Notes on an Execution(34)

A highway, dusk. A flicker of long black ponytail. Izzy had died at sixteen, but she was older here: nineteen, maybe twenty. Windows open, air whipping hard, an old bluegrass song twanging from the radio. There would have been a boy, sitting in the passenger’s seat—Izzy would not have loved him, not here, maybe not ever, but this wouldn’t have mattered, in the hot flush of youth, his calloused fingers creeping up her thigh, the horizon bleeding behind the Adirondack peaks.

In this almost-world—the substitute reality that lingered like a daydream—Izzy was never a pile of bones on a table. She was bright and golden, a blazing instant of mundane and perfect glory.

*

Saffy tracked down a handful of the witnesses from the initial case—Angela’s boss from the diner, the kids from Izzy’s party, the friend Lila had gone out with that night. The locals were confused, wary, oddly giddy to find her waiting on their stoops. As Saffy perched on sinking couches and politely declined tepid cups of tea, Moretti kept the captain at bay, while Kensington handled the never-ending tip line. Most witnesses couldn’t remember much. She had gathered no new information.

Her last witness of the long, parched day was a young woman named Olympia Fitzgerald. Saffy pulled up in front of an unfinished house, a single-story ranch perched on a wide swath of field, pieces of construction equipment scattered across the browning grass. October in the Adirondacks looked like a postcard; Saffy sat in her car, skimming the transcript, the details fading off the page. Olympia had been twenty years old in 1990, and her interview had lasted all of seven minutes before the lead investigator dismissed her. The sun slouched over the horizon, the sky a magnetic blue, and Saffy closed the file, too tired to finish.

A woman in a tattered velvet tracksuit answered the door, her gray hair like a thinning mane. Inside, a grandfather clock spilled its guts onto the living room floor. A younger woman—Olympia, the daughter—had propped her bare feet on the coffee table next to an open bottle of neon orange nail polish.

“What’s up,” Olympia said, disinterested, even as Saffy flashed her badge. Saffy yearned for Moretti’s voice, silky and exacting, so naturally competent.

“Back in 1990, you talked to Sergeant Albright about the disappearances of three local girls.”

Finally, Olympia looked up, shifting as she sat up straight. Her mother loped into the room and stood behind the couch, hands protective on Olympia’s shoulders. They had not invited Saffy to sit. She hovered awkwardly next to a fraying armchair.

“I know,” Olympia said. She used her palms to push back a greasy strand of hair, her fingernails still glistening wet. “I saw the news. You found those bodies.”

“Yes,” Saffy said.

“I told him everything.” Olympia’s voice cracked, a hint of panic. “The detective, back then. I told him everything I know.”

“We’re reopening the investigation, Olympia. I’d like to hear exactly what you remember.”

Mrs. Fitzgerald nodded her daughter forward—Olympia hesitated as her mother’s fingers massaged her neck.

“The summer those girls went missing, I worked at the Dairy Queen off the highway. I had this coworker, this boy. He was a little younger than me, just graduated high school.”

“Go on.”

“I remember the night Izzy Sanchez went missing,” Olympia said. “I remember it really clearly, because it was also the night after he and I—well, we’d been flirting all summer. I went over to his place, in that trailer park by the forest where you found the bodies. One thing led to another, and . . . we tried to, you know. But he couldn’t. So, I left. And the next day at work, he seemed strange, completely off. When I tried to talk to him, he had this look in his eye. Like he wanted to hurt me. It was so many years ago, but I’ll never forget it. I let him close the store alone. That was the same night Izzy disappeared.”

“What was his name?” Saffy asked.

“Ansel,” Olympia said simply. “Ansel Packer.”

That name.

Saffy’s jaw filled with saliva, the sulfuric rush before a spew of vomit.

“Did you notice anything else?” Saffy asked, quaking.

“I’m sorry,” Olympia said. “I don’t remember much, not like that. I spent a long time just trying to forget.”

Memory, Saffy thought, was unreliable. Memory was a thing to be savored or reviled, never to be trusted.

“Did you laugh at him?”

The women gaped. An endless pause.

“Please,” Saffy said. “Do you remember, Olympia? It’s important. It sounds like he felt threatened, embarrassed. Do you remember if you laughed at him?”

Olympia’s expression was a cracked veneer of shame. Saffy had her answer. The room smelled like Christmas candles and smoked meat. A sudden wave of understanding broke over Saffy’s body, the recognition simmering. A patch of orange fur, stuck bloody to Saffy’s palm; Lila’s giant eleven-year-old eyes, a handful of crumbling oatmeal raisin cookies. The way the squirrels laid in death, one, two, three with the fox, arms stretched deliberately above their heads in surrender. Moretti’s finger hooked through the eye socket of that skull. Fur, skin. The way death peeled itself deliberately from a bone.

*

The Fitzgeralds’ bathroom was papered in peeling pink. Mrs. Fitzgerald had lined the counter with little figurines—angels and shepherds, porcelain cherubs. A bowl of potpourri sat by the faucet, old and crunchy, a layer of dust gathered on the petals. Saffy ran the water cold, splashed it onto her face.