Zo? and Greening stayed the rest of the night in Mammoth Lakes. Greening already had a motel room there, so she’d followed him from Bishop. When they’d arrived, she’d checked into a room of her own and had been asleep within minutes of stretching out on the bed. Greening woke her with a phone call at 9:00. She was up and out of the room in thirty minutes and found Greening waiting by her car. He was wearing a suit again. She guessed he was on the clock.
“You’re riding with me today. You can leave your car here. I cleared it with the motel.”
Zo? tossed her overnight bag in the trunk of the rental.
“You hungry?”
She nodded.
“Great. I found a good place yesterday.”
They drove to a diner, where they got a booth with a view of Mammoth Mountain and ordered breakfasts. Zo? got the feeling that Greening had been working for a couple of hours before he roused her. He would have no doubt been reporting on last night’s festivities.
“So you came out here to check up on me?” she asked.
“I’m looking into your case. It can help us with ours and, hopefully, vice versa.”
“When did you come out here?”
“Yesterday.”
“Have you learned anything?”
“Not much. I’m hoping for better luck today.”
The waitress dropped by to refill their coffee cups before moving on to the next table.
“Why is it so important for you to come out here and torture yourself?”
She shrugged. “Because I have to remember what happened to me. That night is a blank. Everyone else can probably tell you more about it than I can, and that pisses me off. I’ve been meaning to come out and retrace my steps. I tried once before, but didn’t have the courage to go through with it. I felt that if I came back and faced it all, I’d be facing what I did—or what I didn’t do.”
“Which was?”
“I ran when I should have stayed.”
“You’d be dead if you had. You know that.”
“It’s not like my life has been all sunshine since. Dying in order to save Holli would have been the better option.”
“Bullshit.” Greening’s remark came out with sharp edges and no sympathy. “Don’t tell me Holli got the better deal. If she were here, she’d make you eat those words. If Laurie Hernandez is any reference, your friend died an ugly death that no one would wish on another person. You lived. Accept it. And love life because of it.”
It was oh-so-simple to people like him who didn’t understand what she had gone through. Their problem was they didn’t comprehend shame’s indelible mark and how deep it went. And why would they, unless they’d committed a reprehensible act? Even Jarocki didn’t really get it. He’d lived a charmed life. All he knew about shame was what he’d learned in books or from the people he’d studied. Greening and Jarocki and everyone else saw it the same way—like it was a surface issue. Oh, look—you have some shame on you. Don’t worry, it’ll come off with a little soap and water. Shame was one of those things that had to be excised like a cancer, but it was a hard thing to remove when it was wrapped around your heart.
“Did you come out here hoping to run into him again?”
“No. I’m not on a suicide mission. I’m trying to help. Help Holli, Laurie Hernandez, and any other victims.”
“And yourself?”
“Yes, and myself. I’ve hidden from that son of a bitch for too long. I was trying to repeat the trip from Vegas to home, to see if it could provide any clues.”
“Like the Smokehouse.”
“Yes. I don’t remember the place at all, but they remembered me.”
Greening shook his head. “And you apprehended Craig Cook, an innocent man. Do you see how dangerous that was? How that situation could have turned nasty on you?”
“But it didn’t.”
“You saying that concerns me, because that situation did get nasty, and you don’t recognize that.”
Greening sounded like Jarocki.
“You like to make waves, Zo?.” He looked at his half-eaten meal and pushed it away. “Did you think Cook was the guy?”
“In that moment, I did. I saw him and I saw the possibility.”
“Our man is in the city. Not out here.”
“You don’t know that. He could be commuting. Double identities and all that.”
“Possible but unlikely. To have picked up Laurie Hernandez the way he did means he studied her. Trust me, he’s in the city. Even if he isn’t, you can’t be so reactionary. It’s going to get you hurt.”
A lull followed, where they didn’t say anything for several minutes.
“Look, I didn’t mean to get overbearing or anything,” Greening said. “Actually, you retracing your steps is a good thing. It’s something I was trying to do, but it’s a lot more helpful with you, so what I’d like to do is take you out to where the sheriffs found you and backtrack from there. Sound good?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”