Chapter 4
LANDON - NOW
After checking in at our headquarters and ensuring everyone’s investigations are on track, I drive straight to the foothills south of Clear Springs. Someone at SEPD leaked info to the media. Now everyone knows the precise location where Alice was found.
It’s a little side road off the highway, leading farther up into the hills. Lots of long grasses, some pine trees. The forest gets thicker the higher I travel.
I couldn’t miss this spot if I tried. Five news channels have vans on the site, and several law enforcement vehicles are parked nearby.
Operators have their cameras pointed at polished, heavily-make-upped men and women who gesture at the surrounding area.
I overhear, “Twenty-six-year-old Alice Meeks was found in a dirty wedding gown, malnourished and collapsed on the side of this remote highway. She had been missing for thirteen months.”
That sounds about right. Except it wasn’t a wedding gown; it was a stuffy, white nightgown.
But “wedding gown” sounds far more sensational.
It irks me that they’re misrepresenting her.
It irks me that they’re talking about her at all.
Her life isn’t some circus. She’s been through more than any one of these people could possibly imagine. But fine, focus on the dress.
I keep out of the cameras’ reach as I walk along the edge of the highway. Carl Baldwin, my detective friend with SEPD, sees me at the same time I see him. He waves me over.
“Isn’t this a little out of your jurisdiction?” I ask.
“I asked a favor.” He runs a hand over his brown, curly hair. “Alice’s disappearance hit me hard. I’m relieved she’s alive, and I want to make sure we find the asshole who took her.” He pauses. “I know it hit you and Cody harder, since you knew her and all.”
“Yeah. It hit a lot of people pretty hard.” Even her church. They’d put up a half-million-dollar reward for any information about Alice’s disappearance. Up until that point, I hadn’t realized how loaded the Seven Blessed Days church was.
Baldwin nods. Something unintelligible comes over his radio, and he silences it.
“What else can you tell me, man?” I ask. “Something that hasn’t already been leaked to the media.”
“When I find the asshole who talked…” He takes a deep breath, exhales. “There’s nothing else. Not because I can’t share it, but because I don’t know it. We had a sketch artist work with Alice in the hospital, but we aren’t releasing the sketch yet.”
I’d love to get my hands on that.
“Any direction about where she ran from, to end up here?” I ask.
“No, because it rained after she was found. We have a couple ideas, nothing firm. But if I did know, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.” He doesn’t apologize. I wouldn’t expect that, anyway. We have mutual respect for each other’s roles in solving the mysteries and miseries of San Esteban.
“I’m gonna have a look around,” I say. “Will you let your people know so they don’t bother me?”
“Yeah. As long as you—”
“Share anything I might find. Sure thing.” I give him a mock salute and start ambling through the grassy embankment.
This area has already been covered, as told by the numerous heavy footsteps and bent and broken grasses.
I imagine Alice out here, stumbling and scared, rapidly losing energy as she moves through the grass.
It would stick to that nightgown, pull her back.
It would cut her feet, along with rocks hidden within the soil.
If it rained, she would be shivering not only with fear, but with cold. I can’t fucking stand it.
A too-chirpy male newscaster’s voice reaches my ears as I loop back toward the road. “And some are theorizing that Alice Meeks plotted the whole thing alone.”
I stop dead in my tracks. What the fuck? How could they even say that?
The reporter continues, “Because no kidnapper has appeared. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Alice Meeks wasn't kidnapped—if instead, she ran away.”
That’s not right. Alice didn't run away. And saying such a thing on the news? Alice is probably having a hard enough time already, she doesn’t need the public to turn against her. Who the fuck is this guy, starting these shit rumors?
I whirl around to check out the reporter. I've seen him on TV before, and on VideYou. Mitchell Something-or-other. Fuckin' asshole. When he isn't kissing the asses of powerful politicians, he's spreading misinformation like an evangelist spreading the gospel.
Mitchell leans in closer to his mic, like he's telling a secret. “Think about it. A sexually frustrated tradwife, trapped in her marriage and eager for some adventure—”
“No.” The word escapes my mouth before I can think it through.
The reporter turns, his bushy gray mustache wiggling in excitement. “Sorry, sir, did you say something?”
“I said no. She wouldn't have run off. She isn't like that.”
How the fuck dare he lie about Alice? I consciously have to release my clenched fists. Force myself to calm down, to chill.
Mitchell gestures for his camerawoman to follow him. “Make sure you get this.” To me, he says, “Would you care to comment on the case?”
I shrug. “Only to say that you need to stop spreading lies. Everything you say is a lie.”
“Particularly about Alice Meeks?” he asks. “What is your connection to her disappearance?”
Shaking my head, I start to walk away. My blood is boiling. I've already said too much. I just can't stand the thought of people lying about her like this. The fucking nerve of this clown.
