Headlights(39)

But Oliver Wright …

I look up who owns the high school that Ryder Smith, those victims, and that Drifter all went to. It takes a minute and a number of searches, but I find an article. WRIGHTSTAR ACQUIRES FORTY ACRES OF PROPERTY IN WEST DENVER, INCLUDING HIGH SCHOOL AND LOCAL BUSINESSES.

My glass suddenly knocks over onto the table with a clang. Beer spilling over my notebook, down into my lap. I stand, look around to see a shadow darting away, then quickly try and mop up the beer with some napkins.

What the hell? This shadow came and knocked my beer over? Motherfucker. The father of the family in the corner eyes me, wary. I reach for more napkins. Did I knock it over?

Tillman says, coming up behind me, “You okay, brother?” I turn to find him and a young guy, maybe twenty-three, twenty-four, standing there. Lean, sharp, grief and shock written on every inch of him.

“Stansfield, this is David Chen, Kimberly’s brother. He’s got about two minutes to speak to us, then he’s gonna be about his day. Thank you again for your time,” he says to David.

“Look,” David says. “I’m exhausted and I’m just trying to keep it together, okay? I’m just…” He wipes a tear and adjusts his hat, turns to Tillman. “If you hadn’t helped with the kegs, I wouldn’t be talking to you at all. This whole thing … My sister is the best person I know, and she is my rock. She would never ever do this.”

“We understand,” Tillman says. “What happened that night? You said you talked?”

“Yeah. I was on the phone with her. She was making her rounds on Eighty-Five. And she suddenly just stopped talking and said, ‘What is that?’ And I said, ‘What?’ but she didn’t answer me. It was quiet for a long minute, and then I asked, ‘What?’ again, and she said, ‘Hold on a second. There’s something in the road.’ She sounded worried, freaked, even.

“Then she put the phone down on the seat, but I could still hear. She does that, and I can always hear her talking in the background, whoever she’s pulled over responding to her. But this time I couldn’t hear any talking. This time I heard grasshoppers, I heard her boots. And then … I don’t know how to explain it better than … it was like this sort of wind turbine, almost. The sound. Or a giant vacuum. Like … VOOM. It happened a few times, three or four. And then, I didn’t hear her boots anymore, and the sound stopped. Even the grasshoppers. It was just silent. And the phone cut out. She didn’t call back and didn’t answer when I called her. So I called nine-one-one and told them where she was. When they got there, there was no sign of anything. Just her abandoned patrol car.”

That sound. What I heard in the field. I start to say, “And did you—”

“Look,” David says, “I already answered the cops when I called them. I know who you are, and I know what this whole thing is, and I just cannot get my head around the fact that this is our lives now, or that we are in any way a part of it. Okay? Like my sister I’ve known my entire life just decided on a whim to put down the phone and kill and skin someone she pulled over on the side of the highway? And now she’s in jail? She has a cat, a life, a family. She would never do any of this.

“So please don’t sit here questioning me when I’ve already told the cops everything. Get out there and do your job, because if there’s any chance of my sister, or me, or anyone else getting out of any of this, it’s you just finally figuring this the fuck out. Please.”

On our way out, we pass the family in the corner.

My eye catches on the marker drawing the kid has been making, sitting between his parents.

A long spindly creature with antlers or horns. I stare at it for a second.

I dodge another shadow as we step out the door.





9



We need to talk to Oliver Wright again,” I say to Tillman back in the lot. He leans against the side of the car, looks up at the sky. Clouds have rolled in, and in the gray light the city looks like the purgatory it is. I tell him about the new connection with these last three murders, the WrightStar developments. He’s already read over what Frazier and Daphne sent.

He furrows his brow. “Josie and Jack are investigating him,” he says. “Oliver Wright.”

“What?”

“White-collar stuff. Fraud, I think.” He shrugs. “Wouldn’t hurt for us to talk with him.”

We wrap up this super fun day by lingering in the parking lot near each other, making calls. Leaves fall from the oak trees, squirrels zipping at the edges of the parking lot. A magpie pecks at an overturned take-out container that’s fallen from a trash can.

“Got good news and bad news,” Tillman says when we get back in the car.

I start the engine, the podcast turning back on automatically.

“So Mona Brown, Everett Brown’s wife, she’s down to talk to us,” he says.

“Great,” I say. “When?”

“Tomorrow morning, first thing. But she had a stipulation.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, so she doesn’t actually want to talk to us … she wants to talk to … me.”

“To you.”

“Yeah, or like, more specifically, to anyone. Just not … you.”

“Not me?”