When I spot him, he’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat in tanned canvas, watering bouquets of dark dinosaur kale with a garden hose, and I am appalled. Not just because the hose could be repurposed into a garotte, but because he looks so peaceful on this sunny spring day, and I am running on two hours of jagged sleep. We both know the clock is running out, and yet I am the only one with something to lose when it does.
He sees me and shuts off the water. At first he approaches slowly, poking higher the underside of his hat’s brim so that he can see if it’s really me. He begins to move faster—he is charging me, actually—and I’m thinking about all the fine print I refused to read in the waiver I signed, how I cannot hold anyone but myself accountable for bodily injury or even my death, when I taste blood.
RUTH
Aspen
Winter 1974
Evening descended on the walk back to the hotel. Tina and I were up against a shiv-like wind that chapped our faces and stripped the branches of their iced sleeves. But under my wool coat and Tina’s wool sweater, I was burning up, agitated, and thirsty. The champagne had hit my system like a live wire, startling dormant sensations from their slumber. I was tormented by the image of that old man lathering Tina’s pubic hair while his family set the table for dinner downstairs. It wasn’t late enough for bed, and we had decided to hang out in the lobby for a little while longer, but I was working up the courage to lie to Tina. I needed to escape from her, just for a little while, to sedate the wild animal clawing at my skin from the inside.
We entered the lobby, stomping and scraping our wet boots on the carpet runner, to find a few guests warming up before the molten fireplace. From the other side of the room, a stocky woman with a blunt haircut called out to Tina.
“Marlene!” Tina waved. She leaned into me. “That’s Frances’s cowriter on the book.”
I seized my opportunity. “Go say hi. I want to run upstairs and change out of these wet socks.” I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered for show.
I made my way to the elevator with short quick strides, the way you do when your stomach is upset and you need a bathroom now but you don’t want anyone to know you need a bathroom now.
I punched the button and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t stand to see if anyone else joined me while I waited for the elevator to arrive. There were fifteen floors, and we were on the twelfth. If we had to stop on the way, I would have a conniption. I heard the brake release with a dull clank, and I opened my eyes, relieved to find that I had the car to myself. I pulsed the button for twelve with my thumb, over and over, though I knew it wouldn’t make the thing move any faster.
Someone slipped inside just before the doors clasped. It was the same woman I’d ridden the elevator with that morning, the one who had mouthed of course at me in the mirror when the cardiologist assumed she was there to ski. She pressed the button for fourteen; at least I wouldn’t have to stop for her.
“I hate when people do that to me,” she apologized. “But we’re better off riding together.”
I turned to her with a blank look. She gave it to me right back.
“You do know about the woman who went missing here last year?” She arched an eyebrow expectantly, sure my memory could be jogged. But I had no idea what she was talking about. The woman filled me in. “Her name was Caryn Campbell. She was here with her fiancé. For the conference. They came back from dinner and were going to sit and read in the lobby by the fire for a bit. She went to grab a magazine from her room. She got on the elevator, and that’s the last time anyone saw her alive.”
The floor felt like it was pushing against my feet, insisting it was there, as the elevator’s brass arm began its count. “Was she ever found?” I heard myself ask.
The woman shook her head grimly. “Not alive. No.”
The elevator clutch released at my floor, but my head still felt pressurized and heavy. The doors opened.
“Let me walk you,” the woman offered. “My name’s Gail, by the way. Gail Strafford.”
“Ruth Wachowsky,” I told her. We stepped off the elevator and went left down the orange-and-yellow diamond-patterned runner. “Did the police catch the person who killed her?”
Again Gail shook her head. “That’s why I’m here.”
“How does”—I paused, trying to recall the name of her department—“forensic anthropology come in?”
“We can perform certain tests that can help determine the most accurate time of death.”