“Do you remember her stopping here?” I ask the woman, whose pale blue veins are tightening beneath the waxy skin of her throat.
She raises an eyebrow at me, as if I’ve offended her in suggesting that she might not remember such a thing after five years. I know Maggie St. James stopped at the Timber Creek Gas & Grocery because it was in the police report, as well as a statement from a cashier who was not named. “She was unmemorable at best,” the woman answers, what’s left of her thinning eyelashes fluttering closed then open again, dark mascara clotting at the corners. “But lucky for the police, and you, I remember everyone.” She glances to the oily storefront windows—snow spiraling against the glass—as if the memory were still there, just within reach. “She got gas and bought a pack of strawberry bubble gum, tore open the package and started chewing it right there, before she’d even paid for it. Then she asked about a red barn. Asked if I knew where she could find one around here. Of course, I told her about the old Kettering place a few miles on up the road. Said it was nearly collapsed, a place kids go to drink, and hadn’t been properly used in twenty years. I asked her what she wanted with that old place, but she wouldn’t say. She left without even a thanks, then drove off. They found her car the next morning, abandoned.” She snuffs, turning her face back to the windows, and I get the sense she wants to make some comment about how rude city folk can be, but catches herself just in case I might be city folk. Even though I’m not. And from what I knew of Maggie St. James, she wasn’t either.
I clear my throat, hoping there might be more beneath the surface of her memory if I can ask the right question and pry it loose. “Have you heard anyone talk about her in the years since?” I ask, tiptoeing around the thing I really want to ask. “Someone who saw her, who remembers something?”
“Someone who remembers killing her, you mean?” She unfolds her arms, mouth tugging strangely to one side.
I doubt there’s a serial killer in the area—there’d be reports of other disappearances—but perhaps there’s someone who keeps to themselves, lives alone up in these woods, someone who maybe hadn’t killed before, but only because he had never encountered the right opportunity—until Maggie drove into town. Someone out hunting deer or rabbit, and a stray shot tore through a woman with short, cropped blond hair—a woman whose body now needed to be disposed of, burned or buried. Accidents can turn people into grave diggers.
“I can’t say for sure that some folks around here don’t have a bolt untightened from the mind, a few cobwebs strung between the earlobes, but they aren’t killers.” The woman shakes her head. “And they certainly can’t keep their mouths shut. If someone killed that girl, they’d’ve talked about it by now. And soon enough, the whole town would know of it. We’re not much for keeping secrets for long.”
I look away from her, eyeing the coffee machine again, the stack of paper cups. Should I risk it? But the woman speaks again, one eyebrow raised like a pointed toothpick, as if she’s about to let me in on a secret. “Maybe she wanted to get herself lost, start a new life; no crime in that.” Her eyes flick to the pack of cigarettes sitting beside the cash register, a purple lighter resting on top. She needs a smoke.
I nod, because she might be right about Maggie. People did sometimes vanish, not because they’d been taken or killed, but simply because they wanted to disappear. And Maggie had reason to escape her life, to slip into the void of endless highways and small towns and places where most don’t go looking.
Maybe I’m chasing a woman who doesn’t want to be found.
Behind the cash register, the woman finally reaches for the pack of cigarettes, sliding it across the counter so it’s resting on the very edge. “Maybe it’s best to just let her be, let a woman go missing if that’s what she wants.”
For a moment, she and I stare at one another—as if we’ve reached some understanding between us, a knowing that we’ve felt that same itch at the back of our throats at least once in our lives: that desire to be lost.
But then her expression changes: the skin around her mouth wrinkling like dried apricots, and a shiver of something untrusting settles behind her eyes, like she’s suddenly wary of who I am—who I really am—and why I’ve come asking questions after all these years. “You a private detective?” she asks, taking the pack of smokes in her hand and tapping out a single cigarette.