Hiding Place (9781101606759) (3 page)

“It’s the past,” she said. “Our past. And isn’t the past always with us?”

Janet shivered. Out of the mouths of babes…

She went to get dressed for work.

Janet had begun working at Cronin College fourteen years earlier. She’d started in the mailroom just after high school, sorting packages alongside work-study college students from all over the country. Ashleigh was a year old then. Janet didn’t think she could work, raise a baby, and attend college, but she took the job at Cronin with an eye toward bigger things. She knew—
knew
—her daughter would go to college someday, and employees of the college received a huge tuition break. Janet even planned on getting a degree herself and had taken classes over the years as
she worked her way from the mail processing center to the copy and print center to the chemistry department and finally to her current position working for the dean as office manager, overseeing a staff of five. She loved her job. She loved supporting herself and her daughter with her own work. She even enjoyed knowing that her job and salary helped her dad hold on to her childhood home.

But she didn’t love her job the day the story about Dante Rogers ran in the paper.

As soon as Janet walked into the office, she knew everyone had read about it. Nobody said anything—at least not right away. But she could tell by the looks on their faces. Her coworkers smiled at her, but they weren’t happy smiles. They were forced, toothless, the heads cocked to the side a little, the lips pressed tight.
Oh, you poor thing,
the smiles said.
The tragedy. You were there that day…

You were supposed to be watching him…

In the break room during lunch, Madeline Hamilton, the office’s resident busybody, approached Janet, sitting down next to her and casually removing a soggy sandwich from a plastic bag. Madeline had known Janet’s mother, had landed the job in the dean’s office with Janet’s help. Janet knew Madeline’s interest wasn’t casual, and Janet even found herself happy to see the older woman cozying up next to her. She hoped someone would break the tension, pop the black balloon that seemed to be hovering over her head.

“So,” Madeline said, drawing out the
O
, her tiny mouth formed into a similar, circular shape. Madeline didn’t bite into her food. She raised her right hand and fussed with the pile of bright red hair on the top of her head. “Crazy day for you, huh?”

“Do you want to ask me something about the story?” Janet said.

Madeline took a bite of the sandwich and gestured with her free hand. “If you need someone to talk to…,” she said, the free hand floating in the air, a heavy, fleshy butterfly. “I’ve always thought of you as family. And I know today’s that awful anniversary. Are you going to the cemetery or anything?”

Janet shook her head. She had a Diet Coke and a bag of pretzels in front of her. She’d eaten two pretzels and barely touched the drink. “They’re interviewing me today.”

“Oh, really,” Madeline said. She wiped her mouth and set the food aside, shifting to all-business mode. “But you read that story? The one today?”

“Yes.”

“Can you believe he’s still here in Dove Point? Just living here? Among all of us?”

“Where is he supposed to go?” Janet asked.

“I’d think he’d want to live anywhere but here.”

“His parents are dead. He lived with his aunt…back then. But she’s dead, too.”

“See,” Madeline said. “No ties here. He could just pick up and move anywhere.”

“You make it sound so glamorous. He’s an ex-con. What’s he going to do? Besides, I don’t think he’s going to hurt anybody.”

“He’s already killed two people,” Madeline said. “First Justin and then your mother. She’d still be with us if not for the grief.”

Janet didn’t disagree. Her mother never recovered from her brother’s death. Diabetes-related complications, they’d written on the death certificate nearly eighteen years ago. Janet knew the truth—her mother had died of a broken heart. But Janet just couldn’t summon the same anger toward Dante Rogers that everybody else did.

“Don’t you feel sorry for him?” Janet asked. “Even a little? He looks so pathetic, so empty.”

“Sorry for him?” Madeline fanned herself with both hands. She looked like she was choking. “Sorry? For a killer? He better hope he doesn’t come my way or cross my path. I can’t be held responsible.”

Janet checked the clock. She needed to get back to her desk. The dean’s office didn’t rest in the summer, despite the shorter hours. In fact, summer brought more work. Annual reports, budgets, faculty travel arrangements. But she wasn’t ready to go back.

“Do you ever wonder?” Janet said. She knew her voice sounded dreamy, distracted. She didn’t know what she wanted to say. She didn’t know if she should even give voice to her thoughts.

