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Rachel guided their car down a narrow gravel road as morning gave way to early afternoon. The sky had brightened a bit but there was still a chill in the air—not able to be felt in the car, obviously, but it was the sort you could just see on the air. The car tires crunched rhythmically over loose stones and patches of dead grass, the sound oddly comforting in the growing gloom. After navigating several bends through dense Virginia woods, Keith Grimm's double-wide trailer came into view. It was perched on a small, cleared lot that had been carved out of the forest.

Though clearly weathered by years of harsh weather, someone had made visible efforts to maintain the property's dignity. Fresh paint, a soft powder blue, covered most of the rust spots around the windows and door frames. Despite the patchy lawn, dotted with brown spots and bare earth, neat rows of artificial flowers lined a makeshift garden bed near the front steps. Plastic chrysanthemums and daisies provided spots of determined color against the dreary backdrop. A string of solar lights, half of them no longer working, bordered the short gravel path from the road to the porch. She wondered if all of this had been Keith’s work or if Andrea had engineered it all.

When they pulled into the small, dirt driveway next to Keith's old pickup truck, Keith was standing on the small, covered porch. His shoulders were hunched against the chill as he smoked a cigarette. The ember glowed brightly as he took another drag and blew the smoke into the cold air. His gaze followed their approach with an intensity that spoke of desperate hope mixed with barely contained fear.

As she and Novak stepped out of their car, she noted how Keith's fingers trembled when he lifted the cigarette to his lips again. His free hand gripped the porch railing so tightly his knuckles had gone white. He was clearly expecting some sort of news.

"Mr. Grimm," Rachel said, “Do you have a second?”

“Did you find her?”

Rachel shook her head. “No. But we did speak with Dr. Tharpe, as we mentioned. We'd like to ask you a few more questions about Andrea, if that's alright."

Keith nodded, crushing out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray that balanced precariously on the porch railing. The metal tray was full to the brim with butts, suggesting he'd been chain-smoking for days. Rachel wondered if it was in an attempt to curb the drug withdrawals. "Come up," he said, his voice hoarse and raw. "Did Dr. Tharpe have any ideas? Was she able to help at all?"

Every word was fragile, coming out somewhere between anger and a desperate attempt to keep himself from crying.

“No, nothing like that,” Novak said as they climbed the creaking wooden steps to join him on the porch. Though Keith had changed clothes since they'd seen him at the precinct, his fresh shirt was deeply wrinkled, as if he'd been pacing and fidgeting constantly. Up close, Rachel could see that his hands weren't just trembling – they were shaking badly enough that he had to stuff them into his pockets. His eyes were bloodshot, darting between the two agents as if trying to read their expressions for any hint of news.

"Does Andrea live here with you?" Rachel asked gently, noting even more fake potted plants near the door. Their presence, plus the ones down below, indicated not just an attempt to brighten the place up, but maybe even an attempt at irony, given the location and style of Keith’s home.

Keith's laugh was bitter, empty, echoing slightly in the still afternoon air. "Most nights, yeah. When things are good between us." He swallowed hard. "But she's got her own place. Well, if you can call it that. It’s a real piece of shit…a trailer her old man left her when he bailed to Florida a couple years back. Couldn't even be bothered to sell it, just...left it to rot with her in it." He shook his head, jaw clenching. "She stays there sometimes when things get rough between us. When the cravings hit one of us too hard or when I piss her off."

"But you're both clean now?" Novak asked, his tone carefully neutral.

"Three months for her," Keith said, a flash of pride crossing his features before his expression darkened again. "Two weeks for me. Again. Can't seem to stay straight like she does." His voice cracked, and he had to clear his throat before continuing. "She's been my rock through all this, you know? Even when I slip, she stays strong. Keeps me going. Tells me it's okay, that recovery isn't a straight line." He blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. "And now..."

Rachel watched as Keith struggled to maintain his composure, noticing how he kept glancing toward a small wind chime hanging in the corner of the porch. The metallic pieces clinked softly in the breeze, creating a melancholic melody. "That hers?" she asked, nodding toward the chime.

"Yeah," Keith said softly. "She loves that thing. Said the sound helps keep her calm when the cravings get bad." He reached out and touched one of the metal tubes gently, setting it singing. "She's got all these little tricks like that. Things that help her stay clean. She's so much stronger than me."

