I had the distinct feeling that once Brad talked to his sister, I would not be employed much longer.
I headed to Belmont without much of a plan, hoping one would materialize. As I waited at the traffic light on the exit ramp I glared out at the grey landscape. Wildflower Capital of Ohio, the sign reminded me. But then I noticed another sign on the same pole, a brown one with an arrow informing me that the Clover Point Scenic Overlook was two miles away. The place where Mallory’s body had been found. A morbid curiosity took hold of me. I wanted to see the place.
I drove east on Clover Road, past Taverna Athena, the place where Sarah Cook’s house once stood, and past Kenny Brayfield’s street, finally spotting another sign that directed me to turn left. The road got suddenly narrower, plastered in slick orange-brown leaves, no edge lines. Up ahead, a slight incline and a rusting guardrail. I slowed down as I drove up the hill and finally found Clover Point, which was nothing more than a gravel rectangle with space for half a dozen cars and a wooden platform perched on the side of the hill and facing the trees. There was no one else up here.
I felt around in my backseat for a Columbia rain jacket and transferred my keys and phone—which was mercifully quiet so far today—to its pockets. Then, after looking at the murky dark below, I got my revolver out of the glove box. I pulled the hood of the rain jacket over my head and stepped onto the wooden platform, grabbing on to the railing, briefly disoriented from the height. It was nearly a hundred feet of sloping, leaf-covered ground to the bottom of the ravine. I saw now that there was a set of steps leading down to the ravine from the platform I stood on. A few dozen yards away, a chain-link fence separated the woods from an access road like the one I’d taken to get here, and a cluster of orange barrels and construction equipment stood behind it.
I started carefully down the steps. They were slippery from rain and mud and leaves. Although the area was quiet now, evidence of assorted vices littered the ground: food wrappers, crushed beer cans, a condom caught on branches below a small plank bridge that spanned a dried-up creek. Why had Brad said no, he’d never come here with Sarah, and then corrected himself a beat later? Why had he told me about this place but then seemed to regret it? Peter Novotny had said that innocent clients were often the least helpful, but Brad’s behavior had now crossed the line from unhelpful to something like suspicious.
At the bottom of the steps, a frayed nylon rope was tied between the hand railings, a small sign advising No Access. I hopped over it, put my hands in my pockets, and walked through the dense thicket of trees to the fence, through which I could see the source of the construction equipment—an apartment complex was going up over there, one of those big, impersonal ones with names like The District. Two buildings were done and appeared occupied, and two others were in various stages of completion.
I walked along the fence for a while. I didn’t like it down here, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something here for me to see besides just the place where Mallory Evans was found. The farther away from the overlook, the denser the woods got. The muddy ground was free of footprints and trash now, like no one was interested in trespassing this far in. Five or so minutes of walking and I couldn’t even see where my car was parked anymore. The rain provided a blanket of even sound, a white-noise machine.
Maybe that was why I didn’t hear footsteps in the mud until they were right behind me.
I spun around, my heart leaping into my throat. A few feet up the incline, a Belmont cop peered down at me from under the brim of his uniform hat. He was a slight black guy with glasses, which were spotted with rain. He wore a billowing clear plastic poncho that made him look like he was draped in a shower curtain liner.
“Jesus Christ, you scared me,” I breathed, a hand over my chest.
“Can I ask what you’re up to back here?” he said.
“Can I ask why you snuck up on me?” I squinted in the low light at his name tag: R. Meeks.
“Sorry.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” I said.
But he did look like he was a little sorry. He appeared to be about my age and completely miserable in his poncho. “Come on, let’s go.”
“I thought it was Columbus city territory down here.”
“Not anymore. Belmont annexed it a while back, and now it’s private property. Hence the no-access sign, which you must have tripped over since I’m sure you aren’t trespassing on purpose.”
I smiled slightly. Now that my pulse was returning to normal, I put my hands back in my pockets. “The scenic overlook is private property?”
“Recently sold,” Meeks said. “In nine months, all of this is going to be apartments. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s go on back up.”
I wondered what I was supposed to do next.
I wondered if the developers of the apartment complex knew that they were about to take over what had once been a young mother’s burial site.
I wondered if it mattered.
I looked at Meeks for a second. This was the fourth time I’d been intercepted by the Belmont police in as many visits to the area, and this time there wasn’t even anyone around to rat me out. “How did you know I was here?”
Meeks nodded toward the steps but I didn’t budge. Finally, he said, “Your car. There’s a BOLO out for your car.”
It wasn’t funny, but I laughed. “Great,” I said. “So now what?”
“Now Chief Lassiter would like to speak with you.”
“About my car?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.” Meeks huffed impatiently. “But it sounded urgent.”
I shrugged and began to follow him back toward the overlook. “How did you find my car this time?” I said.
“This time?” He glanced back at me, losing his footing a little on the rocks.
“Every time I come down here, one of Belmont’s finest manages to find me. It’s just interesting.”
“Well,” Meeks said, “I was driving by and saw your car parked up there. Every shift since Wednesday, we’ve been getting a little pep talk at roll call, about looking for you.”
I stopped for a second as I contemplated that. The Belmont police were a bipolar bunch: they were hypervigilant to my presence even though I had literally done nothing except ask a few questions and sit in my car, and yet they also seemed to be terrible at preventing actual crime. “What is it that I’ve allegedly done?”
“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” he said, like I should take comfort in the fact that no one had accused me of anything yet. “Belmont’s a close community, though. Outsiders are pretty obvious.”
“I hope you realize how insane that sounds,” I said, and he looked over his shoulder and gave me a little smile.
“I do. You’d be shocked at the things we get calls about on a regular basis. People are just cautious, is all. Not much happens down here, so a stranger in a vintage car sticks out like a sore thumb.”