She's Not There (18 page)

Amelia shut her eyes. My God, she remembered it all now. Remembered how she had made up the friend Carol Fairfield, how she would fly into Minneapolis every year and make the drive south to visit The Bird. She had kept it all secret, lying that her grandmother was dead and gone, just because she was afraid Alex would find out and leave her. Jesus, what kind of woman had she been?

“She died once.”

Amelia opened her eyes. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

The Bird had still been looking out the window and now her cloudy green eyes locked on Amelia.

“Mellie,” The Bird said. “She almost drowned, when she was just six. Right out there in that lake.”

Amelia looked to the window. She couldn’t see the lake through the trees, but she knew it was there. And so was the memory of being back in the blue-green bubble, drifting, drifting, drifting downward toward the black.

“What happened to her?” Amelia asked softly.

“She waded out way too far. She was always going too far,” The Bird said. “But Ben saw her hair in the water, floating there like seaweed, he said. He saw it and pulled her out. The man in the ambulance said Mellie had died, but Ben brought her back.”

Amelia could remember none of that. She could remember the day on the roof when Ben had pulled her back, but nothing about almost drowning. Just the blue-green bubble and the slow swirl down toward the black.

“Mellie was a lucky girl.”

Amelia was still staring out the window, and she looked back to see her grandmother smiling.

“Mellie got a second chance to live,” The Bird said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

She had to see it. She had to see the place where she had almost died. It wasn’t anything rational or reasonable. It wasn’t even something she wanted to do to bring yet another lost memory into focus. It came from a deeper need inside her.

Ever since Amelia had woken in the hospital bed, she had felt as if she were drifting slowly down to the blackness. But these last days, since leaving Hannah’s home and now finding The Bird, had felt different, like she had found the strength to fight the downward pull.

But the need was there. The need to first find the bottom and feel it under her feet. She had to see the place at the lake where she had died and come back.

Back at the nursing home, Jill had told her where to find it. There was only one place folks went swimming, Jill said, and that was “Boji Beach” at Arnolds Amusement Park.

The map Jill had drawn was open on the passenger seat of the Impala, but after a mile or two down I-71, Amelia hadn’t needed to look at it. There were strip malls and new condos, but she recognized the old marina, the abandoned Lake Lodges motel, and the iron and stone entrance of Okoboji Cemetery. Then there it was on her left—the huge white arch over the road with the sign—
A
RNOLDS
P
ARK
A
N
I
OWA
C
LASSIC
.

There was a large empty parking lot on her right, but she still couldn’t be sure someone wasn’t chasing her, so she didn’t want to risk leaving the car out in the open. She drove down the long straight road, passing a shuttered pavilion. About halfway down the road, she pulled in and parked the Impala between two buildings. The car wouldn’t lock and the trunk didn’t close without the wire hanger to hold it, so she grabbed her duffel, buttoned her sweater, and started walking down the rest of the long straight road.

The first thing she noticed was the quiet—a silvery kind of silence where nothing moved. It was close to four now, and the sun was a pale pink glow in the western sky. The wind was slicing cold and hard off the water ahead.

The midway booths were all shuttered, most of the rides dismantled. In the children’s area, the small merry-go-round was sheathed in heavy plastic and tarps, and ahead of her, an old wooden roller coaster loomed against the gray sky like the humped skeleton of a dinosaur. She paused to take it in, her eyes locking on a small sign perched on the first hill:
P
OINT OF
N
O
R
ETURN
.

Don’t be scared, Mellie. I’ll hold onto you.

I’m not scared, Ben.

Vivid memories were filling the holes in her head—riding the coaster, the Whip, the Dodgem cars. And at night, soaring upward on the giant Ferris wheel with Ben, the midway lights sparking up into the starry sky.

It started to snow lightly, but Amelia walked on, her duffel crushed to her chest. The lake finally came into view, gray green against the steel-gray sky. The ground suddenly shifted, and she looked down to see that the asphalt had changed to sand.

Don’t go too far out, Mellie.

She walked down the gentle slope to the shoreline, the snow swirling around her like talcum powder.

Her chest grew tight, and she stopped. Her eyes moved over the lake, and then she closed them, drew a deep breath, and willed the memory to come.

In her mind, she kept walking, walking into the lake, the cool water rising up over her knees, then up to her chest. She kept going until . . .

Silence dropped over her, filling her ears, so quickly it took her breath away. The water eddied around her, pulling at her body, pulling her deeper and deeper downward, farther and farther from the sunlit green surface.

A fire in her lungs.

Lead in her feet as she struggled to find something solid to push against.

Then a light, like a bright fluorescent in the filmy green. And suddenly she was floating in the calming cocoon of the blue-green bubble, bodiless and without fear.

A hard yank on her hair and she was out of the bubble.

