Highway 24 (4 page)

Paul stood and thanked him. On his way out the door, he glanced back. The sheriff’s eyes had glassed over. His mouth opened and closed, reminding Paul of a fish pumping water over its gills. Paul wondered on what scene far away and in the past that gaze fixed. He felt sorry for the sheriff, whose unfinished quest to find Amanda Mills’ killer appeared to have swollen into an unhealthy obsession. As he hustled toward the exit, he passed the receptionist. With upturned eyes she watched him but made no sign of farewell. Paul reciprocated with a cool stare.

Bright sunshine streamed through the oaks and cottonwoods behind the jail, casting a crazy pattern of thick and thin lines across the sidewalk, reminding him of an oversized game of pickup sticks. The barren branches gave no shade, only a suggestion of the cover provided before the leaves died and fell. His shoes pounded the steps in quick succession. He knew her name and that was enough. A deep blue sky stretched from one horizon to the next. The preacher was speaking to an impromptu gathering. Paul followed the sidewalk in the opposite direction, away from the preacher and the center of town, with no idea where this new path led.

* * * *

Paul hurried across a brick street, ducked down a side lane out of the preacher’s sight, and then slowed to a leisurely pace to think. Shards of buckeye shell snapped under his feet. Someone, most likely his father, killed Amanda Mills years ago. He had seen an apparition, not some fancy of his imagination. How to process a ghost into his world view hadn’t occurred to him yet. First priority was to put an end to the haunting. At the end of the block, he turned left, planning to double back toward town. His feet scattered the leaves caught in dips in the old sidewalk. Fox squirrels, fat from acorns and walnuts, scurried up trees, their claws scratching the bark. When he reached his car, the shoe would be there. Putting a name to Amanda somehow humanized her, brought her out of the realm of demons. He needed more information. Did her family still live in town?

He chuckled, picturing himself on Amanda’s porch, presenting the long lost white pump to her parents. That stunt would guarantee another meeting with the sheriff. A new idea came to mind. He rejected it straightaway, but it bobbed in his thoughts, unwilling to sink. Maybe Amanda wanted her shoe left with her corpse? He shuddered to imagine what lived in a seventeen year-old coffin: a desiccated curtain of skin wrapping a skull or perfect, cold, embalmed preservation? Would he have to find out to reunite girl and shoe?

As he rounded a corner, he spied a white placard advertising the public library. Newspaper records, an obituary, of course, he thought. That will answer nearly everything. He hurried toward the two-story Queen Anne-style mansion which appeared to have once been a grand private residence. He ascended the limestone steps to the porch. A square tower with a steep, pointed roof jutted from the center of the house.

From the entry hall he stepped into the former sitting room. The floorboards groaned, disturbing the delicate silence. A grandfather clock tick-tocked from deep in the house. Paul felt an urge to tiptoe. A steel desk on a red and orange rug swirling with flowers commanded the room’s center. Ink pads, date stamps, and neat stacks of index cards stood at attention across the desk. With the hint of a smile creasing her lips, a woman looked up at him from a book.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Paul requested the local newspaper from seventeen years ago. She directed him to a microfilm reader and placed a roll of film on the desk.

“Did you attend high school here?”

“No,” he answered warily.

“Oh, really? I thought you looked familiar.”

“Nope. Never been here.”

“Really?” she said, drawing out the syllables. Curiosity played across her arched eyebrows.

“Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome. Are you a graduate student? We don’t get many professional researchers here.”

He avoided directly answering her question. “It’s research.”

“Well, good luck. If you need some paper to take notes—”

“Just some scouting today. I’ll be back tomorrow for the real thing.”

“Wonderful. If you need anything else...”

Paul nodded. The woman left him alone, treading quietly back to her desk.

Cawker Daily, rendered in some pretentious medieval font, emblazoned the microfilm box containing six months worth of small town news. The reader whirred, drowning out the ticking clock, as Paul skipped over week after week of Cawker Daily editions. Amanda’s school portrait—confident smile and coifed hair—snapped into view. No doubt she was the girl from the backseat, from the highway. Goosebumps rose on his arms. A second photograph showed the accident scene, state troopers standing around a white chalk outline with a dark circular stain encasing where the head had been traced. Lilac mingled with burnt rubber tinged the air in the library. He glanced over his shoulder. The librarian had turned back to her book.

