Page 4

I drove Bobby’s Honda Pilot north into town. It was late afternoon, and at this time of year, the sun was already starting to go down. As I made my way through the thick growth of pine and spruce, the light was long and slanting low between the massive trees. It caught beaded drops of water and sparked them with gold. It traced the saw-toothed outline of ferns. It threw dark shadows, and when the hanging moss drifted in the breeze, it was like ghosts moving among the branches.

That was too morbid a thought, and I tried to shake it off. I tried to think about practical things. Like cars. A few months ago, a very, um, unhappy man had run me off the road. I’d survived, but the Jeep hadn’t been so lucky. And since I was currently in the precarious financial position of having eight dollars and sixty-seven cents in my savings account, I hadn’t bought anything to replace it—the insurance payout had disappeared startlingly quickly into saving one of Hemlock House’s particularly slanty chimneys. Bobby was kind enough to get a ride to work most days and let me borrow his Pilot, but I knew that wasn’t ideal. It made Bobby’s commute much longer than it needed to be, and it wasn’t convenient, even though he never complained. It made me dependent on Bobby, and I was working hard not to repeat some bad patterns about relying on other people to take care of all the un-fun adulting stuff. And there was one other thing: there was this tiny part of me (the teensiest) that thought the Honda Pilot was maybe, just a little, a mom car.

Don’t tell Bobby.

Also, don’t get me wrong. It was a great SUV. It was big, and it had a tow hitch, and Bobby had gone for a trim that made it look extra sporty. Obviously he kept it in pristine condition. (It never smelled like french fries, for example.) But sometimes, when I had to pick Keme up from school, I started noticing all the other cars in the pickup line. And who was driving them. And the fact that I was driving one too. And that I was picking up my feral wolf-child from school, and on the way home, I was going to get milk and bread and eggs from the Keel Haul General Store, and then I was going to wait for my man to get home.

Sometimes, I really, really, really missed the Jeep.

The Gull’s Nest RV Park concreted-in grills; and often a smaller vehicle with out-of-state plates. The permanent residents, on the other hand, had clearly made themselves at home. They had little wooden signs announcing THE SMITHS, and they had patio furniture instead of the park’s disintegrating picnic tables, and many of them had Halloween decorations hanging from their awnings and strung along the yew. Somebody had clearly gotten into the spirit of the season and hung a witch on her broomstick from a nearby spruce. The witch had her face pressed up against the trunk, her hair a gray cloud around her head, legs kicked out in surprise. The effect, I guess, was to look like she’d crashed into the tree.

The other thing I noticed about the park was that it was old. The asphalt pads for the RVs were crumbling, and the trash cans were rusty and dented. There wasn’t any litter on the ground, and the landscaping all looked neat and maintained, but you couldn’t look at this place and not know it had a lot of years behind it. That made sense; Hastings Rock’s boom as a tourist town was a relatively recent phenomenon. Land values had skyrocketed, and the town’s focus had shifted to providing lodging and food and entertainment for visitors. An RV park wasn’t an efficient use of all this real estate, and I wondered how much the land would be worth now if the owner decided to sell. Then I remembered the owner was dead.

I spotted two sheriff’s cruisers outside the RV park’s office—a single-story building with a fieldstone foundation and shake siding, everything painted tan with green trim. On one side, a curving wall of glass blocks reinforced my sense that the park had been built a while ago. You just didn’t see enough glass-block walls these days, let alone curved ones.

Thinking inconspicuous thoughts, I rolled past the cruisers. I didn’t have an address for Keme’s mom, so I had the vague idea that I’d drive around to get a sense of the park’s layout and then start knocking on doors. Then, on a camper across from the park office, I saw a sign that said COLLSON. It was done in Sharpie on copy paper, and something about how it had been taped onto the door—lots and lots of tape—suggested, to my writer’s imagination anyway, passive-aggressive defiance.

