Photograph, page 22
She was there in the parking lot because the girl was with her. They were together.
But that left me with the same question.
Who was the girl?
TWENTY-SEVEN
From what I knew of Lara Lovell’s background, she’d spent one year as a teacher in Devil Creek. Otherwise, she’d grown up and lived in the town of Frankfort three hours to the north. I checked the online records for Berrien County and then for Benzie County, where Frankfort was located. As far as I could tell, Lara had never gotten married, and she’d never had a baby. So the girl wasn’t hers.
Even so, a man and a little girl had shared her room at the Thunder Mountain Motel that night. Who were they?
Were they family?
Was the man a boyfriend?
Was Lara having an affair?
Any one of the three seemed possible. But if she’d checked into the motel alone on her arrival from Frankfort, that made me think her visitors must have come from Devil Creek.
The only person in town who seemed to know Lara well was Rick Kaslan, so after Chuck Kimble dropped me at the motel, I got in my SUV and returned to the local high school. Kaslan was back in his principal’s office, in the midst of preparations for the school year, his desk stacked high with papers. Somehow I thought his spray-on tan got a little paler when he saw me.
“Oh, hello. It’s Shannon, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. Hello, Rick.”
“So you’re still in town. Have you made any progress?”
“Actually, I have.”
I sat down in the chair on the other side of Kaslan’s desk. He wore a teal-blue polo shirt today, and his arms jutted from the sleeves like two chicken bones that had been picked clean. He tapped the eraser of a pencil on the arm of his chair, and he swiveled back and forth at a pace that made me dizzy. His paper-white smile had a nervous twitch.
“Well, that’s good news, isn’t it, what did you find?” he asked, running his words together like a high-speed train.
I didn’t start with Lara.
I started with what I’d discovered about Dawn. Because as far as I could tell, the relationship between Dawn and Zeke had started with her math teacher and a note on the back of her assignment.
“Among other things, I found out that Dawn West was tutoring Zeke Daugherty in trig that summer.”
The surprise pasted on his face didn’t look sincere. “Oh, really? She was?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Well, not that I recall, but it was a long time ago.”
“Did you suggest that Dawn start tutoring her classmates? Was that what the note on her assignment was about?”
More faux surprise.
“I guess it’s possible. After all this time, I can’t be sure. But I probably did tell Dawn she’d be a good math tutor. She was very smart.”
“Did you suggest Zeke talk to her?”
“I don’t remember specifically. I may have given Zeke or his parents a list of tutors who could help him. Maybe that included Dawn. I told you Zeke was anxious to do better at math.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
His face darkened. “If I didn’t tell the police, it’s because I didn’t know there was any kind of relationship between Dawn and Zeke. Lots of kids need math help. Typically, I post a list of available tutors on the school bulletin board. That doesn’t mean I know who’s helping who.”
“Okay.”
I let it go, but I was convinced that Kaslan wasn’t giving me the full story.
“I have a few more questions about Lara,” I went on.
Kaslan folded his arms over his chest with a sullen reluctance and waited to see what I would say. I used my phone to zoom in on the little girl in the photograph from Millennium Memories.
“Remember I showed you this picture? You said you didn’t know who the little girl was. Are you sure? Because now it looks like the girl was in the motel room with Lara Lovell the night of the murder.”
This time, Kaslan’s face flushed with genuine surprise. He looked at the photograph again, more carefully, but then he shook his head. “Her back is to the camera. I mean, if I saw her face, maybe I would recognize her, but not like this. She could be anyone.”
Yes, he was right about that. She could be anyone.
I was sure that was why the image at the pop machine had appealed to Lara. The girl had an every-child quality about her, like a symbol of what it was like to be growing up at that point in history.
But she was not everyone. She was one specific girl, and I needed to find her before a killer tracked her down.
“Do you remember a child here in Devil Creek who might have been part of Lara’s life? A cousin? Or a daughter of a friend?”
“Lara never mentioned it if there was.”
“We think a man was in the room with Lara, too. We don’t know who he was or why he was there. Was there anyone in Devil Creek that Lara might have been close to? Someone she might have called when she got to town?”
“I can’t think of anyone. She never talked about having a boyfriend. She was only here for a year.”
“Could there have been a relationship she wanted to keep secret?”
Kaslan eased back in his chair. “What, like an affair?”
“Yes, like an affair. Is that possible?”
“Well, I told you, men were drawn to Lara. She had this way of making people feel instantly comfortable around her. You could spend ten minutes with her and feel like you’d known her your whole life. But most of the time, she didn’t seek out relationships on her own. She was an introvert. If she had free time, she’d usually be out in the rural lands taking photographs.”
“What about back in Frankfort?” I asked.
“I didn’t know her there.”
“Yes, but did she talk about her life growing up there? Did she mention any old boyfriends?”
“No, not that I recall. Like I said, Lara was a loner. I guess she was a little like Dawn that way. Perhaps that’s why they connected.”
I sighed and took one last shot. “Is there any possibility that Lara had a child of her own? Maybe a little girl she gave up for adoption before she came to Devil Creek?”
