Snow Creek(8)

I know that there is nothing I can do with Ruth Turner. At least not now. I’ll need her later if her sister and brother-in-law are missing.

“That’s fine,” I tell her. “I’ll be sure not to mention the mascara. Don’t you worry about that. I want to find Ida and Merritt and that’s all I want.”

We both know what I’m doing.

She gives me a cool stare and scribbles more contact information on the card. “There,” she says.

I stand and let her leave.

I don’t like it when people light a fuse and then get out of the way. If you want to find out something you need to stay on it. Never let go until you get where you need to be. Until you do what you need to do.



Tony Gray is leaning back in the world’s oldest office chair with his eyes closed. The chair has been repaired so many times that it appears to be upholstered with silver vinyl. On closer inspection, it’s clearly the work of a man who sees duct tape as the end-all, be-all. He’s well past early retirement, is married to a nurse he met at the hospital when he had a mild heart attack. He’s twenty pounds, maybe thirty, overweight and despite his constant complaining about dieting, I’ve never seen him eat anything that resembled doctor’s orders.

He’s either asleep or he’s succumbed from the empty contents of the Taco Bell bag that takes up the space in front of him.

“Sheriff,” I say.

His eyes flutter.

He bobs to alertness. “Detective. Just resting my eyes. Long day.”

“Tell me about it. It’s after six.”

He looks at his watch. “So it is.”

I fill him in on my adventure into the hills above Snow Creek with Wintergreen Ruth.

“I’m more of a peppermint guy myself.”

“Good to know.”

“Did I tell you about the time I went up there to arrest a bunch of freaks who were molesting their livestock?” he asks.

“Gross,” I say.

“Yeah, I even caught one in the act.”

I put my hand up. “No visuals please. But yeah, weird stuff goes on up there. Strange people. Probably more decent folks than freaks.”

“Not in my book,” he says. “People up there are there because they’ve got something to hide.”

He gets up, his eyes landing on the Taco Bell bag.

“Let’s not mention this to my wife.”

I agree. I know about keeping secrets.

We walk outside. The air is filled with the smell of rain after a warm day. Oil leaks from cars in the parking lot are rainbow-colored. I’m quiet, thinking about those secrets of mine.

“You okay, Megan?” he asks.

“I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow after I check out the Mexican orphanage.”

“Ma?ana,” he replies.





Five





I’m not fine.

Not really.

The thought of the Wheaton siblings and something sinister happening to their parents, stirs something inside of me. I have a gut feeling that something terrible has happened, something beyond a late holiday or time doing good works for some Mexican orphans.

I’ve been there. So, has my brother. One day in a blinding flash our parents were gone. We’d experienced the jagged range of emotions from fear to anger to constant dread—never really knowing what had happened.

My hands are trembling. I grip the steering wheel and turn onto the driveway.

I feel a compulsion that I’ve denied myself for a very long time. I’m not sure if it’s the Wheatons or something else that is driving me to dig into a Pandora’s box that I’ve carried with me from place to place for about a decade.

I rent an old Victorian in historic Port Townsend, though there’s nothing quaint about it. It’s cheap and needs more TLC than the landlady can afford at the moment. It’s a big house, divided into two units. The old maple floors are dangerously uneven. I’ve tripped twice at night on my way to the tiny bathroom down the hall from my bedroom. Set a marble down and it will roll around on its own, desperate to find a level spot on which to rest. At the moment, I’m the sole tenant. The guy who lived in the other unit tired of unreliable heat in the winter and the sweltering that comes with western exposure. I don’t mind. I open the windows and let whatever is outside blow over me.

I drop my purse and keys on the table by the leaded glass door, the only part of the house that has any style from a bygone era. I expect one day the place will be razed and the door will end up in some fancy home in Seattle. I lock my gun in the gun safe in my office look at the blank screen of my laptop.

Ruth and her secrets.

Snow Creek people have theirs.

So do I.

Mine happened a lifetime ago.

I think about the box of tapes, how they have silently waited for me. I think of my psychologist, Karen Albright, and how she brought me back from the precipice that had been my world since I was born. I recollect how Dr. Albright’s blue eyes scared me at first. Almost otherworldly. How her office smelled of microwave popcorn.

How much I grew to trust her.

I was twenty when I first saw her. Defensive. Closed off like a street barricade. I had never let anyone inside, but I was smart enough to know that everything inside of me—from my experiences to the bloodline of my birth—had to be exorcized somehow. I’d been traumatized, and while I couldn’t see it in the mirror, others did. Night terrors are traumatic and uniquely embarrassing. You don’t know what you said, if anything. You don’t know if anyone heard your screams.