10.
The limestone vaults outside Pickleweed, Georgia, had once been quarries, deep underground, from which the malleable stone
was excavated. At the top was a rickety metal cage, where a very young-looking records officer had Ruby, who had come straight
from the airport, sign his clipboard. Soon they were hurtling downward in the old mining elevator, and Ruby was aware of the
way the earth tamped light, hundreds of feet belowground.
The young officer looked nervous. He had made sure to record all her information. He was going to do everything by the book,
she saw. When the swinging brass pendulum above them read six, he pulled the lever.
With a loud shake and hiss, the elevator door opened.
She stepped into what felt like a giant ice cave, with massive pillars like stalagmites. The vaults went on as far as the
eye could see. They were filled with metal shelves, crowded with old boxes and wooden crates. The air was an exhale of time
trapped for centuries. A low motor purred: it was the elevator, and it smelled, ominously, of burning rubber. She could see
strings of ancient, flickering lights on the stone ceiling. But she saw no sign of stairs. Or sprinklers. What if there were
a fire down here?
Ruby put the thought out of her mind. That’s how she faced danger. She didn’t feel it. She was aware that others might say
she had turned that primal part of her off—but she felt that the fear had been scared right out of her. There were times she
wondered if one day she would wake up and all the fear would be there, wide awake and ready to go.
She focused. Yesterday was twelve days. Today was eleven. Time was falling like that elevator dial.
The records officer turned on a penlight as they began walking, shining the light over the metal shelves. There were faint
numbers painted on some of the limestone walls, but she soon lost all sense of direction, following him through the labyrinth
of caves. She could feel the memories of the miners who had worked here two hundred years before, pushing their carts full
of the white stone, carefully stepping back and shielding their eyes against the blasts. In their wake, they had left boxes
crouched like little men in the corners.
Despite the depth, there were spiderwebs on the walls. The combined odors of decaying wood, old paper, and police evidence
hung in the air. She had been in enough archives to recognize the distinctive smell of blood rotting on cloth.
The officer was silent. Police were sent to such postings as punishment for misdeeds. She wondered what this young man had
done that would merit such a demotion.
“It should be around here,” he said, stopping in yet another nameless row. The shelves here were piled high with plastic bins,
some looking like they were ready to topple over.
“How can you tell?” she asked, curious.
“Case numbers. Everything is organized by year and department. This entire floor is police evidence—agencies across the state
send their storage here. This section is Pickleweed. There it is.”
He pointed at a large, dusty plastic bin that said Brown, Mitchell, AMUR on the side. AMUR stood for aggravated murder. The
bin was perched, precariously, high on the shelf above them, next to other murder boxes.
“Do you mind getting it for me?” she asked, smiling. “You’re a bit taller than me.”
The joke—almost everyone was taller than her—seemed to go over his head.
“Sure. Gosh, sorry.”
He put his penlight in his pocket and pulled the big box down, looking surprised at how light it was. Ruby wasn’t surprised:
When they opened the lid, the stale air rising, all the evidence from the court exhibit boxes that should have been stowed
safely inside was gone. There was only one lonely plastic bundle on the bottom, still wrapped in police tape from the station
house.
“I’d like to take that,” she said.
“You’ll have to sign for it,” he said.
By the time she got back up to the top, to the bright flag of day, she had sweated through her shirt without even being aware
of it.
Ruby left the vaults, driving down the country roads. She wasn’t far from where Betty Dubois had gone missing. She needed
to find a VCR machine. No one seemed to have them anymore.
She passed an old-fashioned roadside motel, the bent metal sign on the roof spotted with bugs and rust. The sign said the pickleweed motel. She slowed and turned back, pulling into the nearly empty lot.
There was only the suggestion of air-conditioning in the motel office. The woman inside looked so much like the pictures of
Betty Dubois that Ruby almost dropped her bag. The woman had the same square bone structure, the same bright eyes. She wore
a little plastic name tag that said owner and under that, willa.
Behind the woman was a shelf of old movies on VHS: The Lion King, Aladdin, Snow White. Next to that shelf was another one with a curtain with an X on it, no doubt hiding movies of a more risqué nature.
“Are those movies for rent?” Ruby asked.
“You get one free movie a night,” the lady said. “Costs you two bucks each to rent more.” She looked over Ruby, in her sweaty
work blouse and loose black trousers, and said nothing about the X-rated movies.
“Do all the rooms have VCR machines?” Ruby asked.
“The TVs come with them,” Willa said, pointing at her own small television, behind the counter, with a VHS tape slot at the
bottom. Ruby nodded. She remembered having one of those herself some years back.
She paid for the room, Willa leaning over to fill in her name on the handwritten log she kept under the counter. Ruby caught
a scent that brought back a wave of memories.
“What’s that nice smell?”
The owner looked pleased. “It’s my motel soaps. You can’t get them anymore.”
She passed over a room key that said 11.
“That’s it. I remember . . .” Ruby’s voice faded.
The owner looked up and saw the pain in Ruby’s eyes. They held this gaze for a long moment, until the owner looked away.
There was a silence.
“Would you like to pick out your movie now?” Willa asked.
There was a window in the back of the motel room, opening to the buzz of the cicadas. A thick tangle of woods greeted Ruby.
It was early afternoon. Her stomach growled, and she reminded herself to eat soon.