I passed the pad, turned at the next corner, and parked the Pilot behind a dense wall of yew. Then I trekked back. In my mind, I’d expected the RV park to be full of, well, RVs —ginormous houses-on-wheels that cost somewhere in the six figures and were driven by men who liked to wear fishing vests as a fashion statement. But that wasn’t the case. Plenty of the pads were occupied by pull-behind travel trailers, and plenty of these still looked like they might cost more than a college education.

Keme’s mom, on the other hand, lived in a camper that looked like it cost less than a used car. It was white with brown accents, and the paint was bubbling up around the doors and windows. The slide-out on one side looked a little, um, precipitous, and the tires were flat. Scratch that. The tires looked like they’d gone flat years ago and then slowly disintegrated until now it looked like the little camper had fused with the pad itself. I did a quick walk-around. Rust snaked down from the ladder on the back, and a decomposing black hose ran from underneath the camper to what I guessed was a septic tank. Water and electric hookups completed the operation. The blinds were down in the windows, and the aluminum slats were bent in places, but someone had gone to the effort of decorating the glass with vinyl clings—pumpkins and spider webs and friendly ghosts. Through the camper’s thin shell, the sounds of daytime television were clear. Somebody was watching The Price is Right .

I knocked on the door. There was a lull, and then the camper rocked slightly as steps moved toward me. The door opened, and a woman stood there.

She was White, petite, and young—maybe in her thirties, but if so, she had great genes. Dark, wavy hair fell to her shoulders, and she had wide-set hazel eyes complemented by high cheekbones and a full mouth. Her dress called to mind a lot of adjectives I’d heard but wasn’t exactly sure of—smocked was one, and off-the-shoulder was another, and maybe something about poet sleeves? She wore suede clogs, and standing there, she reminded me of a Disney princess who had fallen on hard times.

Her smile was automatic but still warm. “May I help you?”

“Yeah, hi. I’m Dash Dane. I’m looking for Keme Collson. Well, Keme’s mom, actually.”

“I’m Keme’s mom.”

I like to think I’m quick on my feet, but…yeah. First, the words didn’t make sense. Then I tried doing the math. I mean, it was possible. But how young had she been?

“Who is it?” a man called from inside the camper.

“He said his name’s Dash,” Keme’s mom answered.

“Well, what does he want? You’re letting the cold in.”

“Can I help you?”

I was still recalibrating, so I said, “I wanted to ask you a few questions if you have a minute.”

“He wants to ask me some questions,” the woman said over her shoulder.

“About what?”

“About Keme,” I said loudly enough to carry.

“Is he police?”

“I’m attached to the sheriff’s office,” I said. Which wasn’t exactly a lie. I mean, I was attached to part of the sheriff’s office—that part being Bobby.

A television audience cheered. The breeze shifted, and I could smell the lodgepole pine and the char of the park grills and the clean, crisp air of autumn.

“All right,” the man said.

“Won’t you come in?” Keme’s mom asked.

I followed her inside—which took about two steps. Somehow, the camper’s interior felt even smaller than the outside had suggested. It probably had something to do with the fact that this one had the same design aesthetic as the few other RVs and travel trailers I’d been in: “Dad’s man cave” meets “Mary Poppins’s valise.” There was a built-in sofa, a kitchenette with a three-quarters fridge, and the slide-out dinette, which I guessed doubled as a bed at night when you put the table down. A TV was mounted on a swing arm overhead, and sure enough, Drew Carey and some lovely ladies were showing contestants a new car. Two doors led off the cramped space; one stood open to reveal double bunks (literally that’s all—you opened the door and climbed right into a weirdly octagonal bed). The other, I guessed, was the bathroom. Patchouli and the smell of warm bodies in a closed-up room were overpowering.