Kaslan replied with a sad smile. “That’s very unlikely.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Honestly? Because Lara and I talked about things like that. I told you, the two of us were close. I opened up to her about being gay, and I remember mentioning that it frustrated me that I might never have children as a result. Either I’d have to adopt or find a surrogate, and neither seemed very likely at the time. Lara was sympathetic. She really wanted kids someday. She definitely wanted kids more than she wanted a husband. But I remember her talking about my situation and how she couldn’t imagine a woman carrying a baby for nine months and then being willing to give it up. She said she’d rather die than do that. So whoever this little girl was in the motel room, I feel pretty safe in saying she was not Lara’s own child.”
I thought about driving to Frankfort that night.
No one in Devil Creek seemed to have any answers about Lara Lovell, so I figured I might have better luck in her hometown. Somebody had to know more about her, right? But it was too late to get started on a three-hour drive. I decided to head north in the morning and see what I could discover about Lara’s other life.
Late evening, after nine, the rumbling in my stomach told me I was hungry. Pizza time. I walked from the motel to DiMaggio’s, which was about a mile and a half away. The twilight woods on both sides of the highway whistled at me as sticky wind blew off the lake. Frogs croaked in thunderous unison, and crickets chirped double-time in the heat. There was almost no traffic, no one to see me. Every dirt road looked like the first chapter of a Stephen King novel.
Believe me, I kept my Glock within reach.
When I got to the restaurant, I sat at the bar. I ordered my pizza and a beer to go with it. Phil had made me a convert to Mich Ultra. This was a locals joint, loud and crowded, and everyone stared at me, the female stranger on her own in Devil Creek. A couple of the good old boys came knocking, trying to ring my bell. I was reasonably polite in telling them that I wasn’t interested. One of them persisted, and when he touched my shoulder without permission, I twisted his wrist almost to the point of breaking it. Everybody got the message and left me alone after that. But I could see them muttering about me.
Bitch.
My pizza came. I ordered another beer, ate half the pizza, and left the rest behind. I’d lost my appetite.
The text tone sounded on my phone. When I checked my lock screen, I saw that my father had sent me a message. Actually, he’d sent me about a dozen messages since I’d left Florida, all of which I’d ignored, all of which were variations on the same theme. Can’t we talk about this, Shannon?
I ignored this one, too.
I didn’t even open the messaging app, because I didn’t want him to know I’d seen it. Yeah, maybe I was a bitch.
Look, it’s not like I expected my father to walk out in the middle of surgery because I’d been assaulted. Actually, no, I’m lying, it’s exactly like that. I was crying, and I was alone, and I was hurt, and I was ashamed, and I needed my daddy to hold me and kiss my head and tell me I could sleep in the back seat and leave all the worries of the world to him. Four hours later, when he finally arrived at my hospital bed, I no longer needed him, and I no longer wanted him. His words of comfort couldn’t chip away the ice that had frozen around my soul. It was too late. Things were never going to be the same between us after that.
None of this put me in a good mood.
I paid my check in cash and left the bar. By now, it was after ten o’clock and totally dark. I walked back beside the highway, a little wobbly after the beers. No cars zoomed by. I kept my gun in my hand, the butt slipping in my sweaty palm. Acid from the spicy tomato sauce rose in my throat. I kept looking over my shoulder to see if one of the boys from the bar was following me, either on foot or in a slow-moving pickup with the lights off. But I was alone.
The rain came. There was nothing I could do except get soaked to the skin. My long black hair clung to my face. By the time I got back to the motel, all I wanted was a long hot shower. Ahead of me were the parked cars and the Coke machine. My room number was 102. I hadn’t put it together before, but I was staying in Lara’s room. As my mom used to say, we go where we’re destined to go in life.
When I let myself inside the room, I saw it differently, as if secrets were still hiding in the walls and I could somehow coax them to talk. This was a double room. Two beds. Lara in one, the girl in the other. And the man, where did the man sleep? But I already knew the answer to that. I knew, because nine months later, Lara Lovell—Faith Selby—gave birth to a daughter. I was absolutely sure in my heart that it had happened right here. A little girl asleep, a man and a woman making love silently and breathlessly in the next bed.
Then what?
I lay down in one of the beds, the one closest to the door. I pictured the little girl lying there and tried to get inside her head. How had it happened? It’s the middle of the night, she’s awake, she can’t sleep. There’s some Coke left in the can that she got from the machine hours earlier. It’s warm, but she drinks it and wishes she had more. The man is in the other bed with the woman. Their skin is bare all over; their arms are around each other as they sleep. Something about this feels both wrong and right.
At some point the girl leaves the motel room. Why?
Why would she do that?
To go to the Coke machine?
