Somebody I Used to Know (15 page)

The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Did you not just hear the advice I gave to you, oh, maybe thirty seconds ago, Mr. Hansen?” He pointed up the street, telling me the direction to go.

I didn’t wait. I took his advice and left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I
crossed into Ohio in the late afternoon, and thirty minutes into my home state my eyelids started to droop. It had been a long day. Emotional. Stressful. I needed gas and to fill my own tank with caffeine.

I stopped at a gas station a mile off the interstate. I didn’t catch the name of the town, if it even had one. The station and its convenience store were the only things in sight besides fields and more fields and somewhere in the distance a weathered barn that was folding in on itself. I stretched while the gas pumped, and then left Riley in charge of watching the car while I went inside to pay.

An old man in a cap from a seed company was working the register. He looked like he’d seen a lot of miles, and he didn’t even meet my eye when he asked if I needed anything else. I told him I didn’t. I had coffee and a candy bar, enough to get me home.

It might have been my grogginess or the distractions filling my mind, but I didn’t see the car coming. I’d taken one step out of the store, my right foot just hitting the asphalt, when the silver sedan rushed by, forcing me to jump back to avoid being hit. I lost my balance and fell backward against the glass door behind me, the hot coffee spilling down my arm and pants leg.

I remained like that for a moment, frozen in place in a kind of crouch with my back against the door and my hand dripping. The car didn’t stop. It rushed to the exit and out onto the narrow country road leading to the gas station. I tried, but there was no way in hell to get the license number.

Then I felt the pain in my hand. I looked down and shook the excess coffee away and went back inside, dropping the candy bar on the ground. The old-timer at the register didn’t look up while I hustled into the bathroom and ran cold water over my hand.

The water was soothing. I looked at myself in the mirror. My skin was blanched, my eyes wide. My heart thumped a crazy rhythm, and a pulse beat in my neck, visible in the mirror just beneath the skin.

I felt hot. Really hot. I splashed cold water on my face, two and then three times. I wiped it with a towel.

Someone had almost run me over. I pulled out another towel and patted the rest of my face and hands dry. I thought of Emily, her life choked out of her in that hotel room. And then her body sealed in a coffin for all eternity. It all made me feel paranoid. Scared.

That car wasn’t
trying
to hit me, was it? That couldn’t be.

I returned to the front and cleared my throat. The old guy looked up from a hunting magazine.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

He swiveled his head around the store. “See what?”

I pointed. “Out there. That car almost ran me down when I left.”

He followed the line of my finger and shook his head. “I didn’t see anything.” He pointed to his ear. “I can’t hear so good either.”

“A car came right up against me when I stepped out the door. I had to jump back. I spilled my coffee.”

He looked at my stained pants. “Do you want to call the law? Or would you just like another coffee?”

What would I tell the police if I called them? That someone almost ran me over? For all I knew, it was a bad driver, a clueless person texting while driving or blabbering on a cell phone. I had no license number, no description of the driver. I did have a mind pushed to its limit by stress and shock.

Did I really think someone tried to kill me?

“I guess I’ll take the coffee,” I said. “And a candy bar. I dropped mine.”

“Coffee’s on the house,” the old guy said. “But I have to charge you for another candy bar.”

*   *   *

I dropped Riley off at home first, and then I called Mick Brosius. I gave him a quick rundown of what had happened at the funeral, especially about seeing the woman who looked like Marissa, and he told me to meet him at his office. Once I arrived, I added the part about the car almost running me down.

He listened to that part of the story patiently, but his face showed skepticism.

“Should I tell Reece about that?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “if you really want to. But it’s not his jurisdiction, and you really don’t have any proof this person meant to do you harm.”

“But they came so close. Are you saying I’m just being paranoid?”

“There are a lot of bad drivers in the world,” he said. “Let’s not worry about it right now. I called Reece. He’s expecting us.”

So together we walked over to the police station to meet Detective Reece.

