Stranger in the Room: A Novel (10 page)

“So back to the ovens.” Neil was still on the crematory thing. “A body goes in and a little pile of ashes rolls out?”

“It’s not ashes, Neil. Basic elements like calcium don’t burn. It’s bone fragments, mostly. Pulverized.”

This seemed to shut him up. He looked away. We found the suspension bridge that would get us to Highway 75, which twisted through the mountains toward the North Carolina line. There was a distinct change in real estate after we crossed the bridge. No more glitzy tourist town. No cement-block foundations and beat-up cars either. This was the resort community Quinn had talked about—gated communities with huge homes, lake views, and immaculate lawns, surrounded by mountains and golf courses. A discreet sign in muted colors at the entrance of one of the lakeside communities went almost unseen until we passed:
Water’s Edge, from the Low 3.5s
.

Neil had pulled up satellite imagery of the area. “Crematory’s about three miles north. The hotel’s coming up on our left. I’m starving. Can we get some lunch and get checked in?”

It had been awhile since I’d had a partner. I’m fine with teamwork. You have to learn how to function as a unit in the field. The Bureau had drilled this into me. But I wasn’t happy about my current partner’s nutritional requirements. I would have been just fine scoping out the crematory grounds, maybe finding a few neighbors at home, poking around a little, and locating Billy and Brenda Wade and their urn full of fake ashes. I glanced at Neil. He looked pouty.

We rounded a turn and saw rising up over flowering gardens and a rolling green golf course the Big Knob Resort and Spa—an enormous granite slab lodge, part railway hotel, part castle, nestled in the southern Appalachians and staring at the vast blue waters of Lake Chatuge. I slowed the car. We gazed at it.

Neil brightened. “Larry booked this?”

“He did. Said everything else was full.”

“Least he could do after he sent you to find that cow at some lesbian colony last year.”

“It wasn’t a colony. It was a
couple
that owned the cabin where I stayed.”

He grinned at me. “Fun to think about, though.”

I pulled onto the long drive that led to the Big Knob Resort and Spa. Golfers, two to a cart, cruised over the paved paths next to the green. “What’s the appeal, anyway? I don’t get the obsession men have with lesbians.”

“It’s about challenge, Keye. We’ll pretty much do anything that moves. The cat stops purring when I walk in.”

The lobby was furnished with heavy wood, claret rugs, a high beamed ceiling. A couple of huge granite fireplaces that probably burned all winter were unlit now. We were told our adjoining rooms were ready even though we were here way in advance of the official three-o’clock check-in time. My room was small but nice, more lodge than hotel, crowded with heavy furniture. A mahogany four-poster bed was angled in one corner with a view of the lake. I pulled the covers back and checked the sheets and the mattress. Don’t judge. The bedbug thing really gives me the creeps.

My feet didn’t reach the woven rug on the floor when I sat on the edge of the high bed. I sat there for a minute, glanced at the wrist that had been sliced open the night a killer broke into my bedroom with a knife. I remembered letting my 10mm loose, blood spatter and tissue flying at me, filling my nose and mouth, the killer’s carotid artery gushing wide open like black oil spilling out into the dark night. And the taste—unlike anything I’d ever known.

Why was it taking so long to get past the memories? I’d spent most of my adult life learning about sadists and psychopaths, profiling their crimes, their victims’ seemingly unendurable pain. So many people had been through so much worse than I had ever suffered. They’d grown and become healthy and whole again. On most days, it’s like the scar on my wrist; it’s healed over, unthought-of. But when it hits, it’s as blunt and ruthless and unexpected as the killer who shook my trust and almost took my life that night. And just for those few moments, I’m in it. I’d studied psychology and criminology. I am a PhD, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t need Dr. Shetty to tell me that something as simple as noticing that scar could act as an external cue and spark me to reexperience the trauma. The mind has a terrible time
processing an act of violence perpetrated by another human. I’d noticed the changes in me, observed myself swinging from heightened anxiety and hypervigilance to a kind of psychic numbness. I recognized the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Seeing them for what they were—memories, flashbacks, reactivity, psychological distress—was what kept me mentally sound. My professional self understood it was happening
inside
me. I wanted to move past it. But my obsessive addict’s brain had found something new to latch hold of. “No, no. Don’t blame yourself,” Dr. Shetty would have said. “That’s part of the problem.”

