Headlights(23)

This matters. She matters. I can feel it in the air up here as we near her cabin, a sort of thick crackling rightness. Or wrongness, I don’t know, I just … want it. Want to be near it. Want to know how and why I am a part of it. Want … to be near her. No. I clear my throat. That’s not—

Tillman trips and stumbles behind me. I don’t turn around. I remind myself that he’s working for me on this case. Technically. It should make it better. It doesn’t. The dude is, at the end of the day—maybe even at the end of today—fucking my wife. Ex-wife. Whatever.

The sun filters in through the trees, and the unexpected heat releases a pine smell familiar to anyone who’s grown up in these parts. Ponderosa. Smells almost like butterscotch. I breathe it in. It’s peaceful up here. Quiet. I can see how someone would be drawn to this life. It isn’t all that different, maybe, from the one I’ve been planning … dreaming of, at least, after my tour. After I’ve proved that I deserve it.

What did Josie say? Getting yourself killed won’t—

I look up, suddenly, and there it is.

The cabin. Two hundred square feet, less. Tucked back away from the trail in the trees. A bell on a hook hangs above the door, and a brittle mat sits in front of it on the ground. One word printed on the door: RANGER, in black letters. Crime scene tape across a perimeter, attached to trees. The two crime scene investigators step out and come over to us. We introduce ourselves, and they say they were told we were coming.

“We’ve done our sweep. Got everything we need. No sign of struggle. Up to you, but I think we can turn it back over to her for whenever she comes back, don’t have to leave it active.”

Tillman’s staring up past the trees to the sky. I nod and thank them.

“Here,” one says, handing a key over. “We locked it up. Ranger came by and gave us this. Said he’d get it when we’re done, be down at the trailhead in a bit for questions.”

We thank them, and they head back down. Tillman and I approach the cabin, slipping on our gloves and booties, ducking under the crime scene tape.

They were right. There’s no sign of a struggle here, at least not from outside. The mat squared just so, door locked. No scratches against any of the window casings or the doorframe.

Inside the cabin, a plain twin-sized bed is built into the wall with just one sheet, one blanket, and one pillow on it. Tight-fitted. A single wooden chair and a small one-person table sits on one side of the room. An electric heater and generator-powered kitchen comprised of a self-contained sink, toaster oven, griddle, and electric kettle on the other. A small cubbyhole of a room with a composting toilet in it, entered through a wood pocket door by the kitchen. Three windows in total, none large enough for a human body to get through, just enough to let in a little light. Simple white blinds pulled down over them. The wood of the furniture is all one color, some kind of light pine. The whole place is spartan. Except the one wall.

I take a step closer, hold my breath.

All of it, the entire wall, is covered in playing cards. Each card with a sketch of an animal, a view, plant life. At least three full decks’ worth, maybe more. Covering nearly every square inch of it. When I step up close, I see how meticulous and detailed each sketch is. How beautiful. They’re … amazing, actually. All of them, labeled and dated next to the rank and suit. Bobcats, insects, bears, chipmunks, coyotes, foxes, birds.

These moments in time, quiet encounters. I reach up and trail my gloved fingers over the edge of an ace of clubs with a mountain lion on it. The girl who was in the motel room, the room from my childhood. She drew these. I can’t imagine how much time it must have taken, the thought and devotion that went into each one. It feels intimate, seeing them. Like we shouldn’t be here. Something of her soul exposed in these drawings. In a cooler, we find film canisters. No camera. In a drawer, film rolls full of the shots she must draw from, the photos she must take. I hold them up to the light while Tillman gets cell phone shots of the space. On the film, close-ups of animals, of flying wings. I try to picture the stillness required to capture these images, the patience and quiet.

I open another drawer. Clothing. Simple, utilitarian. Lavender sachets in the corners, to ward off certain bugs. The clothes smell of it. I softly close the drawer.

“Wow. She really digs nature,” Tillman says. He changed before the hike into a Phish Farmhouse shirt and a Smokey Bear beanie. My blood pressure goes up looking at him.

The cabin is clean. That’s already clear. No blood, no scratches or scuffs, no sign of struggle. Assuming no one came in and cleaned the place, it probably hasn’t been abandoned for that long—three, maybe four or five days, tops. I glance up at the wall of drawings again.

We document the orientation and state of the room, but I think it’s probably a waste. She wasn’t taken from here. My gut tells me, and the evidence does. Still, somehow, I think … we learned something. We learned something about Hannah Lawrence, even if I’m not quite sure exactly what it is. And something tells me it’s going to matter.

Something tells me she matters.

Tillman steps back outside first.

My heart races for some reason I can’t identify, looking around the space. A dizzy feeling jolting through me.

And in a split second of insanity, just me alone in Hannah Lawrence’s cabin, I unpin one card from the wall.

I slide it into my pocket.