I turn away from the house now and look out into the distance. I have a few minutes. I know where I want to go. I cross the road and find the railroad tracks. I know you are not supposed to walk beside them, but I’m living on the edge today. I follow the tracks out of the town center, up past Downing Road and Coddington Terrace, past the storage facility and the old industrial plant that’s been converted into a party space and circuit-training studio.
I am away from civilization now, high up on that hill between the station for Westbridge and the one for Kasselton. I skirt past broken beer bottles and reach the edge. I look down and see the steeple from Westbridge Presbyterian. It lights up at 7:00 P.M., so I assume you saw it that night. Or were you too stoned or high to take notice? I knew that you were starting to get a little too fond of recreational drugs and drinking. In hindsight, I guess I should have stopped it, but at the time it didn’t hit me as a big deal. Everyone was doing it—you, Maura, most of our friends. The only reason I didn’t partake was because of my training.
I take another deep breath.
So how did it all go down, Leo? Why were you here, on the other side of Westbridge, and not hanging out in the woods near the old Nike base? Did you and Diana want to be alone? Were you trying to avoid your Conspiracy Club friends? Were you intentionally staying away from the old base?
Why were you here? Why were you on these train tracks?
I wait for you to say something. You don’t.
I wait a little more because I know it won’t be long now. The Main Line runs every hour this time of day. I wait until I hear the whistle as it pulls out of the Westbridge station. Not far away now. Part of me wants to stand on the tracks. No, I don’t want to end it. I’m not suicidal. But I want to know what it was like for you. I want to reconstruct that night so I know exactly what you experienced. I watch now as the train hurtles over the horizon. The tracks vibrate to the point where I can’t believe they don’t come apart. Did you feel that vibration under your feet? Did Diana? Or were you standing off to the side, just as I am? Did you both look down at the steeple, turn, and then decide to jump across at the last possible second?
I can see the train now. I watch it come closer. Did you see it that night? Hear it? Feel it? You must have. It bears down on these tracks with unfathomable power. I take another step back. When it rushes by, I am a full ten yards away from the train and yet I’m forced to close my eyes and raise my hand to protect my face. The swoosh of air nearly knocks me off my feet. The pure might of the locomotive, the sheer mass times velocity, is awesome, devastating, unstoppable.
A mind, like a heart, goes where it wants, and so I imagine that hard-steel front grille crushing human flesh. I imagine those churning wheels grinding bone into dust.
I pry my eyes open and squint at the train speeding by. It seems to take forever, that the train is endless, crushing and churning and grinding. I stare straight at it, letting it blur without trying to focus. My eyes water.
I’ve seen the horrific, splatter-filled crime scene photos from that night, but they oddly don’t move me. The destruction was so great, the disfigurement so immense, that either I can’t link the misshapen waxy chunks to you and Diana or, more likely, my mind won’t let me.
When the train finally passes, when the quiet slowly returns, my eyes start to take in the scene. Even now, all these years later, I am searching for clues, evidence, something that may have been missed. Being up here is strange. The horror is obvious, but it also feels somehow holy, somehow right, to be in the place where you drew your final breath.
As I start back down the hill, I check my phone for messages. Nothing from our old classmate Beth Fletcher née Lashley, MD. I call her office in Ann Arbor again. The receptionist gives me a bit of the runaround, so I get more pointed. Soon a woman who introduces herself as Cassie and calls herself the “office manager” gets on the line.
“Dr. Fletcher is unavailable at this time.”
“Cassie, I’m getting tired of being jerked around. I’m a cop. I need to speak to her.”
“I can only pass that message on to her.”
“Where is she?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Wait, you don’t know where she is?”
“It is not my concern. I have your name and number. Is there any other message you’d like me to give her?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Do you have a pen, Cassie?”
“I do.”
“Tell Dr. Fletcher that our friend Rex Canton has been murdered. Tell her Hank Stroud is missing. Tell her Maura Wells briefly resurfaced and then went missing again. Tell the good doctor that it all goes back to the Conspiracy Club. Tell her to call me.”
Silence. Then: “Is that Laura with an L or Maura with an M?”
Completely unflustered.
“Maura with an M.”
“I’ll give Dr. Fletcher the message.”
She hangs up.
I don’t like this. Maybe I’ll call the Ann Arbor Police Department, ask them to send one of their people over to Beth’s home and office. I keep walking. I think again about all the strands—your and Diana’s “accident,” Rex’s murder and Maura being at the scene, Hank and that viral video, the Conspiracy Club. I try to find connections, draw lines, work Venn diagrams of these events in my head. But I see no overlap or link.
Perhaps there is none. That’s what Augie would tell me. He’s probably right, but of course, accepting that possible reality gets me nowhere.
I see the Westbridge Memorial Library up ahead now, and that sparks an idea. The front facade is that kind of red school brick that dates back a hundred years. The rest of the building is modern and sleek. I still love libraries. I love the hybrid quality, the new computer sections and the books yellowing with age. Libraries for me have always had a cathedral-like ambiance, a hushed sanctuary where learning is revered, where we the people elevate books and education to the level of the religious. When we were kids, Dad would take us here on Saturday mornings. He would leave us in the children/young adult section with strict instructions not to misbehave. I would browse through dozens of books. You would grab one—usually one meant for an older reader—sit in a beanbag chair in the corner, and read the entire book.
I head down two levels to the dingy basement area. It is old-school down here—rows and rows of books upon books, most no longer of interest to the casual library visitor, sit on aluminum shelves. There are a few cubby desks for true homework grinders. In the corner, I find the old room. The plaque next to it reads TOWN HISTORY. I lean my head in and rap on the wood.
As Dr. Jeff Kaufman looks up at me, his reading glasses drop off his nose. The glasses are on a chain, so they bounce against his chest. He’s wearing a thick knit cardigan sweater buttoned up to the sternum. He’s bald on top with shocks of gray hair on the sides that look as if they are trying to flee from his scalp.
“Hey, Nap.”
“Hey, Dr. Kaufman.”
He frowns. Dr. Kaufman was a librarian and town historian long before we moved to Westbridge, and when you call someone of authority “doctor” or even “mister” as a kid, it is hard to convert to a casual use of their first name as an adult. I move into the cluttered room and ask Dr. Kaufman what he can tell me about the old Nike missile base located by the middle school.
Kaufman’s eyes light up. He takes a moment or two to gather his thoughts; then he invites me to have a seat across the table from him. The table is a mess of black-and-white photographs from days of yore. I scan them hoping to see one of the old base. I don’t.
He clears his throat and dives in: “The Nike missile bases were constructed in the midfifties throughout northern New Jersey. This was during the height of the Cold War. Back then, we would run school drills where kids would duck under their desks in case of nuclear attack, if you can believe it. Like that would help. The base here in Westbridge was constructed in 1954.”
“The army just stuck these bases right in the middle of suburban towns?”
“Sure, why not? Farmland too. New Jersey used to have a lot of farms back then.”