I was mentally addressing invitations to my pity party when I heard a tap at the door that joined my room to Neil’s. I opened it and saw blond eyelashes peeking out behind a smooth coating of dark grayish-green facial mask. To keep his hair off his forehead, he had twisted it up with one of those fuzzy rubber bands. It stuck straight up on top of his head Pebbles Flintstone–style. I was reminded of how much I loved the men in my life—my dad, Rauser, Neil, Jimmy—and how silly they were.

I stood there staring. I was utterly speechless. His skin was drawn so tight he had that weird wide-mouth post–plastic surgery look. He was wearing a white hotel robe with
Big Knob Resort and Spa
embroidered over crossed golf clubs. Behind him, his espresso maker was on the dresser next to a yellow-and-red Café Bustelo can. His socks were folded and lined up on the bed with his other clothes, an impressive collection of hair- and skin-care products, and a snakeskin shaving kit. I don’t unpack when I travel anymore. The bedbug thing. Until they bring back DDT, my shit stays in my suitcase.

Neil spoke through clenched teeth without moving his mouth. “I knee ten ninits.”

“Ninits?” I laughed.

He asked again for ten minutes and heard himself this time. He tried to squash the smile that was causing creases in the plaster at the corners of his mouth. A section of mask flaked off his right cheek. We watched it float to the pine floors.

“Can I borrow a tampon?” I asked, and Neil swung the door closed in my face.

  
9

W
e crossed over the suspension bridge and drove back into another one of the neighborhoods skirting Big Knob’s touristy downtown, a hidden community visitors would probably never see. The pavement stopped, and we went for a hundred yards over a sandy one-lane that ended at a gate with a wooden sign.
Lakeshore Gardens
, it said, in pastel green and pink. We peered past the entrance at a trailer park with neither a lake nor garden. Children were out playing. I saw a couple of bright plastic Big Wheels, bikes lying on their side or propped against trailers, more sand and dirt, a few small tomato gardens, some folding chairs.

“They know we’re coming, right?” Neil asked. He’d been fully coffeed, facialed, and stuffed with catfish and jalapeño hush puppies at the resort restaurant. “That whole thing with the cowboy was really stressful.”

“
Aww
. Didn’t the facial help you relax?” I reached across and touched his check. “
Nice
. Baby soft too.”

He slapped my hand away as we pulled up to a white mobile home with burgundy trim bottom and top. A small built-on deck made from the same raw wood that had been used for the three steps led to the front door.

We got out. “Mr. Wade?” I said to the man on the deck scrubbing a grill with a wire brush.

“My daddy is Mr. Wade. I’m Billy.” He smiled and brushed his hands off on well-worn jeans. He was thin, had a mustache, hair below the collar, and an accent so thick Wade sounded like
Waa-aid
. He came down the steps and extended his hand. “You must be Mr. Quinn’s investigators.”

“Thank you for seeing us today.” I shook his hand. “I’m Keye Street and this is Neil Donovan.”

Billy Wade invited us inside the double-wide. The metal door opened into the living room. Billy veered off to the refrigerator. “Brenda’s in the back somewhere. Can I get you something? I got beer and water.”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

“I’ll take a beer,” Neil said.

Billy Wade delivered a Bud Light in a can to Neil and kept one for himself. Two pop-tops went off almost simultaneously. “Come sit down,” Billy said. “Honey,” he called out. “They’re here.”

