Chapter Thirty-Four

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Neither of us were sleeping. I was halfway into a doze as gray dawn crept into the sky outside our bedroom window, and Eddie was on his back on the bed next to me, his breathing even and his body still. I knew he was awake.

We had talked, speaking in low voices in bed for a long time. I told him what had happened to me, about Trish and the tire iron. Eddie had been rigid as he listened, and he barely spoke.

“Jesus,” he said when I finished. “So that’s why they can’t solve it. It was someone different every time. Someone random. Someone who doesn’t remember.”

“All of them except for the first one,” I said. “The Lost Girl. We don’t know who killed her. That’s the key.”

We’d pretended to sleep then. But now, as dawn light began to edge into the sky, Eddie said, “April, I want to explain.”

I was too tired to follow. “Explain what?”

“What happened before I was discharged. The things Quentin said.”

I had to reach back into my memory. “You mean the fight he said you got into? The gun?” I let out a humorless laugh. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about my mother being a convicted murderer first?”

“You didn’t trust me with that,” he said softly, and those were the only words he needed to make my rib cage feel like it was closing in on itself. “You’re protective, April. You think I don’t know that? I’ve always known there are pieces of you I can’t see. You told me what you could. I feel like I should have seen the rest.”

“My mother was a criminal,” I said into the graying darkness. “I was never part of it. You can believe me or not if you want, but that’s the truth.” I could barely breathe, the words were so hard. “But I didn’t turn her in, either. I spent the money she made. There was a lot of money, sitting in a bank account that I never told you about until my mother cleaned the account out. But until then, I kept that money. And I lied for her over and over again.”

Eddie laced his hands on his chest, his gaze still fixed on the ceiling. “When I bought the gun, I didn’t know whether it was to use on me or on someone else. I couldn’t decide.”

I rolled onto my side, facing him, listening.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he went on. “I was dreaming about terrible things. No one I talked to could help me. It just seemed like if there was a way forward, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything.”

I wanted to touch him, but I knew he didn’t want me to. So I stayed still.

“I didn’t like guns as a kid,” Eddie said. “Didn’t even like them as toys. And there I was, years later, and I knew how to kill people. It was one of the skills I’d learned. I didn’t want to be the man I was. But I was. They were going to send me on another tour, so I bought a gun. I figured if they came for me, I’d kill either them or myself. Because I knew how. And then I got in that fight—which I never do, but I did that day. I don’t know why. That led to my discharge, and they weren’t going to send me back anymore. I was ashamed of it, so I didn’t tell you. I thought I could leave it behind.”

“You can.” This time I did touch him, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Leave it behind, Eddie. It isn’t easy, but I think you can do it. I think we both can.”

“Those days of leave Quentin talked about—”

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t think for a second that I’d believe you’re a murderer.”

“Why did she draw us here?” he asked. “We just wanted to get married and move on, both of us. Why are we here?”

“I don’t know.”

There was another moment of quiet, and then Eddie sat up in a swift motion, his legs swinging over the side of the bed. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.

I blinked. “Hear what?”

“I heard something.”

I hadn’t heard anything, but I rolled off the bed and stood as Eddie strode to the bedroom door in his old tee and boxer shorts. I recalled the things I’d heard—or thought I’d heard—in this house. Had Eddie heard them, too?

In my short nightie—it was cotton, but it was lacy, because when I packed, I thought I’d be on my honeymoon—I followed him into the main room. Darkness had started to fall away, and the furniture in the living room was just visible, the hump of the sofa and the dark squares of pictures on the walls. Nothing moved, and except for the ever-present ticking of the clock on the wall, there was no sound.

I followed Eddie’s back as he walked slowly toward the front door, listening between steps. “Out here,” he whispered.

Maybe it was Kal again, or maybe it was one of the other cops who was supposed to keep an eye on us at night. Were they still out there, sitting in their cruiser, or had Quentin and Beam reassigned them? Were Eddie and I still a threat?

Eddie stood at the front door. He put his hand on it, as if he could sense vibrations, and suddenly I had a bad feeling. Don’t open the door, I thought. I wanted to grab him, to tell him that opening the door was a bad idea.

“They’re gone,” Eddie whispered, letting out a breath. Then he unlocked the door and swung it open.

Outside was an empty porch and gray sky. The warm, damp air of a summer dawn. A breeze rustled the trees. There was no other sound in the silence.

Eddie stepped onto the porch and looked around. “Someone was here,” he said, and this time he sounded confident, completely sure. He walked barefoot down the steps to the front walk, looking left and right. “Maybe they went around back,” he said, holding up a palm briefly in my direction. “April, stay there.”

I crossed my arms over my breasts, hugging myself as he strode off through the grass around the side of the house. I could barely breathe. Far off in the sky, a starling called. I edged my feet forward, letting my toes touch the threshold of the front doorway, feeling the warm air on my bare legs. It was a beautiful morning for someone who hadn’t almost been murdered a few hours ago.

