“Is there anyone in town that would want to kill her?”
“Chelsea was the nicest person you’d ever meet. But she slept around a lot. Older men, especially. I think a few of them were glad she went away.
“Did anyone kill her? Hell, this is Hudson. Anything is possible. You hear about that Indian family that went missing?”
I remember them from the missing-persons database. “Yeah.”
“What the newspapers don’t say is that they were running their own little meth lab. Without permission. That’s why they disappeared.” She grins knowingly and lowers her voice. “Know who the last two people to see them were? Bower and Jackson.”
“Bower and Jackson?”
“The police officers who got arrested for trafficking crystal. That’s how fucked-up things are around here.”
“Has anyone else ever mentioned something like what you saw the night Chelsea went missing?”
“I talked to some Chippewa guy. He grew up on a res. He said they have lots of stories like that. I don’t believe any of that. What I saw was a man that wanted me to think he was an animal. But I saw him walking, plain as day.” She narrows her eyes. “I thought they caught the bear that killed your girl.”
“They caught a bear. But there’s nothing that ties it to her.”
Amber watches a flock of birds fly overhead. “At least you know she’s gone. You have something to bury. Everyone around here is pretending Chelsea is out there somewhere having a gay old time. But they know. They know Chelsea’s dead. They just don’t care.”
I can feel the sense of loss she’s experiencing. It’s a quiet desperation, like clinging to a rope in a fog.
“Do you remember the spot where she disappeared? Where you saw the man?”
“Round about. I took the police there.”
“Did they find anything?”
“Are you kidding? They spent about ten minutes, then left. They didn’t give a fuck.”
“So it was never made a crime scene?”
“They didn’t make it a crime.” She stabs the air with her finger. “They didn’t care!”
The words come out of my mouth without thinking. “Can you tell me where it happened?”
Before she can answer, I hear the familiar sound of squealing truck tires.
“Shit,” Amber mutters. “My boyfriend is here.”
Here we go again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
BAD PRINCE
I feel my spine stiffen as Devon’s boots stomp across the grass. He comes to a stop over my shoulder, his shadow falling over me.
My right hand grips the can of Mace in my pocket, but my fingers are trembling. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull it free quickly enough, let alone muster the nerve to squeeze the trigger.
I’m terrified that trying to defend myself will only aggravate him further. Last time he took my money but left me well enough to walk away. Fighting back might put me in the hospital, or worse.
Amber looks over my head at Devon and gives him a little nod. “What’s up.”
“Who’s he?” Devon asks.
My body slackens a little when I realize he hasn’t recognized me under my hat and sunglasses. I keep my head down and avoid looking up at him, lest he see the bruise on my face and recognize his handiwork.
“He’s nobody,” Amber replies. “Just an old friend of Chelsea.”
“Friend or customer?” Devon replies with a mocking tone. He walks past me without turning to look. “Make sure he knows your pussy is no longer on Craigslist.”
“Fuck you.” Amber flips him the bird as he steps inside, closing the door behind him.
Amber shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “You probably think I’m a horrible person.”
I keep my voice low, afraid he’ll hear me inside. “Aside from what happened yesterday, I think you’re swell.”
“Yeah, whatever. We only started doing that after a trucker roughed up some girl from Quiet Lake. They fucked his shit up when they got to him.
“Devon was getting pissed when he saw the guys calling me. It was one thing if they were a local, someone we knew who was okay.”
I’m trying to understand the relationship dynamic. “Is Devon your . . .”
“Pimp? Fuck, no. I’m not a fucking whore,” she says sharply.
“I was going to say ‘boyfriend.’”
“Oh. We have an open relationship. Not that it’s any of your business.”
I’m embarrassed by the whole discussion. “I didn’t mean to imply anything.”
“You have a judgmental face.”
“I’m a scientist. I look at everything this way.”
She tilts her head toward the house. “Devon wanted to be a scientist.”
“Really?” I say a little too loudly.
“He loves all that shit. He’s got a Neil deGrasse Tyson T-shirt and everything. We used to get high and watch Bill Nye the Science Guy.”
Out of nowhere, this makes me laugh. My stomach protests in pain, and I try to stop moving.
“Yeah, fucked-up, I know. You ever watch Sesame Street wasted? It’s like it’s made for two-year-olds and stoners.”
“No. I’ve never gotten high all that much. As an undergrad I was on a trip to the Amazon and a local medicine man gave some of us something that I still can’t identify. We sat around in a circle drinking it, thinking it was a bonding ceremony.
“Turns out they were just messing with the out-of-towners. I sat in a tree for hours convinced I was a spider monkey. When I got back down and explained what I experienced, the medicine man asked me how I was so certain I wasn’t a spider monkey that got high and thinks it’s a scientist.”
Amber taps the side of her nose. “That guy knew what he was talking about. How are you so sure?”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
She leans back and stares at the passing clouds. “Chelsea and I used to have those conversations all the time. We’d wonder if this world was the real one. When we were little girls, we’d always be looking through closets and random doors, hoping we’d find one that led to another place. Like Narnia. Something different.”
She leaves out “someplace better,” but I know what she’s trying to say.
She tugs at a weed. “When we got older and realized that we weren’t going to find that door, we started thinking that world was around us, but we couldn’t see it. I don’t mean like a Doors song or nothing. Just that we get used to calling things by names and thinking about them in a certain way.
“We started making up our own names for stuff. Like the phone was the far talk box. We’d call the TV a magic window. We’d come up with names for people, too. Chief York was the Evil Baron. Charlie was the Bad Prince. We had names for everyone. Reverend Goat, the Red Witch, the Bad Wizard—he was a meth cook.” Her voice drifts. “Anyway. Stupid stuff.”
I feel a connection to this lost girl. “It’s not stupid at all. I teach a whole class on nomenclature. I explain how using different names, but ones that still fit, can give you a different understanding of things.”
“Like how?”
I think for a moment. “Take Hudson Creek. It’s not much of a creek, but the whole town and everything around is in its valley. Actually, it’s kind of a bowl between the mountains. On the other side are a couple of different towns. One is more in the mountains—lots of summer rentals, right? The other seems like a nice enough place. What makes this town different? What name would you give it?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Hell Mouth. This isn’t hell, but the entrance can’t be far. We’re all circling the edge, waiting to fall in.”
“I don’t know about all that, but I’m sure you get more than your share of wicked passing through.” I think of the dark-purple bands MAAT showed me. I wonder what I’d see if I used data from last century. Was Hudson Creek still on the devil’s highway? From what Gus told me, it would seem so.
“Amber, if I give you a map, can you show me where you last saw Chelsea?”
She thinks it over, then shakes her head. “I’m not sure.”
“Could you at least tell me some markers to look for?”
“They’re hard to find.”
I’m frustrated that she’s suddenly become a dead end. Maybe the subject is still too painful.
“How about I show you myself?” she offers.