“Yeah, them dogs could find Sasquatch in a snowstorm. That how they found your husband?”
“No, actually the dogs had the trail for a while, but lost it. Sheriff Fisk even had a helicopter come out and search the area.” Michelle left out the part about the disappearing house. It was too strange, and she was never sure if the sheriff had really understood what the pilot was saying. After all, it had been very noisy with the craft right above them.
“So that night I went down the hill to find Cliff.”
“By yourself?” Pink said. “That’s gutsy, ma’am. Though probably a might early for rattlesnakes. But still, gutsy.”
Rattlesnakes. Michelle had no idea there were rattlesnakes up there. “So I worked my way down the mountainside until I came to a cabin that looked exactly like the one we own . . . the one you built . . .”
“Yeah, that don’t surprise me none,” Pink said. “You can get turned ass-side-up in these woods even in the daylight. You just came round on yourself and ended up where you started. It happens when you’re lost . . . or in the dark.”
Michelle paused a moment. “I don’t think that’s what happened.”
Pink’s expression soured, but he listened quietly as Michelle continued.
“Anyway, the queerest thing is that Sheriff Fisk’s car was there, and when Cliff opened the door, he was relieved to see me . . .”
“So Fisk found him and brought him back?” Pink said. “Where’d your husband end up? Down by the highway? Keep heading down the mountain and eventually you come to the—”
“No . . . Sheriff Fisk didn’t find him. At that point it seems Cliff was never lost. But everything had changed. He had a scar on his forehead that had never been there before, and one of his fingers was missing from an apparent car accident that happened a year earlier. And even though Sheriff Fisk was inside with Cliff, he didn’t recognize me from only a few hours earlier . . .” She paused her story to study Pink’s eyes for signs of skepticism. Pink sat stone-faced as a professional gambler with a royal flush.
“They said I was the one who had gone missing,” Michelle said. “That they had been looking for me all that time, and that Cliff had never gone down the mountainside or searched for any light.”
Michelle didn’t tell Pink what the sheriff had said about him killing his wife, about the authorities digging up the yard searching for the body, about Pink and his mother disappearing. She also didn’t tell him about Cassie. It was too painful, too dangerous to acknowledge that aspect to another person, as if talking about her death could make it real.
Pink stared at the wall behind her head. “Why doesn’t your husband remember hiking down the mountain?” Pink finally asked after a long silence.
Was Pink trying to punch holes in her story, make her see how ridiculous it all was? Yet he seemed genuinely perplexed by the riddle, as was she.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He claims to remember nothing about any light either.”
“Well, I know there’s nobody below your cabin on my mama’s road because like I told you before, she owns all that land,” Pink said. “There may be somebody below her land, but it would be a long way off.”
The way Pink was talking—as if he believed her—put her at ease, but there was more to tell him and she wanted to get it over with. “When I rode down there with the sheriff and deputy—”
“You’re talking about Loudon and Elmer again, right?”
She nodded.
“Well, hell, I’ll talk to Fisk and see what he remembers . . .”
“No. You can’t. I mean . . . that won’t work,” Michelle said, trying to smother the urgency from her voice. “They don’t remember any of it either. Cliff talked to them at the hospital. They said they’d never seen me before.”
Pink’s expression changed from hopeful to strained, as if he’d bitten into something sour. When he toggled his head back and forth, she knew she’d lost him. She’d been hoping for validation, a knowing smirk, a shrewd glint to his eye, something to betray his complicity. But it was obvious none of this made any sense to him.
Michelle felt something give way inside her, like a faulty wall collapsing.
“So, what you’re saying is, Loudon and Elmer remember looking for you but don’t remember looking for your husband. That about right?”
Michelle didn’t like the severe look Pink had attached to his question, or the tone with which he’d asked it. She got up and walked to the door.
“Never mind,” she said, opening the door. “Thanks for everything.”
“Look,” he said, twisting in his chair. “These woods around here can be vexing. Easy for folks to get turned around and confused, think they see things that ain’t there. Me and Clarence been out coon hunting on nights so dark and disorienting I could get myself lost in my own backyard. I don’t know what happened to you that night, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”
Michelle held the door and looked at the parking lot. A woman crossed the pavement with her young daughter, holding the child’s hand. The little girl dangled a tiny yellow purse from her free hand, and Michelle missed Cassie more than ever. “Please, just go.”
Pink stood and hitched up his trousers. “I’m sorry, ma’am. You seem disappointed in me, like I was supposed to have something for you and didn’t. And I can’t think what it would be.” He stepped past Michelle and ambled across the parking lot.
Michelle closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed, her open purse next to her, the gun barrel aimed at the ceiling.
Chapter 15
Pink had never been lost in the woods, day or night, sober or drunk. He’d lied about the coon hunting hoping it would make her feel better. Truth was never as comforting as lies. Obviously, his lies hadn’t helped her though. He couldn’t deny he was attracted to her, and he wished he’d been able to provide her with whatever it was she was so desperately seeking. A gift like that might be rewarded with unbridled gratitude. He’d gotten a little aroused when she’d asked him to stay a few minutes, even though he was fairly certain sex wasn’t part of the offer. Her story was strange, but no stranger than most stories he’d heard from the lips of women. And he knew she was in some kind of trouble and that maybe she was dangerous by the gun she was trying to hide in her purse—although she hadn’t done a very good job of concealing it with her bag hanging open like the jaws of an old catfish.
The police cars were gone when Pink got to the office. Mrs. Stage’s Explorer was still there. If she was telling the truth—that her husband planned to take her back to Atlanta—then why hadn’t Loudon towed her vehicle? Was Fisk planning some kind of trap, leaving the Explorer as bait? Pink laughed to himself and looked over toward the strip of stores, the Subway sandwich shop, Tom and Lois’s Family Restaurant, the office supply store. Pink pictured Loudon and Elmer parked by the dumpster behind the stores, engine running, lights off, waiting for the signal to race out and nab Mrs. Stage. But Loudon and Elmer weren’t idiots or small-town hick cops who weren’t allowed to carry bullets. Loudon and Elmer had serious jobs, breaking up theft rings, dragging dead bodies from the bottom of Burtran Lake, raiding meth labs, dangerous work that meant putting their lives on the line. But Pink still couldn’t help chuckling to himself imagining the headline, “Sheriff Fisk and Deputy Bogan of Ardenwood apprehend the notorious Mrs. Stage during a dramatic bust in front of the Pink Souder Real Estate office.”