Then I saw it.

“Eddie, here,” I said, keeping my voice calm so I didn’t alarm him. “Come back and look at this.”

He reappeared instantly from the other side of the house, because he’d done a swift circle through the backyard. “What?” he asked.

I pointed.

Rose had a black mailbox affixed to the brick wall next to the front door. The corner of the mailbox was propped up by something that had been shoved inside. It could have been a flyer, or it could have been the mail, but I had the feeling it wasn’t either of those. I could see an edge of bright pink lettering, a familiar typeface I’d seen many times before.

Eddie walked back up the steps, lifted the lid of the mailbox, and pulled it out.

He unrolled it, and Alicia Silverstone’s face looked up at us. Someone had left us a copy of Seventeen magazine.

---

—In Rose’s kitchen, Eddie and I turned on the overhead light and opened the magazine. It wasn’t much of a mystery how the magazine had arrived—it had to have come from the Snell sisters. Rose sure as hell didn’t have a subscription to Seventeen, and neither had Robbie.

“Why the subterfuge, do you think?” Eddie asked, opening the pages. “If there are cops watching Rose’s place, they’d see her putting the magazine in the mailbox.”

I flipped past a Benetton ad, a thick card with a perfume sample on it. “I don’t think there are cops watching the house. The Snell girls work in mysterious ways.”

“What are you doing?” Rose came into the kitchen, wearing her neck-to-feet housecoat and an irritated look. “It’s early.” She caught sight of the magazine. “Why are you reading that?”

“It was left in the mailbox,” I said.

Rose huffed. “Beatrice Snell.” Her voice dripped with disdain. “She’s probably in trouble with her parents and her phone privileges are cut off. Or she thinks someone is listening to her phone calls. What did she put in it?”

The magazine flipped open to the middle, where the subscription card was. Taped to the subscription card was a small envelope. Eddie detached it and opened it. I was starting to realize that no one had a sense of drama like a teenage girl—especially a Snell sister.

Eddie unfolded the paper inside the envelope and read it over. He didn’t say a word. Then he handed the paper to me.

“What is it?” Rose asked, impatient.

I scanned the page, which was a photocopy. “It’s a missing person’s report,” I said. It had been filed by a man named John Haller, stating that his daughter, Shannon Haller, had not been seen or heard from since March of 1976. Shannon was aged twenty-six at the time. The report was filed in December of 1977.

Shannon Haller’s father had filed a missing person’s report.

“I don’t get it,” I said, handing the page to Rose to read. “When we were at the Snells’, the police file said that they checked with Midland and they had no record of a woman missing.”

“Look at the dates,” Eddie said, his voice calm. “The Lost Girl’s body was found in April of 1976. The missing person’s report was filed in December of 1977. There wasn’t a report filed when the police file was written. Not until over eighteen months later.”

“You think this is the girl whose body they found?” Rose asked, her eyes reading the page from behind her large glasses. She read the description that John Haller had filed in the report. “ ‘Brown hair, past shoulder length. Five-five, slender build. Brown eyes.’ ”

Eddie and I exchanged a glance, both of us remembering the Lost Girl’s face. “We can’t assume it’s her,” I reminded him. “There are millions of girls with brown hair.”

“How many of them are from Midland, and how many of them died in 1976, aged between twenty and thirty?” he asked.

I shook my head. “How did the Snell sisters get this?”

“I have no idea.” Eddie picked up the magazine and leafed through it. “There’s more.”

Rose and I moved closer and read over his shoulder. In the margin around an article about the five best eye shadows to buy this season was handwriting scrawled in ballpoint pen. An address in Midland.

At the bottom of the page was written: You’re welcome, punctuated with a heart.

It must be John Haller’s address. Shannon’s father still lived in Midland. I was exhausted, so bone-deep tired, yet my pulse started to pound in my throat. We had to go talk to Shannon Haller’s father. We had to do it right now.

The ghost on Atticus Line had tried to kill me. I had to know who she was, once and for all. I had to know if she was Shannon.

I grabbed a pen from the phone nook. I flipped the pages of the magazine to an ad for Calvin Klein perfume and wrote along the edge, since this was the Snell sisters’ preferred form of communication. Trish, I wrote. Age around 40, Asian, drives a dark green Toyota. Married, has at least one child that is old enough not to need a car seat anymore. Possibly a dentist or works at a dental office. If you can locate her, please check on her and make sure she’s okay. Then I ripped out the page with the Midland address on it. I put it with the photocopy of the missing person’s report. I walked to the front door, opened it, and put the Seventeen magazine back in the mailbox.

I walked back into the kitchen. Rose was frowning. Eddie’s gaze met mine, and his expression was stark and determined.

“Let’s get dressed,” he said.