55
ANSON
“We think he dropped it.”
Detective Moss had said that before loading me back up in a patrol car and returning me to the Quick at a little past two in the morning. I was in a bit of a daze as I wandered through the quiet market and went back upstairs. I barely remembered stumbling to my bed.
I didn’t lie down. No way I could sleep. I sat on the corner of the mattress as the others snored around me, lost to slumber.
It hadn’t been just any picture—I think that’s what spooked me.
In the image, I was back at my home in Simpsonville.
The house was ablaze behind me, with firefighters working to put out the fire.
I was surrounded by first responders, all trying to get me to talk.
The photograph was taken moments after I left the woods.
Moments after I found my knife hidden near the lake, left behind by Mother.
Left behind like she left me behind. Whoever took the picture had been there in the moments after I realized I’d been abandoned by my family.
Much of that night was a blur. I’d taken the memories and placed them in a box. I sealed that box and stacked it deep in the back of my mind, hid it behind a bunch of other boxes where it was meant to be forgotten, and remain forgotten, but it refused. Seeing that image brought it all back.
I remembered emerging from the woods the first time to find two vans with “Talbot Enterprises” stenciled on the sides in red lettering.
Men in plastic white suits crawled all over our house like ants, inside and out.
I hid and watched. Dazed. Mother had left with Mrs. Carter and the man I knew as Mr. Smith.
The three of them had taken an old Plymouth Duster and vanished.
No doubt with the money and documents Mr. Carter had pilfered from his employer.
That’s why Talbot Enterprises was there—searching for them, searching for what they stole.
When they couldn’t find what they wanted, they set the house on fire and drove off.
I watched all this from the edge of the woods and didn’t show myself until the firefighters arrived.
If someone were to ask me how much time had elapsed, I couldn’t answer.
Perhaps minutes, most likely hours. All of it passed dream-like, this nightmare I’d hoped to wake from but never did.
Whoever took the photograph had arrived sometime after the men from Talbot Enterprises left, but long before the fire was out.
And while under most circumstances my memory was near perfect, most of that day and night escaped me.
Even now, as bits and pieces came back, as I closed my eyes and tried to wander through the memory as Father had taught me, I was unable.
I couldn’t see the faces of those who were there.
I only saw these blank things where faces should be, blank things lacking eyes, mouths, or ears.
Whoever had taken that photograph somehow found me in Charleston. Was it the killer? Or had someone placed the photograph in the killer’s hand?
I needed to know who took that picture. If the memory was in my head, I needed to draw it out.
Standing from my bed, I crossed the room in silence to where Paul slept. I gave his shoulder a gentle shake. “Wake up. I need your help.”
An hour later, we were on the floor in the hallway surrounded by sketches.
Under my direction, Paul had drawn my house, the surrounding woods, the Talbot vans, the firefighters, the police, Mother, Mrs. Carter, Mr. Smith, and the Plymouth.
As I described all I could recall, his hand flew across the paper, bringing each bit of memory to life.
Seeing those images jarred loose new memories, new faces.
He drew those, too, and the doors I’d shut slowly creaked open.
The boxes I’d packed opened with them. It was the last sketch that finally brought it all to a stop, the one he held in his hand. The one we were both staring at.
“Are you sure?” he finally said.
“Yes.”
“We need to wake Vincent.”