuit and diamond earrings. She seems to know things. She is telling the short, chubby man with her that this statue business is running late because the doves they plan to release are being uncooperative. The doves are perturbed after being dyed black to look like bats, which the old lady has decided was a racist thing to do.
She announces that the pastor of First Baptist has been asked to kill some time, and Lord have mercy if he gets going.
So I’m prepared when Odette’s uncle takes the stage in a plain black suit. He looks much older than the stock picture they run of him on the news and in that old true crime documentary that I have watched seven times. His voice, not old. Even with the mic squeaking, he’s got every head bowed and a nice rhythm going.
God ordained two of our beautiful angels to watch over this town forever. That’s his spin. I don’t think so. I feel Odette all the time, and she’s pissed. Her wings are burning.
He makes my mind wander, like most preachers. I know a lot of nice, open-minded Baptist ministers, but there are plenty who walked right out of the pages of The Handmaid’s Tale, who preach that women should give their husbands sex seven times a week and think Jesus was whiter than snow. I don’t know for sure, but I think Odette’s uncle is one of those.
I say my own prayer. Two words. Why, God? Odette must have been so afraid that night. There was just a tiny spot of blood in the dirt. A shovel. A fence post jerry-rigged to look like a cross, and a hole dug up with nothing in it. Her pickup truck, lights blazing. A scattering of pennies, like dandelions. Her wishes, lying in dirt.
I ask forgiveness, mostly of Odette. If I hadn’t refused to say a word at Maggie’s kitchen table, if I’d nodded and said I recognized my father on her computer screen, maybe she never would have left the house.
Even though I was just a kid, even though I was scared of my father hunting me down, even though just dredging up the word dandelion felt like a cigarette in my throat, I would have gone with her if she asked. I would have recited the Emily Dickinson poem my mother loved or the whole Olive Garden menu. I would have done anything if I knew Odette was the one who was going to die.
I close my eyes one more quick time.
Watch over me as I dig.
Amen.
38
I’m guessing that a couple of people accidentally nudged the person in front of them, and it set off a chain reaction. The whole sweaty bunch of us lunges closer to the stage like we’re one ferocious animal.
I’m only 103 pounds, but I hold my ground and try not to reach under my skirt and itch the new mosquito bite on the inside of my thigh. The prayer is rolling on and on. At least half of the heads have already popped up.
The old lady beside me is talking low to her friend. She’s annoyed that Odette’s husband is engaged to someone else but won’t put the Blue House on the market and sell it to a deserving local family who would clean up the lawn. She thinks Finn is a pretentious name and heard he flat-out turned down an opportunity to speak today.
The preacher descends the podium to a smattering of hand claps. Finally. Cellphones are hiked high in the air, ready to snap whatever is hiding under the white drape. I don’t think all of these people are assholes—just that it’s way easier to see life through a screen.
A cop in jeans, a badge, sunglasses, and a cowboy hat has taken the stage. I can tell he’s from a long line of real-deal swaggerers. I quickly recognize him as Odette’s old partner because of his red hair. People call him Rusty or Wonder. The old lady refers to him as “Francine Colton’s boy.”
To me, he always seems like a reluctant spokesperson when he’s caught on TV. He was never willing to say Odette’s disappearance was linked to Trumanell’s or why he was so bad at finding them.
He’s on my list. He ordered cops to dig around that fence post for months, until the hole was as wide as a football field. I’ve seen pictures. It was like a giant leaned down and bit the earth.
“I got very little to say on the five-year anniversary of Odette’s disappearance,” he begins, “except this kind of event does nothing to help our town’s image. I wouldn’t be up here if the mayor hadn’t told me his second choice was our shithead in Congress.” He steps back from the microphone and stares off, like he’s having trouble composing himself. It’s several uncomfortable seconds before he tries again. “Odette told me over a beer, right after she saved my life from a crackhead, that whenever she died, she wanted to be cremated, poured in bullets, and shot into the sky. Most of you out there, you don’t know shit about Odette. Or give a shit about her.”
His tone is barely under control, but I don’t think he’s drunk. I rethink that when he pulls out his gun. “Put down your fucking phones,” he orders. “Now.”
Arms drop like they were sliced off. The crowd takes a big step back, but nobody around me seems to think they are personally going to get shot.
“I can’t ricochet my partner off the sky,” Rusty is saying. “I can’t grant her last wish. So let this be a warning that I’m not done.”
Only one idiot still has his phone up high, recording it all. He’s off to the side, leaning against a crumbling mausoleum. Rusty locks his eyes on him and seems to be considering whether he’s worth his time.
“I hope Francine’s boy shoots the phone right out of his hand,” the old lady declares. “He could do it. He’s a former Iraq sniper. Rumored thirty-two kills.”
Except he doesn’t. He whips around and points the gun up. Three shots rake the sky. The doves are going nuts in the cages, their wings making the squeaky warning whistle that most people think comes out of their mouths.