She’s not breathing! Do something, Ben!

Pain. A hard pain, like someone pushing on her chest.

The warm press of a mouth against hers like a kiss but not a kiss.

Coughing. Coughing.

She’s back. Thank God, she’s back.

And she could see Ben’s face above hers, dripping wet, scared but grinning.

Amelia opened her eyes.

She tried to hang on to it, but Ben’s image faded, replaced by the endless roll of gray-green water and the misty horizon. She was back in the moment, back in this life. And for the first time in this awful week, she was sure of what she needed to do.

She needed to go backward.

She needed to go back to Fort Lauderdale to find out what had happened. She needed to find out what had happened that night in the Everglades, to find out why she feared the man she had married, what had happened to the woman she had once been. The Bird had said her Mellie wasn’t afraid of anything. So she wouldn’t be afraid now. She needed to go back to find out where she had gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

It hadn’t been hard finding The Bird.

Buchanan’s first step was to go through his notes from his first interview with Alex to retrieve the name of Amelia’s grandmother. A quick search at PeopleFinders found Avis Martin was not dead at all but very much alive and living in an assisted-care facility called Edge of Heaven in Okoboji, Iowa.

Edge of Heaven.

Buchanan drew in a breath. Edge of hell was more like it.

He swung his Toyota into the parking lot of the nursing home. He had driven thirteen hours straight through from Nashville. Not because he had any hard evidence that Amelia would show up here. It was something else, something born of his experience chasing runners and what he knew people did when they were scared or needed to hide.

It was like birds. Or any animal, really. They would always seek out a secluded place if they felt sick or threatened. Woodpeckers climbed into tree holes, pigeons crawled into pipes, and ospreys returned to their old nests.

Avis Martin was all Amelia had. And right now, his hope that Amelia had come here was all
he
had.

Buchanan did a quick tour of the lot—only three cars, all with Iowa plates—and swung his car into a far corner. What was his next move? He had to know if she had been here, but he couldn’t let anyone see him so they could identify him later. Things were different now. He was off the grid. He couldn’t use his personal cell to talk to McCall, couldn’t use his credit cards, or risk leaving any kind of trail for someone to follow. He wasn’t a skip tracer any more. He was a hired killer.

He pulled out his burner phone and dialed the number on the sign out by the entrance.

“Edge of Heaven, this is Jill. How can I help you?”

“Yes, this is Delta Airlines. We’re trying to reach Mrs. Amelia Tobias. We’ve located her lost bag.”

“Oh, you just missed her. She left just a little while ago.”

Sometimes you just get lucky.
Fuck that, he was way past luck now.

“Well, this is the only local number she gave us and we’d like to deliver her bag to her tonight. Do you have any idea where she’s staying?”

“No, she didn’t say.”

Buchanan rubbed his gritty eyes.

“But she did mention that she was going to stop off at Arnolds Park. There are two motels right near there.”

Arnolds Park . . . the place on the old postcard.

Buchanan thanked her and hung up. He glanced at his watch. Four thirty and it was starting to snow lightly. He slapped open the map on the passenger seat. The park was only about a twenty-minute drive south on Highway 71. He shoved the car in gear and sped out of the lot.

As Buchanan drove under the white arch, he glanced up at the lettering—
A
RNOLDS
P
ARK
A
N
I
OWA
C
LASSIC
. He was surprised the park wasn’t gated or that the entrance wasn’t at least chained off for the winter but then he saw a sign that said
B
OAT
R
AMP
and realized maybe locals had access to the lake all year round.

He drove down a straight two-lane asphalt road. Far ahead, maybe the length of a football field, he could see where the road dead-ended at the shoreline of Lake Okoboji. He drove slowly, scanning for cops or guards but saw no one. To his left was a shuttered ticket house and a pavilion, and to his right was a vast empty parking lot. Up ahead, he could see an old wooden roller coaster and beyond that, other carnival rides covered with tarps. But the place was deserted—no people, no cars, no sign that anyone had been here since summer.

No sign that Amelia was here either. It was snowing, but the wind was so brisk that nothing was accumulating on the asphalt to leave tire tracks.

Buchanan stopped the car about halfway down the road and put it in park. He leaned back in the seat, fatigue washing over him. He turned up the heat and considered his next move.

Most likely, Amelia would get a room here in town for the night, maybe go back to see her grandmother again. He would stake out the nursing home tomorrow.

He let out a tired sigh. Shit, how in the hell had Amelia Tobias even gotten this far? He had checked all the bus lines and nothing came anywhere near this place. Had she found someone to drive her? Had she bought a car? Alex had found out that her diamond ring was missing from the hospital, so it was likely she had pawned it and was moving around on the cash she had gotten for it.