“Nice place,” Neil said, as we sat down on a tweedy Rooms To Go couch. Two chairs matched it. The heavy coffee table with a place for magazines matched the entertainment center. The trailer was spotless. Photographs of Billy and Brenda’s wedding, the two of them on the beach in bathing suits, Brenda with curves and wavy dark hair—L’Oréal black #3—were lined up on a shelf braced by metal brackets. There was Billy with spindly white legs sticking out of baggy trunks and hair halfway down his back on a beach. Another with Billy and Brenda, arms around the other’s waist, NASCAR caps, smiling at the camera, with a race track behind them, Brenda’s shirt tail tied up, showing cleavage.

“That’s my wife,” Billy said, following my eyes. He raised his voice. “Honey, we got company.”

I smiled. “She’s really lovely.”

“She sure is.” He took a sip of beer.

“Mr. Wade … Billy, we need to talk about your mother’s ashes. I’m so sorry for your loss. Can you tell me how you discovered the mistake and what happened then?” Quinn had given me the skeleton version. I wanted to make sure I understood the facts as the Wades interpreted them.

“I’ll tell you what happened.” I felt the trailer rock in the same way an overpass sways a little in heavy traffic. I heard Brenda’s voice coming down the narrow hallway. And then she appeared. Same face as in the photographs, but let’s just say Brenda’s weight had gotten away from her since the wedding. Hey, I don’t judge. I glanced at the end-table picture of them at the racetrack. Admittedly, North Georgia skinny and city skinny is not the same thing, but in this small, honeysuckle-kissed pocket of the Georgia mountains where a Ford F-150 means you’re knocking ’em dead and church and line dancing are the main activities, Brenda had been a compact little hottie. She took one of the chairs, knees popping like rice cereal when she bent them to sit. “I heard a loud crash,” she said, without bothering with introductions. “And I ran out here and found him standing in the kitchen, looking down at the floor.”

“Brenda doesn’t like a lot of noise inside,” Billy interjected.

She didn’t skip a beat. “And I said, ‘Billy, did you spill your
own
mama’s ashes?’ And then we started looking close and realized something was really
wrong
.”

Billy scooted his chair close to hers and put his hand on her arm in that perfectly easy way couples reach for each other. “We scooped it all up and sent it to the lab when the funeral director said he couldn’t help and that crematory operator wouldn’t take our calls,” he told us.

“You mind giving me the name of the funeral home?” I asked.

Brenda got up and went to the kitchen, pulled open a kitchen drawer, and brought me a business card. “We just wanna know what happened to Shelia Marlene’s remains. We’re old-fashioned about these things. We feel like we have to put our dead to rest.”

Neil shifted in his seat, tilted back the beer.

“It’s my understanding you did eventually get hold of the crematory operator,” I told them. “Is that right?”

Brenda nodded. “He said he hired some help and this so-called employee somehow destroyed the remains.” Her tone made it abundantly clear she wasn’t buying the story.

“You have questions about the employee.”

Brenda shook her wavy L’Oréal allover color. “There’s never been any employees up there. It’s been a family business as long as I can
remember. The Kirkpatricks been here a long time. Our kids go to the same school. Everybody knows everybody’s business. But Joe Ray’s not like his daddy. Everybody in town loved Mr. Kirkpatrick.”

“And Joe Ray Kirkpatrick reimbursed you for your expenses?” I asked, and Brenda nodded. “Did he ask you to agree to drop it?”

“We didn’t sign anything,” Billy said. “He didn’t ask outright, but it was kind of implied. We said we understood. I guess that sounds like an agreement. But we weren’t thinking straight. Once we thought about it, it sounded suspicious. It’s not about money now. We need peace, and so does my mama.”

“Do you know anyone else that used the same funeral home and crematory?”

“Just about everybody in Big Knob uses the same funeral home. And Northeast Georgia Crematorium serves people in two or three states. Unless they bury their dead,” Brenda told us.

Neil took another long pull from his beer.

“Are you thinking of asking people for their urns to test what they got too? Oh my Lord. I wouldn’t want to put anyone else through this,” Brenda told us.

“And you received a written report from an independent laboratory analyzing the contents of the urn, is that right?” I asked.

“Yes we did,” Brenda answered. “We have it in a fireproof safe.”