The article detailed the time and place. Outrage and tragedy simmered below the bare facts written in the words. Some fiend had snapped short a promising future. The police asked for help to locate the hit-and-run driver. The article made no mention of a missing shoe. Perhaps they didn’t notice, or maybe the investigators withheld the detail, hoping to trip someone up during questioning. Maybe they thought it insignificant.

The obituary appeared in the following Monday edition, listing her accomplishments and school activities. Paul skimmed the article, searching for the details of her burial. He planned to leave the shoe next to her headstone or dig a little hole and bury it, but Amanda’s remains did not lay under earth and rock. They rested in the family mausoleum.

The librarian smiled expectantly when he returned the microfilm. No doubt she wanted to know what articles had held his attention. He dropped the film carton on her desk and kept moving.

The weather had turned. A gray blanket covered the western horizon and packs of dull gray, low-hanging clouds scudded toward the east, obscuring the sun. A chill, gusty wind swayed the evergreens and whistled through empty branches. Paul skirted the eastern edge of the courthouse lawn. He saw nothing of the preacher.

At the doughnut shop he ordered chili and coffee. He ate at a table for two near the front window, as far as possible from the other patrons, a group of old men surrounding a large table in the shop’s center. He mulled over his options as the chili warmed his stomach. The crypt indicated the family’s prominence in the community. But nothing explained the sheriff’s obsession over solving a seventeen-year-old mystery. Had to be something personal. If Paul left the shoe inside the mausoleum, months or years might pass before anyone discovered it. He downed his coffee and then stuck a dollar beneath the cup.

He stepped outside into a blustery fall day, determined to find the cemetery and locate the mausoleum, two tasks that could not be delayed until after nightfall. He shuddered to think of spending another night with those green-eyes haunting him.

Back in the car, Paul found the shoe and his tie undisturbed. Did his inquiries please her? He struck off for the town’s northern boundary. Thirty minutes later, after crossing a creek and two sets of railroad tracks and locating the district’s high school, he drove beneath the metal arch spanning the gate of Oakwood Cemetery.

Black tar gave way to a dirt track covered with cherry-sized rocks that crunched together beneath his tires. Trimmed yew bushes lined the lanes dividing the graveyard into sections. Row after row of irregular tombstones cut across the grass. A few lonely trees interrupted the monotony. Paul surveyed the orderly arrangement of monuments and vegetation, hoping to spot a small stone building. To his right rose an obelisk capped with a Civil War soldier standing at ease with his rifle. Paul gripped the steering wheel hard, turning his knuckles white. He hated cemeteries, always barren, exposed, hot or cold, suffering the most extreme weather of the moment. And they foretold one’s fate with a brutal accuracy that no fortune teller could hope to achieve. Not since his father’s funeral had Paul set foot among the dead.

Rain drops spotted the windshield. A yellow light glowed in the window of a small brick building not much larger than a garden shed. The sextant, he thought, or whatever they called themselves in a secular cemetery, would have a map.

Paul held the screen door open as he rapped on a windowless door, its white paint peeling. The wind was cold and wet against his cheeks. He rapped again. The thud of a deadbolt retracting answered. The door opened no more than a foot. A man wearing a red flannel shirt over a black T-shirt peered out. Greasy black hair and a ragged beard framed his face. He looked Paul up and down.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“I was hoping you could help me find a grave.”

“Maybe. Do you know the name? I’ve gotta know the last name on the stone.”

“Yes. Could I come in? It’s getting wet out here.”

The caretaker stepped aside, inviting entry to a dingy, slatternly room lit by a naked bulb. The odor of stale cigarette smoke fouled the air. A ratty desk made of imitation wood with chips along the edges occupied one corner of the room. In the opposite corner stood a green, metal filing cabinet. Two metal chairs with rust on the legs provided the only seating. A camp cot occupied the room’s center, and on the floor beside it sat a heaping ashtray and a large bag of potato chips. Once inside the disgusting hovel, Paul wanted nothing more than to get out. How could anyone live on the cusp of so much death?

