Headlights(35)

She nods, debates whether to say more, a question on her face. Probably about the papers, Hannah asking who touched them.

“I’ll call you,” she says. I nod. She gets in.

As the car pulls away, I get one glimpse of her. One glimpse of Hannah Lawrence sitting in the back seat, leaning out the window.

And as they turn out of the lot, she looks back with an expression I can’t even begin to read and that I know I will turn over in my head again and again for a very long time.

Anger, confusion, hurt, fear.

Recognition on her face.

As she looks right at me.



* * *



Back upstairs, I step into the interrogation room, stand where Hannah stood. Try to feel something, somehow. To understand. This space she occupied just minutes ago, molecules, breath. I force my eyes up and to the mirror wall.

Blood, bathtub,

Dad—

I close my eyes and take a step back, exhale.

She couldn’t have seen me through it, it’s just a mirror. There’s no way.

I breathe through the moment, and I open my eyes to look down, check my watch. Ramona Lopez’s mother is coming. I run my hands over my face and look at the chair Hannah was sitting in.

I look up to find more shadows moving in the room.

They all rush toward me.





7



The house that Pete Noland snuck out of the night he killed Ramona Lopez sits on twenty acres just outside of Greeley. Tillman and I pass through the city on the way up. Elitch Gardens, Meow Wolf, Mile High, warehouses, downtown skyscrapers, factories, the Adventure Forest on our right, bright letters painted on a giant wooden pod that kids run in and out of: WE ARE ALIVE IN A LIVING WORLD.

The city giving way to hay bales and pump jacks, junkyards and open fields as we head north. We take the exit for Greeley. Drive through the old-timey, charming downtown, a strong putrid smell permeating the car, the air outside notably warm. Tillman’s podcast talks about a haunted themed restaurant.

My mind is occupied by Hannah Lawrence. Her eyes on mine, leaving the lot. My heart pounding.

Before we got in the car, Ramona Lopez’s mother came in for her interview. She was crying too hard to give us anything other than that no one had any reason to hurt Ramona, and that Ramona Lopez was walking home from work at St. Mary’s Hospital near Eagle’s Nest when she would have been intercepted. The reports say her phone was found on the side of 76. I hadn’t heard of Eagle’s Nest. I put it in the search bar of my phone, try to focus, try not to think about Hannah Lawrence.

Eagle’s Nest. New development, out by Aurora.

“Jeez, what a smell,” Tillman says. “What is that?”

Right. Tillman who probably only goes into the mountains, hiking, climbing on weekends. Who wouldn’t have come out this way. It does smell terrible to be fair. Meat, methane, blood. I say, “Greeley. It’s the town. The smell is worse before a snow.”

“Why?”

“Gets warm before a snow, and humid, it—”

“No, I know that. But why the town?”

I nod to the stockyards and meatpacking plants we’re passing, and Tillman sees them too. “The farms and all the cow methane don’t help either. It’s a whole thing,” I say. “How long have you been here again?” There might be a little shade in my tone.

“Six years.”

“Hm,” I say.

Tillman is silent for a moment. Then he takes a deep loud breath, stretches, and says, “Man, I just feel like I need to move today. Shake all this shit off.”

I was able to squeeze in a morning workout between Jack’s call and Hannah arriving for the interview. The basement gym at Whileago is dusty, and I still haven’t got the power back on, but sweating out that much whiskey feels shitty in the dark or the light of day, so who cares. After what happened in the office though, I could use more too.

Tillman groans and stretches loudly, again.

“Maybe hit the gym,” I say, as the podcast prattles on. “I swear, bacon and eggs just flyin’ across the kitchen! Would sometimes hit you right in the face!”

“Not really a gym guy, I’m about the fresh air, ya know? We live in a freakin’ wonderland. Real waste not to explore it.”

As if suddenly remembering that he hasn’t done it in ten minutes, he leans forward and looks up to the sky through the windshield.

It’s brown, wide open, windy. Despite the college nearby, the town feels quiet. Aside from the construction. A lot of nearly identical apartment buildings going up off the main roads, farms surrounding. So many new developments all the time.

We pull up to the Wheely property. Pete Noland’s girlfriend, Lucy Wheely, and her dad, Frank, the residents. A sign sits out front that says IF YOU VOTED FOR WOLF REINTRODUCTION, YOU’RE NOT WELCOME HERE.

We walk up the front porch steps. The first thing he says when he opens the door is, “If I had known that boy was sneakin’ into my little girl’s room, he probably wouldn’t have been the one going to jail, if you know what I’m sayin’.” Frank Wheely is stout, but strong. Has eyes that look hard but carry sadness, wears a flannel button-down and a vintage Broncos hat.

“Sure, yeah,” Tillman says, adjusting his beanie.

“Mr. Wheely,” I say. “We just have a few questions for Lucy if that’s okay, and if possible we’d like to take a look around the property, see where Pete’s car was parked.”