“Wonder what?” Madeline asked.

“The way he maintains his innocence, even after all this time. He has no reason to. He’s already done his time.”

“Remember what was lost,” Madeline said. “Your mother never had the life she wanted because of that man. And neither did you. You’ve been without a mother for eighteen years because of that man.”

“I’ll see you later, Madeline.”

“You call me and tell me how it went when you’re finished.”

Janet left without agreeing to make the call.

But Janet didn’t go back to work. She took the back stairs down to the parking lot. She stepped out into the hot day, felt the wave of humidity wash over her. The trees just beyond the parking lot were a rich summer green and the traffic on Mason Street just off campus hummed back and forth, the steady rhythm of Dove Point’s life. When she needed a break from work, a moment
alone or a moment to think, she came to the back of the building. No one else ever went there unless they were coming or going from their cars. Janet knew she could steal a quiet moment.

She noticed the man almost immediately. He stood by a parked car, watching her as she stepped outside. The man was tall and lean like a runner. He looked to be the same age as Janet, and despite the heat, he wore jeans and a long-sleeve button-down shirt. Even though about two hundred feet separated them, Janet could sense the piercing nature of his eyes. Was he a faculty member, perhaps someone newly hired she had never met? She thought of turning away, of simply stepping back inside Wilson Hall and going back to work, but something about the man’s posture and the way he held his head looked familiar to her. She had seen this man before—hadn’t she?—but not for a long time.

And then he raised his hand and made a waving gesture, beckoning her to him.

The bus carried them five miles west and let them out near an abandoned shopping mall. As the bus pulled away, Ashleigh pointed and walked forward, Kevin following. Ashleigh had printed a map the night before and studied it enough so that she wouldn’t need to refer to it again. They were still on Hamilton Avenue but took the first right and headed north for a few blocks, back into a run-down neighborhood, one her grandfather would call “hillbilly.”

Kevin hadn’t said much on the ride over. He’d left her to her thoughts, one of the reasons she liked him so much. He’d heard it all before, listened to her stories and plans, patiently and without judgment. He knew what these trips meant to her—“her escapades,” he called them—and went along with her as both companion and protector.

Ashleigh found the street she wanted—Lemongrass—and turned left. The apartment complex came into sight, a series of gray buildings with little landscaping or color to break up the monotony. Even the cars in the parking lot looked dingy and old, their fenders rusting, their mufflers sagging. She stopped, and Kevin stopped beside her.

“Well?” he said.

She shrugged. Her heart rate had picked up and she felt a tingling down the length of her arms, the mixture of excitement
and fear she always felt on these escapades. But it was even greater this time.

This is really it,
she thought.

“We’re going to have to look at mailboxes or just knock on doors,” she said.

And hope.

“Okay,” Kevin said. “But if I’m doing all this, you need to be writing the history paper for me.”

Ashleigh didn’t move. She stayed rooted to the spot, her feet like concrete.

“Well, boss?” Kevin said. “What do you say?”

Ashleigh had had one glimpse of this person, one fleeting look at a face on a darkened porch. Like a picked scab, she’d kept it alive and fresh, a fixed point around which the last few months of her life had revolved—the man who’d shown up one night claiming to know something about the murder of her long-dead uncle Justin. Claiming that Dante Rogers was not guilty…

She took a deep breath and shivered.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Three months earlier, the man had come to their house in the middle of the night.

Ashleigh didn’t know if the sound of his knocking had stirred her, or if her mother’s voice had brought her out of sleep. But she’d woken up. She’d gone down the stairs, wearing a long T-shirt that hung below her knees, and stood in the darkness of the hallway, listening to the muffled voices from the front porch. The night was cold. She shivered.

Her mother cried.

Most of the words her mom spoke were indistinct, coming as
they were between choked, halting breaths. But Ashleigh understood the important ones. The ones she never forgot.

“Justin,” her mother said, over and over again. “Are you sure? How do I know this isn’t a joke? Tell me what you know—tell me right now.”

And when Ashleigh heard that name spoken and her mother’s pleading, she too began to cry. Her chin puckered, and hot tears fell down her face.

She saw the man through the open door.

He wore his blond hair short, almost a buzz cut. The scruff on his face tried to make a beard, and in the bright shine of the porch light, Ashleigh saw dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept well in weeks. He seemed gaunt, undernourished.

