Headlights(57)

At the edge of the lot, a young man with a backpack on, stepping out of a car.

A young man who looks a lot like Tony Howell.

Hannah’s camera. Hannah’s film roll. Tony Howell who was taped into the bed with her at the Happy Inn. The two of them in the same place at the same time, a week and three days before we found them at the motel. Hannah taking a photo of him.

Proof of it on her camera roll.

“Oh shit,” I say.

“Yeah,” Frazier says. “Ran prints on the camera. Inconclusive, but…”

A roaring in my ears. That giant sweeping avalanche.

Hannah Lawrence might in fact be responsible for everything.



* * *



We get to Hannah’s cabin a little after midnight. Her bed’s made. She isn’t there. My heart pounds. Was it her? Did she do this, orchestrate all of this? With help? Alone? Why? What could she possibly want with me or any part of my life?

We stay all night, sit outside in the mountain dark, walk a perimeter around her cabin. Tillman, Garcia, and me.

We couldn’t ask her about Tony Howell before, if she knew him, because we hadn’t gotten an ID. The two of them are surely connected, have to be. The only photo of a human in her film roll, and it was him.

I feel eyes on us. Am certain we are not alone. We hike all around, check everywhere. See nothing. Hear nothing.

We leave a trail camera with an automatic alert function. By morning, we decide to head down. We check her grocery store resupply spot on the way back to town in another new development I haven’t seen before. The store clerks say they haven’t seen her in weeks.

By the time I step through the doors of Whileago Manor, it’s late morning. I haven’t slept at all. I open my laptop and search for her again. Frazier already talked to the people who hired her. We called the ranger I saw before, to let us in. They know nothing more about her life than what we’ve already got in the files.

I’m restless, don’t know what to do with myself. Am so fucking tired and wired and— Wizdumteller. Could that be her?

I check the chat room again. Nothing new. We hiked sixteen miles, there and back. All of it.

Hannah Lawrence.

I read and I search, and sleep pulls at me, but I fight it. It’s cold in the house, gray outside the windows. I build another fire. Sit back down, look for her again. I search and search for her, for anything at all. The shadows in the corners of the room, watching me. Hannah’s card in my hand the whole time.

Hannah’s drawing is the last thing I’m thinking of when sleep finally takes me.



* * *



My phone. Ringing again. Eyes open.

Awake in a dark house. Whileago Manor. Hannah Lawrence’s card in my hand. My laptop half-closed before me.

It’s evening. Did I sleep through the whole afternoon?

“Hey,” Jack says through the phone. He sounds terrible, worse than before. And it jolts me back. Images of Brianna in a hospital flash before me. Of the worst possible thing.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s the kid,” Jack says.

And my brain doesn’t compute at first.

“Pete Noland,” he says.

It takes me a moment to catch up, to realize he’s not talking about his family, that they’re all okay. My heart rate slows. Then another moment to understand.

“He hung himself in jail,” Jack says. “He’s dead.”





18



I’m running. In the dark, on the High Line Canal, beneath the cottonwoods, willows, green ash. I’ve been running, I don’t know how far, how long. Headed back toward the house. The house where I’ll stare at files and search things on my phone, on my computer, ask the same questions of the same people, beat my head against the fucking wall again and again.

Pete Noland is dead. Another person dead because of me. A kid.

You know, Blaze was never afraid, not of anything. He sang things that could’ve gotten him killed, but he did it anyway. He looked out for people, did right by ’em. Rose, talking to me in the motel. The sun shining in through the shades. Blaze Foley’s voice playing on our little tape player.

For me it was John Denver. For her, it was Blaze. She talked about him all the time. How he was living in Texas in the Reagan era when he put that song “Oval Room” out. Everyone around him was scared he was gonna get shot for it. And he did get shot, but not for that. I always thought his songs were lonely, kind of sad. I liked the president one, but the others, the ones she played again and again like they held the answers to everything … as a kid, they just made me feel sad. Maybe just made me feel.

I don’t shut out the memories, the pain. Us dancing and laughing. Her sitting up crying when she thought I was sleeping. Counting coins on the table and making me mac ’n’ cheese or ramen in the microwave and reading me books from the library. My dad, when he was around. The two of them, fighting, screaming. Him holding a bottle and pulling his fist back, and— I trip over a root. Hit the ground on my shoulder, roll to my back. The Colorado night sky above me. My heart pounding. And …

Pete Noland is dead. Because he couldn’t handle the idea of having done this to someone. Because I couldn’t get to an answer fast enough.

Because we had Hannah Lawrence in custody but I couldn’t see past the fact that she was hurt and strong and familiar-seeming and beautiful. How fucking stupid can I be?