I felt a little like I was going into the lions’ den, since I could only assume that they still considered me a “person of interest” in Emily’s death. But my desire to tell him the things I’d learned—and seen—in Richmond overwhelmed any other concerns.

Reece sat at his desk, his tie slightly loosened. His jacket hung on the back of his chair, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. On his forearm, just above his wrist, was a tattoo of a small cross.

Brosius and I sat in uncomfortable wooden chairs. Mick said, “I’m here because I want to protect my client. And I want it noted that he’s voluntarily providing this information in the hopes of helping the Emily Russell case move forward.”

“How was Emily’s funeral?” Reece asked.

“Look, I went because I felt a connection to the girl, to her death. It’s not a crime, is it?” I asked.

“Don’t say that,” Brosius said. “You’re not guilty. You don’t even look guilty.”

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Reece asked. “I’m assuming it’s good.” A phone rang on Reece’s desk, but he didn’t answer it. After two rings, he pressed a button, silencing the call. “You can tell me about this disturbance at the Russells’ house.”

I looked at Brosius, who nodded, giving me the okay to tell the story I had told him on the phone.

“I don’t know what it was about,” I said. “I went to the Russells’ house because I was looking for someone I thought I knew. When I arrived, the police were in the driveway. They talked to me for a while and checked me out. They obviously called you. That’s all I know. When I found out something had happened, I decided to get out of there and come home. I figured if there had been some kind of disturbance, the Russells didn’t need me showing up for more. Do they even know who I am? Have you told them about my address being in Emily’s pocket when she died? And the grocery store?”

“They know all of it,” Reece said. “They might not recognize you if you strolled into their home, but they know about it. They know everything, even things they don’t want to know, I’m sure.”

He let me contemplate that for a moment. I remembered sitting in the very same chair the first time I came to the station with Reece, the day I was fingerprinted and swabbed. I remembered Emily’s parents walking through the room, carrying that unseen but unbearable burden. They had just identified their daughter’s dead body. Yes, they most certainly knew more than they ever wanted to know.

“What was the disturbance at the Russells’ house?” I asked. “Am I allowed to know?”

Reece picked up a paper clip and started twirling it between his fingers. He moved it deftly, like a magician working up to a trick.

He said, “A woman showed up at the Russells’ house, right after the funeral. She claimed to be Emily’s birth mother.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I
summoned a picture in my mind of that woman—Marissa?—hurrying away from the graveside, her head down.

“What kind of disturbance did she cause?” I asked.

“She showed up as the first guests were arriving back at the Russells’ house,” Reece said, his voice level, almost nonchalant. “She came in the back door and announced that she was Emily’s birth mother. She said she wanted to talk to the Russells and find out what really happened to her daughter. I guess she also said she had a right to be mourning alongside everybody else. Some of the guests tried to get her to quiet down and leave.”

“Did they know who she was?” I asked.

“Do you mean did they know if she was really Emily’s birth mother?” he asked. “No. No one had ever seen her before.”

“But everyone knew Emily was adopted, right?” I asked.

Reece shifted in his chair. He pushed his sleeves farther up his arms, first one side and then the other. “Did you know Emily was adopted?” he asked.

“I just found out today,” I said. “At the funeral. At the cemetery, as a matter of fact. A cousin of Emily’s mother told me. Are you saying you didn’t know?”

Reece rubbed his chin. “I can understand that in the grief and confusion of Emily’s death certain details may not be conveyed to us in the timeliest fashion. But in a case like this, everything is clearly relevant.”

“So you didn’t know?” Brosius asked.

“No, but we know now. And we’re curious to talk to this woman who is claiming to be Emily’s birth mother. Not only did she show up making that claim, but she threatened one of the Russells’ guests. Mr. Russell’s brother tried to gently and calmly steer her away from the reception and back out the door. He told her this wasn’t the time to be bringing things like that up. The woman threatened to come back and kill him.”

“Shit,” I said.

Reece’s face darkened. “You have to understand that we take a claim like that very seriously when it’s directed at a family member of a homicide victim.”

