The Clairvoyants(87)

“The path’s through here. The field’s a ways down,” he said. “It’s a hike.”

“The weather is nice enough,” I said.

Jimmy was hesitant. But I assured him I only wanted to look from afar.

“That’s probably all you’ll get,” he said. “A look.”

The place was a crime scene—I understood that. We started down the path. The old ties had been taken up, and loose gravel marked the way through the woods. Every so often the sun broke through the canopy of trees. We passed families out walking, the little girls picking violets. The air was crisp, and snow lay beneath the low-hanging pine boughs. We crossed a trestle over a swift-running brook, and small birds darted about. Soon there were no more people. I felt as if I were in the middle of nowhere. Jimmy walked quietly by my side, nervous, shy. He wasn’t sure what to make of me or my interest in Mary Rae, and I almost wished I could tell him that she’d appeared to me and asked me to do this, but even that wasn’t exactly true.

Soon we emerged at a place where the path opened and fields stretched for miles on both sides. The sun was high and bright, and Jimmy stopped walking and pointed.

“Up there,” he said.

I could see the rise of the field, the grass waving, the bluets and buttercups, and then along the line of the woods batches of day lilies. If he hadn’t pointed it out to me, if the sun hadn’t hit the Silver Streak’s metal body, I would never have been able to spot it. I slipped my hand from his, and I stepped off the path and ducked beneath the farmer’s barbed-wire fence. Jimmy shook his head at me—a caution not to go, maybe a little angry that I’d lied to him. It didn’t take long to cross the field. A path led beside the trees that rimmed it. Every so often I looked back at Jimmy, and he waved his arm—whether in greeting or to call me back, I wasn’t sure.

In winter, when Mary Rae came here in her down coat, the snow would have been high, though along the tree line where I walked now there might have been less. Even so, she would have had to break off through the field to reach the trailer, as I did. The Silver Streak stood beneath an oak, below the field’s rise, and hidden from view from the path. I’d thought there’d be yellow crime scene tape cordoning the trailer off, but there was nothing—only a trailer’s rusted hull, and the concrete blocks that formed steps up to the door. The detectives must have gotten everything they needed. I took a step up to the door, turned the knob, and pushed the door open. The inside was nearly the same as I’d seen it—though the mattress on the narrow bed was gone, and the interior was empty of its contents—the tattered drapes, the clothes that once hung on the rod. The kerosene lantern was gone, the clothespins. The shelf above the bed was empty, and the little window was broken. I guessed kids came up here, too, and, afraid to approach the trailer, threw rocks.

Despite the changes, this was the place. This was where Mary Rae had died. During the spring and summer months her body had decomposed. Now the pollen and new grass smells filled the trailer. Hornets had begun to build a nest in a corner. The floor was soft with rot. Soon the whole thing would slump into the soil. There would be nothing I could find that the investigators didn’t, yet I closed my eyes, listening. Why would she come here in the dead of winter? Had she made the trek, heartsick, and shut herself in the trailer to let the cold consume her? Somewhere I’d read that hypothermia often caused confusion, that people experiencing it shed their clothing. Maybe she’d given in and let William take his photographs, then found that wasn’t enough to win him back. If so, William played only a small part in her death—he’d confessed to not loving her—and she’d done the rest.

As I stood there someone called. It was Jimmy. My name echoed over the fields, bouncing off the line of trees. I left the trailer and went to the rise of the field where I could see his red cap, and I waved, and he waved back—this time clearly signaling for me to return. I stood at the peak, and I turned to take in the view behind me. The field led down to another large crop of woods, but I was high enough to see beyond them to a house—the yellow siding of Anne’s Windy Hill farmhouse, miles away, but visible. Mary Rae had been here above us that October evening of the All Hallows’ Eve party. I’d imagined her in the line of trees, waiting to emerge, and I’d been partly right.

Jimmy met me in the middle of the lower field. He said one of the local officers had approached him on the trail and asked him questions, and he’d told the truth—that one of Mary Rae’s friends wanted to see the place where she died. The officer had seen me walking along the tree line and told Jimmy it wasn’t safe for me to be there.

When I asked Jimmy what he meant, he shrugged. “I guess he means there’s a murderer loose.”

The sun dipped behind a bank of clouds, and I felt a chill as we started back along the trail.

“I had to give your name,” he said. “I hope that’s all right.”

“That’s fine,” I said, although I’d lied about being Mary Rae’s friend, and the officer would probably find out.

Jimmy escorted me back to Geoff’s car. He tried to talk me into a movie, or dinner, but I told him I couldn’t. He leaned on the car and crossed his arms. “You’re a cagey one,” he said. “But I’m a good sport.”

I kissed him on the cheek and drove the long way back to Ithaca, thinking about his blue eyes below the brim of his cap, the lovely curve of his arms in his T-shirt.