A man was sprawled on the sofa. White, probably my height, and around my age. He was shirtless and barefoot, dressed in nothing but a pair of jeans that rode low enough to give a glimpse of, uh, the melons (and to tell me underwear was not a priority with this guy). He was one of those guys who would probably be flat-bellied and slim-hipped forever, no matter how many beers he drank or nachos he ate. His dark hair was long enough to cover his ears, shaggily parted on one side, and he had a soft, boyish face. He made me think of one of those kids from The Suite Life who’d grown up rough. His eyes flicked to me and then back to the television.

“Right over here,” the woman said.

We squeezed past the man on the sofa and onto the dinette benches, and our knees bumped under the table. Up close, with more time to study her, I decided she wasn’t just pretty—she was beautiful. Keme was a good-looking young man, and it was clear where some of that had come from.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t know your name.”

“September. September Collson. You’re with the sheriff’s office?”

“In, um, a monogamous sense, yes.” Before she could ask what that meant, I hurried on. “I’m also Keme’s friend, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. In particular, where was he—”

“How is Keme?” She said his name with delight, and her smile broadened. “How’s he doing?”

I had to reboot again. It wasn’t only the question—although the implications behind it were bad enough. Among other things, it made me think the deputies hadn’t talked to her yet. But more than that, it was the tone. The unqualified happiness.

In retrospect, I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. A drunk, maybe. Someone with a substance-abuse problem. Even a raspy-voiced cocktail waitress who reeked of cigarette smoke would have made more sense to me than…this. The shine in her eyes, the rise of her voice, the smile, the Disney princess softness—this, I didn’t know how to handle.

“Uh,” I said.

(That’s me. I’m a writer.)

“Well,” I tried again, “that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I was wondering if you’ve seen Keme lately.”

“Oh sure. He was here last night.”

That seemed a little too easy. “He was?”

She nodded.

“What time was he here?” I asked.

“Five? Six? What time was Keme here, Foster?”

The man on the sofa—presumably Foster—didn’t answer.

“Oh!” she said. “It was after dark. I was plugging in the lights.”

“Okay,” I said. “And what time did he leave?”

That seemed to be a real stumper. She frowned and folded her hands on the laminate tabletop. “I don’t know. Foster, what time did Keme leave?”

Nothing.

“He wasn’t here very long,” September said. “A few minutes is all.”

“He didn’t stay here last night?”

September frowned. “No. Why would he?”

Because you’re his mom seemed like a good starting point, but somehow I managed to say, “He doesn’t sleep here?”

Her tone was perplexed, like I was asking a question she didn’t understand—or maybe like she couldn’t figure out why I didn’t understand. “No.”

“Do you know where he might have stayed last night?” I asked. “Somewhere he might have gone. Maybe his dad’s?”

“Keme’s dad died. A long time ago.”

From the sofa came, “Why are you asking about where that kid slept last night?”

I twisted in my seat to look at Foster. He was still watching TV, but his fingers were restless on the remote, bumping over the little rubberized buttons.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “who are you?”

“That’s Foster,” September said, as though that explained everything.

“What’s the nature of your relationship?” I asked, but I directed the question to the man.

His gaze snapped to me, and he sat up. I saw what I hadn’t noticed before—he’d been lying on a bag of frozen peas, and he had one heck of a shiner on his cheekbone. “Why’s it any of your business?”

“We don’t like to put labels on things,” September said.

“I’m talking to him,” Foster said. He didn’t look at her, and the words were flat and low.

Outside, the wind in the yew creaked and rustled.

“I think I’m getting a headache,” September said in a bright, trembling voice, and she slid out from the table.

Foster was still watching me. He had dark eyes. He was pretty in that soft, boyish way, and the dark eyes were part of it, but right then, there was something else in there. Something I didn’t like. Something that had September holding an old pill tin. Her hands must have been shaking because I could hear the pills rattling around inside it.

