JOSIE
YOU ARE EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE, says a giant sign on the door, making my crappy mood instantly dissipate.
I press the doorbell, but it doesn’t work, so I knock. Music comes from behind the door. The hallway of the two-story apartment building on the river side of Burnville smells like incense. I’m definitely at the right place.
I don’t hear the footsteps, but the door suddenly swings open, and Rika appears in the neon-pink light that saturates the dim hallway behind her.
“Come in,” she says.
She’s wearing wide mandala-patterned harem pants and a long knitted sweater with sleeves almost hiding the tips of her fingers.
Without waiting for my reply, she walks back down the corridor. “Leave your coat on the hanger!” she shouts, turning the corner.
I hang my parka where she told me, noticing several coats of hers that I recognize.
Boots and shoes are scattered on the floor by the wall.
Old wallpaper, high ceilings, creaky hardwood floors—all courtesy of the Burnville design of the last century.
The posters on the walls are all new and framed, some artsy stuff, illustrations, vintage movie posters.
There is a guy splayed on the flowery couch in the living room, his arms on the back of it, knees wide apart.
“Trevor, my neighbor from the second floor,” Rika introduces him as she takes a seat on the floor, legs crossed in a yoga pose, as she nods to the empty armchair next to her.
Trevor is in his fifties—an unusual pick for a friend.
His fair hair down to his shoulders is a mess.
He has a tiny piercing in his ear and a goatee blending into several-day stubble.
He’s wearing old, ripped jeans and a long-sleeved tie-dye shirt.
One of his bare feet is tapping against the patterned rug to the rhythm of the music, which I can’t figure out.
Soul? Blues? Folk? It trickles from a giant old-school speaker set in the corner.
I peel my eyes off him and look around, my lips freezing in a silent “oh,” because Rika’s living room is the coolest I’ve seen in this town.
Artwork, statues, plants, wind chimes, drapes, neon lights, a chandelier-looking light in the corner.
The faint smell of incense and paint thinner saturates the air.
Trevor takes a puff from a vape pen and offers it to me. “Want a hit?”
I shake my head. “Thank you.”
“Not a smoker or shy?”
“Not a smoker,” I reply.
“Get comfortable,” Rika says. “Help yourself to whatever you find in my fridge, if you want a beer or soda.”
“Pop,” Trevor corrects her, and I smile in approval.
Rika rolls her eyes. “Right. Pop. You and your Pennsylvania slang.”
I grab a Coke out of the fridge and study the illustrations that seem to be everywhere on the walls.
“Who did these?” I ask in amazement. The illustrations of fantasy creatures and humans with pointy ears are elaborate, some in color, others in ink, flawless and gorgeous.
“I did,” Rika says.
“For yourself? Is this your hobby?”
“It’s a gig. I’m a freelance illustrator. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” I slowly turn around, taking in the living room-slash-art studio.
“I do commissions. It’s not steady.”
“These are beautiful. Why don’t you do this full-time?”
“Why don’t you sing full-time?”
The answer startles me. Rika’s staring at me, with no bitterness but that now-familiar dare in her eyes, leaning back on her palms, her blue braids almost touching the floor.
Trevor takes a puff of his pen, squinting at me through the smoke.
The question slightly irritates me, but I dismiss it. Rika is right. We all have our reasons for not doing what everyone thinks we should do.
“So, Trevor,” I say to change the topic. “Rika tells me you are quite a sleuth.”
He presses his palm to his chest and bows to me.
In less than half an hour, I get to know the man who is a documentary lover, a canophilist, a mushroom hunter—“Edible,” he clarifies—a conspiracy theorist, a believer that microdosing is good for your brain, that the American government is a pack of Russian spies, that most of us can't think for ourselves because the AI algorithm already invaded our online life and predicted what it’ll make us years from now, and that ninety percent of Earth’s population won’t make it to 2050.
Hello, Trevor.
I finish my soda in the time it takes to hear Trevor’s brief résumé. I’m sure I don’t need to tell him mine, considering his investigation skills.
“So, Rika tells me,” he says on the inhale as he puffs on the vape pen, “you are in a bit of a pickle.”
“Not really.”
“Not really?” He talks slowly, like nothing surprises him. “A kidnapper lured you into a house where you found a kidnapped girl. The kidnapper is now missing, in hiding, and is probably very dangerous.”
Probably healing, I add silently. He might be hurt, but I can’t tell these two that I saw him being hit by a car.
“Right,” I confirm reluctantly.
Rika shifts gracefully, like a cat, refolding her crossed legs.
“You can share things with Trevor or ask him questions,” she say. “He’s cool. If anyone knows all the dirt on the locals, it’s him. He probably knows more about your family than you.”
“You from here?” I ask him. “Originally? I don’t remember ever seeing you.”
