Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake)(47)

My rental car is behind the bus station, in a parking lot that’s an adjunct to the full, busy one; we walk toward it, and I notice that there’s a dilapidated RV circling the lot, restlessly looking for a place to park.

Carol suddenly grabs my arm and pulls me to a stop. Her grip is so tight it hurts. “Have you got a gun?” she asks.

“Even if I do, I’m not going to start anything in a Greyhound parking lot,” I tell her. “What’s the matter?”

She nods toward the RV. It’s sun-faded, the kind of antique that nobody wants. It probably dates from the mid-1980s, at best. I’m surprised it’s still running. She pulls me off to the side, beside an overflowing dumpster, and I try not to breathe in the reek of garbage and urine. Carol doesn’t seem to notice. Her attention is all focused on that RV. “They found me,” she says. “Oh, Lord help me.” Then she turns an angry, narrow stare on me. “They found me because of you. Stirring things up.”

“Who are they, Carol?”

She doesn’t answer. The RV cruises the lot, doesn’t park, rambles on over to the next lot. When it finally pulls out onto the main road again, she says, “We have to hurry. They’ll come back.”

I don’t know what she’s thinking, or who she’s afraid of, but one thing’s for sure: she’s not bluffing. We race to the car, start it up, and I tell her to get down out of sight.

I pass the RV going the opposite direction, and when I try to read the back license plate in the rearview, it’s useless. They’re Tennessee plates, but dirty and mud-splattered, and I can’t make out anything but an M.

The interior’s completely hidden by tinted glass.

We keep moving. I hold my speed down to just below the speed limit, and look for the RV to follow us.

It doesn’t. I watch for several blocks before I tell Carol we’re in the clear.

“We aren’t,” she says, but she climbs back up into the passenger seat. Her shoulders are hunched, her hair a curtain that hides her face. “I need to go. Now.”

“We have a deal.”

“We had a deal,” she says. “But they’re here. Looking.”

“And if they’re chasing us in an RV, they’re going to be damn easy to spot,” I tell her. “There’s no sign of them now. We’re okay. How about that food? You still hungry?”

She stares straight ahead for a long time before she finally nods.

Then she folds her hands and starts to pray.



At dinner, she wolfs down buttermilk fried chicken like it’s her last meal. She’s chosen a seat near the back, by the kitchen, where she can watch the entry doors. It’s not by a window.

High vigilance. I understand that impulse. I’ve had it for years.

I wonder how often she gets real food. There’s a certain way she hovers over the plate, like she’s guarding it. People who’ve been starved do that. Maybe it’s a consequence of how she’s been living. Or maybe it’s worse than that. She’s not giving me much, and she doesn’t talk other than to say yes or no or can I have that butter.

When she is finally filled up and sits back with a sigh, I pay the bill and hustle her back to the rental car. Still no sign of the RV. There’s a good selection of hotels around the airport. I choose the Best Western, which seems like a low-profile destination, and check us in. One room. One key, and I keep it. I make sure to park the anonymous rental car in the covered garage, backed in so the license plate is invisible. I’ve always hated the Tennessee rule that says front license plates aren’t required . . . until now. It makes this a whole lot easier. If whoever’s in that RV wants to check every white rental car in Knoxville, they’re going to have a long job of it.

I have that weird déjà vu again as I lock the door behind us; the room’s nice enough, but it’s another anonymous, temporary shelter. So many in my history that it’s disorienting. I got two beds. Carol sits down on one of them, testing the mattress and running her fingers wistfully over the clean covers. She bounces tentatively on it, as if she’s forgotten what a bed feels like.

“What’s your real name?” I ask her. She doesn’t look at me. She keeps smoothing her hand over the sheets.

“Hickenlooper,” she says. “Carol Hickenlooper.”

I don’t believe her, but I let it go. Something’s nagging at me, but I can’t put my finger on it. “If you want a shower, go ahead,” I tell her. “I’m fine.” I’ve brought in my small suitcase, and I unzip it to take out my laptop from the front pocket. I set it out on the small work table. The young woman practically jumps at the chance for the shower; she takes underwear and clean clothes—another plain shirt and long skirt, from what I can see—out of the backpack and goes into the small, clean bath area. I hear the click as the lock engages.

I lose no time before examining the backpack she’s left behind, and just as I expected, I see Remy’s initials in black permanent marker on the inside of the front pocket. That makes it real. And grim. And I don’t believe that he gave it to her before his disappearance; he had it with him the night he disappeared from the bar. I saw it on the video.

She knows something. Saw something.

There’s nothing else of his left inside it. The large back part holds women’s underwear, a sports bra, a worn white nightgown made of cheap, light fabric with no adornments. Dirty clothing toward the bottom, neatly rolled and ready to be washed. In the smaller front area I find a battered paperback copy of the Bible—King James Version—with plenty of inked annotations. Some basic toiletries. A pair of cheap folding flat shoes, though it seems like those are for emergencies, since the soles are still clean. A washcloth almost certainly stolen from a hotel, a few miniature bars of soap, some nearly empty hotel complimentary shampoo bottles and lotions.