“So what’s the name?” The caretaker sauntered toward the filing cabinet.

“Mills. Amanda Mills. I think she died maybe seventeen years ago.”

The caretaker whirled around. A hint of suspicion animated his eyes. “Amanda Mills. Well I can tell you where that is. Everybody knows where that is. She’s in a mausoleum.”

“Yes.” Paul realized he had not posed an idle inquiry.
Have to be more careful. Say as little as possible.

“You some sort of long-lost relative or something?”

“Cousin, twice removed.”

He nodded. “Feel I gotta ask. We don’t want no vandalism.”

“Of course.” Paul wondered if this slob really thought a vandal would ask directions. Best to keep the chitchat going, he decided, and act concerned. “Is there a problem with that here?”

“Not really. Kids do crap now and again. Leavin’ beer cans and trash. Stuff like that. Now if you wanna go down to the old Mills crypt, you gotta take the road out here all the way in until you hit a dead end.” He smiled, as if congratulating himself on his cleverness. “Lot of those around here.
Dead ends
. Get it?”

Paul nodded and smiled to humor him. Loser. He wondered if a joke about a
dead end
job would be amusing.

“Gotta lighten the mood or you get freaked out, you know. Anyway, after the dead end, you take a right and go two sections. It’ll be on your left under a big locust tree. You won’t miss it.”

“Sounds easy enough. Thanks.”

“Real tragedy when she got killed you know. Lot of locals still remember it. Quite a shame. She was a good-lookin’ girl.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows.

Paul reached for the door, determined to leave before the stench of the place soaked into his clothes.

“Hey,” the caretaker continued, “did you stop and see her folks before you came?”

“No. I came straight here. Thanks for your help.”

Paul looked in the rearview mirror as he drove away. The caretaker’s face filled a grimy window, watching him.
This town must be a magnet for kooks
.

By now the rain fell steadily. The squeak and snap of the wipers added a new rhythm to the drone of rain splattering against his car. Myriad brown puddles pocked the dirt track he followed, and the raindrops agitated the puddles with tiny splashes.

Paul stopped in front of a gray stone structure with an ornate, wrought iron cross mounted on the peak of its roof. Circles capped the arms and head of the cross, and within its body an iron rod twisted and turned and looped. Three shallow steps led to a porch supported by two Doric columns, between which sat a pair of empty, stone vases. Two small windows decorated with fretwork flanked the door. Somebody had some money, he thought, and compared his memory of his father’s simple, flat marker to this ostentatious dwelling for the dead.

Paul turned to the shoe still lying on the floor. He half expected it to move on its own toward Amanda’s grave, like metal drawn to a magnet. The shoe lay where it had fallen that morning, immobile and inanimate.

He stared at the gray mausoleum through the gray rain. “What the hell are you doing?” he said. Damned ridiculous, but he couldn’t deny a peaceful rest for that indignant and battered and horribly pretty girl if he could do something about it. As solid and real as his own shoes, the white pump bolstered his resolve. He had it for a reason and he guessed this was it. “Thank you, Dad.” The old man never finished anything.

Paul slammed his car door shut and sprinted for the minimal cover under the narrow porch. The rain drenched his hair. Water pooled at the nape of his neck and rolled down his spine. He pressed against the crypt door to escape the elements’ reach.

A rusty chain and weathered padlock secured the door, and along the doorframe descended a column of metal plaques inscribed with names and dates. He read through them, searching for Amanda’s entry.

The names on two plaques below Amanda’s sounded familiar. Rage rushed through him when he recognized the names of Amanda’s parents from the obituary.

“Damn caretaker,” he cursed and then clenched his teeth. “Bastard tricked me.”

The mother died six months after Amanda while the father lingered for two years. He weighed the lock and chain in his hand, judging its strength. After examining the stone vases, he determined their narrow necks would not admit the shoe unless he broke off the heel and cracked the sole.
That bastard will come out here looking.
The rain striking the mausoleum roof made a horrible racket and fell to the ground in a steady stream as would water poured from a jug. He decided to buy a hacksaw.