“Grew up here, yep.” He leans back on the couch. “Left after high school, traveled the world, had odd jobs here and there, then came back.”
“Why?”
“Yeah, why?” He snorts. “Isn’t that everyone’s favorite question? You came back.”
“I had a reason.”
“I had one too. I actually love this town. Got out when I was young, saw all I needed to see, had my share of fun, got bored of the noise and the fuss of the world, and here we are!” He takes another hit from the vape pen.
I smile. “That’s cool.”
“Cool is subjective. But yeah, life’s good.”
“What do you do?”
“Work from home.” Trevor cocks a brow at me. I don’t press for details. “So,” he continues, “Rika tells me you want to know more about that guy who texted you?”
“More than what they say on the TV, yes.” The police won’t tell me anything. This guy might.
“What did the guy tell you? On the phone?”
“He just texted. I never actually spoke to him.”
I open the text message thread with “Unknown” and pass it to Trevor. It takes him ten seconds to read the messages, his brows crinkling. He raises his eye at me with a frown. “That’s it?”
“What do you mean, that’s it?”
“That’s all? No background? Nothing about who he is? What he wants from you?”
I shake my head.
Trevor looks disappointed and pinches the bridge of his nose. “And you just went to meet this random guy who vaguely hinted at telling you about something you are not even sure about?”
I look at Rika, who doesn’t meet my eyes, but the little smirk on her lips is unmistakable.
I get it. I was careless. Maybe stupid. But neither of them understands what it’s like to grow up with a grandmother who has the reputation of a killer and an arsonist, with a mother who first abandoned me, then died, and with half of the town looking down on me because of all that. I’m guilty by association.
“You saw the picture he sent,” I explain. “No one has this picture. Not even my grandmother. Only this guy. That means he knows something. Or knew my mom. Obviously, he knows more about her than I ever did.”
“Fair enough,” Trevor says quickly, then picks up the thick folder from the coffee table and slides it toward me. “Take a look.”
The folder contains all sorts of articles printed from the internet, as well as court records, copies of driver’s licenses, including my grandmother’s and mom’s, who’s so much younger than I am today, and the guy who I assume texted me.
There are several licenses with his photo and different names from different states.
I sift through the files, marveling at the depth of the research.
I pick up the court transcripts of my grandmother’s trial, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of pages in the stack.
“Those are just the important ones,” Trevor explains as I speed-read the highlighted parts.
Karen Boots, Alysha Boots, Donna Snickett, Victoria Snickett, the Hartzels, and dozens of other people who testified during the trial. I never even knew that court transcripts were public record.
“You can keep those. Those are copies I made for you,” Trevor says.
I look at him with gratitude. “Thank you. I really appreciate this. Why are you doing this? I mean, what’s in this for you?”
He chuckles. “It’s a hobby. I like digging into old local cases.”
“But why?”
“Because most people like to run their mouth without taking the time to actually ask the right questions. And because the police in small towns don’t always have the resources to investigate complex cases properly.”
“You don’t think my grandmother was rightfully convicted?” I drop the folder onto the table and stare him down. He might be one of those who thinks my grandmother got away with murder.
“Hey, hey, hey, hide your claws,” Trevor says, then sits up and leans in, wiggling his forefinger at the paperwork.
“Quite the opposite, actually. I think all the charges were uncalled for. I think it was all a setup. The Hartzel murder, the arson, everything. Well, maybe not the Hartzel case, because Karen Boots might’ve been covering for someone.
But! Someone else was responsible, and the truth is, our guy was mentioned multiple times throughout the trial, but he never testified.
In fact, he was never even questioned by the police.
He skipped town, and there wasn’t enough evidence to link him to any of what happened. Or the police did a lousy job with it.”
“So you think he was responsible for all of this?” I nod at the file.
“Possibly. You have to look at the clues.”
“And those are?”
Rika leans over and pulls a paper from the stack and hands it to me. It’s a newspaper article about a drowned woman.
I frown. “What does this woman have to do with anything?”
“Read on,” Trevor says. “See the date? That’s a week before the bar fire.”
“And?”
“Are you blind, Bootsie?” Rika chirps.
I glare at her. “Don’t call me that, please. I don’t like it,” I say quietly.
“My bad.” She raises her palms in the air in apology. “Read the article, girl. Then look at the court record where your grandma talks about Derek Sickler.” She passes me another paper. “See any familiar names?”
I cross-check the several pages in my hands and see in the statement that the drowned woman’s father mentions James Sickler.
“Oh, man,” I whisper. “Wait, the drowned woman was this guy’s wife?” I raise my eyes at Trevor. “He had a wife?”
Trevor nods. “A domestic partner, yes. And she drowned the day she came to Burnville looking for him.”