For years people had the wrong ideas about him, too. They didn’t know who he really was. Nobody did.
Clay…
Clay wasn’t his name, but it should’ve been. Everything else they called him was false.
Sometimes the name conjured sensations – the blast of cool air, vague memories of a sickness taking shape inside him as he lay in the dark – but it was the best reminder of everything that had been taken from him, a life that he should’ve had before they had come in and taken what was his.
Clay was a name he could use when he was alone, like now, picturing himself in the woods, where the sun had broken through the clouds, sending down shafts of light horizontal through the forest canopy. Raising his arms, turning his face up toward the light, closing his dream-eyes and ready for inspiration…
* * *
He blinked his eyes open, realized he’d lost his train of thought.
Ah. That things happened for a reason. And that – if he was honest with himself, and he liked to think he was more honest than the usual person – the satisfaction of killing, of police finding the bloody body, was fading.
The smell had screwed him up – that much was true. But had it been a mistake? Truly a mistake? Maybe not. Even if it hadn’t gone down the way it was supposed to, there was much to savor. And if he really thought about it, wasn’t the whole thing just like Jim Morrison? Morrison had been a maverick; no one could predict what he was going to do on stage from one moment to the next. That night he’d been singing “The End” and started improvising about killing his father and fucking his mother, that had gotten him and the band kicked out of the venue.
But had it been a mistake? Of course not – it had launched a career.
So, Clay closed his eyes and decided to take pleasure. To see the bigger picture. To see if there was anything else he could learn from the way nature had taken its course…
The spray and spatter of her blood had been like the vivid, physical manifestation of the pain he’d silently endured for years, and – despite its grotesqueness, despite certain miscalculations – it had been righteous and necessary.
Except…
Except what? What was missing?
Maybe what was missing was that he’d been the only one to witness it. And maybe that should be enough, just being him, but as he opened his eyes again, staring up at the bright ceiling, Clay realized that it wasn’t. Not truly. Not if he really asked himself the hard questions about what was next, and how exactly he was going to go about it, and get it right this time, then he couldn’t avoid the past. Because the past and the present and the future all went together.
* * *
Her phone buzzed beside her bed. Bobbi grabbed it and gave the screen a quick glance, expecting Connor.
Hey. How are you, B?
Her chest tightened. The area code was 315, from her old neck of the woods. Since relocating to the Adirondacks she’d gotten a new phone, a new number.
She thought she knew who this was and she debated whether or not to respond. In the past, though, when she’d ignored him, he’d only persisted.
She punched out a reply.
How did you get this number?
The return text came promptly.
From your mom. Just wanted to check on u. Heard about what happened.
Her mother? It figured. Her mother had always liked Jamie; he was an expert in dissimulation, even in the eleventh grade when they’d started dating. Bobbi didn’t understand his pretense though, not until later when she went to the University of Rochester and he enrolled at RIT – he’d finally revealed his true self by cheating.
And then he’d become obsessed, even violent, unwilling to let her go when she tried to break it off. Her mother didn’t know about any of that. Her mother was still charmed by Jamie, his rich parents, and secretly wished they’d get back together. But giving out her daughter’s new number? It was inexcusable.
She typed:
I’m fine.
She hesitated, thought about adding more, but didn’t. She sent the message, waited.
The longer she stood there staring at the screen, the worse she felt. It was just like Jamie to take a bad situation and make it worse. Use it as an excuse to start harassing her again. Why was he contacting her now? He must’ve seen the news: Death in a Small Town. DSS Supervisor Found Slashed; Police Scramble. There was even a story which named her: Caseworker Roberta Noelle, who was supposed to be working the shift Harriet Fogarty covered, had no comment.
It was all an excuse for Jamie.
Either that, or it was something far worse. It was still hard for him to imagine escalating to an actual killer, but…
When he didn’t reply, she sent another message, this time to Connor.
Hey there, mister. Want to hang out again soon? Maybe your place?
She worried for a second it might be too forward. And she knew that she was motivated by Jamie contacting her, but she sent the text anyway.
Connor’s reply came back seconds later:
Love to. Whenever u want.
She felt a warm sensation slide through her.
Then it was gone.
She flipped back to the other text stream.
Hey. How are you, B?
Jamie’s unwelcomed message was like opening a closet and discovering a bad smell. Her thumb hovered over the delete button. She thought about showing Connor, but decided against it. What she needed to do was forget about it, ignore Jamie, and continue to move on with her life. The more attention she gave it, the more it would grow. But she set her phone down beside her, leaving the texts where they were.
She rolled over in bed and hoped for sleep that didn’t come.
It was impossible not to keep turning it over in her mind, asking herself if she thought Jamie was capable of something so dark and unthinkable. That he might have killed Harriet in a blind rage, expecting it to be her sitting there.
She didn’t want to consider it; she wanted her life the way it was before all of this had happened, and she was giving every passing car a second look. But she couldn’t say for sure. Like Mike, she couldn’t rule it out.
Eleven
Mike answered his phone, kept one hand on the steering wheel. “Nelson.”
“Investigator Nelson; Kenneth Perkins, Chief of Police for the Kahonsie Mohawk Tribe.”
“Chief Perkins, glad to hear from you.”
“It’s my understanding that you’ve got quite a case going on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that you have someone in custody, Steve Pritchard, and he’s claiming… he says he’s been spending time with Marlene Blackburn?”
Mike found a spot on the outskirts of Lake Haven and pulled over. The sun was just rising, rays cutting through the tall pines. “Yes, we’re looking for the whereabouts of Steve Pritchard from the morning of July twelfth to the morning of July thirteenth. Pritchard claims, as you say, he was staying with Blackburn.”
“We can obtain that information for you.”
“I’m sort of on the hook for this in a big way…”
State police had no jurisdiction within the reservation; only FBI could actively investigate a crime or interview a person of interest living there, so Mike was blocked. Perkins wasn’t even obligated to help; the call was out of professional courtesy.
“Think of it as efficiency,” Perkins said. “Since you’re two hours away, we can talk to Ms. Blackburn, find out if she’s had company.”
“Thank you, Chief Perkins. Also, to your knowledge – Ms. Blackburn works at the casino, is that correct?”
“That is correct.” Perkins cleared his throat. “However, as you may know, certain tribal members and the tribal government have property just outside the res, including part of the Kahonsie Mohawk Casino and Resort parking lot.”
“Understood.”
“What I’m aiming at is that we can cooperate here – if Ms. Blackburn is part of your investigation, we can help with that.”
“I appreciate it. Can I ask you, Chief – you know what kind of car Blackburn drives?” Mike was thinking about the white four-door seen on River Street.
“She has a 2001 Ford Focus.”
“Is that a four-door or two-door?”
“Four.”