After about ten minutes of searching the front of the car, I move to the rear. No luck. I slide under the chassis with my phone flashlight on, and find it at the center. It occurs to me that it might not be a new chip, that it could have been there all along—a backup for the more obvious one in the rear wheel well. And if that’s true, there could be still more tracking chips on my car. But I don’t want to think too hard about that. According to my phone, it’s an hour and twenty minutes to Jefferville. I don’t have enough time to think too hard about anything.
JEFFERVILLE IS ACROSS the river from where I live and close to fifty miles north. I make it there in just an hour and without getting pulled over, which is a small miracle, considering all the winding roads with twenty-something speed limits there are on the route.
In a way it’s good, having to focus on driving as closely as I do. I need to be alert, and so my mind can’t wander, and I’m unable to let this bubbling terror swell big enough to overtake me. As I hit the straightaway that leads into town, though, I glance at the clock and see that it’s eleven already—three hours after Wendy said she’d call, and I haven’t heard a word from her. Not even a texted ampersand.
I turn the radio on, then off, longing for a relaxation tape, an extra bottle of pills, those Belgian cigarettes I used to smoke in college, Corps Diplomatique, they were called, in their classy white package with the gold embossed print. How it used to soothe me, packing the box against the palm of my hand and taking a drag . . .
I see a sign that reads WELCOME TO JEFFERVILLE, and my heart smashes into my ribs, a small part of me wanting to turn around and drive home. I’m getting the worst type of déjà vu—that same swirling dread I felt while waiting up for Emily the night of her death, that tiny crystalline part of my brain working overtime, the part that knows everything. . . .
She’s gone.
You beg and you plead and you bargain. Please let her live. I’ll be a better person, I promise. . . . And that’s what I feel myself doing now. I’ll give to charity. I’ll never think bad thoughts. I’ll move far away from here and devote myself to prayer; I will never want revenge on anyone, ever, if you let Wendy live.
Downtown Jefferville consists of one street. I pass a CVS and a mom-and-pop hardware store, a diner-type place called the Kit-n-Caboodle, the post office, and the town hall, overlooking a village green with a flag waving in the wind and two teenage girls huddling on a stone bench, smoking a joint. I pass the junior high, which looks too big and industrial for this little town, and the high school, which is even bigger, electric scoreboards towering over a serious-looking football field, a red-and-white sign touting the Jefferville Wolverines. After the high school is an office complex with a big parking lot. I imagine that’s where Wendy’s accounting firm is, and I’m remembering her talking to me from there just yesterday, her hushed tones in the parking lot as I told her about Violet, and we went over our plan. Before hanging up, Wendy had said, “I guess nobody’s perfect.”
And I’d replied, “What do you mean?”
“Triple-Oh-One made a big mistake, introducing you and me.”
My phone’s GPS interrupts my thoughts, telling me to take a right on Dove Street, which I do. It’s a wide street, lined with tidy ranch houses that look as though they were all dropped there at the same time, probably at the turn of the century. Wendy’s house is a pale pink, with neatly trimmed azalea bushes lining the front entrance.
I park my car on the street, and as I make my way to the front door, I notice that there’s only one car parked in the driveway—a red Honda Civic. Wendy’s silver Camry is nowhere in sight, and she never mentioned a Honda Civic. Just the Camry and the Mercedes she tinkers with and never takes out . . . Don’t jump to conclusions, I tell myself, though I’m afraid to even think about what conclusions I’m jumping to. I press the doorbell—a screeching buzz that makes me jump back. I’d expected something more melodic.
I hear a deep voice say, “Just a minute,” and then the door opens and a tall black man with horn-rimmed glasses, chinos, and a yellow polo shirt stands there, eying me warily. “Carl Osterberg?” I say, because he does look like an accountant.