Page 24 of Last Seen

Chapter Fifteen

Halley practically turns over the stools looking for the file, knowing somewhere deep she isn’t going to find it. It didn’t just fall out of her bag or get picked up and thrown away as bar litter. Someone took it.

And that someone must have been the dark-haired stranger. The one who thought she’d know him.

“Could you have left it in your car?” Aaron asks.

“No. I brought it in. It’s not something I’d leave behind. Too sensitive.”

“It had to be that guy,” Aaron says. “He was lurking around you all night.”

“Was he? I didn’t notice. I saw him once across the bar, then he spoke to me, but that was it. Damn it. Why would he take the file?”

Kater joins them. “I thought you were taking off. What’s wrong?”

“I had a file on my mom’s murder in my bag, but now it’s gone.”

“And that creepy guy was talking to her,” Aaron adds. “I think he took it.”

“Yeah, he was interesting looking, if you like your men dangerous as hell. He asked me about you, but I made it clear you were not his type, and that you were married. Told him to buzz off. Maybe it’s in your Jeep?

” Kater is loose with alcohol and not entirely able to focus.

Any other time, Halley would find this hilarious.

The responsible girl getting a load on. Right now, she just feels annoyed.

“It’s not, it was in my bag. It weighs a ton.”

“Why don’t we go out and take a look.”

“Yeah. Okay.” She digs into her bag and realizes the Jeep keys are gone, too. Says a very bad word.

“My wallet is here, and everything else, but my keys and the file are missing.”

“Should we call the police?” Kater asks.

“Absolutely,” Aaron says.

Kater is leaning against the bar now. “I’m hammered. You should probably do it, Halley, not me.”

“Let’s see if my Jeep is still here first.”

They troop outside into the soft mountain air.

The lot is dark, down a staircase behind the bar, and half-full.

She is relieved to see her Jeep right where she left it.

She scans the parking lot. No sign of the stranger.

But he could be hiding anywhere. She hates this.

One tiny bit of news and everything has changed.

She’s never been scared like this before. Not in Marchburg.

Kater stage-whispers to Aaron, “Look in the back seat, make sure he’s not stashed there waiting to abduct her.”

Aaron approaches the Jeep carefully. “No one. But look.”

He opens the passenger door, and Halley sees the file sitting upside down on the floorboard, looking for all the world like it toppled right out of her bag. Aaron reaches down and picks up a shiny object from the gravel. “These your keys?”

Halley heaves a sigh of relief. “My God, I am losing my mind. I was in a hurry, I must have dropped them when I got out. Gosh, now I’m starting to think I’m crazy.

I wouldn’t have left the file here, it must have fallen out of my bag.

Thanks for finding them, you guys. I’m just being absent minded, I guess. ”

“You want me to go home with you?” Kater asks.

“No, no, that’s fine. I’m sure it was my mistake.”

Aaron looks less than convinced, but they get her into the Jeep, and she waves as she drives off.

Halley berates herself all the way home. She can’t afford to be careless like this anymore. She’s seeing ghosts everywhere. She really thought she had the file and the keys when she went into Joe’s, but maybe she was mistaken. And that sense of dislocation is the worst feeling of all.

The house looks almost menacing tonight, and she wishes she’d taken Kater up on the offer of spending the night. Though it feels ridiculous to be a grown woman and ask your old babysitter to stay over because you’re being spooky.

Still, she makes a point of locking and bolting the front door, and double-checks the back door is locked, too.

Everything secure, she makes a cup of chamomile tea and lets Ailuros climb in her lap.

She has no choice; she needs to go through her mom’s file.

Even though Occam’s razor says it just spilled out of her bag as she hurried in to Taco Joe’s, for her to do that and drop her keys, too? It feels off.

But she is admittedly distracted. Anything is possible.

She steels herself, then pulls everything out of the file and stacks it according to category. Crime scene photos, autopsy photos, reports. Three stacks. Answers in all, and more questions, too.

She takes a deep breath and starts with the crime scene. The first few photos are of the exterior of the house and get progressively closer, like a camera is zooming in. The front door with the big wreath, the hallway, shoes lined up under the foyer table. A pink backpack.

The living room, the white carpet, the fingerprints. Her mother’s body lying so still, eyes open and staring, a trickle of tear coming down her face.

I’m sorry, Mama. I’ll clean it up. I didn’t mean to make a mess.

Scrubbing and scrubbing the floor but it only gets worse. Small footprints leading from the kitchen to the living room—she is barefoot, and cold.

Wake up, Mama. Wake up.

Then darkness, that slate slamming across her mind.

Halley sips the tea. These flashbacks are starting to be unnerving. And how they end, so abruptly ... Will that wall ever come down?

She flips through the stack slowly, processing, but remembers nothing more. The photos are horrifying, and she feels her heart ripping apart as she sees her mother’s body, but there is also a strange remove, as if she is looking through a veil. The echoes.

She remembers waking up in the hospital, a woman’s voice saying “You’re going to be okay”—one of the nurses?

Then her dad crying by her bedside. There’s not much after that until Marchburg, standing outside the elementary school in Jasper, the sense of panic she felt looking at all the kids streaming inside, and a warm, gentle hand on her shoulder.

Her dad’s voice saying “You don’t have to, jellybean. Let’s go home.”

All these memories, ricocheting off the one moment she doesn’t remember, a moment she didn’t realize she had no recall of. Her ability to remember has always been unassailable, and now? She’s starting to doubt everything.

Everything, and everyone.