“New theory,” Mitchell says loudly, from behind me. “Alice Meeks had a man on the side, a man who helped her run away from her humdrum, tradwife life. He would have been able to hide her for thirteen months, and her ‘escape’ was their break-up after a long, torrid affair—”
I spin back around, fist held aloft.
“Sprechter!” Baldwin barks.
I freeze.
Mitchell is staring at me, a smarmy grin on his face, his bleached teeth so white they're blinding.
He wants me to hit him.
I want to hit him.
Seems like everything should go forward as planned, since all parties are on board.
But Baldwin is striding toward us, his face grim. To the camera operator, he says, “Delete the last five minutes. Then delete the back-up. Now.”
“You—you can't—” Mitchell sputters, mustache twitching.
To Mitchell, Baldwin says, “I am asking you, for your own benefit, to let this go. This man you're antagonizing? He will find every dirty thing you've ever done or ever hoped to do—”
“I haven't done anything, so you won’t find anything.” Mitchell shrugs. “I'm clean.”
Baldwin doesn't dignify that obvious bluff with a response. Someone like Mitchell is always dirty. And I, personally, will relish digging into whatever shit he’s been hiding. Never engage with pigs, my grandmother used to say, quoting George Bernard Shaw. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
Today, I’m the pig. Let Mitchell wrestle with me. He’ll regret it in the end.
“Sprechter, time to go.” Baldwin turns his scowl on me. “You've had your look around.”
I hold myself straight, shoulders back, and return to my car. Fuck. I screwed up. This is the kind of shit Cody would pull, not me. I'm usually the one holding him back from acting impulsively.
Anyone else, even confronting the bully of the poorest, most abused client in distress, wouldn’t cause me to explode like this.
But it’s Alice they’re talking about. Alice.
LANDON - THEN
It was the fourth week that Alice showed up to grief counseling. When Inderjit asked if anyone had something to share, Alice stood.
“All my parents wanted was a safe place for our family. They wanted me to grow up feeling loved and cared for. They wanted a life for me that wasn’t full of things like short-form videos and quick entertainment.
They wanted something more spiritual.” She wiped away an errant tear.
“So I’m still going to church, and I’m trying to avoid the things my parents hated.
But it’s weird, now. I don’t get to tell them about the book I read, or the sewing project I finished.
I can’t ask my mom questions about cooking, or ask my dad for help with gardening problems. It’s like I stepped from one world—one where my parents were alive.
And into a new one that doesn’t make sense.
They’re dead. Nothing makes sense. It’s like I’ve stepped into… ”
“Wonderland,” Cody finished for her.
She chuckled, along with a few other people in the meeting. “Yeah. I’m Alice, and I’m in Wonderland. And it’s terrifying and it sucks.”
Inderjit ended the meeting soon after that. Meanwhile, my heart was still breaking for this twenty-one-year-old girl who had lost so much but was still fighting.
Cody went off to talk to an older man who had just lost his wife. Cody was like the unofficial grief welcome team. Inderjit had even offered him a job at one point. But Cody didn’t need or want the money; he just wanted to help.
I found myself standing next to Alice at the beverage station. Her sweater had fallen to the side, exposing the delicate slope of her shoulder. It was one of my favorite places on a woman’s body—the perfect place to kiss. Soft. Bearing her taste, her intoxicating scent.
Nope, too young. I blinked to clear my head. I had no business thinking about a twenty-one-year-old like that.
“Are you and Cody friends?” Alice asked.
“Oh.” It took a second for my perverted brain to come back online. “Yeah. Why do you ask?”
“I see you arrive together. I didn’t know if maybe you’re…you know. Together.”
I chuckled. “No, we’re not together. We’re close friends. I’m Landon, by the way.”
“Alice.” She shook my hand. Her touch was soft, hesitant. Almost like she wasn’t used to shaking hands.
Or maybe I was creeping her out and she was trying to limit our contact.
I let her go quickly, hoping to put her more at ease. “That was really beautiful what you said earlier, about your parents.”
“Thanks. Cody was right. This support group is really helpful. I’m learning a lot about grief.
Maybe I’m compartmentalizing, and trying not to feel my grief by learning more about it as a concept?
” She scrunched her nose, looking thoughtful.
“That’ll be something to put in my journal, I guess. Either way, it’s helping.”
“I’m glad. I know it’s hard to believe when it’s so fresh, but it does get easier over time. More time than we’d think. But, it eventually gets easier. Never one hundred percent better, though.” I stared down at my coffee, waiting for another pulse of sorrow. It came, but it faded quickly.
“That makes sense.” She reached forward and rested her hand on my forearm, just for a second, before pulling away. “It was nice to meet you, Landon. I’ll see you next week?”
“I’ll be here.” I raised my coffee in a mock salute and tried not to watch her walk away.