A year ago, I would have made up—and then stammered—some excuse to get out of there. And maybe if things had been different, I still might have. If he hadn’t reminded me so much of Owen Markham, who’d pulled my shorts down in sixth-grade gym class, and who’d gotten a girl pregnant in eighth grade. If I’d been anywhere else, instead of squarely in the middle of the life Keme had hidden from me. If we’d been talking about anyone but Keme. And, of course, if it hadn’t been for all that personal growth stuff, and how I’d changed and gotten braver and bolder.

(Also, if I’m being totally honest, the fact that I knew my boyfriend could beat Foster up.)

So, I barely recognized my own cool, detached tone as I said, “That’s right: you’re talking to me.”

Contestant voices buzzed on the TV in the background. The click-click-click came of the big price wheel spinning. Foster examined me like he hadn’t seen me before.

“If Keme didn’t stay here,” I said, “why did he come by?”

“He owed us some money,” Foster said.

“Her teenage son owed you money?”

“That’s right. He wasn’t supposed to have it in the first place.” Foster cut his eyes to September, and I followed his gaze.

She hadn’t been able to get the tin open, and now she clutched it so tightly her knuckles blanched. “It was just a little,” she whispered. “He never asks—”

“We don’t believe in giving handouts,” Foster said over her. “We believe in teaching children to be independent.”

“Oh,” I said. “Like you?”

I heard the words. I wasn’t sure where they’d come from. I couldn’t seem to think; my hands were shaking, so I pressed them against the dinette cushion I was sitting on.

This time, Foster was quiet longer before he said, “Who are you?”

“He came back to give you the money,” I said. “Did he give it to you?”

“Of course.” September gave a wilting laugh. “He’s very responsible.”

“And what happened then?” I asked.

“He saw—” September began.

Foster didn’t move, not exactly, but his body tensed, and September cut off.

I looked more closely at Foster. At the bruise on his cheekbone that was still darkening from red to blue-black. “What did he see?”

“He left,” September said with a kind of desperate cheeriness. “He stayed with a friend.”

“This is about JT,” Foster said. He didn’t smile, but some emotion lit up his face. “You think he had something to do with it.”

“What happened to JT?” September didn’t seem to remember she was still clutching the pills. The bones in her hand stood out, and her cheeks were flushed. A few strands of hair hung in front of her face, and her eyes were blank with panic. “What are you talking about?”

“Do you know where Keme went after he left?” I asked.

“Yeah, he went over and picked a fight with that dumb jerk who owns this place.” ( Dumb jerk wasn’t exactly what Foster said.) “That’s what I told the deputy. There’s something wrong with that kid. It’s not my fault; I told September she wasn’t strict enough with him when he was little.”

September clutched her whatever-the-smocked dress with one hand. Her breathing sounded gaspy. “What deputy? What are you talking about?”

“You were asleep,” Foster said without looking at her. “You were still upset.”

“Upset about what?” I asked.

“You need to take one of your pills and lie down. I’m gonna handle this.”

“What are you—” Her voice hooked me, and I turned. She was staring at me, a childlike, unspoken plea for help in her face. “What’s happening?”

Foster padded across the camper to her and took the tin of pills from her hand. He opened it, took her jaw in one hand, and pressed one of the pills between her lips. When I’d been growing up, I’d seen the neighbors give their dog her medicine the same way. He waited, and she swallowed, and he released, saying, “Go lie down.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. She gave an unseeing look around the camper, her eyes passing over me as though I weren’t there, and then she made her way to the bunks at the back. She slipped off her clogs and her bare feet looked small and clean as she climbed onto the lower bunk. She had to wiggle around to pull the door shut after her. I thought about Keme sleeping in there too. All three of them packed into that weird little corner room.

Then Foster turned back toward me. I guess it says something about me that, over the last year, I’ve gotten used to the idea that somebody might want to kill me. My first thought was to check for weapons. He was standing in the kitchen, so knives seemed like a real possibility. But he didn’t open a drawer or rummage around inside a cabinet, and there wasn’t anything even close to a weapon out where I could see it.