“But she struggled with kicking the habit, right?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah. I mean…it’s literally a day-to-day fight.”

“And did Andrea ever mention...thoughts of self-harm or suicide?"

The question hung heavy in the air, seeming to draw all the oxygen from the porch. Keith's face contorted as if he'd been struck, and he had to grab the railing again to steady himself. "She...yeah. Sometimes. When things got real dark." He ran a trembling hand through his unwashed hair, his fingers catching on tangles. "She'd say stuff like maybe it'd be easier to just be dead than fighting this demon every day. But I never thought..." His voice broke completely. "I never thought she meant it. She was getting better. We both were. I know when she was a teenager she’d sort of experimented with cutting, you know? But I…do you think that’s what happened? Do you think she…"

But he stopped and shook his head, unable to even finish speaking the thought out loud.

Rachel watched as tears began rolling down Keith's cheeks. He didn't bother wiping them away, letting them track freely down his face and drip onto his shirt.

"The last time I saw her," he continued, his voice barely above a whisper, "she seemed okay. Better than okay. She was talking about maybe going back to school, getting her GED. Said she wanted to be one of those addiction counselors, help other people like us." He looked at Rachel with red-rimmed eyes, pleading. "People don't make plans like that when they're thinking about checking out, right? They don't talk about the future if they're planning to..."

"We'd like to take a look at her trailer," Rachel said after giving him a moment to collect himself. "Would you happen to have an address?"

Keith nodded and pulled a set of keys from his pocket. His hands shook so badly he had to use both to separate one key from the ring. "Got a spare key she gave me. For emergencies, she said." He handed it to Rachel, then rattled off directions to the trailer, his words coming faster now, almost desperate. "It's not far. Just...it's bad. Really bad. Her dad let the place go to hell before he left. I keep telling her she should stay here full-time, but she says she needs her own space sometimes. Says it helps her remember why she's staying clean, seeing where she could end up if she isn't careful."

Novak reached into the inner pocket of his coat and fished out a business card. He handed it over to Keith and said, "If you can think of anything we might need to know, you call us. Anything at all that might clue us into where she went. Please call us before heading to such a place yourself."

“I will. Thank you.”

Before they turned to leave, Rachel paused. Something in Keith's demeanor made her hesitate – a shadow that crossed his face when he talked about Andrea needing her own space.

“And Keith, are you okay? You’re shaking.”

“Withdrawals. And not knowing where she is. I swear…I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to her.”

Rachel placed a gentle hand on his arm, feeling the slight tremors running through his body. "We're going to do everything we can to find her. Don’t give up hope, okay?”

Back in the car, Rachel sat behind the wheel for a moment without starting the engine, watching Keith through the windshield as he lit another cigarette with shaking hands. "It feels like we're getting sidetracked," she said, her fingers drumming restlessly on the steering wheel. "We came to Bowery to investigate Carla Rhodes' body, and now we're chasing leads on a completely different woman."

Novak shifted in his seat, considering. "I don't think so. Look at what we have: two women who both contemplated suicide, both local to the area, no obvious connection between them. And now, on the same night one goes missing, we find another one dead after being missing for five months?" He shook his head. "That's not coincidence. There's something here. And if I might add, all of this seemed promising to you no more than two hours ago.”

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “It’s just frustrating.”

As she cranked the engine to life, her mind drifted back to the suicide angle. Something about it caused her thoughts to hang up, like a torn fingernail on a piece of clothing, but she couldn't quite put her finger on why. She started pulling out of the driveway, and Keith raised a hand in farewell as they pulled away. His figure grew smaller in the rearview mirror until he was swallowed by the forest.

***

Following Keith’s directions, they pulled up to Andrea's trailer seven minutes later. Right away, they saw that Keith's description of the place had not been an exaggeration. The trailer was a horrific testament to neglect, its metal siding warped and stained with rust streaks that looked like dried blood in the afternoon sun. One window had been completely shattered, covered haphazardly with a sheet of weathered plywood that was already starting to rot at the edges. The small plot of land around it was more dirt than grass, littered with stray bits of litter like paper cups and cardboard boxes that had degraded into soggy pulp. An old lawnmower was parked off to the back; it had only three wheels and was almost entirely devoured by tall grass.

