—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
My mood was even darker because of my visit to Zolner’s lonely house and my upcoming counseling session. But I was determined to get one more thing done before going to the VA. I drove fast through the city and caught the northbound interstate, heading toward the cement factory. My goal wasn’t the factory, but rather the overpass at Potters Road. The bridge was part of the area searched by the police and volunteers, but I wanted to see it for myself.
As I drove, I eyeballed the dark, distant clouds out my left window, rolling in over the mountains with the regularity of bowling balls popping out at the ball return. With luck, we’d beat the next storm.
I exited the highway and turned east. The overpass was just outside the extensive area cordoned off by the police. Beyond the bridge, a police cruiser’s blue-and-red lights strobed against the late-afternoon sky. I pulled in behind a battered olive-drab Jeep Wrangler and killed the engine. Except for the Jeep and the cruiser, the land lay open and empty; all traffic to the east of the bridge had been rerouted north. When Clyde and I got out of the truck, the soft cooing of doves floated toward us from across the fields.
A woman sat in the Jeep’s passenger seat. She turned her head at the sound of our approach. She was young and thin, pretty in a starving-waif sort of way with chopped black hair, high cheekbones, and deep-set eyes. Her ears and nose were pierced, her pale skin tattooed on both arms with the vines and blooms of roses.
We nodded to each other and Clyde and I kept walking. Even before we got close to the bridge, I made out candles flickering in glass votives and a pile of flowers and toys left in the shelter of the bridge between the road and the concrete abutment. A man was crouched next to the candles, his head bowed. As we drew near, he stood and faced us.
He was in his midthirties, of average height with a lean build. He had a strikingly handsome face, green eyes, and bleached-blond hair pulled into a ponytail. I recognized him from Samantha Davenport’s website—Jack Hurley, Samantha’s assistant.
In his left hand he held a small hardcover book. He offered his other hand to me.
“Jack Hurley,” he said as we shook. “I saw you on television. You work for the railroad.”
“Sydney Parnell. This is my partner, Clyde.”
“I came to pay my respects,” Hurley said. Then he shrugged. “Or maybe . . . I don’t know. I guess I came thinking I might find answers. But of course there’s nothing here.”
I gestured toward the book. “Is that for the shrine?”
He flushed. His smile was nothing like the cocksure grin I’d seen on Samantha’s website. This one was tentative and it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Yeah.” He turned the cover so I could read the title. It was a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
“You’re fond of Shakespeare?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I run more to Hunter S. Thompson. But Sam loved poetry. I thought—” His voice broke and he turned away.
While he collected himself, I studied the makeshift shrine. People had brought teddy bears and dolls. Bouquets of wildflowers. Sparkling pinwheels. A picture of Lucy photocopied onto a sheet of paper and placed in plastic with the words, “We love you, Lucy! Come home!” There were Mardi Gras beads and paper hearts pinned to cardboard and a DVD of the Disney movie Mulan.
Hurley cleared his throat. “I thought she’d like to have them. The poems.”
“You worked with her every day,” I said. “Did you see any sign this was coming?”
His faint smile turned wary. “Look, I told the police everything. The real police, I mean. I came out here to get some quiet. But since you asked, the answer is no. Other than Sam mentioning a stalker, there wasn’t anything unusual. And, no, I never saw a stalker. Sam just told me she sensed something. Like ESP, or something. Now if you’ll excuse me, I told Livvy I’d just be a moment.”
“The girl in the Jeep, is she your girlfriend? She’s what . . . sixteen? Seventeen?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Twenty-two. But she has an old soul. She’s my muse. She got me into photography, which got me the job with Sam. It’s a good job. Was a good job. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I’ll keep running the business if Ben wants me to. But . . . I don’t know. If it were me, I wouldn’t want me around.”
“Why not?”
“I’m just a reminder, right? Like the business. A reminder of everything he’s lost.”
“You and Ben get along?”
“Sure.” Then he shook his head. “Mostly. Ben is a serious dude. Like everything is kind of a drag. I think he thought I was too flippant, too . . .”
“Frivolous?”
He laughed, a sharp, brief sound. “Frivolous. Exactly. I made Sam laugh, and sometimes I think Ben resented that.”
“Should he have?”
“No. Man, the cops asked me that. There wasn’t anything between Sam and me except a good business relationship.”
“Well.” I narrowed my eyes, studying him. “Maybe Ben will want a little frivolity now.”
“You think?” Hurley’s smile turned into a grin, transforming his face from sullen to guileless. He seemed ten years younger than what I suspected was his real age. “You know, you’d make a great subject, Sydney. You ever thought of modeling?”
This was the Jack I’d seen on Samantha’s website—charming, boyish, flirtatious.
“Not a chance,” I told him.
He sighed. “Well, call me if you change your mind. It’s a good way to earn a little side money.”
We shook hands again, and he walked past me and plodded along the road toward the Jeep. I watched until he’d gotten into his car and was headed toward the highway. Only then did I realize he’d left without placing the book of sonnets with the other offerings.
Clyde and I walked around the abutment so I could study the overpass. The bridge was nothing special. Concrete and iron rebar, a yellow sign indicating the bridge’s height as thirteen feet, eight inches. But even this simple construction would have cost in the tens of thousands.
I tapped Clyde’s lead and we climbed the hill to the tracks. From up top, the land undulated softly in all directions. The rains had turned everything green and filled the fields with wildflowers. Potters Road vanished over the eastern curve of hills. The silos of the cement factory were mere exclamation points against a distant sky.
From where we stood, the tracks curved to the north and south—Potters Road sat in the middle of a long, sweeping arc that resembled a single parenthesis. This was the curve that Deke had been coming out of when he spotted Samantha on the tracks. Thirty years ago, the curve would have meant that any drivers on Potters Road would lose sight of an oncoming train for a full minute before they reached the crossing.
Almost unbelievable, then, that according to what Mags Ackerman could find, there hadn’t been any accidents.
I snapped my fingers. “Tate didn’t report them.”