No. I knew the answer to that question. It’s because the little girl hears Dawn running from the woods. She hears a scream. Does Dawn cry for help? Does she cry for Lara? The girl gets out of bed and opens the door and walks outside into the gentle rain. The empty lot is only a few feet away. She’s bleary, she wipes her eyes, she pads in her little bare feet to the end of the motel. The ground back there is sharp and it scrapes her toes. She see something and wonders if it’s real. Is she dreaming? A teenage girl is running toward her, hair flying, and she wonders why the girl looks so scared—but in the next instant, there is an explosion. The light goes out of the girl’s eyes. She is dead. The little girl barely knows what death is, but this teenager is dead, a limp broken doll at her feet.
There he is. The killer has come from the woods.
He is pointing the gun at the little girl now. In a moment, she will be dead like the teenager from the woods. Their eyes meet. His arm is trembling with fear. He doesn’t want to kill the girl, doesn’t want to shoot someone so small. But he will. The girl is frozen. She can’t move. His finger is on the trigger—
And then the girl is falling. A woman grabs her and takes her to the ground. The gun fires; the bullet misses them both. They are all shocked, all three of them, none of them knowing what to do. The man backs away and runs. It’s too much now, not just the little girl to deal with, but the adult too. He runs away. The woman scoops up the girl and carries her back to the room and slams the door shut.
Then someone knocks on the door.
I gasped and bolted out of my vision, totally disoriented.
This wasn’t part of my imagination. This was real. Someone was knocking on my motel room door right now. Saying nothing. Just knocking. In an instant, my Glock was in my hand, my finger on the trigger, my brain in survival mode. I rolled out of bed and didn’t ask who it was. I jerked open the door with my gun already pointed at whoever was standing there.
Then, just as quickly, I let the gun go limp in my hand and dropped it on the floor. I rushed forward and gathered the woman into my arms.
It was Kate Selby.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I didn’t want you dealing with this alone,” Kate told me, which was sweet. But that was only part of the story.
I understood the complexity of what was in her heart. I’d found her mother. I knew where Faith Selby had come from. Kate couldn’t deal with that long distance. She needed to be here, to meet this woman named Lara Lovell in person, to sew new patches into the quilt of her life. So she’d flown into Chicago and then rented a car to drive to Devil Creek.
Midnight came and went. Kate took one bed; I took the other. With the lights off and the curtains closed, the room was pitch black. Kate was tired after a day of travel, but neither one of us felt a need to sleep. We lay on our backs and talked in whispers, the way you would in a graveyard. Or a church. Something about this room—Lara’s room—felt like both.
Strange. In the moments before she arrived, I’d been conscious of an emptiness in my soul, like a part of me was missing. But with Kate here, the loneliness had fled. There are some people you meet that you love immediately, people who don’t feel like new friends because the relationship is too close, as if you’d already been friends forever and didn’t even know it. That was how it was with me and Kate. I don’t mean that in a romantic or physical way. If I ever got to a point of wanting that kind of intimacy again, it would be with a man. No, the intimacy between the two of us was something very different and yet every bit as strong.
I brought her up to speed on everything I’d learned in the past day. She said little, trying to absorb it all in the dark. I hesitated when it came to the secrets of this room, room 102 of the Thunder Mountain Motel, because I didn’t really know anything about that night. I was guessing. Relying on my sixth sense.
But Kate was way ahead of me.
“I was conceived right here,” she murmured. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? Lara Lovell made love to that man in this room, and here I am. My life began in this place. And you know what? I can feel it. I know it’s true.”
Then she went somewhere unexpected.
She asked me the question I’d been asking myself.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“I—I don’t know,” I replied. “Why do you ask?”
Kate spoke out of the darkness. “Dawn died that night. Doesn’t it make you wonder? Dawn’s story ended, and mine began on the very same night. Maybe it’s the same story.”
She laughed.
“I suppose you think that’s crazy,” she went on.
“No, I don’t.”
“Really? You believe in those things? I’m surprised. I wouldn’t expect that from you, Shannon.”
That was my opening.
I took a deep breath, and then I told her everything. It felt like such a relief to let it out. I told her about my regression with Maro and the things I’d seen—and how it turned out that what I’d seen, the murder of Jenny Curtis, had really happened. I told her about going to Angola and going up the stairs and having my twin shadow turn the tables on me.
I became him. He became me.
Did I believe in reincarnation?
Yes, I did. I could say it out loud now. Yes, I did.
But Kate saw the darker side of my vision right away. “You think he’s coming for you again, don’t you?”
“Yes. I can’t shake the feeling that he is.”
“You think he’s here?”
“I’ve felt that way from the very first night at the motel. He’s close by. In every life, he tries to find me. Maro told me what’s going to happen. If I don’t kill him first, then he’ll kill me.”
Kate said nothing. I let the silence go by between us, and her silence gave me the courage to go on. No, it was Kate herself who made me strong. Having her with me, having her close, made it possible to confront my demons. Because for days, I’d been thinking something truly crazy, and yet if you believe in destiny, you can’t believe that anything is random. Things evolve the way they’re supposed to.
“There’s another reason I believe it. It’s not just because Jenny Curtis is real. There’s something else.”
My voice trembled. In the other bed, Kate seemed to know I was standing on a precipice, and she was there to catch me. “Tell me, Shannon.”