“No, no,” the man said, his voice husky. “I can’t stay. I have to go. But don’t call the police. Don’t get them involved.”

“But why?” her mom asked.

“Soon,” he said, backing away. “You’ll know it all soon. I promise.”

He was gone. Out of sight and into the darkness.

Her mom called to the man—once and then twice. She held out her hand toward the dark, a desperate, grasping attempt to hold the man and keep him from going away. But he was gone.

Ashleigh didn’t think. She didn’t process the information or make a conscious choice. She simply turned and ran up the stairs to her room and slid under the covers before her mother could see her.

Ashleigh sat in the dark, listening. She expected the police to come. She anticipated sirens and reporters and commotion. But none of it happened. Fifteen minutes later, she heard her mother’s slippers trudging up the stairs. Ashleigh took the photo of her uncle off the shelf. She held it in the air so the moonlight through the window illuminated the smiling face of the little boy.

He said he knew something. The man on the porch knew something.

She desperately wondered what it could be.

She and Kevin stood side by side, examining the rusted mailboxes. Ashleigh held her finger in the air as she passed over the names, looking for one that said “Steven Kollman.” Many of the boxes hung open, their doors broken and loose. Old flyers and pieces of junk mail littered the floor. In her mind’s eye, she saw the man from the porch. He’d worn a red T-shirt with an atomic symbol on the upper left side. Her mother wouldn’t know what the shirt meant, even if she had been clearheaded and in the best frame of mind. As emotional as she had been on the porch, Ashleigh guessed there was no way she could have processed what the man wore in such detail. But Ashleigh knew what the shirt meant—every nerdy high school kid in town would. Atomic Tom’s Comic Book and Card Company, a small store in a dingy strip mall where Ashleigh and Kevin sometimes hung out.

A week after the man’s appearance on the porch, Ashleigh had gone to Atomic Tom’s and asked about the guy. He didn’t work there. Atomic Tom had only two employees—Tom himself and his cousin Dirk, a shaggy-haired guy who tipped the scales at close to three hundred pounds. Dirk liked Ashleigh and Kevin. He joked around with them, called them “Little Salt” and “Big Pepper,” and Kevin sometimes brought Dirk shakes and French fries. When Ashleigh asked about the man and described him, Dirk eventually pieced it together and told them he thought the guy they were looking for worked as a dishwasher at Mi Casita Mexican restaurant.

It took Ashleigh a few more weeks to even go to Mi Casita,
and then another few weeks of cautious questioning of the employees there. The man didn’t work there anymore, but she learned his name—Steven Kollman—from one of the waiters. And eventually a friendly hostess told Ashleigh she thought she knew the apartment complex where the man lived. Steven Kollman had moved by the time Ashleigh went to that address, but one of his neighbors speculated about a new address, where Ashleigh and Kevin were standing.

“Why would he just show up here now?” Kevin asked. “What’s changed?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

“Isn’t he afraid of getting caught?”

“Caught at what?” Ashleigh asked, turning her head toward him. “Knocking on doors in the middle of the night?”

Kevin shrugged. She could tell he wanted to be supportive, but he also had more to say. “Messing with people, I guess.”

Ashleigh ignored him and kept looking.

“I mean,” Kevin said, “if this ends up being the guy who came to your house, you’re sure we don’t want to call the police?”

“I’m sure.” She heard the sound of her voice, the way it snapped out like the lash of a whip. Kevin shrugged again, giving in to her wishes. She knew he just wanted to protect her. She tried to soften her voice. “His name isn’t here.”

“Okay,” Kevin said. “What now?”

Ashleigh started up the stairs into the building. “Come on. We’re going to look,” she said. “Sometimes people have their names on their doors. Or maybe we’ll ask someone else.”

They checked all the doors on the first floor. A couple of names but not the one they were looking for. The hallway smelled dirty and musty, an accumulation of cooking odors and unclean apartments. Ashleigh could only imagine the dust and filth behind
the walls. The dirty diapers and greasy stoves, the overflowing garbage cans and dusty corners. Better to think about those things than the task at hand, which made her heart skip and stutter like a damaged DVD. She led Kevin to the second floor, where they again checked all the doors.