She washed her hands with a bar of that soap, caressing it tenderly, then sniffing it. There were tears in her eyes. She dried her hands on the stiff towel, and went to her bag, on the bed. She set the bundle on the bed, with its thin coverlet.
Carefully, she sliced open the package.
First she took out the car manual, dotted with mold from having been in storage for so long, and the road map, as soft as
silk with age. She spread the map across the bed. Mitchell had drawn his long-ago route from Oregon to Georgia in his grandfather’s
old truck on it. He may have been a valued employee, but the people who made the shoes didn’t earn enough to buy them. He
had been paid little over minimum wage, even as a new manager.
The VHS tape was next. She lifted it carefully with both hands, turning it over to examine the tape inside. After ten years
in a bin, it might be too brittle to play. She turned on the television, then slid the tape inside. She adjusted the volume,
then hit play on the video, aware that she was holding her breath. The tape hissed, and for a moment she thought it was broken.
Then it began to play.
The camera had been set outside the bar. She could see a parking lot with several cars. A man appeared, walking away from
the bar. He stopped midway across the gravel lot and looked back at the door. The picture quality was grainy, but his face
was easily recognizable.
Mitchell Brown.
In his interview, the bartender said he had cut Mitchell off, and the young man had promised he would walk home—it was one
of the sad ironies of the case. His new apartment was right down the street, across from the factory.
Instead, he fumbled for his keys. Maybe he had forgotten his promise. The truck looked like it had a million miles on it.
Mitchell stabbed his keys at the lock. Ruby winced. He tried three times before he was successful, and pulled the door open.
The video had no sound, but Ruby could imagine the creak.
She paused the video and leaned close to the TV screen. The image was too blurry for her to make out the plate number, but she recognized the design. It was an Oregon plate. She could tell by the fir tree rising in the middle. She restarted the video.
With the myopic precision of a drunk, Mitchell drove out of the lot, bumping off the curb. The last view of the truck was
the flickering taillights, heading down the street.
From there, Ruby knew, he took a left when he should have turned right, and changed the course of his life. And maybe that
of Betty Dubois.
The video stopped. The last grainy image was of the parking lot, with the remaining cars. She reached in her bag. She found
her camera, and took a picture of the screen.
Outside, the heat was starting to feel oppressive. She found the telephone book, and looked up the name of the bar.
The Drinking Spot was still there, but a few years before, it had turned into a barbeque joint, with a smoker outside, tantalizing
the air.
The inside of the place was dark, smoky with the smell of roasting meat. The few men at the bar were all double-beam wide.
Ruby walked the length of the bar and sat on the stool Mitchell allegedly sat on that night, ten years before. The stool was
warm, like someone had just been there. Looking up at the chalkboard menu, she decided to stay and eat when she was done.
If it went well.
The bartender came down the bar. Ruby recognized him from the picture that had come up when she’d run his name. He was still
here.
She smiled, friendly, and showed her license.
“When you have time,” she said.
He left to close out a bill, and the customer eased off the stool, which squeaked when he got up. The same pinball machine was in the corner—Ruby had looked up old pictures of the place.
The bartender was back.
“Let me guess, that fella facing death.”
“I’m sure I’m not the first one.”
“No, miss.” He sighed. “I had no idea helping out in a death penalty trial would lead to years of trouble. If it isn’t you
people, it’s the district attorney’s office. Hope this is the end of it.”
“It should be.”
“I’ve heard that one.”
“He’s slated for execution in eleven days.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Truly I am.”
“You doubted his guilt?”
He gave a shrug. “I never know what to believe.”
“Me either.”
She pulled a photo out of her bag. She had stopped at a print shop to have it developed.
“This is from your bar video that night.”
He frowned, then his forehead creased. “Oh, that’s right. I remember cutting the police that tape back when it happened.”
“They never used it in the trial. You know why?”
“No.”
“Me either.”
One of the men eating glanced down the bar. He was plowing through some very tasty-looking pinto beans and cornbread with
a chunk of raw onion. He forked up a piece of brisket.
“I’d like your help identifying the cars from that night,” she said. “I want to know who might have been driving them.”
“Sure.” The bartender leaned over the photo, curious.
He pointed. “This old Caddy, that was a guy who used to work in the kitchen back then. He was at the bar, ending his shift
with a meal.”
“His name?”
She wrote it down.
“Know where to find him?”
“Nope. He quit years ago.”
“All right.”
The next one was easy. “This car, you can’t tell, but it was pink. One of them Mary Kay cars from back in the day. The lady
was a drinker. I don’t recall seeing her for a long time.”
“Her name?”
“Marie. No, sorry. Mary.”
“Got an idea where I can find her?”
“Nope. But I remember her full name now. Mary Baldwin. She used to try to pay her tab with a credit card that always got declined.”
Ruby had a sudden, sharp memory of a girl in high school whose mom sold Mary Kay makeup. It was the original side hustle,
along with Avon, Tupperware, and Amway. She blinked the memory away, hard.
“Any others?” she asked.
His finger stopped at a brown Datsun.
“I don’t know this car,” he said, and moved on.
The man down the bar ate his brisket, trying to listen.
“This car, piece of shit Gremlin? I remember this guy. He used to come in a lot. Wes Rogers. Heard he went to prison.”
“What for?” Ruby asked.
The man down the bar spoke up, his throat lubricious.
“Killed his wife.”