Headlights(50)

“You’re saying we shouldn’t concentrate on solving this case, we should just let it … appear to us?”

He smiles at me, shrugs. “Maybe I’m just sayin’ a lot of words that don’t mean anything. You know, I know you don’t wanna talk about it, but given that we both fell in love with the same woman, it stands to reason that we might have some other things in common. Maybe—”

My phone rings, and I mumble a thank fucking god.

“This is Oliver Wright’s office returning your call,” a voice says on the other end. “He can squeeze you in, but you’ll have to come now.”



* * *



Six years ago, Oliver Wright was driving with his teenage daughter, Claire, when he got a flat tire. They pulled over at a gas station. It was dark, and there was a field behind the building. Claire wandered behind the car, and she just disappeared. CCTV cut out for exactly one second, showing her there and then gone when it came back online. There was no sign of Claire Wright anywhere until the first Drifter appeared on the side of the highway twelve hours later carrying her skin.

Oliver sued the gas station company for negligence on the security camera and gave us hell trying to speed up prosecution of the Drifter who took his daughter’s life. His name was Jake Evers, a fifty-two-year-old EMT, husband, father of two, and he killed himself in jail about a month after he was detained. Wright has been doggedly pressuring juries, media, and every decision-maker to keep the Drifters in jail ever since. On the one year anniversary of Claire’s murder, Amber Wright, Oliver’s wife and Claire’s mother, overdosed.

We pull into the WrightStar complex and are greeted by a fastidious young man with a clipboard and in-ear Bluetooth after driving through the gate into the lot. “Mr. Wright has twenty minutes between appointments. Continue straight, park beyond Building C, and walk to the left.”

“Thanks. Um, we didn’t catch your name.”

“Twenty minutes,” he says, and walks away.

We find Oliver Wright sitting at a lone picnic table at the edge of a field. Slumped over a sandwich in a suit, not touching it, just staring down at it as if he doesn’t know what to do with the thing. When he hears our footsteps, he straightens, turns to face us, but doesn’t stand.

“Been a while,” he says. “Come back to be useful again?”

“I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Daniel Stansfield,” I say. “This is Nat Tillman.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not a fucking idiot, Stansfield. I remember you.”

“Well, it’s been a while, so … nice to see you again,” I say.

“Yeah, you’re right, the time my daughter was skinned alive and left in a ditch wasn’t super memorable for me,” Oliver says. “Thanks for jogging my memory.”

“Do you mind if we sit?” I ask.

“Why are you here? Do you think I could possibly have any answers for you?”

“Do you by any chance know a man by the name of Everett Brown?” I ask.

No recognition. Just that anger, that deep furious grief.

“What about Mona Brown, Tony Howell?”

“I meet hundreds of people every month. But I don’t remember them if I did.”

I read the whole list, Pete Noland, Ramona Lopez, Kimberly Chen, and her victim, Ross Thompson. Hannah Lawrence. The last name gets caught momentarily in my throat.

Again, his stare. I don’t think he’s registered my words at all.

“Do you remember where you were the night of November tenth?”

“That was my gala.”

“Your gala?”

“To raise more funds for construction.”

“Oh?”

He waves his hand. “I just started again. Felt like there was no point, for a long time. Then … it occurred to me—maybe I could prevent this from happening to other families. Change up some of my site plans, ramp up security and safety in the existing developments, build even higher security systems in the new ones. Just a safe walk to school. Safe houses. Make sure these families won’t have to go through what I did.”

He works his jaw for a moment, and then takes a breath. I watch as he forces himself to pick up his sandwich and take a bite. A picture of him forms. Doing this every day. Sitting and staring out over the field alone, forcing himself to chew.

“You just started up construction again?” I ask.

Oliver nods, swallows. “Few weeks ago.” A shadow moves in the field. “Been outfitting existing housing and school developments with the higher security for the last six months or so. But few weeks ago broke ground on new projects. Or more accurately projects that I stalled for years after Claire and Amber.”

“Interesting you don’t have security here. With all these materials,” Tillman says. “Especially with all the guards and gates you have out in your housing developments.”

“That’s for people. Kids. What do I care about a bunch of fuckin’ lumber and stone?”

“Pretty valuable, with how much you have. Lumber prices what they are.”

Oliver looks at Tillman while he chews as though he is the biggest idiot to have ever walked the planet. I can’t really blame him.

“Insurance would cover it I’m sure,” he says. “Someone wants to try and take it, let ’em. It’s just material. Anyway, I got so many people workin’ overtime now trying to get these new projects off the ground, place is hardly ever left empty.”