“She probably just blurted it out in the heat of the moment,” I said. “I doubt very much she’d come back and hurt someone.”

“You doubt it, do you?” he asked.

“It certainly looks like you have another possible suspect on your hands,” Brosius said. “One who has leveled threats against the family of the victim. And you have witnesses to the threats.”

Reece raised his hand. “I hear you, Mr. Brosius.”

I looked around the room and thought about what they were implying. Police business went on around us. Phones rang, and somewhere out of sight an announcement went out over a PA system, the voice tinny and rough, the message unintelligible. “I think I know who that woman is, the one who showed up at the reception.”

“You do?” Reece asked. “Who is it?”

I swallowed before I spoke. I knew if I said the name I carried in my head, I was opening myself up for all kinds of ugly responses. Ridicule. Anger. Pity. But I couldn’t stay quiet. If it helped Reece solve the case and exonerate me . . . and if it could possibly bring me closer to understanding whether the woman at the funeral had really been Marissa or not, I had to say it.

I looked over at Brosius, and he nodded again. We’d discussed it at his office before coming over, and he felt it wouldn’t hurt my cause to share the information. “Go ahead,” he said.

“I saw a woman at the cemetery,” I said, trying not to sound as uncertain as I felt. “After the service, and after I was talking to Mrs. Russell’s cousin, I saw a woman walking to her car. That’s how the people at the reception tied us together. They saw that the woman was watching me, and then she walked away before I could talk to her.”

“I’m listening,” Reece said.

“I really think it was Marissa Minor.”

Reece didn’t laugh. He continued to study me, and maybe his eyelids squinted shut a millimeter or so, but other than that, he showed nothing.

Then he said, “Your deceased girlfriend? The one who’s been dead for twenty years?”

“Yes.”

“The one you thought Emily Russell looked like when you saw her in the grocery store?” he asked.

“Exactly,” I said. “That’s what started all of this. And now a woman who looks a hell of a lot like Marissa shows up at Emily’s funeral, claiming to be her birth mother? Doesn’t that tell you it’s all connected?”

Reece reached over and riffled through a stack of manila folders. He slid one out and opened it, turning a few of the loose pages until he found the one he wanted.

“You told me Marissa died in October,” he said.

“I know the math,” I said. “I know Emily was born seven months after Marissa died. I know none of it makes logical sense. But do you have any other way to explain it?”

“And one of the things you’re basing this whole theory on is the belief that Marissa’s family, the Minors, just disappeared after they moved out of Ohio in the wake of their daughter’s death? Am I right?”

His question brought me up short. He knew something. “How did you know about that?” I asked.

“I talked to your friend. Mrs. Davidson. Actually, she came to talk to me.”

“She did? When?” I asked.

“What is this about?” Brosius asked. He looked at me. “Did Laurel tell you about this?”

“No.”

Reece looked down at the folder. “She doesn’t know everything,” he said. “She might know a lot, but she doesn’t know everything.” He removed a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Check that out.”

I studied the page, with Brosius reading over my shoulder. It took a moment for me to register what it was, but then I understood. They were obituaries, printed off a website. One for Marissa’s father and one for her mother. Her father had died four years earlier at the age of sixty-nine. Her mother died one year ago at the age of seventy-three. The obituaries were short on details, but they mentioned that the Minors were predeceased by a daughter, Marissa, and survived by another daughter, Jade.

I looked at the top of the page. The obituary came from a newspaper in Colorado, a town I’d never heard of, Cherokee Falls.

“You found them,” I said.

“I found out they died,” Reece said. “Of natural causes, and apparently at a somewhat advanced age. And didn’t you tell Mrs. Davidson they moved to Colorado after the fire that killed Marissa?”

“They did. That’s what I heard.”

“So they were right there all along, living their lives.” He made a smoothing gesture with his hand. “No mystery. No grand conspiracy. They were exactly what they appeared to be—a grieving family who moved away after their daughter died in a tragic accident.”