The date. The choice of poison. The fact that January’s final words could be equally construed as a farewell and a promise. What if she wasn’t saying good-bye to those she was leaving behind, but saying hello to those she was joining in death?
“I’m sorry,” Maury said. “I hope that helps. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I hope you understand.”
“Of course,” he said. “Maury, thank you. Truly.”
“Good luck with your project, Mr. Graham.”
Maury ended the call, leaving Lucas to stare at January’s black-and-white photograph, tiny dots making up her smiling face and straight blond hair.
See you soon, J.
He didn’t have much to go on, but he couldn’t help thinking that Halcomb had gotten her back. After all that time, he still had a hold on her.
It was no coincidence that January Moore had repeated history, as if to commemorate the anniversary of her old friends’ deaths.
STATESMEN JOURNAL
March 16, 2014
Salem, Oregon, Obituaries Janet “January” Moore May 15, 1961–March 14, 2014
Janet “January” Moore passed suddenly on Friday, March 14. She was fifty-two years old. Janet was a long-standing resident who moved to Salem from Portland, Oregon, in the late 1980s. She was a big part of the Salem community, both as a small-business owner and as a charity and church volunteer. She opened the Chartreuse Moose with Maureen Bennett in the summer of 2003, and sang in the Lord’s Shepherd Church choir as a soprano since 1995. Jan enjoyed traveling around the United States in her free time. She frequented the Washington State coast, where she hoped to one day own a summer home. Jan is survived by many friends who will remember her fondly.
A celebration of her life will be held at McCreary & Sons Funeral Home on March 20. On behalf of her best friend Jan, Maureen Bennett requests that in lieu of flowers mourners make a small donation to Jan’s trust. The trust funds faith-based activities in maximum state prisons in the Pacific Northwest.
“Be faithful to death, and I will give you the crown of life.”
—The Book of Revelation, 2:10
24
* * *
JEANIE REFUSED TO come down for dinner. She was still angry about the house, and Lucas had turned around and made it worse during Echo’s visit by pushing her out of the way. I’m really good at this single-parent stuff. He did the only thing he could think of—ordered pizza and left it on the kitchen island for his kid. Like a runaway with a single sandwich, hunger would wear her down. When it did, he didn’t want her to have to scavenge for a meal. Certainly, she wouldn’t ask him to get something to eat with her, not in her state of animosity.
He spent the rest of the day in his study. His newfound information on January Moore enlivened his hope that maybe, possibly, there was still some life in this project. Perhaps, if he waited it out the way Echo had suggested, more hope would come.
By the time something jarred Lucas from the glow of his computer screen, it was well after dark. It hadn’t been a sound—more of a feeling that he should have heard something. Then the moment was lost, but the cool shiver of air held enough whisper to draw his attention away from his work. This time, however, he wouldn’t get out of his seat. Not until he had lined up at least a thousand words, one after the other—even if it was just transcribing his and Maury’s call to the best of his recollection. At least, that’s what he had promised himself.
That was before his gaze paused on the pictures pushpinned to the corkboard.
Lucas leaned forward, pressing his chest against his desk to get a better look.
Chloe Sears’s photograph hung upside down.
Chloe wasn’t an overly attractive girl. In every picture he’d ever seen of her, she looked dead-eyed, stoned. Her mouth was perpetually open, if only a little bit. Her wide, flat nose gave her face a strange, cubist look; a personified Picasso, where no facial feature was in the right spot.
Within the past few days, he had stared at that corkboard for hours. He’d paced back and forth in front of it, chewed away half his fingernails while inspecting computer printouts and news articles. Chloe had been right side up. Of that he was sure.
He broke his promise, got out of his seat, and stepped across the study to the board. Had Jeanie not closed herself up in her room all night, she could have been the culprit.
Lucas furrowed his eyebrows and pinned Chloe right side up.
Chloe had been twenty-three years old the day she died. Her parents had described her as “fiercely independent” in a blip of an article appearing in The Denver Post after police identified her as one of Halcomb’s devout. To them, she hadn’t seemed like the type of girl susceptible to the charms of a weird guy traipsing up and down the Pacific coast. She had vanished from her Denver-based home in early 1979, but because she had just turned eighteen, the police refused to take the disappearance seriously. That, and the Sears’s track record of domestic disputes didn’t bode well for finding the missing girl. Chloe’s brother, Chris, had a habit of threatening his parents. Chloe’s mother was a drinker, and her father had a chronic case of apathy. After police discovered Chloe to be one of the nine dead in Pier Pointe, her younger sister, Callie, revealed that her deceased sibling had had a mean streak. Chloe had attempted to talk her little sister into joining Halcomb’s group in early 1982, only a few months before they set up camp in the forests of Northern California.