The absence of proper stairs to the front door—nothing but a thin sheet of glass and an aluminum frame—was particularly striking. There were just three stacked concrete blocks serving as makeshift steps to the front door. The blocks were crumbling at the edges, with weeds growing through the cracks. A rusty metal awning hung precariously over the entrance, creaking ominously in the breeze. The whole scene radiated abandonment and despair. To think that someone could live here…could even sleep here for one single night, was horrifying.

They walked up to the door and opened the aluminum screen door. Rachel inserted Keith's key into the lock of the hollow wooden door beyond, which stuck briefly before turning with a grinding sound that made her think of dirt. The door swung open with a long, pained creak, releasing a wave of stale air that made both agents recoil. The interior was even worse than the outside suggested – a tableau of poverty and addiction that Rachel had seen too many times before, but which never failed to affect her.

The living room was scattered with fast food containers and empty energy drink cans. A sagging couch dominated one wall, its cushions stained and torn, stuffing poking through multiple gashes in the fabric. The coffee table before it was covered in old magazines and unopened mail. An empty bottle of whiskey sat on the coffee table, along with a red plastic cup. A small TV sat on a milk crate in the corner, its screen coated with a thick layer of dust. Everything carried that particular odor of long-term neglect – a mixture of mold, dust, and despair. But under it all, there was the feel that the place had seen movement lately—that something warm and alive had filled the space in the past few days.

"Let's search it thoroughly," Rachel said, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. The rubber snapped against her wrists with a sound that seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet trailer. "There might be something here that tells us where she went."

They moved through the trailer methodically, room by room. The kitchen was a disaster of unwashed dishes and spoiled food, the smell almost overwhelming. A half-empty cereal box sat open on the counter, and a few opened soda cans also sat abandoned. The bathroom contained a collection of empty prescription bottles, but all were old, dating back to before Andrea had gotten clean. Rachel noted the dates carefully – the most recent was from four months ago. It looked to be a generic pain pill.

The bedroom was surprisingly neat in comparison to the rest of the trailer. The bed was small, almost like that of a child, but it was made. There was a very small closet where a few different pieces of clothing were hung properly. It was the one room within the place that showed signs of someone trying to maintain order in their life, fighting against the chaos that threatened to overwhelm everything else. A small desk in the corner held a neat stack of NA pamphlets and a journal.

Rachel picked up the journal and thumbed through it. She saw, page by page, the struggle of a young woman with an addiction…but who was also in love and wanted to truly make something better of herself. The last entry was from a week ago and mentioned nothing about suicidal thoughts. She put the journal back on the desk and moved on.

Rachel was examining the desk more closely when a sudden movement caught her eye. A large rat darted out from behind it, running directly across her feet. She jumped back with a startled yelp, her heart racing, as the rodent disappeared into a hole in the baseboard.

"You okay?" Novak called from the other room.

"Yeah," she replied, trying to slow her breathing. "Just had a close encounter with the local wildlife." She made a mental note to watch her step more carefully while pushing down the slight embarrassment she’d felt.

They continued their search but found nothing to suggest Andrea had relapsed or was actively planning suicide. No hard drugs, no paraphernalia, no goodbye notes. The bedroom's tidiness actually suggested someone trying to maintain order in their life, not someone planning to end it. The contrast between this room and the rest of the trailer told its own story – of someone fighting to rise above their circumstances, one small victory at a time.

As they made their way back to the car, the air seemed cleaner, crisper. A cold wind had picked up, whistling through the broken window behind its plywood patch.

"So what's the next step?" Novak asked, closing his car door with a solid thunk that echoed in the desolate setting. Something about the noise unnerved Rachel—an example of just how alone and isolated everything was out here.

Rachel started the engine, trying to look ahead and attempting to put pieces into place—even the pieces they didn’t quite have yet. "I hate to say it, but let's head back to the Bowery precinct. I want to look into other missing persons cases from the past year or so." She pulled away from the trailer, watching it recede in her rearview mirror. "If there's a pattern here, maybe we'll find it in the files."

Dust puffed up into the air in clouds, and gravel crunched under their tires as they made their way back to the main road. She knew it was likely the result of her stubborn streak, but the suicidal thoughts angle kept tugging at her thoughts, suggesting connections she couldn't quite grasp. They’d already mentioned the idea that investigations would not be given the same amount of energy and effort if authorities believed the people they were looking for were not only dead, but by their own hands.

And deep down, Rachel couldn’t help but wonder if that’s exactly what their killer was hoping for.