Now that I thought about it, there wasn’t anything out where I could see it. Everything in the camper looked like it had come with the camper. Heck, for that matter, everything except the cushions looked like it was bolted down. Where were the knickknacks? Where was all the junk that accumulated in a shared living space? I tried to think back to the glimpse I’d gotten of the bunks—had there been blankets? I didn’t think so.

When Foster leaned against the kitchenette’s counter, my attention came back to him. “I don’t know what you think we’re going to say. He didn’t stay the night here. I’m not going to say he did. Whatever he got up to after he left here, that’s his responsibility.”

“Why did Keme go talk to JT?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did he see that made him upset?”

Foster folded his arms across his chest and shrugged.

I tried to think about a clever way to ask the next question, and finally I said, “Where’d you get that bruise?”

“I slipped in the shower.”

“No, you didn’t.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Did Keme hit you?” I asked.

“If he hit me, I’d kill that kid. I don’t put up with that kind of behavior.”

It was surreal, listening to this guy who couldn’t have been any older than me talk like he was some sort of father-knows-best stereotype from the Wally Cleaver era.

“Did Keme see you hurt September?”

For the first time, something like shock showed on Foster’s face. “I’ve never laid a finger on her.”

But I saw, in my mind, how he’d held her by the jaw, and how those slender, boyish fingers had forced the pill into her mouth.

I decided to try a new angle. “Why would Keme be angry with JT?”

“I told you I don’t know.”

“I know. I’m asking you to think. Take a guess.”

“Because JT’s the worst, man. His wife too.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re awful. They run this place like it’s their little kingdom. They’ve got all these rules. They’re always trying to bust someone. And they’ll charge you for anything they can. Petty stuff. One time, we had some friends over, and we didn’t clean up until the next morning, you know. That jagweed fined us for littering.” He shook his head and scoffed.

“That doesn’t sound like enough to want to murder someone.”

“Yeah? If you’re late on your rent, man, they don’t miss a beat. Eviction notice. They slap it right on the door and take you to court. One guy, he was sick, so he couldn’t move out. When he was at the hospital, they went in and took all his stuff and put a chain on the door.”

“That doesn’t seem legal. It’s still his RV, isn’t it?”

“Nah, they own some of them. Rent them out like apartments. They say you can get your stuff back, but you’ve got two weeks. Don was still in the hospital, you know?” Talking about JT seemed to have made Foster forget his earlier reticence. “There’s this law they’re trying to pass, and it would make it impossible for landlords to jack up the rent. It’s going to pass, too. So, you know what JT and Channelle did?”

“Raised the rent before the law passed.”

“It’s crazy, man. Nobody should be allowed to do that. And it’s not like we can afford it—” Foster stopped. As a hint of red climbed his cheeks, he sent a look my way that was simultaneously sullen and challenging, like he was daring me to follow up on that admission.

Instead, I said, “So, there are lots of people who might want something bad to happen to him.”

“I don’t know.” But he shifted, adjusting his arms across his chest, and said, “Yeah, I guess.”

“Anyone in particular? Anyone besides Keme who’s gotten into a disagreement with him lately?”

“I don’t know,” Foster said again. It must have been automatic, an engrained defensive answer, rather than a genuine one, though, because he said, “This guy showed up yesterday. Pounded on the door. He and JT really got into it.” He must have seen the question in my face because he pointed at a window and said, “The office is right there. It’s a straight shot.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“I don’t know.” There it was again, that knee-jerk, adolescent defiance. “They weren’t yelling, but this guy got right up in JT’s face. JT shoved him.”

This was life in an RV park, I thought. Live entertainment, twenty-four seven.

“He was police, too,” Foster offered, unprompted.

“I heard a deputy was out here for a domestic dispute.”

“Oh, that. No, this guy wasn’t from Hastings Rock. Orange County. That’s what it said on his car.”