But money was never enough. He knew that from years of chasing runners all over the world. The best ones had that special kind of intelligence along with animal survival instincts. And they were all good liars. And Amelia had lied about a lot of things in her life.

Still, it was more than that. Despite what her husband thought, this woman was smart, animal-smart. She was as smart as . . .

A fucking crow.

His father had taught him all about crows. That they were second only to humans in intelligence, even smarter than apes, and could learn fast.

A half-forgotten memory came to Buchanan: lying on his stomach by the side of a road with his dad watching a crow try to crack open a hickory nut. It took the bird only five minutes to figure out that if he dropped the nut in the middle of the road, the cars would run over it and split it open. The damn crow even figured out that if he waited for the traffic light to turn red, he could walk right out there and pick up his nut.

Buchanan sat up in the seat and glanced at his watch. He had to find a motel, get some rest, and regroup.

The windshield was snowed over, and he switched on the wipers. He started to put the car in gear and then stopped.

A sliver of motion far down the road. He leaned forward, squinting into the dusk.

Someone was walking along the shoreline of the lake.

Then the person—just a gray blur in the flurries—disappeared.

Buchanan put the car into drive and eased slowly down the road. He was about twenty yards from the dead end when he spotted the rear end of a red car. It was parked off the main road between two buildings. He pulled in next to it and killed his engine.

He got out and walked a slow circle around the old Impala. He felt the hood—still warm. Arkansas license plate, trunk held closed with a coat hanger. Nothing inside that he could see except a crumpled bag from Wendy’s and an empty Coke can. He looked up, toward the lake. Whoever he had seen was gone now. But from his angle, he didn’t have a clear view of the entire shoreline.

He pulled up the collar of his coat, put on his gloves and started down the road.

There was a line of trees that offered some cover, but he wasn’t that worried about being spotted. If it was Amelia he had seen, it was unlikely that she suspected someone had followed her here, and she had no way of knowing who he was. This place was deserted; it was almost dark. He could leave her body in the lake, and it might look like she drowned, a victim of a random attacker, suicide maybe. It was the perfect place to . . .

He was sweating. It was freezing, and he was sweating and his heart was beating too hard and fast.

He rounded the corner of a building and froze.

She was about thirty feet away, standing at the edge of the water with her back to him so he couldn’t see her face. He edged closer, his arms rigid at his sides, his gloved hands clenching and unclenching.

I need to see her face. I need to be sure. I need to see her face. I need . . .

She was just six feet away from him now.

“Amelia.”

She turned at the sound of his voice.

Her eyes, dark and questioning behind big purple glasses. Her mouth, dropping open to form an
O
. Her body, a swath of gray in the gloom, bending away like a tree in the wind. She was clutching a brown leather bag to her chest, as if it offered some protection.

“What?” she said. “Who are you?”

Don’t think. Just do it.

He lunged at her, and she spun away. He got a handful of her sweater, but she jerked out of his grasp and stumbled away from him, running down the snowy shoreline. He went after her, tackling her just before she reached a rock jetty. She dropped the brown duffel, and they rolled on the snowy sand and into the lake.

Buchanan gasped as he plunged into the searing cold water. He could feel Amelia kicking and flailing against him, and he tightened his grip on her arm.

They both emerged coughing and panting.

She was strong, but he was stronger. He got on top of her in the shallow water, straddling her waist and holding her neck. Her hands came up to grasp his wrists.

His fingers tightened around her neck. He thrust her down into the cold water. She fought hard, her fingers digging into his hands.

Gurgling, awful gurgling sounds.

Her face was there just below him. He could see it, even under the water. He could see . . . Her eyes staring up at him. Dark, dark, dark with terror.

Eyes that had been blue before.

Eyes that had been just a picture before.

Eyes that had not belonged to a real woman before.

Oh Bucky, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t . . .

He let go.

He stumbled backward. A second of blackness. A thrashing of water that made him lose his balance and fall back into the icy lake. Then, when he stood and looked up, he heard her and he saw her.

Mel. Melia.
Amelia.

She was screaming and scrambling away, up the shoreline, away from him. She was crawling onto the snowy sand, and she was grabbing the brown duffel. She was pulling something out and she was standing up and . . .

A hard
pop
sound and a searing burn in his shoulder that spun him around and down back into the water. A second
pop-zing
into the water near his ear.

Gun? She has a gun?

Instincts kicked in, and Buchanan tried to crawl away. But the water was too cold and the wound was too hot, and even as he tried to stand up, he couldn’t do anything more than get to his knees in the shallow water.

He squinted hard into the blur of swirling snow, feeling his chest grow tight and cold because as he watched Amelia grow dimmer and dimmer he couldn’t tell if she was moving away or if he was.

Bucky?

His eyes were heavy. He had to close them.

I’m here, Bucky.

Yes, but where am I? The edge of heaven or the edge of . . .