When You See Me (Detective D.D. Warren #11)(32)

D.D. had given us her rental car. After hitting the two establishments in Niche, we’d driven south to Dahlonega, which had many more restaurants. We’d been eating, I don’t know, forever. Ordering plate after plate while fellow diners stared. My stomach ached. My head hurt. I wanted to vomit, though whether from food or memories of Jacob . . .

“They remodeled Columbine High School the summer after the shootings,” Keith offers up. He’s pushing the ribs around on the plate with his fork. “The administrators knew it was important to wipe out as many traces of violence as they could so the student body could move on. And they understood that meant not just patching bullet holes, but instituting a whole redesign, especially one that changed up the library, where so many were killed.”

I nod absently. Keith likes to talk. Sometimes I pay attention, sometimes I don’t.

“But the principal argued a new look wasn’t enough,” Keith continues. “They also needed to change the fire alarm tone, which had gone off for hours that day. Just the sound of those notes sent himself and the students back into a state of panic.” Keith paused. “They also removed Chinese food from the cafeteria menu.”

He looks at me. “That’s what the cafeteria had been preparing for lunch that day. Chinese food. No one could take the smell anymore. Again, it led to immediate panic attacks. Poor Chinese food. It probably was a lunch many used to enjoy.”

I stare at him.

“I understand you’re overwhelmed,” he says softly. “I know thinking about Jacob, remembering anything involving Jacob, has to be excruciating.”

I don’t say a word.

“But Sergeant Warren, what she said is true. We process information through all of our senses. We make associations through all our senses. From building design to the fire alarms to cafeteria food. You may not have seen much when you were first kidnapped. But you experienced a lot. You processed way more than you know. And with a little time and patience . . .”

“I’ll magically know if I’ve been here before?”

“Or you’ll be able to confirm once and for all that you weren’t.”

“My memory isn’t that good. My senses are not that refined.”

“Or your safeguards are just that high.”

“I’m not trying to avoid this!”

“Flora, no one blames you for not wanting to take a trip down memory lane. Sergeant Warren is asking the impossible of you and she knows it.”

I’m horrified to realize my eyes have filled with tears. I’m going to cry. Goddammit, I refuse to be this weak.

“What if I told you it all tastes right? What if I said, every single thing we tried . . . Yes, Jacob could’ve brought that to the basement. Every meal is exactly the kind of thing he would’ve liked. And I know that, because I lived with him that long, I got to know him that well.”

“Okay,” Keith says.

“Okay? There’s nothing okay about this!”

“You’re here. He isn’t. You won. He lost. Everything is okay about that.” Keith reaches across the table and takes my hand. “You’re here with me. And that’s very okay.”

I want to tell him he’s wrong. That I never feel like I won. That mostly I just endured, and I hate myself for that, too. For the days I didn’t fight. For all the times I fell upon Jacob’s offerings of food and greedily devoured them. Shame. I think of Jacob and to this day, I feel shame. It follows me everywhere I go, even sitting at a booth in a tavern staring at barbecued ribs.

“Let’s go,” Keith says.

“Where? Isn’t there another pub we’re supposed to hit?”

“You’re full, I’m full. We’re done.”

I stare at him curiously. “So now what?”

“We take a page out of Sergeant Warren’s book. We launch our own investigation.”

“What are we investigating?”

“ATVs.”

“What?”

“Forget Jacob for a moment. There’s no one in the world who can physically lug four bodies up a mountainside. I barely made it up that trail yesterday and I can run for miles.”

I nod slowly.

“Meaning there has to be another way, maybe even a whole different path we haven’t identified yet. Personally, I’m favoring a four-wheeler-accessible trail. Think about it; it’s not just getting a body or bodies to the site, but also shovel, pickax, other supplies. The area is too heavily wooded for a truck, which leaves us with an ATV.”

I nod again. While I’ve been lost in my dark thoughts, Keith has clearly been using his head, and his logic makes sense.

“Where to start?” I ask.

“I Googled a nearby ATV rental company. They must have trail maps, right? Not to mention local knowledge. Because it might be that the trail doesn’t exist anymore, which is why we didn’t see immediate signs of it. But maybe there was something people used fifteen years ago, that sort of thing.”

I don’t speak right away. Instead, I study this serious man sitting across from me with his Ted Bundy good looks and relentlessly curious mind. I realize I’m no longer angry, I’m no longer ashamed. I’m intrigued.

Keith is right. There has to be some other way to access the burial sites than just hiking. And who better than us to figure it out?