“Did you get a good look—”

“That deputy was out here later. September called it in. JT and Channelle were going to kill each other.” More of that red rose in his cheeks, and he said, “Shoot, that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“They were having a fight, a big one. They do it all the time. Some people don’t know how to build a solid relationship. JT was throwing all of Channelle’s stuff out of the house, and Channelle was screaming at him. When Channelle hit JT, that’s when September called.”

I tried to construct the sequence of events. “So, the guy from Orange County came, and then later, JT and Channelle got in a fight.”

Foster nodded.

“What happened?”

“Same thing that always happened. Deputy comes out. Splits them up before they can—” Foster stopped. Swallowed. “Channelle goes and stays in a motel for a few days like she’s done with him, but she always comes back.”

“You saw her leave?”

“Yeah, she left. That deputy always makes sure she’s actually going to the motel and not just going to loop back and start things up with JT again.”

“And did you see anybody else after that?”

Foster shook his head.

“When was the fight with Keme?”

“Before all that. I figure that’s why JT was already so worked up when that police officer came to the door.”

If that was true, then I didn’t understand why the sheriff was so interested in talking to Keme. JT had clearly been alive after their argument. Then a possibility occurred to me.

“Did you see Keme come back last night?”

“Nah, he wasn’t going to come back. He was too mad.”

“Let me guess: you don’t know what he was mad about.”

In an instant, Foster’s face was closed again, his arms tightening across his chest. He shook his head.

“All right,” I said. “If you think of anything, can you call Deputy Mai?” I looked around for something to write it down on, but there wasn’t anything—not even takeout napkins. “Will you remember that?”

“I’ll remember.”

When I stepped out of the camper, the fresh air was so sweet—full of the scent of dry autumn leaves and the water in the bay and the clean, cold chill of October—that my eyes stung. I hadn’t realized until that moment how claustrophobic the little camper had become. I moved to the end of the pad and looked back. The door was shut. The blinds were down. The aggressively taped-on sign that said COLLSON looked even sadder, somehow. And I thought—even though I tried to convince myself that it was my imagination—that someone in that little camper was staring back at me. Watching me.

An excited shout made me whip around.

Deputy Dahlberg was standing at the edge of a line of trees behind the park’s office. She shouted, “Salk!” Then she waved her arms and did a little jump and shouted the other deputy’s name again.

I stared at her, taking in her visible excitement.

She found something, I thought.

The wind snapped a nearby Halloween banner, and I flinched.

She found something.

I should get in the car. I should call Bobby.

Instead, I hurried toward Dahlberg, cutting in a straight line across a stretch of lawn, and then, where the landscaping gave way, through knee-high grass and weeds. It wasn’t the kind of place adults would come. Kids, maybe—kids were drawn to wild places. But I didn’t think a lot of kids came to the Gull’s Nest. I wondered what was on the other side of the trees. My thoughts were like a needle skipping on an old record.

Dahlberg noticed me when I was still about thirty yards away. “What are you doing here?” she asked. And then she said, “You can’t come over here.”

Twenty yards.

“Dash, I’m serious. Turn around.”

Ten.

She started to move, putting herself in my path. She was saying something, and I recognized the tone—this wasn’t Deputy Dahlberg my friend, the one who let me in the side door at the station sometimes so I could sneak in a little present for Bobby. This was Deputy Dahlberg the deputy, and she was doing her job.

And then I saw it.

Among the trees, on a flat patch of pine duff, lay a pile of clothing. A pair of slides so worn the rubber was gone in places, exposing the fibrous backing. Well-loved (and well-worn) Rip Curl shorts with a familiar stitch along the side, repairing a tear from when a branch had snagged them. The T-shirt showed a cheery hamburger carrying a surf board, and the words Tasty Waves . It should have been white, but instead, it was reddish brown. Rust, I thought. My brain was still skipping. Deputy Dahlberg was saying something. I was missing things, still staring at the shirt.

Not rust. Blood.