“How are you doing today, ladies?” Dennis asked the waitresses. Always the charmer.
“We’re okay,” one of them said dubiously.
“We’ve just got a couple of questions for you, if you don’t mind.”
A tall black woman who had assumed the role of spokeswoman nodded.
“We heard about a kidnapping that happened years ago out in Cale. We were just wondering-”
“Deanna,” the girl said quickly.
“So you’ve heard of her?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Wasn’t there some tie to Bell City? Something about a girl in a trailer home out on the outskirts of town that looked like Deanna?”
The waitresses looked at each other. Their glances were telling-they were communicating apprehension among one another, silently wondering how much they should tell these outsiders.
“You’ll have to ask Gary about that,” the woman said.
“Gary?”
“He’s the boss here. He knows everybody in Bell. He’d be able to tell you anything you wanted to know.”
“Gary here right now?” asked Brian.
“He’s on vacation,” the woman said, stubbing out the cigarette on the fence. “Daytona Beach. Be back next week.”
“We don’t-” Dennis began, but Mary cut him off. She could see where this was going, and for all Dennis’s charm he wasn’t going to get answers from these girls. She stepped in front of Dennis and smiled at the girl.
“Listen,” she said. “We’ve got this class. We’re students down in Winchester. You know how it is. We’ve all got a paper do this week about the Deanna Ward case, and we need to just drive by that trailer to look at it. For inspiration, you know.”
“I’m at Cale Community,” said one woman. “Taking twelve hours this semester.”
“I always wanted to go to Winchester,” the black woman said. “But I couldn’t afford it. I made a three-point-five in high school. Got accepted and everything. But the money, you know…” She trailed off. Then she looked at Mary, her eyes steady with some deep knowledge. “You’re talking about Polly,” she said.
Mary felt the breath go out of her. Brian, who was just beside her, took her arm involuntarily, the way you brace yourself as you’re falling. “Polly?” Mary managed to say.
“The girl the cops found in the trailer. A lot of people said she looked just like Deanna. She was a few years in front of me in school. Everybody said she was a witch. You know. You know how they do. They get to talking about you and they just don’t want to stop. Well, after that thing with Deanna, everybody started talking about Polly like she was some spirit. My mom knew her aunt and uncle. That’s who she lived with out there on Upper Stretch Road. They finally had to move away from here out to DeLane. Couldn’t take it anymore, I guess.” The woman paused, looked off in the distance. “I think in a strange way a lot of people blamed Polly for Deanna’s disappearance. I don’t know what that was about. Just because they looked alike? Just because they were both young and pretty? Please. Some people in this town are so backwards. It ain’t like Winchester.”
With nothing more to ask, the three thanked the waitresses and returned to the Lexus. The day was still and smooth, a few clouds drifted lazily across the sky. Dennis opened all the doors, and they waited as the seats cooled. They felt it now. They were close, close enough where they were nearly one step removed from Deanna Ward.
“What does this mean?” Brian finally asked.
That Williams is the culprit here, Mary thought but didn’t say. She didn’t want to get into that again, because it was clear that Dennis didn’t agree with her theory. She didn’t feel like arguing with him, at least not until she knew a little bit more.
“It means that we have to go out to Upper Stretch Road to find that trailer,” Dennis said.
“But you heard her, Dennis,” Mary said. “They moved away. Polly’s gone.”
“I think he’s leading us there, Mary,” Brian said plaintively. “I think we’re supposed to go. The detective talked about the trailer, Bethany Cavendish did, and now that waitress.”
Mary remained silent. She couldn’t debate the point that it seemed as if Williams was, in fact, leading them to the trailer for some reason. She thought about that old comic strip of the carrot on a string leading the mule. This is what she felt like: led, played, not in control of anything she did.
Just as Dennis was bending into the driver’s seat, Brian said, “Wait. I have something to tell you.” They both looked at him. Mary braced herself for some acknowledgment that Brian had been in on it all along, or that Brian knew where Williams was but had not told them for some reason. But he only said, his voice soft and hesitant, “I met Polly.”
“You what?” Dennis asked.
“It was two weeks ago. I’d had too much to drink. This girl started following me around, and we ended up”-diverting his eyes from Mary now, refusing to look at her-“down in Chop Hall, by the kilns. She told me her name was Polly, and of course I didn’t believe her. I think I got mad. Irate. I screamed at her. I thought she was part of this, you know. I thought Williams had sent her there to show me up. The next day, this guy told me the story of Deanna Ward.”
“How old would Polly be?” asked Mary.
“Thirty-five?” Dennis guessed. “Forty?”
“It was hard to tell,” Brian said. “She looked-she looked young. But she was hiding her face. Her hair was over one eye and she kept turning to the side, like she was afraid she was going to reveal herself. Look, guys, I didn’t know what it meant. I would have told you if”-he looked at Mary, shame in his face-“if I thought it meant something.”
Mary couldn’t stifle the laughter that was in her throat then. She let it out and it crashed out into the air like an animal uncaged, her soul finally, after weeks of pressure, finding release in what Brian had said.
“What?” he asked, reddening.
She couldn’t answer. She only laughed, and when they were in the car and heading toward Upper Stretch Road, she was still laughing, giggling every now and then into her fist. “Shit,” she heard Brian mutter. But then he was laughing, too, and then Dennis, until they couldn’t contain themselves anymore.
How silly! thought Mary. Everything means something.
31
Upper Stretch Road was a sinking stretch of highway in northern Martin County. If they had felt as if they were in the backwoods at the Collinses’ house on During Street, then now they were beyond the pale of civilization. Rusted car hulks burned orange under the sun out in front lawns. A group of children, many of them in diapers, played inside the carcass of an old Cale school bus. The road was just a whisper now, nonexistent, pitted and damaged and crumbling down the hillside.
They drove for two or three miles. They were beginning to wonder if they had missed it when the forest to their right opened up and they saw the trailer. It was in a sad shape, dilapidated and caving, its facade red with rust. The color gave the impression of blood, and Mary could not help but feel that she was entering into the final chapter of Williams’s game. What would it be like, to find a lost girl? But what if the girl was dead and Williams had killed her? There were still so many questions-but there was something about this abandoned trailer out in this expanse of nothingness. An answer was in there. She knew it.
They got out of the Lexus and stomped through the high grass. The trailer had been set up on cinder blocks, and every time the wind blew the whole thing creaked, as if it were going to tip over and break apart into a thousand pieces. The sky was graying up now, and a little mist was beginning to fall. The grass swayed at their knees, and wisps of oak seed blew here and there, white as snow.